This week, on Jan. 22, we memorialized the 42nd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s abortion rulings in Roe v Wade and Doe v Bolton. In these companion cases, the Court effectively legalized abortion during all nine months of pregnancy for virtually any reason. The result? More than 58 million unborn human lives ended, countless mothers and fathers, grandparents and siblings wounded, human life at every stage cheapened, and the conscience of our nation dulled.
Blessed Mother Teresa said “Roe vs. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts—a child—as a competitor, an intrusion and an inconvenience.”
The pitting of “mothers against their children and women against men” is evident in the modern feminist movement as defined by Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Sarah Weddington, the attorney who argued for legalizing abortion before the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade.
Serrin Foster, president of Feminists for Life, points out that “Weddington saw the discrimination and other injustices faced by pregnant women. But she did not demand that these injustices be remedied. Instead, she demanded for women the ‘right’ to submit to these injustices by destroying their pregnancies.”
“Weddington repeatedly said that women need ‘relief’ from pregnancy,” Foster added, “instead of arguing that women need relief from these injustices. What if Weddington had used her legal acumen to challenge the system to address women’s needs?”
Clearly, this notion—that the unborn child is the problem that must be eliminated in order for women to advance in society—has pitted mothers against their children. And it has degraded all human life by enshrining in our nation’s laws the grotesque view that some human beings are undeserving of recognition and protection under our laws.
One effect of this degradation is the continual effort of some groups to legalize physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia in states throughout our country. This effort got a major boost as the pro-euthanasia group “Compassion and Choices” has been exploiting the Brittany Maynard suicide to push for legalization of assisted suicide in numerous states this year.
Another sign of how abortion has pitted mothers against their children are the heart-wrenching testimonies of women who regret their abortions. Here is one example: “My personal journey of healing began after six long years of the most deafeningly silent pain… I remember during those dark years, I would wake up each morning, and for a few brief seconds, all was well. Then I would remember what I had done. The grief was all-consuming. But, like so many other women, I kept it locked inside. I had accepted my fate. I was unforgiveable.
“The enormity of what I had done actually made my steps heavier… I cried alone almost daily… I convinced myself that I had committed an unforgiveable act. I felt utterly alone. I desperately needed to connect with other women who were suffering as I was, and I longed to be the woman I used to be.”
The Catholic Church and the broader pro-life movement offer a polar opposite response from the culture of death’s response to those suffering from various forms of injustice in our society. Our response seeks to remedy the injustices that force mothers to choose between continuing or advancing in a job or in school and destroying their offspring.
Likewise, our response seeks to eliminate the various forms of suffering that can drive a person to seek assisted suicide, rather than eliminating the suffering person.
Thanks be to God, there are encouraging signs in some areas of our pro-life efforts. For example, public opinion on abortion has shifted in recent years toward the pro-life position; the number of abortion centers has dropped from the high of 2,176 in 1991 to 759 in 2011 while the number of pro-life pregnancy resource centers has skyrocketed.
And most encouraging for the pro-life cause is the fact that this year’s March for Life, like all in recent years, will bring together hundreds of thousands of people to stand up for the dignity of human life…and the vast majority of marchers will be young people.
