Morally Blind

          French mathematician and theologian Blaise Pascal said, “In faith, there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.” An opinion piece in a major newspaper exemplifies what he meant.

          The New York Times ran a piece entitled “My Day As An Abortion Care Provider” authored by Dr. Lisa Harris, who describes herself as an obstetrician and gynecologist. She also happens to be the Medical Director of Planned Parenthood of Michigan. She starts her piece by stating she wants to provide both “compassion” and “expertise” for her patients but quickly shifts when stating she breathes a sigh of relief each time she enters her office through her “bulletproof door.”

          She tells of a thank-you note she received from an unmarried patient who was provided with an abortion by Dr. Harris and then references a different letter that includes a picture of Jesus, from a fellow physician and a nun, stating that they are worried about her soul being in turmoil. Harris writes, “I wish I could reassure them that my soul is O.K.”

          But is it? Harris writes:

“I do think about the moral complexities of abortion. I know that for every woman whose abortion I perform, I stop a developing human from being born. And I also know that I can’t turn my back on the people who ask for my care. Both things are true at the same time.”

          No, doctor, they are not. In fact, they are mutually exclusive positions. If a patient comes to a doctor and says, ‘help me end my life,’ is there a moral imperative for a physician to meet that request under the guise of “compassion” and “expertise?” The Hippocratic Oath is a pledge a doctor makes to ‘do no harm’ to the patient. No moral ambiguity.

          In another section of her opinion piece, the abortionist writes,

“I know that for each of them [all of her patients], there was a second entity there—a baby, a person, a potential life, a life, depending on your beliefs.”

          If Dr. Harris recognizes the medical reality that there is a baby – not a ‘blob of tissue’ as women were told for years before the advent of ultrasound machines, how can Harris not be in turmoil when she purposely ends the life of one of the two patients she is treating?

          She also states:

“Abortion feels morally complicated because it stops a developing human being from being born, which of course it does.”

          The morality isn’t complicated, it’s crystal clear. Dr. Harris is blinded by the shadows. Her piece goes straight to the heart of what Jesus said when He describes spiritual and moral blindness.

“He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart…” (John 12:40)

          As abortions clinics continue to close all across the country, as states move to defund Planned Parenthood, and as the number of women seeking abortions continues to decline, Dr. Harris and others who ply their deadly trade will continue to shine a bright light on abortion, while they themselves live in a world of moral blindness.

          That’s my opinion. I’m Janet Parshall.