Imagine, if you can, a place where innocent people, quietly going about their lives, were painfully poisoned by chemical warfare, or dragged from their homes, gagged and violently killed, and then usually dismembered. Their remains were then cremated, dumped in mass graves, or used in medical experiments. Would you be appalled? You would have to be inhuman not to be. 

As history instructs us, this actually happened in Nazi Germany as well as in other barbaric regimes. So strong was the outrage that we conducted trials and put to death those who perpetrated these crimes. And we established Holocaust museums so that we, and future generations of Americans, would never forget the horrors. But genocide has occurred even in our own great land, America, and it continues unabated today. Since 1973, over 53 million of the most innocent of the innocents have been violently killed right here in the good ole U.S. of A through abortion. Yet, we turn our collective eyes away and let the bloodbath continue. This is the silent American genocide ... a genocide of convenience.

Try to get your mind around the number. 

Fifty-three million deaths. To equal this number, one would have to exterminate the entire populations of Montana, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Mississippi, Delaware, Connecticut, Rhode island, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. It would be the equivalent of killing all the people inhabiting one-half of the land mass of the “lower 48.” Or, for the more sports minded, 540 Dallas Cowboys stadiums, each seating 105,000. Can you picture the horror? It would be the same as summarily executing every seventh living American. Every seventh person you know. Imagine that.

Put another way, 53 million equals the number of people killed by these despots: Stalin (23 million), Hitler (12 million), Leopold II (Belgian Congo 8 million), Tojo (5 million), Pol Pot (1.7 million), Kim il Sung (1.6 million), Saddam Hussein  (600,000), Tito (570,000), Taliban (400,000), Milosevic (100,000), and Lenin (30,000). If genocide were an Olympic event America would win the Gold Medal! Our closest competitor would be China. How sad. 

Want more statistics?

In America alone 1.37 million innocent babies are killed each year. That equals the execution of 3,700 babies each and every day — Sundays included. Shocking? Yes. But it is even worse. Worldwide over 42 million innocent babies are killed per year — that is 115,000 per day, or 1.3 babies each second. That is considerably more than the population of the Flathead Valley — brutally killed each day. In our own valley it occurs with horrific frequency. 

Why does this happen? Abortion is born out of irresponsibility. Sixty-four percent of women seeking to kill their babies in-utero are unwed. About 33 percent of women are married. For these women, their decision to kill is typically the most selfishly cruel of acts and one undertaken for their own convenience (financial, career aspirations, bad timing, not ready, et al). Perhaps they feel they are worth more than their baby? Ironic, isn't it, that their mothers did not abort them. Surprisingly, less than 2 percent of women kill their babies because of rape, or incest, or genetic issues, or danger to their own life. And sadly, 43 percent of American women will have an abortion by 45 years of age — many will have several — thereby dramatically increasing their risk of breast cancer. 

Can we end this genocide? How?

Demand the end of public funding of abortion — 14 percent of abortions are publicly funded. Write your representatives and ask them to end the public funding of abortion under Title X. Teach your children the virtues of abstinence until marriage in schools and at home. It is 100 percent foolproof and will dramatically reduce the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases. This is a fundamental parental responsibility. Get involved — join our local 40 Days for Life peaceful vigil from Feb. 17 through March 28. Go to www.40daysforlife.com/kalispell for more information. Speak out publicly and talk to your friends about the horror of abortion and the damage it is doing to our society. 

Elect only those politicians who are for life; not those defending the culture of death. Show love and compassion to those women contemplating killing their child. They are scared and many feel lonely. Compassionately refer them to the Hope Pregnancy Center or Clear Choice Clinic, where they will be loved and cared for. Pray and fast for those who have been lured into the grotesque abortion industry so that they may realize what they are doing. And if you (or your wife or girlfriend) have had an abortion, consider attending a Rachel's Vineyard retreat in Kalispell to assuage your guilt and help your healing.

In closing, Mother Theresa was often quoted saying, “If a mother can kill her own child, how long will it be before we start to kill one another?” How long indeed? We are rapidly sliding down the slippery slope begun by Roe vs. Wade. The next stop is euthanasia and we are almost there. Let's stop the American genocide. Isn't the murder of 53 million innocent babies enough?

McNamara is a resident of Whitefish.