OPINION

Abortion, health care, and socialism

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Contrary to a popular fallacy that science and religion are at odds with each other, it's quite the opposite.

Science and religion are the best of friends. And like good friends, they complement each other and produce beautiful music together.

Take the recent incident of the young woman in Bryan, Texas -- the director of the Planned Parenthood abortion mill down there -- who had a change of heart and quit her job when she saw, for the first time, an unborn child on an ultrasound screen.

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As Abby Johnson related her story to Bill O'Reilly, "....what I saw on the screen was a 13-week baby fighting for its life."

She walked out the door, went down the road and joined a local pro-life organization.

The discoveries and technologies that we gain from science make us more aware, confirm and help us understand even more clearly the truths that our religion and faith teach us. As result, like Abby Johnson, we become more responsible.

According to Johnson, "....Planned Parenthood really tries to instill in their employees and the women coming in for abortions that this is not a baby, that this is just a mass of cells. You know, don't say "baby" in the clinic. Don't say "baby" to the women coming in for an abortion. And so you begin to believe that. You begin to believe that it's not a life."

A recent headline in the Los Angeles Times read, "Babies are found to cry in their mother tongue."

The article reported on just published research by French and German scientists showing that the cries of French babies start out low and increase to a high pitch and for German babies it's the opposite -- starting out high and falling. According to the scientists, these "patterns matched the intonation patterns of spoken French...and German."

The French and German research teams say the unborn babies start hearing and picking up their mother's language during their third trimester, a stage when, in our country, they can still be aborted. As science documents the magic of the life of the developing infant, public awareness grows and the willingness to tolerate abortion atrocities diminishes. When we understand that our unborn children are human we become more human ourselves.

Gallup polling showed recently that for the first time the majority of Americans (51 percent) are pro-life.

Science and religion get at odds when, instead of complementing, religion tries to displace science or science tries to displace religion.

Socialism is the latter. Rather than recognizing that every human being is unique and free, created in God's image, socialism tries to turn us into laboratory rodents, pretending to manage our lives according to predictable formulas.

This, unfortunately, is what the health care bills are that the Democratic Party is now trying to force-feed to the American public. It's why they are disasters waiting to happen.

One heroic Democratic congressman, Bart Stupak, has managed to assure that the House bill allows no taxpayer funds to pay for abortions. But many of his liberal colleagues are rebelling.

President Barack Obama said that this is "a health care bill, not an abortion bill."

But how can it be above your pay grade to consider when life begins but not above your pay grade to define one-size-fits-all health care for several hundred million Americans and force each one to submit to your social engineering?

Taxpayers shouldn't pay for abortions.

But in a larger sense, we won't get health care right if we think we can do it without thinking about life itself. Science is our tool, not our master. As we sit at the brink of health care socialism, it's a good time to recall Jefferson's words that "God who gave us life gave us liberty."