I would like to thank Ms. Maria Hars for her penetrating, compassionate and incisive response to my opening of a “Dialogue on Abortion.”

Firstly, as she says, “Intercourse is a mutual endeavor, and a man must act responsibly.” For in fact, this nuptial act of such great vulnerability and mystery is to be done solely in the context of a man and his lawful wife. Period. It is holy ground, not like blowing your nose: after all, we are surely — as Ms. Hars and I agree — “Made in the Image and Likeness of God,” and we might likewise agree that intercourse is just the proximate cause of conception, but the direct cause is the creative agency of God himself.

Secondly, I am agnostic about the NRA and the Second Amendment, haven’t fired a gun since Basic Combat Training in ’72, and her point here mystifies me, a total red herring.

Thirdly, Ms. Hars points out, “All children should be loved and wanted, cherished in a good home.” However, a great many pregnancies are conceived unexpectedly in life, and most mothers can articulate this. My 99-year-old mother, Helen, was at first startled and mortified by an unplanned pregnancy at 45-plus, but now Mary Kay has proved to be in her 50s, an unmitigated, total blessing. The point? No one has the right to arrogantly supersede this growing baby, embodied in that co-operation of divine and human free will, just because “It doesn’t meet my own convenience, needs, or specifications.”

Fourthly, Mrs. Hars and I would probably agree that women are the superior sex and species and are more “together” generally, but male post ’60s licentious, irresponsible, predatory males have trashed in large degree both the dignity and innate grace of what God has expected them to become vis-a-vis each other. All in the name of “sexual freedom.” This current male attitude is at root power-driven, misogynist — and, God-forbid, if SHE gets pregnant, she alone, often abandoned, trapped in desperation, faces the situation. Such is the depths of male behavior but also a grave societal problem. This problem must be faced head-on by America.

Fifthly, as to my main point that Ms. Hars takes umbrage at about the comparison between the Holocaust and our 59 million babies slaughtered in the womb, eliciting a gratuitous “Wow” from her. Yet the analogy is more than apt both quantitatively and qualitatively: A) With Nazi Germany, a rogue thug-ridden party under a demagogue took control of a nation in order to dominate the world, while we are supposedly a nation on a hill like a New Jerusalem; B) The Third Reich lasted only for 12 years, and after WWII, good-hearted Germans repented, and paid a great deal of reparations for that Holocaust to Israel; and C) In outright quantity, we have murdered 59 million babies in the womb over 44 years. There will be a reckoning before the One who cannot deceive. Nor be deceived.

Finally, rather than quoting a Vatican-condemned nun like the near-apostate sister Jean Christine, I would like to quote the Catechism, N. 2272: “Formal co-operation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense,” for the inviolable right to life, guaranteed even by Deist — as well as Christian — Founders realized that eternal truth. “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I created you.” Still, I am human before being “Catholic” and hope that Ms. Hars likewise too has a warm heart which is the deepest wisdom, for I strongly believe that this ugly business of abortion-on-demand we have in America is emotionally, psychologically, spiritually very destructive to both women (as well as men), that it is judicially corrupt, and societally ruinous, cancerous, and most vicious to the integrity of our country.

Hensleigh is a resident of Kalispell.