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This is a column which I sent to the Budgeteer in January 2006 regarding an anti-abortion column written by Russ Young.

Ten months after my column rebutting Mr. Young was published Rev. Young discovered that I had posted both our columns here on my website. He has just emailed to tell me that I am "required" to make a correction. Apparently he did indeed reply to my original letter. How that reply failed to reach me I can not say but I will soon post his reply to my reply and I will then reply to his reply. As the Rev Young said. It is required.

A Mass Murderer replies to Russ Young

This nasty headline was not dreamed up by the editors of the Budgeteer. I chose it in response to the January 20th column by Russ Young.  In that column Reverend Young lumped me in with such mass murderers as Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot. Young is not the first person to do such a thing. I've been hearing it from people at Republican conventions recently. We pro-choicers used to be called "baby killers" but apparently that epithet proved too puny to express the moral outrage pro-lifers feel toward people like me.

Using the figures compiled by a Michael White, Russ's column listed the greatest mass slaughters since the birth of Christ. They added up to over 400 million deaths.  Remarkably, the Nazi murder of six million Jews would only have ranked 18th on the list had this slaughter not been lumped in with the total deaths caused by World War II. Yet according to Russ, as vast as this death toll is it pales compared to the numbers of babies murdered since 1980.

Your columnist was clear. Supporters of abortion rights are complicit in the worst atrocity in human history. I thought long and hard about Rev Young's accusation and sent him the following email to find out a little more about his theology.


"Hello Pastor Young,

   I presume that you are among those who believe that human life begins at the moment of conception. I agree. Even so, I find it hard to relate to something that is little more than DNA  with no differentiated cells let alone a heart or a brain.

   As for such a life having a soul,  Well, I still don't know if grown up humans have souls or, if they do, what exactly they are. I'm sure that you have no such doubts on this score and that you do believe in souls. If you are right that a fertilized ovum, without a heart or brain, has a soul tended to by God, then you must believe that God admits these souls to heaven when they are terminated any time after conception. If heaven is a fraction as nice as the things I've heard about it, it’s hard for me to feel great regret at the passing of such a human life into this transcendent existence.

   Perhaps, however, you believe that these innocent souls are doomed because they never had the opportunity to become saved through the ministry of God's Church. If this is your belief then it occurs to me that you have put a great responsibility on God's shoulders for his abandonment of so many innocents, a guilt which is every bit the equal of humankind's.

Your recent column in the Budgeteer made much of the misinformation which you say the "pro-choice" side has used to get its way. Perhaps there is some truth to this. On the other hand if you are calling day-old ovums "babies"  you too are leaving your audience with a serious misimpression.  

   You will get no argument from me if you choose to call day-old ovums "human beings." You will get an argument from me if you call them "babies." I've held babies in my arms. Ovums are something you can only see through a microscope. That's a significant difference whether [their souls] end up in heaven or hell or not.

   If you do not wish to commit the same crime that you have charged the pro-choice community with having committed you owe it to yourself and your readers to take more care in spelling out your definition of such charged words as "baby."

Sincerely,

Harry Welty"


Reverend Young did not write back to me.

Harry Welty
mass murderer
Duluth, Minnesota