Congress should crack down on guns "found," stolen or acquired on the "street" or from the "black market"

If you are serious about reducing gun deaths …


In the wake of the recent mass murders in Texas, Congress has again passed legislation intended to stop “dangerous” people from getting guns.

The legislation will enhance background checks for would-be gun buyers under the age of 21, and provides for the examination of juvenile court records, and mental health records from the age of 16.

It provides funding for states to better implement “red flag laws.” These permit officials to “temporarily” confiscate guns from people adjudged to be a threat to criminally use them.

And it strengthens laws against a person who purchases a gun for someone who is prohibited by law from possessing a gun, or who does not want their name associated with the transaction.

So, will this legislation prevent the next episode of mass murder? Only if the would-be shooter is one of the less than of 2% criminals who purchase their guns from licensed gun dealers.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of criminals who use guns don’t get their guns from licensed gun dealers. Indeed, 56% appear to get their guns by stealing them, “finding them” at the crime scene, or getting them “off the street or from the underground market.”

In January 2019, the US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics published a report, captioned, Source and Use of Firearms Involved in Crimes:[2016] Survey of Prison Inmates. It stated that

1. 21% or 287,400 of all state and federal prisoners reported that they had possessed or carried a   firearm when they committed the offense for which they were serving time. 

2. 6% claimed they had stolen the gun.
3. 7% claimed they “found it” at the scene of the crime.
4. 43% stated that they obtained the gun “off the street or from the underground market.”
5. 25% claimed to have obtained the weapon from a family member or friend, or as a gift.

6. Less than 2% of prisoners say that they obtained the gun from a retail store.

7. 0.8% admitted obtaining the gun at a gun show.

The primary goal of the criminal law is to protect those who abide by the laws from those who don’t.

To that end, the criminal law seeks to (a) protect the law-abiding public, (b) punish the offender, (c) provide for his rehabilitation, and (d) deter him and others from committing future crimes.

Congress’ new legislation may help slightly, but it will not stop people from using guns obtained by stealing, “finding” or getting them “off the street or from the underground market.”


If you really intend to do that, you need to pass legislation that scares the hell out of any rational person who would possess a stolen or “found” gun, or one bought “off the street or from the underground market.”

Pass a law that says, possession of a gun bought other than from a licensed firearm dealer carries a mandatory 10-year prison term, with parole possible only after 8.5 years. (The 1.5 year reduction would be for “good conduct” clearly indicative of “rehabilitation.”)

Let that law contain a second section that states that if such a gun is used in the commission of any crime, the mandatory prison term will be 20 years, with parole possible only after 17 years.

Let the third section provide that if bodily harm is done to any individual by gun shot from said gun that the mandatory prison term will be 40 years, with parole possible only after 34 years.

Let the fourth section provide that if death or great bodily harm is done to any individual by gun shot from said gun, that the mandatory prison term will be 60 years or life, without parole, in the discretion of the court taking account of all relevant factors.

Provide an exception where the gun was lawfully purchased after a required background check by a person lawfully entitled to buy it, who subsequently gifts it to an immediate family member after that donee passes a required background check.

Then, if such a gun is used in violation of the five provisions above, provide that the defenses of self-defense and defense of other shall not be available to said gun user.

Finally, provide that where death or great bodily harm has been done with such a gun, and where the defendant is adjudged to be insane, that the prosecutor shall proceed with a “not guilty only” trial, and that upon conviction the defendant shall be placed for the mandatory term in a mental health prison wing for a like term.

You won’t stop all shooting by such a law. But 56% of prison inmates obtained their guns by stealing them, “finding them,” or getting them “off the street or from the underground market.” How many of them could have obtained a gun from a licensed gun dealer after a background check?

The goal of my proposed law is to scare the hell out of anybody inclined to steal, find, or acquire a gun “off the street or from the underground market.” Once “Harry Street-Gang” sees his best buddy, “Charlie Gang-Bang,” get 10 or 20 years, for possessing or using such a gun, obtaining a gun off the street will no longer be worth the risk.

Wikipedia states that in 2020 there were 615 “mass shootings” in the USA that resulted in 521 deaths. But in 2020, over 19,000 were shot dead (excluding suicides). It is folly to focus on the 521 mass shooting victims, and to ignore the other 18,500. Toddlers are being killed in our great cities as street gangs wantonly shoot up and down our city streets.


Of course, my statute will fail if prosecutors won’t use it, or plead such cases down.

Admittedly, there do not appear to be recent statistics to show exactly how many of the 19,000 deaths were caused with stolen or black-market guns. But when 56% of the prison inmates say the gun they used was such a gun, there is a reasonable inference to be drawn.

Copyright 2022, John Donald O'Shea

First Published in the Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus on July 17, 2022 

Before the EPA can destroy a major industry, there must be clear Congressional authorization

Does the EPA — a collection of unelected bureaucrats — have power in America to shut down industries that produce electricity by burning coal or natural gas to prevent climate change, notwithstanding the costs involved to the public, the industry and the workers who will lose their jobs?


In the days when I was in law school, we took a required course known as “Agency.” That course explained the relationship between the “principle” and his “agent.” An agent was a person appointed by the principle to transact certain business on behalf of the principle. The rule was that an agent had only such powers as an agent as were conferred upon him by his principle. The agent was powerless to create his own authority. 

A simple example: If I hire a young man for the purpose of mowing my lawn, I have given him authority to mow my lawn. Unless I have given him authority to paint my house, he has no such authority. The agent can’t create his own authority.

If I authorize the young man to cut my lawn, that is his express authority. I am also implicitly authorizing him to use a lawn mower. That would be reasonably expected. He would not by implication, however, be authorized to buy a $3,000 John Deere Garden tractor at my expense to do the job.

Our American Constitution provides that, “all legislative power resides in Congress.” Among the enumerated powers, Congress is specifically granted “Power To provide for the general Welfare of the United States.” To facilitate that purpose, another clause says that Congress has power “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers.”

As such, Congress is the “principle.” As such, Congress can appoint an “agent,” if Congress determines that an agent is “necessary and proper” to implement a law it passes. The IRS, the FAA and the EPA are such “agents.” As in the case of any other agent, Congress’ agents have only those powers conferred upon them by Congress.

A few days ago, the U.S. Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA ruled in accordance with those principles.

Congress created the EPA to protect the environment. For many years, the EPA set standards to be met by the states to control pollution. Traditionally, industries, such as industries that burn coal to produce electricity, have been required to install equipment calculated reduce the carbon emissions created by the process. The standards created by the EPA have traditionally balanced, among other factors, the cost of installing the most efficient equipment for obtaining the best result in terms of pollution reduction against the cost to the industry of doing so.


But what happens if employing the best and most modern equipment, produces only minimal results in further reducing pollution? 

Can the EPA make a new rule that say that to further reduce pollution, the plant owner must shut down his coal-fired plant, and replace it with a gas-fired plant? But while gas carbon emissions are only half of the of coal emission, what if to “save the planet,” the EPA determines that even carbon emission produced by burning gas, still pollute too much? Can the EPA order a shut-down of all coal-fired and all gas-fired plants, and order a conversion to “green energies?” What if that change-over will cost billions, or even trillions of dollars? What if the cost to the public is dramatically higher energy prices? Inadequate electricity? What if tens of thousands of people are thrown out of work? Can the EPA do that?

In West Virginia v. EPA, the court held, "No."

“Prior to 2015, EPA had always set emissions limits under Section 111 based on the application of measures that would reduce pollution by causing the regulated source to operate more cleanly.

“Here, rather than focus on improving the performance of individual sources, it would “improve the overall power system by lowering the carbon intensity of power generation.” … It would do that by forcing a shift throughout the power grid from one type of energy source to another.

“Under its newly “discover[ed]” authority, … EPA can demand much greater reductions in emissions based on a very different kind of policy judgment: that it would be “best” if coal made up a much smaller share of national electricity generation. And on this view of EPA’s authority, it could go further, perhaps forcing coal plants to “shift” away virtually all of their generation—i.e., to cease making power altogether.”

In West Virginia v. EPA, the court said that if Congress meant to give the EPA such authority, it had a duty to clearly state that it meant to do so.

“Agencies have only those powers given to them by Congress 'Enabling legislation" is generally not an “open book to which the agency [may] add pages and change the plot line.” …

“We presume that “Congress intends to make major policy decisions itself, not leave those decisions to agencies.”

“To convince us otherwise, something more than a merely plausible textual basis for the agency action is necessary. The agency instead must point to “clear congressional authorization” for the power it claims."

Before the EPA can destroy a major industry, Congress must clearly give it such power.

Copyright 2022, John Donald O'Shea

First Published in the Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus on July 10, 2022 

Balance and compromise are the essence of democracy

If you have studied civics or American government in school, you know that our federal government has only those powers expressly delegated to it by the Constitution. All other powers are reserved to the states or to the people. The federal government was created to do only those things that the states found that they couldn’t do for themselves.

As such, the federal government is not “presumed” to have powers. It has only those powers “specifically delegated” to it.

If you scrutinize our U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights, you will not find the word “abortion.” The Constitution nowhere says, “Every woman has a right to choose abortion.” So, how did “abortion” come to be a Constitutional Right?

The Constitution itself prescribes the mechanism for its amendment.

“Amendments, … shall be valid … when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three-fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress ….”

Twenty-seven amendments have been to our Constitution. Do any of its 27 amendments mention the word “abortion?” The answer is, “No.”

So, how then did “abortion” come to be a “constitutional right?”

Abortion came to be a “constitutional right” in 1973 when seven justices of the U.S. Supreme Court said so.

Mr. Justice Blackman, author of the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, wrote that a woman’s right to choose to abort her fetus has its basis in the right of “privacy.”

Blackman, however, began by acknowledging that “The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy.”

“In a line of decisions, however, going back perhaps as … [1891], the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution. In varying contexts, the Court or individual Justices have, indeed, found at least the roots of that right in the First Amendment …; in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments …; in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights …; in the Ninth Amendment …; or in the concept of liberty guaranteed by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment … . These decisions make it clear that only personal rights that can be deemed 'fundamental' or 'implicit in the concept of ordered liberty… are included in this guarantee of personal privacy.”

The court then concluded

“This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”

Thus, in the absence of clear language in the Constitution or in its Bill of Rights, the seven-member majority discovered a “constitutional right” to abortion lurking somewhere “in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights” or “'implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”

Because I believed that our Constitution and Bill of Rights must be construed consistently as they would have been construed by the people who adopted it, from the day Roe was decided, I have
believed that Roe v. Wade was improvidently decided, and was a usurpation by seven judges of the rights of the people to amend our Constitution through their elected legislatures or conventions.

I believe the following questions are dispositive: (1) at the time that our Constitution was written and ratified, did anyone involved in the process believe it was enshrining “abortion as a“constitutional right?” (2) Did anyone believe, at the time our Bill of Rights was adopted, that “abortion” was being protected thereby? (3) Did anyone believe in 1868, when the 14th Amendment was written to prohibit the states from depriving “any person (especially the former slaves) of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” that it was guaranteeing women the right to abort fetuses?”

Have we a historical record of even one person, at any of those times, arguing that the Constitution, the Bill of Rights or the 14th Amendment “will guarantee women the right to abortion?”

If not, Roe v. Wade was an unconstitutional judicial usurpation.

In 1973, in dissent, Mr. Justice White, wrote 

“I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment…

“This issue, for the most part, should be left with the people and to the political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs.”

In 1973, I said the Roe decision was wrong. The Court construed two adjoining words in the 14th Amendment: “life” and “liberty.” 

The mother’s “liberty” was construed “expansively.”

The fetus’ “life” was counted for nothing. Dodds v. Jackson allows the people and their 50 legislatures to act to strike the proper balance the fetus’ “life” and the mother’s “liberty.” Balance and compromise are the essence of democracy.

The purpose of our written Constitution and its written amendments was to clearly state, for the whole world to see, the rights of every American, and the powers specifically granted to the national government. If abortion was such a fundamental right, it is remarkable that it wasn’t guaranteed therein, along with our fundamental rights to speak, worship, print and peacefully assemble.

Copyright 2022, John Donald O'Shea

First Published in the Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus on July 3, 2022 

Bad deeds are done in the dead of night

So, what are the costs of President Biden’s open Southern border policy?

On March 17, 2022, I wrote of the fentanyl crisis enabled by Biden’s criminally wanton open-border policy.

"Illicit fentanyl, primarily manufactured in foreign clandestine labs and smuggled into the United States through Mexico, is being distributed across the country and sold on the illegal drug market.

 "Between 2020 and 2021, nearly 79,000 people between 18 and 45 years old — 37,208 in 2020 and 41,587 in 2021 — died of fentanyl overdoses …”

I concluded by asking, “So does Biden really care?” Biden's past remarks signal he doesn’t.

"I find that international drug trafficking — including … fentanyl ... constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States."

But fentanyl deaths are but one deadly consequence of Biden’s obtuseness. There are others.


Between February 2021, and May 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (“CBT”) states that there have been 2,500,000 encounters with foreign nationals illegally attempting to enter into the U.S.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody recently released a document from President Biden’s Department of Homeland Security, captioned, “U.S. Customs and Border Protection Overview of the Southwest Border.” That heavily redacted eight-page document describes the role of Mexican cartels and other transnational criminal organizations (“TCOs”) in smuggling foreign nationals into the U.S.

That document states,

“…We assess that smuggling networks [Mexican Drug Cartels and TCOs] are very active in promoting the flow of migrants through Mexico. These drug trafficking organizations maintain control of the primary trafficking corridors into the United States. The drug trafficking organizations’ control of these corridors, allows them to regulate the flow of migrants, as well as charge migrants a ‘tax’” for the right of passage through these corridors.

“TCOs will exploit migration flows and entrench themselves in the smuggling cycle. TCOs endanger vulnerable individuals, amass illicit profits that feed cartel violence in Mexico and along the border, and create a volatile border environment.”

AG Moody states that. “This … contradicts what the Biden administration has been telling the American people. It shows that the Mexican drug cartels are profiting off the mass migration ….”

In October 2021, according to Border Report, CBT agents advised:

“Everything going through their [the Cartels’] area they know,” … so everyone going through their area they has to pay a fee. … They charge between $8,000 and $15,000, depending on the person and where they are coming from. … They have pick-up drivers in the United States. They recruit the youth to drive. They have stash house coordinators, people that transport these people form the stash houses to their final destination.”

The detriment to the people of the U.S. has been well-documented. The illegals are rewarded with welfare benefits, SNAP cards, free medical care, free schooling for their children, etc., all at the expense of American Taxpayers. Why? To create a new mass of voters beholden and permanently loyal to the Democrat party, who will ensure the Democrats with a permanent hold on power.

But what effects does enriching the Drug Cartels have on the people of Mexico? Here is just one CTV News (Canada - 1/25/22) report. Many others can be found on the internet.

“Activists from Mexico's violence-plagued western state of Michoacan said … that the government has to fight all drug cartels equally and return land to an estimated 35,000 people displaced by fighting.

"’In terms of safety, we are worse than ever,’ said Hipolito Mora, former leader of the 2013-2014 self-defense movement that kicked the Knights Templar Cartel out of Michoacan.

“The cartels are back, with the Jalisco Cartel fighting the local Viagras gang for control of the state. The battle has featured heavy weaponry and the use of bomb-dropping drones. The government response has been to hold off incursions by the Jalisco cartel, while doing little to stop the other gangs.

“Rev. Gregorio Lopez, a Catholic priest once known for wearing a flak vest while celebrating Mass, said, … ‘There are regions where the government frankly can't go, regions ... where organized crime has total control…. At least 35,000 people have been forced to flee their homes and farms …. The warring drug cartels extort money from almost all merchandise passing through Michoacan. … They have to pay protection money on the outskirts of the city. There are little plastic tables and some guy there charging …’"

A president should be proud of his border policy. The Press and the American people should be allowed to see everything that’s being done. Secret air flights, disbursing the migrants in the dead of night, should tell you that Biden feels he needs to hide what he is doing from the American people.

Copyright 2022, John Donald O'Shea

First Published in the Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus on June 19, 2022 

Abortion, self-defense, slavery and the well-formed conscience

The sections dealing with abortion in the Roman Catholic catechism provide no exceptions allowing abortion, even in cases where the pregnancy threatens the mother with imminent death, and even in cases of rape or incest. But do other chapters provide exceptions? Perhaps. But such exceptions as might be provided in the chapters on conscience and self-defense, are narrow.

So, can a woman ever be justified in taking the life of her unborn child? (Note: we are discussing morality here; not “law.”).

On this matter, the Church’s catechism provides useful “guidance” to both those who’d say, “Yes,” and those who’d say, “No!”

I use the word “guidance” carefully. In the last instance, the catechism provides rules to guide the formation of the “well-formed” conscience. Why? Because ultimately every human must act in conformity with his/her own “well-formed” conscience — especially in grave or blood matters. On issues such as “conscience,” that catechism embodies the best analysis of popes, churchman, and theologians over the course of 2000 years, as well as scriptures.

The Catechism teaches that “conscience” requires every person to discern whether his proposed course of conduct will be good or evil. That judgment takes account of all relevant circumstances surrounding his/her act. It requires the person to utilize the means available, under the exigencies of the circumstances, to make an informed judgment. Once that effort has been made, the person must always obey the certain judgment of his/ her own conscience — regardless of what others may say.

"Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself, but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment. . . . For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God. . . . His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths. (§1776)

In addition to its teachings on conscience, the catechism also gives guidance on the issue of self-defense.

Under the secular principle of self-defense, a woman can do what is both reasonable and necessary to avoid the immediate threat of death or great bodily harm to herself. This principle of self-defense has been recognized in all societies from time immemorial and finds cautious support in the Church’s catechism.

“Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow. … Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one’s own life than of another’s.” §2264.

But can one incapable of “intending,” be an “aggressor?” Theologians have argued that issue through the millennia. Can a woman act in self-defense against the “unintended” acts of a fetus where there is a high probability that that pregnancy will cause her death? Few would deny her the right to use deadly force in self-defense to preserve her own life from death at the hands of a totally insane killer — a person incapable of intending to kill her, or even knowing what he is about to do. Is she not “bound to take more care of her own life? Is this not truly the realm of conscience?

Then there are sections on rape and slavery. Where conception occurs from rape or incest, because the crime does not end with penile withdrawal where pregnancy results, it is certainly arguable that the woman can defend herself and do what is reasonable and necessary to end the rape, forced pregnancy and enslavement. The Church recognizes that rape/incest “causes grave damage that can mark the victim for life. It is always an intrinsically evil act.“ (§2356)

“§2414. The seventh commandment forbids … the enslavement of human beings … It is a sin … against … fundamental rights to reduce them by violence to [slavery].”

The sections on abortion, rape and slavery provide no remedies; but must be read together with those on conscience and self-defense.

The choice to act in self-defense, in the face of immediate death or great bodily harm, is the gravest choice that any woman can ever called upon to make. Especially here, she “must obey” her well-formed conscience. The catechism teaches, that conscience that “ever calls her to love,” permits the woman to love” her own life more, than that of her would-be killer [§2264). If she has done her best, under the circumstances, to fully inform her conscience, the Church teaches she is not culpable even if her judgment of conscience is wrong.

“If the ignorance is invincible, the evil committed by the person cannot be imputed to the person.” §1793.

Copyright 2022, John Donald O'Shea

First Published in the Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus on June 12, 2022 

Why does the Catholic Church condemn abortion?

Knowing the stance of the Catholic Church on abortion, why would anybody contemplating an abortion, consult its catechism? Where else can you find a succinct distillation of 2000 years of Christian moral teachings?

Most people who are pro-abortion, and, indeed, most people who are anti-abortion have never taken time to ponder the underpinnings of the Church’s teachings concerning abortion. But are its teachings today, consistent with those of the early church?

The Didache, generally thought to have been written in the late 1st Century, has been described as the oldest extant Christian catechism. It begins by teaching that “There are two ways, one of life and one of death.” In its second chapter, it condemns abortions: “thou shalt not kill a child by abortion, neither shalt thou slay it when born.”

Tertullian (c. 155 - 220 a.d.) in the 8th chapter of his Apology for Christians wrote,

“But Christians now are so far from homicide, that with them it is utterly unlawful to make away a child in the womb, when nature is in deliberation about the man; for to kill a child before it is born is to commit murder by way of advance; and there is no difference whether you destroy a child in its formation, or after it is formed and delivered. We Christians look upon him as a man, who is one in embryo; for he is in being, like the fruit in blossom, and in a little time would have been a perfect man, had nature met with no disturbance.”


On such texts, the church teaches: “Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable.” “Abortion willed — either as an end or a means — is gravely contrary to the moral law.”

The church find support in its teachings in the Prophet Jeremiah, quoting God as saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you.”

And in Isaiah, “Before birth the Lord called me, from my mother’s womb he gave me my name …

“Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you.”

Based on such passages, the church teaches 

“Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person — among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being, to life.”

From there, the Church goes on to teach, 

“The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation.

"The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority.

“These human rights depend neither on single individuals, nor on parents; nor do they represent a concession made by society and the state; they belong to human nature and are inherent in the person by virtue of the creative act from which the person took his origin."

Among such fundamental rights one should mention in this regard every human being's right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death.

The fundamental question here is not whether you agree with this op-ed. Nor whether you are a member of the Catholic Church. Nor even whether you agree with the catechism of the Church.

The fundamental question is whether, The church is right or wrong when it teaches that abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes. And given the “irreparable harm done” to the innocent fetus-embryo-child “who is put to death,” whether “abortion is grave matter” and mortal sin.

And is the church correct when it teaches, “The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law. When the state does not place its power at the service of the rights of each citizen, and in particular of the more vulnerable, the very foundations of a state based on law are undermined.”

In a few days the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether abortion remains a Constitution right — a legal question. Whatever its decision, the moral question still remains.

But if the “abortion” chapter of the catechism provides no exceptions, does it do so elsewhere?

See my next op ed.

Copyright 2022, John Donald O'Shea

First Published in the Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus on June 5, 2022

Abortion, infallibility and the 'safer course'

Are you infallible?

Are you infallible in your belief that the child in the mother’s womb who is about to be killed is not a human being?

As I watch and listen to the protests, and to the assuredness of the pro-abortion press, my thoughts recur to Blaise Pascal’s “Wager.”

Pascal was a French philosopher and theologian, as well as a famous mathematician and physicist. Today, he is perhaps best known for “Pascal’s Wager.” Pascal argues that all human beings wager, by the way they live their lives, that God exists, or doesn’t exist.

Pascal argues that a rational person should live his life as though God exists. If you do, you will incur, at worst, a finite loss. You will deprive yourself only of one or more of the fruits of the deadly sins: illicit sex, ill-gotten gain, or worldly power.

If, on the other hand, God does exist, you stand to receive the joys of eternal life if you have led a life pleasing to God, or eternal damnation if you have lived a life that displeases.

So, as you take your pro-abortion stand, would you not be wise to ask yourselves the following questions?

Is there a God?

If so, does he reward good and punish evil? Forbid us to kill? Command us to “Love one another?” Tell us that human beings are created in his image and likeness?

If so, at what point does God think that the embryo-fetus-child, is a human being? If at conception, what is your liability if you kill it? If at 15 weeks, what is your liability if you kill it?

If God exists, what if God believes that killing the embryo-fetus-child is murder, even if you don’t?

I have always known that I am not infallible. While I do not know the precise instant when God considers the embryo-fetus-child to be fully human, I choose to wager that there is a God. For that reason, and because I believe he has said, “Thou shall not kill,” and commanded that we shall “Love one another,” I believe abortion to be a moral wrong. In that, I think I am not unlike Abe Lincoln who said that he believed “slavery to be a moral wrong.”

Am I infallible on the matter? No. Am I willing to risk an eternity in Hell for taking the innocent life of an unborn child, except in the gravest of circumstances? No.

I am, however, morally certain that the embryo-fetus-child is fully a human being the moment it can reasonably be expected to survive outside the womb — even if medical care is needed.

But I have also written before of the importance of act consistently with one’s own well-formed conscience. Given, however, what appear to be consistent divine and secular proscriptions against killing the innocent over the history of mankind, coupled with Christ’s command to love one another, the taking innocent life, but for the gravest of reasons, seems utterly inconsistent with acting consistently with a well-formed conscience. It you love your neighbor, can you kill him? Popes, theologians and catechists say, “Rarely, and only for the gravest of reasons.”

In the matter of taking human life, medieval popes, theologians and philosophers consistently counseled, as Pascal suggests, “take the safer course.”

In fire-arms safety training, you are taught that while you may truly believe you are killing in “self-defense,” your jury may think "murder.” When you abort a child believing you are justified, Pascal warns that you may be second-guessed by God.

Copyright 2022, John Donald O'Shea

First Published in the Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus on May 29, 2022