Letters to the Editor

Our Last Beachhead

Dear Editor: 150 years from now the population of the United States and, indeed, the world, will look upon the last 46 years of Roe vs. Wade as we look upon the custom of slavery today!

Slavery is immoral today as it was when it was practiced.  Now, however, we see it!  Now we see it as the dehumanization of a whole race, and we rightly sigh with a collective:  “Mea culpa.”

We know abortion is the taking of a human life, and instead of trying to minimize this tragedy, Governor Cuomo and the New York State Democratic Legislature is seeking to maximize this grotesque practice allowing its procedure to the very last day of a woman’s pregnancy for any reason or no reason at all!

What nation in the history of the civilized world has ever allowed this? Look at what we are doing to ourselves statistically:

60 million aborted babies over 46 years, that averages to just over 1.3 million killed babies each year. Project this number 150 years into the future, and America would have encouraged 195 million abortions!  Add this number to the 60 million previous abortions, and America would have killed 255 million citizens, potential taxpayers – people who would have productively contributed to society – taking care, by the way, of our aging population (a situation that almost plagues us now). What economic insanity this is to kill so many people!

These very same people who seek the liberalization of abortion grieve so much over the environment and climate change.  They want every bud to bloom and every seed to sprout!  They want every acorn to become a mighty oak; then, if they have any moral decency or intellectual honesty, they must want every fetus to become a beautiful baby – a healthy human being born in the image and likeness of God.

We can’t let this “Monster-in-Chief” at our state’s capital continue to desecrate human life.

Where is our collective outrage? Where is our leadership?

Aren’t we afraid, or at least mildly uncomfortable (after all, we have made God into a “warm-fuzzy,” after our own wants and desires); aren’t we afraid to stand before God, and as religious believers, having had done nothing to stop this scourge on humanity – the very image of God!

My friends, storm the legislature! Call out this evil for what it is! Do it now! Do it loudly! Do it courageously – knowing we are all together and God is on our side!

If we do not staunch this hemorrhage, if we do not repair this moral perversion now, mark my words, it is only a matter of time before coercive euthanasia will be practiced upon the born – upon those least in God’s Kingdom:  the elderly, the deformed, the imperfect!

This is the beachhead! We must stop this invasion overwhelming our moral sensibilities!  If we allow this to go unchecked, give Grandma and Grandpa a kiss Goodbye…if not now … soon … very soon!

Father Richard J. Bretone

Bay Ridge

Editor’s Note: Father Richard Bretone is a parochial vicar at St Patrick’s parish. 

One thought on “Our Last Beachhead

  1. Thank you Father Bretone for your honest and courageous letter. I am also outraged at this atrocity that was allowed to become law in NYS. On the weekend after the passage of this bill I stood with other Bay Ridge citizens at a peaceful rally outside of Fort Hamilton High School where one of the signers of the bill was being inaugurated. Prayer in Action was what we were doing. We should reignite the pro-life groups in our parishes and if there are no groups they should be established with the help of the pastors and clergy. I ask that you continue to encourage your parishioners to get involved in peaceful rallies, writing and e-mail campaigns, prayer in action, to let our elected leaders know that we will not stop until this law has been removed and/or altered to protect the unborn.