A modern-day massacre of innocents
Who weeps for the millions of unborn babies aborted across the world each year?
Edita Tronqued-Burgos, Manila
Updated: December 29, 2020 03:57 AM GMT
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A modern-day massacre of innocentsDec 29, 2020
The Massacre of the Holy Innocents. (Image: Wikipedia)
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The story of the Massacre of the Holy Innocents is very well known. The feast of these martyrs was celebrated on Dec. 28.
“When Herod realized that the visitors from the east had tricked him, he was furious. He gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its neighborhood who were two years old and younger — this was done in accordance with what he had learned from the visitors about the time when the star had appeared.” (Matthew 2:16-18)
Why did King Herod order the killing simply because the visitors from the east — we know them as the three wise men or the three kings — tricked him?
The story actually starts at Matthew 2:1: “Jesus was born in the town of Judea, during the time when Herod was king. Soon afterward, some men who studied the stars came from the east to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the baby born to be the king of the Jews? We saw his star when it came up in the east, and we have come to worship him.'”
When King Herod heard about this, he was very upset, and so was everyone else in Jerusalem. He called together all the chief priests and teachers of the law and asked them, “Where will the Messiah be born?” “In the town of Bethlehem in Judea,” they answered. “For this is what the prophet wrote: Bethlehem in the land of Judah, you are by no means the least of the leading cities of Judah, for from you will come a leader who will guide my people Israel.”
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So Herod called the visitors from the east to a secret meeting and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem with these instructions: “Go and make a careful search for the child and when you find him, let me know, so that I too may go and worship him.” But when they returned, they took another road because they were warned in a dream not to go back to Herod.
Clearly, Herod wanted to get rid of the baby whom he thought would be a threat to his reign. And since he didn’t have any information about the baby, he ordered the killing of all boys below the age of two. The number is not certain. Some historians say 6-20 children were killed, while other sources say thousands of children were murdered. Nonetheless, children were massacred — that is certain. They were killed to eliminate anyone who could possibly overthrow Herod.
Today, we witness the horrible phenomenon of abortion of the unborn. What adds to this scandal is that in some countries abortion is accepted as the first option.
An abortion is a medical procedure that terminates a pregnancy through the removal of an embryo or fetus from the uterus, ending the life of the fetus. An abortion can either be induced deliberately or caused by complications during pregnancy.
Access to abortion is one of the most hotly contested topics globally and the debate is clouded not only by misinformation but by bias.
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The Catholic Church provides this guide: “Abortion or the deliberate ejection of a non-viable fetus from the mother’s womb is strictly prohibited by the Fifth Commandment as the killing of an innocent human being.” (CCC 2270-75)
“Yet this moral position must be related to the social and economic situation that most often is the root of the problem. Many women who in anguish, depression and fear succumbed to having an abortion felt they simply had no choice in the matter; they simply felt they had to do it. Consequently, the equally urgent moral obligation is to help indigent mothers, expand adoption services, improve health care agencies for needy women and children and the like.” (Catechism for Filipino Catholics)
A quarter of pregnancies end in abortion every year, according to Amnesty International. The Guttmacher Institute, a US-based reproductive health non-profit group, says the abortion rate is 37 per 1,000 people in countries that prohibit abortion altogether or allow it only in instances to save a woman’s life, and 34 per 1,000 people in countries that broadly allow abortion, a difference that is not statistically significant.
Every year in the world, the World Health Organisation reports, there are an estimated 40-50 million abortions and of this number 25 million are unsafe. This means that about 125,000 abortions take place every day. For the period from Jan. 1 to Dec. 26 this year, Worldometers.info reports that there were 41,455,946 recorded abortions.
So many lost lives. So many preventable deaths. So many innocent victims.
Unless the abortion decision came from a medical emergency, could it be that the lives women carried in their wombs were perceived as a threat just like the boys killed upon the orders of King Herod? Were they disposed of so that they could not impede the desired lifestyle of a reluctant parent or encumber that person with added responsibility?
The grief that filled Jerusalem must have been unbearable, with parents who could only cry, watching helplessly as their innocent children were killed. “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning. Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” (Matthew 2:17-18)
But in the cases of abortions, who weeps for these innocent lives? We can pray to the Holy Innocents to intercede for the unborn babies under threat. And we can unite our own losses and pains and cry for the voiceless innocent babies taken before they were born.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.