Governor Rick Perry: A Leader with Courage in an Age of Cowardice Defends Children in the Womb

Governor Rick Perry most certainly has a chest. He is to be commended. He is a leader with courage in an age of cowardice.

I write to express my admiration for Texas Governor Rick Perry. In an age of cowardice, he showed courage. The behavior of the opponents of the Right to Life in Texas, including their vulgar signs and slogans, and efforts to use human feces and urine against their opponents, were depraved. The rage of the opponents of the Right to Life in Texas exposes the importance of this legislation. They  know Texas HB2 is a part of a growing trend throughout the Nation to limit, reduce and finally end the taking of the life of our youngest neighbors through procured abortion.They see the writing on the New Berlin Wall, the one which keeps our youngest neighbors from being set free to join our family. They sense that this wall too will soon come down.  

P>AUSTIN, TX (Catholic Online) - As he promised, Governor Rick Perry signed Texas HB 2 into Law on Thursday, July 18, 2013. The Bill seriously restricts the taking of the life of unborn children through a procured abortion after these children are twenty weeks old.

The legislation also requires an abortionist who participates in the taking of the life of children through abortion to have admission privileges at a nearby hospital. It requires that if the execution of the child's life is to occur through the lethal injection of chemicals, the abortionist must administer the lethal chemicals into the mother's vein. You can read the full text of the bill here.

Upon signing the Bill Governor Perry said, "Today's signing builds on our continued commitment to protecting life for more than a decade. This is an important day for those who support life and the health of women in Texas. Signing HB2 further solidifies the foundation on which the culture of in Texas is built. HB2 brings improvements to the quality of care women receive and HB2 protects unborn babies after the fifth month of pregnancy."

Of course, the Governor is absolutely correct. However, if one were to only read the accounts of the propaganda machine masquerading as news these days, this reasonable legislation is 'dangerous'. Those who defend the Right to Life of these children and want to protect the women who proceed with the lethal procedure from further injury at the hands of a deficient medical professional, are called 'extremists'. 

The behavior of the opponents of the Right to Life was obscene, vulgar and blasphemous. They sought to disrupt the orderly process of democratic government and the expressed will of the people of Texas to begin to protect their youngest neighbors. As a constitutional lawyer, I have no doubt this bill is constitutional, even under the decisions of Roe and Doe. It is also part of a trend throughout the nation, state by state, of restricting abortion on demand. 

My friend Fr Frank Pavone of Priests for Life issued this statement,"Governor Rick Perry and the Texas legislature have done what they were elected to do, that is, safeguard the well-being of Texans. The new law Governor Perry signs today will advance the protection of women from the unscrupulous practices of abortionists, and the protection of children from the deadly weapons of those same abortionists.  Those who were so vociferous in their opposition to this law are on the wrong side of morality and of history. We at Priests for Life will continue to expose the horrors committed by Texas abortionists like Douglas Karpen. This law will make that task much easier."

I write to express my admiration for Texas Governor Rick Perry. In an age of cowardice, he showed courage. In an age of compromise, he showed he has what the great C.S Lewis once called a chest. The behavior of the opponents of the Right to Life in Texas, including their vulgar signs and slogans, and efforts to use human feces and urine against their opponents, was depraved.  

The rage of the opponents of the Right to Life in Texas exposes the importance of this legislation. They  know Texas HB2 is a part of a growing trend throughout the Nation to limit, reduce and finally end the taking of the life of our youngest neighbors through procured abortion.They see the writing on the New Berlin Wall, the one which keeps our youngest neighbors from being set free to join our family. They sense that this wall too will soon come down.  
 
The very expression -abortion right- is propaganda. It is used by journalists who have sold out and become tools of the opponents of the Right to life for children. There is no abortion right.  The true Right is the one being denied in every procured abortion, the Right to Life. Rights are goods of human persons and every proocured abortion takes the innocent life of a human person. 

These children have no voice except our own. They are killed by chemicals and surgical strikes - all protected by the police power of the State. They have no power to resist this new form of slavery without our help. Medical science has confirmed what our conscience knew and the Natural Moral Law has long confirmed; the child in the womb is our neighbor. These children are our first neighbors in the first home of the whole human race, their mothers' womb. It is always wrong to kill our neighbors.

Our 4D sonogram technology has made it possible to take baby´s first picture and send it as a birth announcement or place it on a Face Book or My Space page or send it through our Social Networks. We marvel at the image of those little babies at the early stages of what is a lifetime of development for every human being. However, we then use that same technology to direct the weapons of warfare which will dismember them in the womb and kill them. We do not want to see those pictures.

With the introduction of baby's first picture in the first home of the womb we watch these children smile, play, feel pain and grow. The 3 and 4d images are becoming more and more prevalent throughout the social media. They are regularly showing up on television commercials. We surgically operate on our first neighbors in the womb. We then put them back in their home and allow them to continue to grow so they can be healthier upon their birth. We know they are members of our human family.

It becomes increasingly difficult to deny that the child in the womb is our neighbor. Those who love to use the language of social justice while denying iot for our youngest neighbors are being exposed as the frauds which they have become. Where is their solidarity with these children? The Orwellian Newspeak of using the word "choice" is stale and tired. The wind is out of its sails. Some choices are always and everywhere wrong, and the taking of innocent human life in at the top of the list.

All of these technological advances have humanized the child to an increasing number of people who once bought the lie of those who promoted abortion as choice. Whether a child is wanted has become the sole criterion for whether he or she has a right to life. Such an approach to children is heinous. Decent people are beginning to recognize this and indecent people are having a hard time defending their choice to kill our youngest neighbors. Governor Rick Perry is just such a decent person. He is now one of my heroes.

He has faced derision, mockery, threats and the grandstanding of zealots and anti-child, anti-right to life bigots who disguise themselves as crusaders for justice when they fail to hear the cry of the poorest of the poor, our neighbors in the womb. Governor Rick Perry did not back down. How very refreshing! He did what he was elected to do, what his oath of office and conscience required, and what was morally right. 

In 1947, C.S. Lewis addressed the decline of his beloved Britain in an insightful book entitled "The Abolition of man: How Education Develops Man's Sense of Morality". He warned of the subjective and relativist trends in the British educational system and reasserted the timeless moral truths of Christianity.

Lewis called for a return to the classical Christian vision of the human person and the cultivation of virtues as the path to true human flourishing and freedom. He defined what he called "the chest" in this work as the "higher emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments or character." He wrote that without this "chest", men and women devolve into self idolatry losing their human dignity and true freedom. They become slaves to disordered appetites.

The West is a mess, just as Lewis warned. With its decline we face the eclipse of true freedom. Lewis' words in this book are timely: "And all the time - such is the tragicomedy of our situation - we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive,' or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity.'

He continued, "In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."

Governor Rick Perry most certainly has a chest. He is to be commended. He is a leader with courage in an age of cowardice.

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