40 Days for Death

This is chilling.  I read today, via John Smeaton's blog, about a Planned Parenthood initiative in California in which pro-choicers are being asked to make a forty-day prayer campaign in support of what the organising group calls the "sacred care" of abortions.  LifeSiteNews carries a report on it here.

The organisers, Six Rivers Planned Parenthood of Eureka, California, have entitled their prayer campaign "Supporting Women Everywhere".  They are backed up by Humboldt County "Clergy for Choice" (please God these do not include any Catholic priests!) who apparently "value all human life" (as long, presumably, as it's not inside anyone's womb).  They have produced a brochure with a prayer for each of the forty days and something struck me very forcibly as I read through it.  Look at these two prayers:

Day 2: Today we pray for compassionate religious voices to speak out for the dignity and autonomy of women.

Day 12: Today we pray that women know the power of their own stories. May they find their voices and tell their truths.

Each prayer, in fact the whole campaign, revolves around "the autonomy of women... the power of their own stories... their voices... their truths".  The unborn children in the womb, of whichever gender, apparently have no voice or truth, no story beginning, because they are never mentioned.  It's all about the women.  I can only suppose that this is because the organisers do not consider the "clump of cells" growing in the womb to be a person.  I struggle to understand the Humboldt County Clergy for Life, though, who have explicitly stated that they "value all human life", because as I remarked above they evidently can't be including what's growing in the womb.  Only... it's alive... and it's not anything other than human by species... so, um?!  Humboldt clergy, please explain your logic.

On Day 36 participants are invited to pray for "the families we've chosen" and yet Day 39 asks that "a contagious love... overflow from our spirits".  Well, let's qualify: only to those we choose to infect.  That does sound like a contagious "love" and not one I'd care to contract or be contaminated by.

It is a sad day when a prayer campaign is not only launched against a prior prayer campaign, Christian up against Christian, but is launched in support of violating the Fifth Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill".  It is a sad day when a group of people claiming to have faith in God can absorb the individualistic, utilitarian ethics of the modern secular world so thoroughly, to the extent that they describe the dismembering of human foetuses not just as permissible but actually as "sacred care".  And perhaps the saddest thing of all is how misguided this all is.  Humboldt Clergy, this is not the way to support or value women.