What Will It Mean? by Sherry Antonetti

The laws have gone into effect and tax payers now finance embryonic stem cell research and the promotion of abortion abroad. What does it mean if we as tax payers must render unto Caesar money that will be used to provide and promote a culture of death? How do we reconcile our civic obligations with the moral corrosive consequences of funding grave sin?

We ought to have been asking this more. We ought to have asked this whenever our government proposed war or engaged in trade with a nation well documented in severe human rights violations. We ought to have been demanding that our government reflect more of our values and more than mere lip service at ceremonial times when our traditions provide a good photo back drop. Maybe we always were helping to push forward wrong acts whenever we have financed a war or turned a blind eye to the evils of another regime because of the resources we wanted. No government can be completely good, but funding embryonic stem cell research and abortion would be yet another step in the wrong direction and larger in scale and scope. Maybe we should have yelled then more, but we are awake now, and ought to start speaking up and soon.

Current proposed legislation will have us fund tax paid abortion in Washington DC and existing health care reform acts have conflicting proposals that will have to be reconciled. Given the public and political statements given by the Executive and legislative branch, tax payer funded abortion and birth control remain a real possibility.

If the current administration and Congress go forward with abortion as a benefit, we will be left with the unpleasant knowledge that we collude with our government to slaughter millions of holy innocents with every tax dollar. We will knowledgeable in a way we perhaps never have been before, about the real nature of sin. The actions of all these private individuals who chose to abort their children will now have a public effect, as we will be enablers of evil. It is much harder to speak out against what one finances with full knowledge. The obedient soldiers of Herod at the time of the birth of Christ could not claim to be unaware that they were killing children. They also would have had a hard time refusing to carry out the order, as they were paid for their services.

If we receive government health care for our families, our authority to speak out against a specific benefit will be considered simply a preference and not a morally clear stance that ought to be universal and not simply person specific. Those in favor of funding such benefits will be able to say, "We won’t have to take advantage of the benefit. We just have to pay for it to be available." That little nuance of agreement will satisfy the legislators and their constituencies that elected them, and that fig leaf of a defense will be considered a legitimate cover for any troubling moral scruples.

What then is a pro-life person to do? Working to remove people from office who pass the bill so as to have more Pro-life legislators will not automatically change existing law, and working to repeal the law will be much harder than opposing it before it exists. So stay informed. Learn the numbers of your Senators and Representatives, at both the federal and state level and call. Send emails, send faxes and send letters. Read that section of the paper you'ld rather not and when the opportunity presents itself, speak up and speak out and speak often. It takes as much courage to witness in the school parking lot as it does in the workplace and over the phone with aides and receptionists for elected officials. Pray for all of them, and for all of us that God will move enough hearts.

What do the current laws proposed mean?

If we know something is evil and our treasure will be used to support it, what does it mean if we say we’re pro-life? It means, it is time to get to work.