In recent years, the abortion culture in our country has increasingly radicalized its goals, actions, messaging, and tone.
In past decades, pro-abortion politicians would mouth the “safe, legal, and rare” mantra, although we knew that conviction was never the true belief of Planned Parenthood or the abortion lobby.
Now, many political and cultural leaders and influencers in our society celebrate the goodness of abortion as an act of love, hold it up as a means of personal liberation, seek to remove all restrictions on it, lobby hard for it in every state where abortion is on the ballot, and make it an integral part of political platforms.
Some have gone so far as to say that the American Dream is unrealizable without it.
In such warped thinking, the ideals of our country only gained reality in 1973 with Roe v. Wade.
The woman who tragically aborts her child quickly encounters the horrible reality that lies behind the shiny lies of our society.
Her defensive denial is shattered, as she realizes her child died an untimely and violent death.
This trauma runs deep, which is why the Church seeks to help both women and men wounded by abortion to find hope and healing.
Abortion has deeply wounded our country, destroyed millions of lives, hardened so many hearts against the dignity of human life, poisoned our politics, and left the United States without a sustainable birth rate.
The Church and abortion
Both St. Teresa of Calcutta and St. John Paul II warned that abortion destroys the common understanding of the sanctity of human life, and the dignity of the person, and uses power and violence to affirm radical autonomy at the cost of a precious life in the womb.
The Catholic Church, congruent with science, affirms that human life begins at the moment of conception, as another child of God, willed by Him from all eternity, begins the adventure of blessed existence, growing silently in the mother’s womb, quickly taking on the familiar shape of a vulnerable child, being readied to enter into the world.
Regardless of the circumstances of conception, no child is a mistake.
Irrespective of one’s abilities or disabilities, or the social environment into which one is born, every child has the right to come into the world.
If you could ask an unborn child what she wanted, wouldn’t she say, “Let me live. Let me love, learn, and dance. Let me know God, pray, and serve. Let me reach my potential and find my place in the human family.”?
The Catholic Church will always condemn abortion in the strongest of terms; the Second Vatican Council calls it “an unspeakable crime,” but She will also stand with every woman who finds herself in a crisis pregnancy, offer resources to families in need, and help those wounded by abortion to find hope and peace, free of judgment and shame.
We also pray for a profound conversion of heart in the lives and convictions of those who think abortion is a good and necessary thing.
How many abortion clinic workers who have experienced a profound conversion attest to the impact of pro-life witnesses who stand outside in all weather, and endure much abuse, yet prayerfully and lovingly point the way to the grandeur of human life in the womb?
Many forces are currently arrayed against the truth that God has both inscribed in the human heart through natural law and taught us through divine revelation.
Ever since the Original Sin in the Garden of Eden, humanity has fallen prey to the wiles of the Evil One, tempting us to throw off the sweet and liberating sovereignty of the Lord in order to embrace a radical and sinful autonomy that promises freedom and happiness, but only leads to despair and death. We see this dynamic with alarming clarity in the wake of the sexual revolution.
Artificial contraception and abortion have contributed to the breakdown of marriage and family, the acceptance of sexual activity outside the sacred bond of matrimony, the transgender ideology, and the surgical destruction of children’s bodily integrity.
The sexual revolution promised liberation and joy but has only deeply wounded our culture and destroyed millions of people in the process.
Embracing a Culture of Life
Born in 1963, I was the last of my parents’ six children.
My father was 46 and my mother was 40 when I came into the world, ages considered old for childbearing back then. I don’t think my conception was planned or expected, yet my parents welcomed this surprise baby with joy and love.
Can we build a culture in which every conceived human life finds acceptance and welcome, regardless of the surrounding circumstances?
Can we show the world a better way to serve both mother and child, so that both can find the necessary resources for a full and abundant life?
Life is God’s greatest gift to us, a privileged participation in His very being, a promise of eternal joy.
Jesus tells us that He has come so that we can have life and have it to the full. (cf. John 10:10)
In the Eucharist, Jesus calls Himself the Bread of Life, as He desires to fill us with His heavenly abundance. (cf. John 6:48)
In the Book of Wisdom, we read, “God did not make death, and He does not delight in the death of the living. For He created all things that they might exist, and the creatures of the world are wholesome and there is no destructive poison in them . . . But ungodly men by their words and deeds summoned death, considering him a friend, they pined away and made a covenant with him.” (Wisdom 1:13-16)
The Lord gives us a choice: God or the Evil One, life or death, joy or misery, hope or despair.
“I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse, therefore, choose life, that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying His voice, and clinging to Him; for that means life to you and length of days.” (Deuteronomy 30: 19-20)