Legal Protection of the Unborn

January 22  Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children  

Sunrise on January 23

Gospel and Preaching Text for January 22

Gospel   MT 18:1-5, 10, 12-14

The disciples approached Jesus and said,
"Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?"
He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said,
"Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children,
you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.
Whoever becomes humble like this child
is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.
And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.

"See that you do not despise one of these little ones,
for I say to you that their angels in heaven
always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.
What is your opinion?
If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray,
will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills
and go in search of the stray?
And if he finds it, amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it
than over the ninety-nine that did not stray.
In just the same way, it is not the will of your heavenly Father
that one of these little ones be lost."

The period of time after Roe vs. Wade corresponds roughly with my own years as a priest.    I was ordained in June of 1972 and the decision regarding Roe that invalidated state laws prohibiting abortion was handed down in January of 1973.    Through the last 47 years I have followed the debate and spoken frequently about the need to protect life from conception to natural death.    We are blessed to have in every Catholic community men and women who have found ways to assist women who identify pregnancy as a dilemma for them.   

I believe that the developing embryo is a human being from the moment of conception.   If I have any doubt I am persuaded by the need to grant this organism the benefit of the doubt.   This blanket belief is consistent with our universal belief in the human dignity of the child after birth.   I believe that the organism before birth bears the exact essence of the child.   

I take notice, too, of Pope Francis’s pertinent remarks in his encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si.   Here he points to the need for a consistent posture toward life protecting both the developing fetus and the threatened biosphere.

 “….Concern for the protection of nature is… incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, (even earth itself, this my own addition) ….if we fail to protect a human embryo?   If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away.”  (120)

In any case the laws prohibiting abortions in the USA were unevenly enforced over the years before Roe.  Even today I believe the weakened laws protecting the fetus from certain procedures or at certain periods of gestation are unevenly enforced.    The difficulty of enforcement has always been one hesitation arguing against absolute and universal abortion laws.  

But we should note that abortion is not the only moral problem that demands prudent law and its careful implementation.     Especially in modern times, for example, war cries out for laws to guarantee the protection of non-combatants and for the enforcement of these laws.   For this reason there are very detailed, absolute and universal laws protecting non-combatants.   These laws have international support and they speak well of our sensitivity to human dignity.     But again these laws are nearly impossible to enforce despite ongoing efforts in an International Criminal Court.     Sadly war-time violence against civilians overwhelms the desire to punish such violence and the desire to eliminate it.   But no reasonable government or civic body questions the nature of the laws.   And their enactment unites communities.

In the case of abortion the widespread belief that the developing embryo and fetus should not be granted human status creates a lack of unity around the need for protection.   Approval in the USA of absolute laws protecting the fetus like those protecting non-combatants faces a very steep up-hill battle.

There are, for example, over 350,000 medical abortions a year in our country.   Even should laws prohibit them, the nation lacks substantially the enforcement and judicial systems required to enforce such a law.   Controlling the drugs used will be almost impossible and offers no solution.   Adding to this enforcement burden the vast majority of the women and medical professionals involved in these medical abortions deny that these procedures in the first ten weeks of pregnancy are the taking of human life.  Any consistent effort to enforce a law against this practice will lead to a fractured human community.    We could say “so bit it” but laws prohibiting medical abortions are very unlikely to be enacted and less likely to be enforced.      Protection for the unborn facing medical abortions will be better served by devoting our resources to education about the nature of the fetus and to providing services to pregnant women who are contemplating abortion.    But in all cases, whether our laws are perfect or imperfect applications of natural law, we can rely on God’s justice and mercy having the last word.

Of course, 60 to 65% of abortions are not medical abortions and there is a need to decide on some level of protection for these unborn, protection that is prudent and that our human community can administer.    Such protection must include continued and expanded outreach to support and encourage pregnant women.  I welcome the wisdom of our two new Justices on the Supreme Court.   I hope that they can aid the court to broaden the level of protection.

We join in prayers for the unborn, for pregnant women no matter their intentions and for medical professionals and bioethicists who dedicate themselves to protect life.