9-11, abortion stem from same source, says Keyes

Lest pro-lifers get too involved in the minutiae of the day-to-day fight against abortion, speaker Alan Keyes framed the battle in apocalyptic terms at the Archdiocesan Respect Life Conference November 9.

Referring to the terrorist attacks on 9/11, the noted author and former UN ambassador asked, "What was the evil in that evil day? The loss of life? The great damage to the symbols of our nation's economic might? The offense to our military pride?"

It was not these things that we found so repugnant, he said, but rather, "The evil lay in the fact that this blow was struck from a heart that completely disregarded the claims of innocent human life."

After 9/11, it became fashionable to call on the name of God.

"It was the first time," said Keyes, "that you could stand up and speak about God without the ACLU telling you to sit down and shut up."

ALAN KEYES

But, he warned, "The help we ask for against our enemies may bring God's wrath down on ourselves: we, as a nation, stand convicted before the Lord on the same judgment"‹the massive taking of innocent human life‹through abortion.

Keyes was reminded of the joke in which evangelist Billy Graham said that if God doesn't judge America soon, He's going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.

But he believes that God's judgment on our nation has already started.

"The destruction has begun against our human liberties in the name of security. We are starting to forget the right of due process," the abandonment of which can lead to tyranny.

Recalling God's words to Israel in Isaiah, "I will not hear your prayers; your hands are full of blood," he said that Christ's first message, which we will think about more with the Rosary's new Mysteries of Light, was repentance.

"I think our nation is in the state where there is a wall between our country and God. Repentance is the key.

"We as a pro-life movement are seeking to raise our nation from a ditch of lies."

God has handed pro-lifers a context, he concluded: the issue of terrorism in principle is the same as the issue of abortion.

"The terrorism issue sets the nation up to see the truth; that's where we need to get this country."