Prayer making a difference in healing 'wounds’ of legal abortion, Bishop Isern says

Pueblo, Colo., Jan 26, 2010 / 01:02 am

The new bishop of Pueblo, Colorado has warned of the “lingering wounds” of abortion and said the prayers and efforts of those who oppose it are making a difference.

Bishop Fernando Isern’s remarks came in his homily at a noon Mass in Pueblo’s Cathedral of the Sacred Heart on Friday, the 37th anniversary of the pro-abortion Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.

He noted that though the earthquake in Haiti has killed an estimated 200,000 people, abortion has killed almost 25 times that number in the U.S.

“In the years since, 50 million lives have been lost,” he said, according to the Pueblo Chieftain.

Calling legal abortion “a terrible cloud over this great nation,” he said the laws show an “absurd logic” in criminalizing damage to an egg of an endangered bald eagle but not an early human embryo.

Bishop Isern said abortion harms the whole family and scars would-be mothers.

"These are wounds that linger years and years," he continued. "As priests we hear it over and over again in the confessional."

The bishop also urged the Catholic faithful to help expectant mothers and to say “We’re there, and we will help you.”

He noted that his former parish in Miami opened its arms and finances to a young single woman who was expecting a baby. The parish cared for her emotionally, spiritually and financially and the baby is now a student in the parish pre-school.

The mother now works in the parish’s maintenance department and has a second child, which she may not have done had she aborted her firstborn.

Bishop Isern said the girl is “the apple of her eye,” according to the Pueblo Chieftain.

He said that prayer is the key to stopping abortion both individually and as a legal practice.

The bishop also pointed out that a clear majority of Americans now oppose abortion.

“It is prayer that will make a difference,” Bishop Isern insisted.

Colorado was one of the first states to permit legal abortion. In 1967, Colorado Republican Gov. John A. Love signed the first U.S. law allowing abortion in cases of permanent mental or physical disability of either the child or the mother or in cases of rape or incest.