I read with interest Felix Carroll's column "Not your average abortion foe," Jan. 20, featuring his conversation with Dr. John Bruchalski, a former abortion provider. Surprisingly, Dr. Bruchalski does not politicize his stance by demonizing pro-choice adherents. Instead, this father of two reflects on his firsthand experience in aborting fetuses, a procedure which he describes as "brutal (and) visceral." He adds, "I felt it was eviscerating my humanity."
His rhetorical questions cut to the heart of the issue when he asks, "What's the definition of personhood? Is it still subjective?" Not if we consider what recent advances in medical imaging reveal to us about the development of the fetus in its very early stages. If we had had this knowledge 40 years ago, Roe vs. Wade might have had a different outcome.
What Dr. Bruchalski goes on to say is far broader than the pro-choice and right-to-life stances, significant as they are. He uses an old-fashioned, politically incorrect term, "sinful behavior," to describe our human condition, and he's right. The sanctity of life is being trashed on a number of levels, and he enumerates them: killing the innocents and defenseless, "promoting dysfunctional families," encouraging premarital sex, failing to address poverty, and "gouging the people who can pay for health care." He very well could have included human sex-trafficking and genocide.
Sinful behavior cannot be legislated away, though laws are put in place to keep society in check. Rather, he notes, it is the human heart itself that needs to be changed, a heart transplant of sorts; a merciful God will replace "a heart of stone" with a "heart of flesh" if his people are willing to submit to "spiritual surgery" (Ezekiel 36:26). With that kind of radical intervention comes the kind of peace we all want and so desperately need.
JUDY BELLAMY
Malta