Selective Outrage

On Friday, July 20 a man walked into the Century 16 Movie Theater armed with body armor, four guns, smoke bombs, and began randomly shooting people.  By the time he was finished, he had killed 12 people and wounded 58 more.  Several of the wounded remain in critical care in a local hospital.  Since the evening of this tragedy, this news event has been the lead story on every news show.  Discussions range from outrage, shock, and horror, trying to figure out why a man would act out in such a violent way.  Now that the victims are being buried, the media is giving a great deal of attention to who these innocent victims were, and what they were planning to do with their lives.  It is indeed, a tragic situation.

However, consider the following.  If one would leave the Century 16 Movie Theater where the shooting took place, turn North on South Sable Blvd, and drive 2.2 miles (according to Google maps) they would arrive at the Mayfair Women’s Center.  Here at this center, they perform 12-25 abortions a day.**  But where is the outrage?  Where is the news coverage?  Where are the stories about the senseless murder of innocent lives?  Where are the stories discussing the potential these individuals could have contributed to our society?  In both cases, innocent lives were taken, but one is condemned while the other is condoned.  In both cases, the victims were unwilling participants, but one is unacceptable while the other is accepted.  In both cases, the murder is perpetuated by a man, but one is called a evil lunatic while the other is called a Doctor.

Friends, our society has tried hard to “sanitize” the murder of innocent babies.  It’s done in landscaped buildings, in sanitary rooms, performed by doctors in white lab coats.  They would have us believe there are no horrors, no shocking acts of violence perpetrated on innocents, no news worthy stories at these clinics, but don’t be fooled.  There is, for example, the affidavit of Dr. Curtis E. Stover who reported that the former owner-operator of Mayfair Women’s Center’s disposal practices were: “grinding buckets full of 15 to 22 weeks’ gestation babies through a hand-cranked, old-fashioned meat grinder until they took the consistency of ‘multiple tubes of pink toothpaste,’ able to be flushed down sink drains” (Source: Affidavit of Curtis E. Stover, M.D., dated June 15, 1992, corroborated in depositions of Dr. Parks and clinic staff).  What took place 2.2 miles South of this clinic can’t be any more horrific than this!

I’m outraged by a man who would enter a theater and murder 12 innocent people.  But I am every bit as outraged that one can leave that theater, drive 2.2 miles due north, and come to a building where 12 to 25 innocent babies are killed every day and such carnage is met with silence!

Will you be the voice for the innocent?  “Learn to do right; seek justice.  Defend the oppressed.  Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow” (Isaiah 1:17).

**(My wife called the  Mayfair Women’s Clinic to ask them how many abortions they averaged each day.  They would not answer her question without certain credentials.  However, Brad Harrub, who gave me the idea for this article, did call and these were the figures given to him).