Jamaica Gleaner

Woman’s right: Choose life or death

- Fr Richard HoLung DIARY OF A GHETTO PRIEST

IDON’T know if finally the right to life will be the position held by Jamaicans. There seems to be so much money and power involved in the abortion issue.

Sex is such a precious issue, life is even a more precious issue; women are the bearers of new life, while God is the author of life. Sex provides great pleasure and can be a wonderful expression of love. But it has been debased and shortcircu­ited. Life and love are bound up together, it can be the most creative and joyful of acts bearing a new human person made in the image and likeness of God – to create a future hope for families, and the human race.

In this abortion age, we are separating sex from regenerati­on so that the precious gift of sexual intercours­e is now artificial­ly separated what should be love and life as one beautiful causeand-effect act between a man and a woman. The act of love is experience­d between a man and a woman. But the birth of the child is purely the woman’s concern.

This is where the women in the feminist movement can go too far and create a disastrous imbalance in the God-given natural laws written in the hearts of every man and woman. The child is from the man and woman’s body. Abortion is a powerful act of evil. To kill a child in her womb, a woman can bring about a most unnatural act of murder. Abortion is murder of a little baby – from conception to birth, the child is a person.

NATURAL PROGRESSIO­N

Once the male sperm and female egg meet, and if you leave it alone, it continues to develop into a child. You have to sniff it out to prevent its natural developmen­t, otherwise it will become a full life of a baby, and later, if there is no partial abortion, the baby becomes a little human person, then a child, and later an adolescent.

Something has to be done to kill what’s in the mother’s womb to prevent it from being a child. There is, from the beginning, a human person, no matter how small. Only natural death, or the unnatural performanc­e of the death act, namely abortion, can destroy it. The mother knows this. Abortion creates great problems of guilt, and mental and emotional disorder. The mother instinctiv­ely knows it is an act of murder. Many women do not recover from their chosen act to abort. As the prophet Jeremiah says, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” It’s ultimately God’s child.

And no matter what, we must forgive. Though there is much push to allow for the legalisati­on of abortion in the cases of rape, we must not punish the child with the penalty of death because of the sins of the father. At our centre run by our Missionari­es of the Poor sisters, there are such cases where the mother allows us to care for her children.

Because there are cases of rape, there is an opening to legalise abortion. It would be the first step to rationalis­e abortion at large. I would advise that we don’t go there. Let the women who are pregnant come to us. Our sisters willingly take in such women, and even their children. Call them at Holy Innocents (13-15 Heroes Circle, Kingston 5) and speak to Sister Joanne Belmonte at 876-9671530 or 876-439-1817.

Please support our Sisters who offer free service to such mothers and children.

 ??  ?? Sister Joanne Belmonte and two of her kids, Mary and John Joseph. Anyone wants to adopt either or both of them?
Sister Joanne Belmonte and two of her kids, Mary and John Joseph. Anyone wants to adopt either or both of them?
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