As the Marist poll from the Knights of Columbus suggests, most Americans are not joining Andrew Cuomo’s rallying cry for expanding abortion access, a priority of his administration this year. Most Americans, I suspect would be horrified if they realized 41 percent of children in New York City are aborted. When New Yorkers were polled about that in 2011, even 57 percent of pro-choice women thought the rate too high.
Greg Pfundstein, president of the Chiaroscuro Foundation, which commissioned that poll, put it well last week: “New York’s abortion regime is among the most liberal on planet Earth already. The notion that women need more access to abortion in New York is simply preposterous.”
One powerful protest of sorts is planned on January 22 in the heart of Manhattan. At 7 a.m. there will be a Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral celebrated by Timothy Cardinal Dolan. Those gathered for the Mass will offer prayers in sorrow for the misery of our culture of death, and in hope that the work of those who provide practical help to women and children and families to save lives will speak to the hearts of a nation in need of a reawakening on this issue.
You can invite people via Facebook here.
After Mass, there will be a procession through the streets of Midtown — St. Pat’s is, of course right by Rockefeller Center, possibly the center of our pop-cultural universe (certainly if NBC had anything to say about it . . .) — of Catholics praying the Rosary. If we have a prayer of something better here, is there any better way to start than with prayer?
That’s where I plan to be that morning. Praying for women and men and a renewal on questions of life and love and family and freedom. Join me?
The situation in New York is one that deserves more attention, with real potential for awakening consciences to the culture Roe has wrought. As Pfundstein discussed with me awhile ago, “Many New Yorkers have an abstract commitment to a woman’s ‘right to choose,’ but the situation we have in New York is not the one they signed up for. Many think of abortion as a necessary option for that once-in-a-lifetime mistake, but with 54 percent of NYC abortions being repeat abortions, that’s not what we are dealing with here. We hope that people will take an honest look at the situation and question some of the orthodoxies that defend this status quo.”
Or so we pray. And so we pray.