Archbishop Charles J. Chaput
The January 22, 1973, Supreme Court Roe v Wade decision is important for two reasons: its flawed reasoning and its destructive effect. In practice, Roe legalized abortion on demand. It has poisoned our public life for 43 years. It has enabled the killing of tens of millions of unborn children, an entire American generation. Abortion “procedures” — a sanitized understatement worthy of George Orwell — have emotionally scarred millions of adult women and men.
Abortion supporters talk a good line about reproductive health care. But there’s very little health care in homicide. There’s simply no way around the living, developing unborn daughter or son — visible on any ultrasound machine — who ends up dead at the end of the abortion industry’s doublespeak.
The reality of abortion is the butchery of Kermit Gosnell’s blood-stained Philadelphia “clinic,” and the callousness and profiteering captured by last year’s Planned Parenthood videos — not the fabric softener alibis of pro-choice public relations memos and news media cheerleaders. Abortion supporters press the importance of reproductive rights. But they systematically violate the most basic right of all: the right to life.
“Right to choose” advocates often claim that most Americans support abortion rights. But polling data are easily misused or misunderstood. Key information is often overlooked or omitted because it doesn’t fit the preferred storyline. The most recent Marist Poll, commissioned by the Knights of Columbus and released just this week, found that 44 percent of surveyed Americans describe themselves as pro-life, while 51 percent describe themselves as pro-choice. But the really telling data emerge from beneath those broad labels.
More than 80 percent of Americans, including two-thirds of pro-choice supporters, would restrict abortion to – at most – the first trimester of pregnancy. By a 25 point margin, Americans believe abortion does women more harm than good. Sixty percent believe abortion is morally wrong. And 77 percent believe that our laws can protect both a mother and her unborn child. Nearly 70 percent oppose public funding for abortion. More than 60 percent support laws that would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, except to save the life of the mother.
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In an immediate sense, these facts change nothing. Forty-three years after Roe, the abortion industry has grown fat on public money and pious in its own deceits. Its leaders really don’t care what Americans think because they’ve been ideologues (“culture warriors” to borrow a phrase) from the start, playing the long game of changing people’s attitudes through aggressive court action and sympathetic media. It’s an intelligent strategy. It should have worked. So it’s understandable that industry leaders are annoyed and baffled — and increasingly paranoid — that pro-lifers have not gone away. Because they haven’t. Quite the opposite.
We see the proof every January. Impending snow and transportation woes may impact the turnout for the annual March for Life today in Washington, D.C. But that’s not a worry. It’s happened before, and yet year after year, despite disapproving media and uncertain weather, the March for Life’s pro-life numbers keep coming and keep growing. They also keep getting younger.
Here’s why. Abortion is not like other social issues. It’s visceral; instinctively repugnant; an obscenity in the present and a refusal of the future. It can’t be reduced to a theoretical dispute or a smokescreen of laundered language about “reproductive health.” Health can never mean homicide. No matter how good the verbal gymnastics, no “pro-choice” PR firm can escape the flesh and blood violence to mother and child, and the lying to women, that occur in every abortion.
The unborn child is alive, innocent and now observable, thanks to the same medical technology that the abortion industry perverts in every killing. Today’s young people may differ from previous generations in many ways, but killing innocent life isn’t one of them.
And that simple fact on this 43rd anniversary of Roe, with a lot of hard work, can be the beginning of a new and better culture that respects the sanctity of human life at every stage. May we, with God’s help, make it so.
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Full Marist Poll results — see them here — are available from the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, Poughkeepsie, NY, and from the Knights of Columbus, New Haven CT.
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I like to quote the words of Professor Elizabeth Fox-Genovese:
“By declaring reproductive freedom to be women’s exclusive right, it dismisses the claims of men and cancels their obligations to the next generation.” One of the great unaddressed issues is the widespread rejection by men of the role of protector and provider, and it had given us a generation-several generations-of men who could care less about their children. resent having them, and whose values, attitudes and expectations for their offspring are best summed up by the one “deadbeat dad” interviewed by Newsweek, who, when asked what sort of relationship he expected to have with his sons if he refused to pay child support, replied:
“None”.
Very thoughtful and well defined article. Thank you Archbishop Chaput. The genocidal murder of over 57 million aborted baby souls since Roe v Wade cries out to God and to all of us for sustained unflinching and uncompromising action. The Catholic Church has been the one leading force against the evilness of abortion since Roe v Wade, and for that I say wonderful and thank God for the Church.
But in the eyes of God, is it possible that He may not be as happy as we are? That one march every year, and then we pack things in for next year, is not nearly enough in His eyes? I wonder sometimes how precious to God is just one innocent baby soul made in His image? I suspect so precious that not even our puny temporal realm concept of infinity would be enough. How then do you think God feels when this one precious soul is ruthlessly murdered and his life snuffed out by abortion? How do you think God feels today after 43 years of Roe v Wade and more than 57 million murdered babies? Do you think God might be infinitely angry?
I think today the Church has lost sight of the concept of moral evilness and how God looks at pure evilness such as abortion. I think the Church has forgotten a simple Truth. That God hates evilness. That He can not stand it. And that He has No Mercy towards it. Only His Righteous Wrath. Do you think a Righteous God would be happy with just a yearly march which after 43 years has no final end in sight?
The Church has also forgotten I believe, that it is an institution and its mission and prime directive from God, to fight evilness and save souls, is very different from that of the Catholic laity, which is to follow the institutional Church and its teachings which will lead them to heaven. Unfortunately today’s Church thinks and acts like it is one of the Catholic laity and in the abortion fight it is just like one of the abortion marchers. Well it is not.
When it comes to the abortion fight, the institutional the Church is like the general of a righteous army fighting evilness on behalf of God, and whose overall objective is the total obliteration of Roe v Wade. By any means necessary and with No mercy given! Also as a general you would think that the Church today would be operating under an extreme sense of urgency and using all means at its disposal to bring the conflict to a successful conclusion. After all there are already 57 million dead casualties lying of the battlefield and the conflict has been going on for 43 years.
And yet the Church has not been operating with a sense of urgency, has never changed its tactics or strategy, is no closer to victory today after 46 years, and has never replaced weak or status quo generals. Just as bad the Church has never taken decisive public disciplinary action against the many high profile pro-abortion Catholics who were/are open proponents, supporters and defenders of Roe v Wade. Why? Shouln’t the Church be putting all these pro-abortion proponents, activists, politicians and Supreme Court Justices on notice that they can not remain a Catholic in good standing and at the same time be pro-abortion?
Perhaps this is what God wants His Church to do. To show Him some righteous action!
Would that ll Catholic religious leaders have your courage and denounce abortion without worrying about diplomacy. It’s time for the Church militant to speak from the pulpit about the rap dance about this issue when they do not strongly speak out against this horror and the people in the pews maintain their opposition to abortion but they don’t want to force their beliefs on other. Our dear Lord didn’t worry about “forcing his teaching” on others and neither should our Church. Catholics need to hear a quote from Winston Churchill when he was criticize for switching his political party:”some people change party for principles; others change principles for party”. Catholic Democrats should heed this and vote pro=life first and foremost.
I hope you don’t mean that if Hitler said he was against abortion we should all vote for him. Catholics are not one issue voters and I guarantee they will vote for whomever they wish.
Archbishop Chaput I support the Churches position on abortion but the Supreme Court’s decision was based on the law, not on the religious policy of any religion in the U.S.A. I believe in the separation of church and state because even if I went to Mass every day I still have to pay my taxes, my utilities, take care of my civic duties including obey the law. I cannot sit back and think that God will take care of those things for me.
Even if abortion was illegal again, people of means have always been able to get abortions even by their family physicians. That’s not an excuse just a statement of fact. I’m almost 80 years old. Grew up in Philadelphia and if you had enough money abortions were always available under the guise of another medical procedure. I also wish you had not referred to that video about Planned Parenthood which had been edited and pieced together so much as to be gross but factually false and nothing to do with Planned Parenthood.
The Supreme Court in a 5 to 4 vote based their decision in Roe vs Wade on a right to privacy in the Constitution when no such language exists in the document. Judge Harry Blackmun who cast the deciding vote regretted it later.
So therefore Ron, you are saying you put your faith in a false interpretation of a phrase not found in the Constitution ahead of God’s commandment to not murder the innocent? It may have been a long time since you last read the Constitution, but the Constitution of the United States does NOT include the phrase “separation of church and state.” The only place the phrase does occur is in a latter written around the same time as the Constitution. On top of that, the author used the phrase “separation of church and state” to reassure a CHURCH that the Government couldn’t interfere in Church matters – It was NOT used to mean that people could not vote, petition or otherwise participate in the US government according to their faith, which is what you appear to be demanding. In addition, the First Amendment of the Constitution says *Congress* may make no law that abridges the *free practice* of Religion. Note it says Congress – NOT the Supreme Court, NOT the President, because under the US Constitution, lawmaking powers reside with Congress. The Supreme Court is supposed to *interpret and apply* the Constitution to cases that come before it…which it utterly failed to do in Roe v Wade and again in summer 2015. Or should I say the majority of judges. The dissenting minority judges remained faithful to the Constitutional description of their powers and faithful to God.