Religious Left Blesses New Planned Parenthood Facility in Schenectady, New York

But Were They Aware of All the Things They Were Blessing?

The following opinion piece first appeared in The Sunday Gazette (Schenectady, New York) in February 2008.

While the religious right was protesting abortion on the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade (January 22), the religious left was praying over and blessing the new Planned Parenthood Mohawk Hudson (PPMH) facility in Schenectady. What kind of prayers does one say over a building where mothers go to have their unborn children sliced, diced, salined and hoovered out of their wombs? All I could think of was a perverse rendering of the "Hail Mary." Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the defruiting of thy womb.

Prayers by pro-abortion clergy are not new. More than twenty-five years ago, Bishop John Taylor tried to get a prayer recognized by the Church of England that said, "Into your hands we commit in trust the developing life that we have cut short. Look in kindly judgment on the decision that we have made..." So to see the radical religious left praying over a Planned Parenthood clinic was not surprising. And while pro-abortion supporters have tried to silence religious opponents of abortion by saying that abortion is not a religious issue, the religious left continues to play a major role in defending "reproductive rights," even though what goes on in Planned Parenthood clinics rarely results in reproduction.

But when the religious left was declaring that 1040 State Street was, like some Indian burial mound, sacred real estate, they were not only blessing the right to abort, they were also blessing things which are antithetical to their beliefs.