Is life winning?
We ask that question this month as the 49th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision permitting abortion throughout this great country approaches on Jan. 22.
The answer is: Stay tuned.
We hope to know more when the Supreme Court issues a ruling on the Dobbs v. Jackson case regarding the state of Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Early indications point toward the court ruling on the side of life, which eventually would impact – and, please, dear God – overturn Roe v. Wade, which would then return decisions on the legality of abortion to individual states. A high court decision is expected this summer.
Who’s to blame for this incomprehensive mass geocide that has claimed more than 62 million innocent lives in the United States since 1973?
Some would point to the sexual revolution of the 1960s when artificial contraception became widely available and free love outside of marriage increasingly became acceptable.
Others might say population control efforts or the cultural brainwashing that made “pro-choice” a widely accepted phrase. What that term did was shift the focus from the reality of a baby being killed inside the womb to a woman having a “right to choose.” Choose what? Death for her baby?
Of course, abortion-minded supporters don’t care that the baby has no say in the matter. The precious human person inside the womb is just a blob of tissue, they’re told, and a burden that the mom doesn’t want or can’t afford.
To be brutally honest, though, the Catholic Church deserves its share of the blame for this crime against humanity.
Yes, the Church is one of the staunchest defenders of the rights of the unborn and deserves praise for its efforts to promote a culture of life. But with surveys indicating a majority of professed Catholics believe abortion is acceptable in at least some circumstances, that’s proof positive the truth has not been communicated or received.
Why is that? Maybe it’s because some important people in the Church aren’t communicating the message with extreme clarity.
Here’s one example. Father Pat Conroy, SJ, a Jesuit priest who retired last year as chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives, seemingly said in a recent interview with The Washington Post that abortion is a matter of choice for Catholics under American law.
“How do we, within our constitutional system, how do we get to our Catholic value in this case, (that women have) the right to choose,” he told the Post. “By the way, I want to know the American who thinks the government should take away their choice in any area of their life – any area of their life.
“It’s an American value that each one of us can choose where our life is going. That happens to be a Catholic value, too. That we should all use our gifts and our talents and our intelligence as best we can to make the best choices we have the freedom to make.
“Sometimes we don’t have the freedom to make really important choices because of fear, because of oppression, because of poverty, because of all kinds of things. Choice is a highly American value, and it’s a church value.”
He went on to use Thomas Aquinas, the great Catholic philosopher of the 13th century, to justify his opinion. And he also stated, “A good Catholic in our system could be saying: Given women in our system have this constitutional right, our task as fellow Christians, or as Catholics, is to make it possible for her to optimize her ability to make the choice.”
There’s that word again: choice. What he meant by that, it’s not totally clear. But it does muddy the waters on what Catholics really believe and teach about abortion. And it leaves the public confused.
Is it OK for a pregnant woman to “choose” an abortion, but it’s not OK for practicing Catholics who have questions about COVID-19 vaccines to exercise their right to “choose”?
Communicating the truth about the sanctity of human life is really where the Church has failed. It’s time to end the squabbling about whether abortion is a preeminent issue. It most definitely is.
The messaging from the hierarchy on down needs to be crystal clear – and it needs to be preached and reinforced in no uncertain terms, particularly among the very public dissenters.