Schizophrenic Nation

 

A Schizophrenic Nation

By Carol Tobias, President,National Right to Life

National Right to Life President Carol Tobias

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines schizophrenia as psychotic disorder with serious specific characteristics. Its second definition for the word is “contradictory or antagonistic qualities or attitudes.” Based on this second definition, I think it’s safe to say that our country is schizophrenic when it comes to life.

Abortion has been legal for 40 years and more than 55 million unborn children have been killed, but the country is still not comfortable talking about abortion. It’s not a topic at the family dinner table. “Well, Susie, what did you do today?” “I went to Planned Parenthood to get an abortion.”
Women don’t tell co-workers that they are not working tomorrow because they’re going to get an abortion.

Because of right-to-life efforts to keep the unborn child alive and as part of the public debate, this country still knows that it’s wrong to kill unborn children. Any woman in this country, who is considering abortion, knows that someone– a family member, a friend, co-worker, or neighbor– would counsel her not to do it.

As a whole, the country seems to be saying, “Abortion is legal, we just don’t like it.”
But while the country legally condones the killing of unborn children, the children who did survive, the so-called “wanted” children, have become even more precious, maybe because they survived.
Consider these examples of schizophrenia, a contradictory or antagonistic quality or attitude:
The development of technology has allowed us to declare “Amber alerts” nationwide. If one child is missing, the entire country is asked to help find him/her. This is an unqualified good– we should search for every missing child and grieve for every lost child.

Some parents are so overtly involved in their children’s lives that a recent phenomenon–helicopter parents– has arisen. The parents are “hovering” not just in their young children’s lives– there are stories of parents who phone their college-student children to wake them up for class, or even attend job interviews with them.
Some say it’s a paradox that at the same time we dispose of 1.2 million unborn children each and every year, the children who survive are cherished and protected.
A better explanation, I believe, is schizophrenia.

Source: NRLC News