A friend of mine lives on a farm about a forty minute drive from the parish. He is having a rough go of it lately and it is not because of the snow and cold. It is because of woodpeckers. He has a wood house and the woodpeckers have targeted it for their pecking of wood. He has tried everything. He put up fake owls, he started blasting “woodpeckers in distress” calls over loudspeakers, freshly painted his house (as was recommended by experts) but nothing works. Every day there is a couple of more holes, about half an inch across, many of which are clean through the siding. So he has to go out and fill in the holes almost every day. He is not happy.
He can’t do anything to kill the woodpeckers. They are federally protected and he could get into a hole basket full of trouble if he resorted to that. Yet if he and his wife should conceive their child, they have a federally protected right to do to that child what it is illegal to do to that woodpecker. With the woodpecker we say, “Well, it may greatly upset your life but you going to have to find a way to cope with it. That’s life.” When it comes to their child we say, “Well, if he is going to greatly upset your life, you can get rid of him. That’s life.”
I am not for the overturning of the protection of woodpeckers. Maybe we could extend the rights to humans in the womb (and extend to the parents more assistance than we do to woodpecker sufferers - which I know many of you do!)
Today is the national day of prayer for the legal protection of human life in the womb. Please consider offering a prayer and engaging in some action, exercising the rights, privileges, dignity and power that you have on behalf of one who currently, legally has none of these in our country.
1 comment:
*Exactly.* - Sue, OFS
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