Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) appears to have a special mission to defend the dignity and rights of people and organizations that torture, dismember, and mutilate their victims.
Faced with President Donald Trump’s widely reported comments on the MS-13 gang’s reputation for sadistic, brutal violence where Trump referred to the gang members as “animals,” Ms. Pelosi rose up in righteous indignation.
“Does he not believe in the spark of divinity, the dignity and worth of every person?” Pelosi asked.
“The crimes that we’re talking about are brutal,” said Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas, in reference to acts by MS-13 gang members. “Their weapon of choice is a machete. We end up seeing people with injuries that I’ve never seen before. You know, limbs hacked off.”
One female MS-13 member kidnapped a 15-year-old girl and tortured her, cutting out the girl’s tattoo. “That’s just a level of cruelty even I’m not used to after almost 35 years in this business,” said one veteran law enforcement official.
Curiously, Ms. Pelosi’s vehement defense of a group that tortures, dismembers, and mutilates its victims on a daily basis line up perfectly with her defense of the abortion industry, another group that tortures and dismembers its victims for profit.
In his description of a D&E abortion of a preborn baby in the womb, former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino said, “In a D&E procedure you must use a grasping clamp … there’s rows of teeth.” Levatino said, “When this gets a hold of something it does not let go … grabbing at parts of the baby, and then getting a hold and pulling, and you really pull… all of a sudden you pull out an arm or a leg that big and put it down on the table next to you.”
Somehow, Ms. Pelosi is able to recognize the “spark of divinity, the dignity and worth of every person” in gang members and abortionists, but not in unborn children.
Reasonable people of faith understand that the president’s comments on MS-13 members reflected the president’s disgust at the actions of this brutal gang.
We want our president to work vigorously to help convict MS-13 members of their heinous crimes and work with the states to deport any illegal immigrant members of the gang.
Yet, as Christians, we still do recognize the dignity of MS-13 members as human beings made in the image and likeness of their Creator. We pray for their conversion.
But Nancy Pelosi has no moral authority to call out her president — as a congresswoman or as a Catholic Christian — while she openly promotes the torture, dismemberment, and desecration of innocent pre-born children.
Jesus famously upbraided the religious leaders of his day for their hypocrisy, as those who would look to the speck in their brother’s eye while failing to observe the plank in their own.
“Hypocrite! First take the beam of wood out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take the splinter out of your brother’s eye,” he said.
Nancy Pelosi has publicly pointed out the splinter in the president’s eye.
She seems to remain blind to the very large beam in her own.
Father Frank Pavone is National Director of Priests for Life.