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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
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