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Last Updated December 6, 2003
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History of My Involvement in Human Life Issues
How did I get involved in the issue of human life? Care to guess? Once again, 8 years of Catholic school has propelled me to the opposite stance of the Church on many of these issues.
If there was one issue, aside from sex, that my school seemed to have a religious hard-on for, it was the right to life, specifically, abortion. This came from having a bishop who seemed to like making a personal crusade out of the issue. Whenever he performed even the most minor of functions for schools or parish church's, abortion was sure to be mentioned. He sunk so low as to soil events like my confirmation and high school graduation with bigotous, self-righteous speeches on how abortion is the biggest evil in the world today. My confirmation and graduation are supposed to be celebratory events, but Bishop Thomas Doran saw fit to put a damper on the joy with his own personal quest.
This is not to say that the stance was forced on my school; my school embraced and accepted this stance, going so far as to form a "Respect for Life" club, composed of students who thought that abortion, the death penalty and euthanasia were wrong. Unfortunately for those of us who thought outside of the Church, this club gained quite a bit of power during its first year, my senior year. It's one thing when the bishop ruins a baccalaureate mass with a spiel on abortion, but it's quite another when fellow students do so. My baccalaureate mass kicked off with the lighting of a candle for all the children who "would have been graduating with us, but were aborted." Isn't that a nice way to start what is supposed to be one of the most important days of my life? It didn't stop there. My graduation commencement was initiated in the same, self-righteous and despicable fashion.
So, as you can seem, my stance on the issue is slightly personal, having had to put up with one side hammering its beliefs into me and trampling two significant events in my life. That is a very abbreviated history. The full version includes pro-life presentations, prayers, et cetera.
