Why The Church Leads the Way in Civil Rights

Today's alternate Gospel reading is about the visitation. I love it when people say we do not know the bible. because we wrote it, and we live it through the liturgical year. This week is the 20th week in ordinary time. Today we also celebrate the visitation. This occurred when Blessed Mother visited her cousin St. Elizabeth. Both of whom are with child. Blessed Mother with Jesus and St. Elizabeth with His cousin St. John the Baptist. St. John the baptist leaped in St. Elizabeth's womb at their meeting.

Today also we have a debate about health care. Should something called comprehensive reproductive care, as characterized by Cecile Richards, be included in a national health care package. According to Ms. Richards, comprehensive reproductive care includes the legal right to abortion. Of course to the rest of us comprehensive reproductive care means something else -- prenatal care. Who could be opposed to having prenatal care included in a national health care package.

As with any debate language is important. No African American man today would put up with being called "boy" or worse. Just as no woman would want to be seen as "unviable" without a husband to provide for her. So in the future the unborn will gain their civil rights and no longer be referred to as sub-human, "unviable", fetus, embryo. The extention of civil rightss to the unborn will occur, and rightly so, for two reasons. First, science has proved that a unique human being is formed at conception. The second reason has to do with the foundation of this country. This country was founded on the fact that all humans are endowed by their creator with rights, and that it is the proper role, the duty of governments to protect the rights of human beings.

So reproductive care is prenatal health care, and abortion is not.

Abortion requires that we see a class of unique human beings as less than human, otherwise we would not be able to deny them their civil rights. These rights which include the right to life, as codified in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution, apply to all human beings equally. Our country was founded on this principle. the principle that rights are inherent and retained by the human being and that it is the proper function of governments to protect the rights that are unalienable from the human. These rights belong to human beings. This is the forward progressive thinking of humanity and has been since the enlightenment and the birth of the nation to first recognize and put into practice this principle -- the United States of America.

And so there are two sides in this debate on universal health coverage. There is the reactionary oppressive side, who would characterize and have the rest of us see human beings as something less than human, and thus not protect the rights that they inherently have. And give one class of people a privilege to destroy these sub-human people through their medically assisted discharge. The idea that governments can assign such privileges to a class of people is of course the old thinking which dates back to the time of the Divine right of kings to assign privilege to whomever they might choose, arbitrarily. This previledge, extened arbitrarily and with no basis in law, denies the rights that reside with another class of humans the oppressed unborn child.

Have we learned nothing about civil rights from the principles in our Declaration of Independence and our Bill of Rights? Have we learned nothing from Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. about nonviolently objecting to laws that are not laws because they do not live up to our founding principle, our country's very foundation?

And so we can see Ms. Richards and groups like Planned Parenthood for what they really are -- the nobles who oppressed the serfs, the slave traders who oppressed African Americans, and the male chauvinists who oppressed women. These new oppressors the abortionists, expect the privilege of being able to destroy human beings, human beings who according to this backward oppressive thinking are now seen as chattel.

The cause of unplanned pregnancy is unplanned pregnancy, the cause of the slave trade was the slave trade. Neither of these support the position that it is right for a class of people to oppress another class of people by denying them the rights that they were endowed with by their creator.

And who are the progressives in this debate? Who are the forward thinkers? Who are those who are standing up for the inherent rights of an oppressed class? As the abolitionists, as those who fought for equal rights for women? They are in fact, USCCB The United States Council of Catholic Bishops. Our Shepards. The successors of the Apostles. These are the ones standing up for the greatest civil rights movement of the 21st century. Standing up for the rights of human beings conceived and formed unique human beings. These men are the forward thinkers the defenders of civil rights in this new movement that will continue until all men are truly created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are LIFE ... The USCCB these are the new patriots the true defenders of the American ideals upon which this country was founded.

As lay people it is our duty to follow them as sheep follow Shepards and to leap for joy as St. John the baptist leaped in the womb of St. Elizabeth.

We Catholics are the new abolitionists. Unfortunately there is no underground railroad to free these unborn human beings. But there is prayer, fasting and debate. Debate where the sides are properly understood. The oppressors are the privileged class and those who support them encouraged and even sanctioned by the government, as slavery once was, to destroy human beings because they are seen as unviable, just as in previous generations other human beings were seen as sub-human or weak and thus unviable.

Civil rights for the unborn.

What does this have to do with the visitation? One human being leaping for joy in the womb as he was visited by another fully human and fully God, yet in the womb.

copyright 2009 by Fred Celio