Recognizing Christ in the Womb by Sherry Antonetti

The County Council where I live is considering a regulation that would require pro-life pregnancy resource centers to tell new clients that the information they provide is not intended to be medical advice and to turn to other providers before "proceeding on a course of action regarding [her] pregnancy."

Translation: Pregnancy centers that don’t provide abortions should advise women to consider going elsewhere. The regulation would impose a fine of up to $750 per day for not doing so.  The bill singles out pregnancy resource centers only because of their pro-life mission. If approved, the regulation would impose government-compelled speech on a non-profit organization that does not receive government funding simply because the organization declines to provide or refer for abortion. The regulation does not apply to "family planning" clinics, which the County government funds, or to abortion clinics. Translation: abortion mills don’t have to hang up a sign saying, "Warning, We kill children with acid or forceps and scissors for money." It is one sided and intentionally so.

I wrote my council and received a response.  "Under the resolution, CPCs would be required to notify clients that the center will not be providing medical advice or establishing a
doctor-patient relationship.  The resolution also would require CPCs to
recommend to the client that she seek out a qualified health care
professional.  As women face some of the most complicated and meaningful decisions of
their lives, we owe it to them to make sure they receive thorough and
medically sound information."

To which I would counter, "Fine, require that abortion clinics provide an ultrasound to every woman considering an abortion, and impose the same fine per person for each woman not shown the real pictures of their real children that they are really going to destroy willingly and pay the clinics to do." As for wanting the women fully informed, again I say "Fine, require that the "full service" women’s clinics disclose all the complications emotional and physical that stem from abortions and from decades of use of birth control." and "Fine, I want parental consent and the same protections put on my kids if they want asprin at school established to prevent the dissemination of birth control pills, IUD’s, Condoms, RU-486. I also want informed parental consent required for all medical procedures to ensure proper medical care." But these things are not proposed or even considered. Nor would they gain the traction this type of regulation has garnered from those heavily invested in politics. This policy is coy and clever, it pretends that it does not mean what it means, it feigns ignorance but is calculated to destroy alternative clinics that do not promote or practice abortion.

She continued, "The resolution does not limit the type of counseling a woman may receive.  Rather, it ensures that women understand the nature of that advice." No, councilwoman, it does precisely limit one side of the argument in favor of the other.  It demands that pro-life clinics provide documentation of the immoral alternative while not requiring the same of those that are pro-abortion.

In conclusion, I ask everyone to pray in this time of Advent that more of us come to recognize the unborn and that we become less fearful of the opposition and more knowledgeable of what they are about.  We have to recognize that if we cannot speak it, if we cannot practice it, if we cannot live it, we are not actually believing what we profess to believe, we are giving lip service to the belief that all human life is sacred.  By our words, by our deeds, by what we do and do not do, and what we say and what we will not say, we will reveal whether we love and recognize Christ in the Womb like Saint John the Baptist.


Copyright 2009 Sherry Antonetti