A recent column appeared in the OBSERVER which caught my attention and compels me to respond. The column’s author, with whom I seldom agree, nonetheless always find interesting. His opinions are often provocative but sometimes I wonder if he is playing a joke on readers or as the English say, “he is having us on.” His column had as its premise that in his opinion pro-life supporters are inconsistent, regarding several aspects of the movements position and for him that indicates that they either do not believe in it or do not understand it.

To begin, let me make clear that I have been a Catholic my entire life. I am a graduate of a Catholic high school and college; have a Master of Arts in Pastoral Ministry from Christ the King Seminary, once coordinated a religious education program and was employed by the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo.

The first inconsistency the author cites in the pro-life position is that prolife advocates do not support charging the women who have abortions and the doctors who perform them with murder. Pro-life advocates would not support charging them with murder because that would compound an already tragic situation. Pro-life advocates would, however, pray for the soul of the baby, pray for the health and well being of the mother and pray that the healthcare professional might eventually discover their error as has often been the case with many physicians and other healthcare professionals who have stopped performing abortions.

The next inconsistency he cites is that prolife advocates do not support shooting abortion doctors. I’m not sure if his intention is to paint prolife supporters as homicidal maniacs in support of their cause, or if his understanding of the pro-life movement is skewed by inconsistencies in his own thought processes or as I have previously said he is really just “having us on.” However, when prolife supporters say they are for protecting life from conception to natural death we are including the lives of doctors and any health-care workers involved in performing abortions.

The author makes a rather absurd analogy about a paratrooper killing a Nazi about to dump Zyklon B into a gas chamber full of children, which I assume he sees as an example of how prolife supporters should react to abortion doctors in order to act consistently. A better outcome in this example would be to capture the Nazi, as long as the children are not further endangered, so that he could be tried, and the horrors of unbridled hate utilized by a state exposed.

In regard to the author’s statement that women who damage their children by drinking, smoking, or using drugs during pregnancy are treated more harshly than women having abortions, I find that very often the harshest criticism comes from progressives who are part of the pro-choice movement. Supporters of the prolife position would be more inclined to pray for the wellbeing of the mother and infant and to calmly explain to her the impact drinking, smoking and taking drugs can have on her baby.

The author goes on to lament that more pro-life supporters don’t take more solace in the fact that aborted babies likely go immediately to Heaven. However, for all people of faith the greatest reward we receive from God is human life lived fully with the final reward being eternal life in Heaven. Anything that unnaturally terminates our human life on Earth following conception makes that impossible and is wrong.

The author then returns to his theory, stated in a previous column that human life begins when we start thinking. This begs the question of just what level of thinking he feels makes us human? Did my 3-year-old grandson only become human when he reached age one or one-and-one-half? According to the authors position would he consider developmentally disabled persons to be less than human? For pro-life supporters life begins at conception. The fetus very quickly begins taking on human form, develops a heart and a brain, can feel pain and is on a path that is not a precursor of human life but is human life.

The author wonders why the prolife legal position calls for the overturning of Roe v. Wade and returning jurisdiction to the states without an outright ban on abortion. He should remember that under our system of federalism as stated in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” Based on this, because abortion rights are in no way delegated to the federal government by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states, under the principle of federalism Roe v. Wade, can be seen as not only judicial over reach but also a usurpation by the Supreme Court of a power constitutionally reserved to the states.

In conclusion, I hope that the author in his column is “having us on” and that his thinking does not reflect inconsistencies in his reasoning.

Thomas Kirkpatrick Sr. is a Silver Creek resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com