Right to Life

Since the legalization of abortion in the US, marked by the Roe v. Wade supreme court decision of 1973, over 50 million pregnancies have been terminated. It has heralded one of the largest Christian, particularly Catholic religious movements in America, the Pro-Life Movement. While many Protestants are also pro-life, Catholics are the primary leaders of this cause, believing that abortion in every circumstance - as well as birth control, euthanasia and assisted suicide - are unjust, immoral and abominatory against God's law, without exception. Most who are against abortion accept it in some specific situations, such as instances of rape or incest, while Catholics believe taking the life of a child is never justified by any evil act that caused the pregnancy, or by the possibility of a good end from the evil means of abortion.

Roe v. Wade was not a random decision, however; the supreme court had a specific reason for passing their policy. They said that, under the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, women's right to privacy gives the due right to abortion. This Amendment concerns due process - no state or local government may deprive someone of their life, liberty or property without due process to ensure fairness. Under this Amendment is the right to privacy, which is what the court used to validate their decision. According to them, until birth, a baby is a woman's private property to do with as she pleases. They did not deny that abortion is murder, or that a prenatal baby is human. Many pro-life advocates use these two points in debate against pro-abortionists, but it is futile: they know the child is human, and that killing it is murder. But according to them, it is a woman's business - not mine. If a woman wants to "get rid of" her baby, it's her privacy, and as people often say, whatever you do in your own privacy is your business.

This mindset is reflective of the modern mind, especially in the US. The individualism intrinsic to a capitalist, democratic society naturally disintegrates community - each person is a wholly separate, distinct individual, and any dependancy, mutual concern or involvement is either functional, familial or casual. Once someone in the US reaches adulthood, they become an island in a vast sea of islands whose only connection is being in the same ocean. Compassion, charity and justice dissolve into a high-minded benevolence, the rich giving to the "less fortunate", either out of sentiment or a desire for more workers. And one's failures have no influences or qualifications - if one fails, it is because they didn't work hard enough, make enough money, succeed. Life becomes a ruthless battle of competitive power-grabbing on all scales of society, from schoolyard cliques to sexually promiscuous conquests to business corporations.

Pro-life is not simply a political disposition. It is a fundamental Catholic worldview that derives from the deepest currents of our spiritual heritage and religious tradition. When Christ was born into this world as a living person, He sanctified everything He did - being a physical being, in a body, as an embryo, fetus, baby, child, teen, adult. He is the life of the world. Made in the image of God from conception to death (and beyond), each human person has inherent, inalienable dignity, and from this dignity comes a necessary right to life that cannot be removed - even if doing so might convenience a mother, profit a doctor or satiate political eugenicists. We must love our neighbor - including our children - regardless of the suffering involved, and we must have the courage to stand up for what is right, especially the most fundamental goodness of life itself, even amid persecution, ridicule and personal difficulty - even from those who call themselves Christians. The Cross of Christ is an emblem of suffering and death, but in that incredible courage and sacrifice, Christ gave the greatest gift: life.