Thirty-five years ago, we lived through a most memorable year.
In its first month, on Jan. 22, former President Lyndon B. Johnson died
in San Antonio, Texas. And on that same day in our nation’s
capitol, death got official approval to expand its influence.
In one of its most controversial rulings, Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme
Court overturned state bans on abortion. There is a graphic way to state
it: The highest court in the land made baby-killing legal.
Ironically, in the last month of the same year, another branch of government,
the U.S. Congress, passed the Endangered Species Act. Few people noted
the irony.
The Supreme Court’s decision that January endangered the human species
in ways perhaps unseen. The wonder of a new human life, the beauty of
a new addition to the family, and even the joy of motherhood all took
a small but definitive step toward extinction. We as a nation became immersed
in what the late Pope John Paul II would aptly label “a culture
of death.”
We have learned a lot about ourselves since then. I know I have. The little
compendium of moral theology we seminarians carried around 40 years ago
placed abortion in a footnote for rare moral breaches of the fifth commandment.
Now, this former crime is condoned and encouraged in many quarters as
just another medical procedure designed to solve a problem.
A clever manipulation of the language has come about. People on the side
that recognizes abortion for what it really is are called “pro life.”
But instead of the usual linguistic opposite, which would be “pro
death,” or “pro abortion,” the euphemism “pro
choice” was developed.
The media quickly adopted that terminology, and has never really hidden
its prejudice. The pro-abortion side relishes its celebrity endorsements,
and usually purports to be the humane approach to an unwanted pregnancy.
But thousands of good people, young and old, many with their bishops,
gather every year in Washington, D.C., to protest the court’s decision
of 35 years ago.
By no means are all of those marchers Catholics. Our sisters and brothers
of other Christian denominations, and of other faiths, also recognize
not only the inherent harm to individual women, but also the insidious
effects of legalized abortion that inevitably trickle down from it, such
as euthanasia and broken marriages.
Is it any wonder that violence often becomes the ultimate solution to
all disputes? That life is cheap on our streets? Or that youngsters plot
murders on their school campuses?
Allow me to quote our Holy Father, Benedict XVI, our Church’s new
champion of a counter-culture, who told us in his first year as Pope:
“Recognizing the sacred nature of human life and its inviolability
without any exceptions is not a small problem or something that can be
considered part of the pluralism of opinions in modern society.”
The Holy Father then questioned why modern society is repulsed by the
thought of infanticide while it has become virtually insensitive to abortion.
Perceptively, he added, “Maybe because in abortion you don’t
see the face of who will be condemned and never see the light. By allowing
state-sanctioned execution of the unborn, you become blind to the right
of life of another, the youngest and weakest, who doesn’t have a
voice.”
We can be proud that for all these years our Church has been a leader
in giving these innocents a voice, even if it seems like one crying out
in the desert.
Father Peterson is pastor of St. Maria Goretti Parish in Hatfield.