Steve Benson and Senator John McCain
Leave it to Steve Benson, editorial cartoonist for the Arizona Republic, to attack Senator John McCain for being pro-life. In a recent editorial cartoon, Benson does just that claiming that the good senator wants to throw women "overboard" by supporting the reversal of Roe v. Wade.
Of course it is Roe v. Wade that has been throwing women overboard for the last 34 years by treating them as objects and property rather than the persons they were created to be.
The abortion industry has long exploited the economic and social pressures that an unintended pregnancy may cause a woman. And for a fee, the abortionists have all been very willing to "take care" of the "problem" so that the woman could continue her life uninterrupted. Except that for the vast majority of women, the "interruption of a pregnancy" and its subsequent destruction never leaves the woman. She will remember this event for the rest of her life. And the event will color her relationships with everyone she knows or will know in the future.
The real "lifesavers" who throw out the "lifeline" to the mother in distress are the emergency pregnancy services and the right to life movement as a whole. These organizations offer real hope and healing to women in distress. Rather than try to sweep the reality under the table, the pro-life side addresses real problems and offers real long term life affirming solutions. Senator McCain knows this and that explains in part why he supports the efforts of the pro-life movement.
The real tragedy is the downward slide of Steve Benson from being someone who defended the innocent and the helpless to a cold calloused individual who just doesn't care anymore. What led him to his own embrace of the culture of death cannot be a lack of knowledge. Steve and I were friends at one time. He spoke at right to life functions showing his cartoons where he mocked the proprietors of the abortion industry and their political minions who kissed up to these purveyors of death. He and Chuck Assay, another cartoonist, would do a slide presentation ( this was in the late 1980s) and speak about the unborn child and the mother and how we all needed to be involved in some way. He was funny; he was sharp; he was passionate.
I still have some of his cartoons, one where he blasts Planned Parenthood for suggesting Mrs. Beethoven have an abortion, another where he compares the abortion mills to the crematoriums in Nazi Germany. He entitled it "Reich to Choose." The box cars leading to the crematoriums had "PP" on the side. But one of my favorite cartoons shows a Planned Parenthood office and a crisis pregnancy center side by side. Through the window of the Planned Parenthood office is the employee waving her hand at a teen age girl, screaming, "What?!!? Good heavens, girl, you don't want to go next door! They'll just manipulate you into not having the abortion we're trying to talk you into!"
What happened to Steve Benson is most likely tied to a number of things we will never know.
But in my last conversation with him years ago, he could not answer my questions. Perhaps the desire to get along with a more liberal environment, coupled with events in his family and church life, and a mid-life crisis, explains his abandonment of these pro-life principles. That is something that he will have to discuss in the depths of his heart with God.
Of course it is Roe v. Wade that has been throwing women overboard for the last 34 years by treating them as objects and property rather than the persons they were created to be.
The abortion industry has long exploited the economic and social pressures that an unintended pregnancy may cause a woman. And for a fee, the abortionists have all been very willing to "take care" of the "problem" so that the woman could continue her life uninterrupted. Except that for the vast majority of women, the "interruption of a pregnancy" and its subsequent destruction never leaves the woman. She will remember this event for the rest of her life. And the event will color her relationships with everyone she knows or will know in the future.
The real "lifesavers" who throw out the "lifeline" to the mother in distress are the emergency pregnancy services and the right to life movement as a whole. These organizations offer real hope and healing to women in distress. Rather than try to sweep the reality under the table, the pro-life side addresses real problems and offers real long term life affirming solutions. Senator McCain knows this and that explains in part why he supports the efforts of the pro-life movement.
The real tragedy is the downward slide of Steve Benson from being someone who defended the innocent and the helpless to a cold calloused individual who just doesn't care anymore. What led him to his own embrace of the culture of death cannot be a lack of knowledge. Steve and I were friends at one time. He spoke at right to life functions showing his cartoons where he mocked the proprietors of the abortion industry and their political minions who kissed up to these purveyors of death. He and Chuck Assay, another cartoonist, would do a slide presentation ( this was in the late 1980s) and speak about the unborn child and the mother and how we all needed to be involved in some way. He was funny; he was sharp; he was passionate.
I still have some of his cartoons, one where he blasts Planned Parenthood for suggesting Mrs. Beethoven have an abortion, another where he compares the abortion mills to the crematoriums in Nazi Germany. He entitled it "Reich to Choose." The box cars leading to the crematoriums had "PP" on the side. But one of my favorite cartoons shows a Planned Parenthood office and a crisis pregnancy center side by side. Through the window of the Planned Parenthood office is the employee waving her hand at a teen age girl, screaming, "What?!!? Good heavens, girl, you don't want to go next door! They'll just manipulate you into not having the abortion we're trying to talk you into!"
What happened to Steve Benson is most likely tied to a number of things we will never know.
But in my last conversation with him years ago, he could not answer my questions. Perhaps the desire to get along with a more liberal environment, coupled with events in his family and church life, and a mid-life crisis, explains his abandonment of these pro-life principles. That is something that he will have to discuss in the depths of his heart with God.
posted by Jakubczyk on Life | 6:28 PM
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