Appalled?

A reader sent me a link to this story from th Denver Post.

Special / Matthew Staver The Memorial Wall for the Unborn outside of Sacred Heart of Mary Church in Boulder honors the fetuses buried there since the late 1990s. The Boulder Abortion Clinic didn’t know the parish had been getting the ashes until the church announced a Sunday burial service.

A Boulder Roman Catholic church’s plan to bury the remains of fetuses from a local abortion clinic was assailed Thursday by the clinic’s director, who called it "a cynical exploitation of private grief for political purposes" by the Catholic Church and the mortuary that gave the ashes to the parish.

Dr. Warren Hern, director of the Boulder Abortion Clinic, issued a scathing statement in response to Sacred Heart of Mary Church’s announcement that it would stage a ceremony Sunday morning to bury the ashes of what Hern describes as surgical tissue from abortions and what the church describes as babies. The event marks the 32nd anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.

…A state health official said the arrangement between the church and Crist Mortuary doesn’t violate state laws.

The mortuary, which says it has an agreement to retrieve the tissue from the abortion clinic and cremate it, has been delivering the ashes to the parish without Hern’s knowledge since 2001.

The mortuary director, Chuck Myers, provided the same service from 1996 to 1998 when he directed a funeral home in Lafayette, said Susan LaVelle, a parish volunteer long involved in the practice. The church has quietly been burying the ashes in front of a red granite "Memorial Wall for the Unborn" in its cemetery.

In his statement, Hern said, "I am appalled that the Catholic Church again has shown its willingness to exploit the private grief and pain of women seeking legal abortions in order to advance its political goals."

More schizophrenia from abortion supporters. They said the ashes were "surgical tissue." Why would anyone grieve over "surgical tissue?" Why would you have "surgical tissue" cremated in the first place? This just shows that even their own beliefs and rhetoric are not one, though in this case at least I am glad their hypocrisy leads to some form of care for the remains of the unborn. They might be appalled at what the Church is doing, but it is much more appalling that they would ignore the private grief and pain of women and then profit by the abortions they perform.

"I do think this is right," she said. "What was going to happen to those ashes if we didn’t pick them up? Would they be thrown away? I hope my words would never harm someone. My message is one of healing."

Sergio Gutierrez, spokesman for the Denver archdiocese, said the burial at Sacred Heart "is something the parish is doing to honor the dignity of these children."

"Anything that does that, obviously we support," he said.

Update: Dale Price takes at the same story with his unique and brilliant style.

Dawn Eden also looks at the mixed messages and the semantics used.