By Kevin Hershey
Like any other Catholic institution concerned with human dignity, the University of Portland campus has been recently brimming with anti-abortion initiatives.
I use the word "anti-abortion" specifically because I feel that we cannot be a truly "pro-life" campus until we fight for justice for born human beings as much as we do for the unborn.
In my 12 years at Catholic school, I have never felt more ashamed of my religion as the day when our academic quad was transformed into the "grave of the innocents" with small white crosses to represent terminated pregnancies.
While I agree that fighting abortion is an important part of our faith, I have to wonder what happened to the rest of Catholic Social Teaching and where our value for the lives of other human beings has gone. Are we no longer valuable after we exit the womb?
Maybe I had fingerprints and a heartbeat before birth, but it seems that my abilities to walk, talk, analyze and create are completely useless and unworthy of defense from Catholics.
For example, we commemorated the anniversary of Roe v. Wade with the graves of the innocents, but we completely ignored the Dec. 10th anniversary of the Massacre at El Mazote, in which thousands of innocent citizens were slaughtered in El Salvador at the hands of their own military, which was trained by the U.S. government.
Had these victims been fetuses at the time of their deaths, maybe we would have done something a bit more to remember them, but as fully-functioning human beings created in the likeness of God, each with a unique story and a family, I guess we can let it slide. The same seems to apply to the U.S. soldiers and Iraqi citizens that have been killed in the current war.
There were fliers placed on each of the tables in the Commons offering to fund any postcard sent to the legislature in protest of Obama's Freedom of Choice Act.
They stated that under FOCA, my tax dollars would fund abortion and while the bittersweet image of mother and child tugged at my heartstrings, maybe some photos of our dead soldiers, U.S. torture victims, or sweatshop employees would make me feel a little worse about where my tax money goes.
It seems that financing war and torture is just fine, but heaven help us if our money goes to abortion!
These fliers were placed on the very day that was also a National Call-in Day to ask that our legislators close the School of the Americas/WHINSEC, an American institution that has been responsible for some of the worst and most gruesome atrocities against human rights in Latin America.
I saw not a single advertisement for this pro-life initiative and have yet to receive an offer from UP to finance a letter to my legislators in protest of the SOA.
War wages in Darfur as we speak and people are murdered every day on the basis of their ethnic identity.
This is yet another pressing issue that has been virtually ignored on the UP campus.
I guess we have deemed the lives of innocent Sudanese citizens far less valuable than those of unborn babies.
I ask you, in a world where thousands die each day at the hands of genocide and corrupt military governments, how can we ignore all of that and concentrate solely on the unborn?
I am ashamed that we choose to take the easy way out by shaming women who choose to terminate their pregnancies, rather than by putting efforts into lifting the world's most vulnerable out of oppression.
Jesus knew that the responsibility he gave us to live out his message as Christians was not an easy one, so why should we make it so simple?
Jesus stood up against the corruption of his government and spoke out against an injust status quo.
We should do the same. How I can take those white crosses seriously when I know that there are more undisputedly human lives that are being taken and ignored?
Catholic Social Teaching states that we have a responsibility to care for life in ALL FORMS. Clearly, the fetus is not the only form of human life. It is time that we remember that life does indeed continue after birth.
??Kevin Hershey is a freshman Spanish major
