Msgr Everard de Jong, a Dutch Catholic auxillary bishop and chaplain for the pro-life group "Stirezo", has caused a stir in the past weeks with a letter he wrote to each member of his country's House of Representatives. In it he says that in this age of budgetary restrictions, Parliament should cut abortion funding:
"Why not find savings on the backs of bloody abortion clinics? In the coming years we will need hundreds of thousands of hands at our [healthcare] beds. We don't have them. Those who could have cleaned us, it is us who have already 'cleansed' them."
With his letter, he included a plastic fetus doll at 10 weeks gestation.
"As you can see by looking at the enclosed model of an unborn baby at 10 weeks, it does not consist of a blob of tissue, but of a very discernable little person, whose heart beats and whose face has very precise features. In the Netherlands, it is possible that up to the 24th week of life, such a precious little person can be assassinated."
A liberal representative from the VVD Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert said his letter was "nauseating". For a Green Party member Linda Voortman, it was "contrary to good taste and unbecoming: Imagine if one is infertile or just suffered a miscarriage. " Social-democrat Pia Dijkstra said "Allowing an unwanted child to be born is a very bad beginning to life. The choice then seems to me to belong to the individual and nobody else."
The issue came back to the fore as the editor of a daily Catholic newspaper, Katholiek Nieuwsblad, Mariska Orban, said that she understood how the liberal member might have been taken aback, as she herself had suffered greatly due to a numerous miscarriages. Reminded of the pain at the sight of these fetus dolls she said "is it not nauseating that our society allows 30 000 babies to be aborted every year?"
This Catholic editor, under the force of public pressure, felt compelled to apologize to the liberal member for her remarks.
By the way...Cardinal Ouellet... this man might be worthy of promotion...
