Well, you don’t often get pro-life pieces at the Huffington Post.
Though to be honest, the piece I found isn’t explicitly pro-life. In fact, it doesn’t mention abortion or euthanasia at all. But the ideas he expressed are thoroughly pro-life (though I’d predict the author would deny the connection).
Writer Bryan Young, nominally Catholic, recently posted an article titled “What Batman Can Teach Conservatives on Immigration and Other Issues.” I felt an immediate affinity for him when he wrote, ” I’ve long felt that comic books crafted my moral compass.” Having occasionally written on similar topics myself, I was immediately interested.
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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He went on to say:
I’ve been re-reading some recent older [sic] comics, and one passage in Detective Comics #853 (written by Neil Gaiman no less) had an impact on me that hit me right between the eyes. This comic was right after Batman’s “death” at the hands of Darkseid and Gaiman was asked to write sort of a sum up of the character in a two-part story called “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?” In it, heroes and villains alike spoke at Batman’s funeral.
Clayface, one of the lesser known villains in Batman’s rogues gallery, was speaking over the coffin and said, “He died saving the city. No, that’s not true. He saved the city, he died saving me. I said, ‘I’m not worth it.” And he said, ‘Everyone’s worth it.’”
And right then and there, it hit me. It smacked me in the face.
It was an incredibly poignant moment and it solidified in my mind everything I felt about the immigration debate, the death penalty, jailing drug offenders, and a dozen different issues.
It really doesn’t matter who you are; as long as you’re a person, you’re worth saving, worth protecting, worth welcoming with open arms.
That’s the message that pro-life activists have been trying to teach for years.
I wonder if Mr. Young pursued the train of thought sufficiently to have abortion, embryonic stem cell research, or euthanasia occur to him? Or did he just stop at the traditional Democratic ideas he was already familiar with? Was his epiphany a life-changer, or was it, as I fear, simply a confirmation of what he’d already believed in the first place?
It’s worth praying that Mr. Young and his readers follow his ideas through to their logical conclusion.