40 Years Under Roe v. Wade

This is going to sound like a strange question, but can you think of a place on Earth where you could go where you would lose your dignity as a human being? Like a place where, just by being there, you would no longer have any special worth as a human being? 

I told you it was going to be a strange question. But I’m just getting started.

What if I made a comic-book ray gun that could make you bigger or smaller? Anybody remember “Honey I Shrunk the Kids?” If I shrank you to the size of a bug, would it still be wrong to squish you like one? If I made you twice as big as me, would your life be worth twice as much as mine?

How about this one: Is your physical maturity related to the value of your life? You were born without a fully functional reproductive system. Did you become worth more as a human being when it developed? Is it more wrong to kill someone after puberty than before? What if you were developmentally disabled, and your brain didn’t function the way most people’s does? You’d be less intelligent, but would you be worth less? How many developmentally disabled people does it take to be worth the same as you? My niece is still developing physically and mentally. How much less valuable is her life than mine?

Speaking of my niece, she’s also really, really dependent on other people, namely her parents. That brings us to my last strange question. Is your value as a human life affected by how dependent you are on others? Right now there are, I think, six astronauts on the International Space Station up there. They’re about as dependent as humans can be. Dependent on being given food, life support, protected by a totally artificial environment in a little capsule outside of which they’d die in a few seconds. How much less are they worth because they’re so dependent? What if you became incapacitated and needed lots of help to survive? Would that make it less wrong to kill you?

I’ve been saying these are strange questions but of course that's wildly understated. They are idiotic questions, repulsive questions. Of course human life doesn’t become worth less because a person is bigger or smaller. Of course disabled or undeveloped people aren’t worth less. Of course it isn’t less wrong to kill my niece because she’s so dependent on her parents.

But what other differences are there between a newborn child, protected by law, and the same child a few minutes before in the womb? Or a few months before? Size, location, dependency, development. That’s it. Those are the differences. And yet any sane person, thinking logically, admits that none of those factors affect the value of a person’s life.

This is a homily about abortion, and it’s statistically probable that some of us here have been touched by it directly. I really do regret any pain this may cause, any wounds it may open. I’m sorry for that, but this has to be talked about. The most important thing you can possibly know is that God loves you, forgives you, and you’re in the right place. This is where sinners come for redemption, and anybody here who pretends not to need mercy is wasting their time. If you haven’t gone to confession about an abortion, please do it soon. If you don’t want to come to me, I can definitely understand that; call over to a neighbor parish and ask how and when you can make an anonymous confession. You will find nothing there but mercy and compassion.

Here’s the Gospel, Christians. Here’s the Good News: human life is sacred, period. Your life is sacred. Not because of how smart you are or how strong you are, or how independent you are, or where you live. The Declaration of Independence was absolutely right to call the right to life ‘inalienable,’ meaning it can’t be taken away. You can’t lose it. You didn’t earn your right to life by something you did. You didn’t earn it because your parents wanted you. It is yours, inalienably, because you are a human being.

That’s the truth, and it’s good news. Here’s the bad news: those of us under the age of 40 have lived our entire lives under a regime that contradicts all this. Anyone born in the United States since 1973 has known, deep down, that in the eyes of our society we aren’t worth something just because we’re us, that our right to exist is conditional, not inalienable, that we only exist because somebody made a choice that we would be allowed to. If you are under the age of 40, you only exist because someone chose to allow you to. We could have been dismembered, poisoned, chemically burnt with saline solution, or stabbed with scissors halfway through our delivery and it wouldn’t even have been a crime. For what reason? Because we were unwanted. Now even if we’ve never thought it through consciously, what effect do you think that knowledge has on us? You don’t exist because your life is inviolable and sacred. You exist because we let you. Because you were wanted.

That’s the twisted spiritual disease of our time and our nation, the poison eating away at the very root of us. At the time of the Declaration of Independence we weren’t living up to those words, there was a terrible disease at the root of society, a moral blindness that somehow allowed them to live comfortably with slavery. We eradicated that poison, and we can eradicate this one.

How? I’ll tell you exactly how. Charity, persistence, reason, prayer, and fasting.

We need charity first - charity always first - because our war is not against flesh and blood. Those who disagree with us are our opponents in a debate, but not our enemy. Standing up for the dignity of human lives must include honoring theirs. This fight brings out great passions, and it should. But if we find ourselves losing charity, those passions have gone wrong. Hate the evil, yes. Hate abortion, yes. Hate pro-abortion people, never.

Persistence. Lots of people say they’re pro-life, and mean it, but have lost the stomach for the fight. “We don’t seem to be getting anywhere,” they say, “and let’s face it, this is one of those issues where you just aren’t going to change someone’s mind.” We seem to be losing ground in some ways, and standing still in others, but those are a coward’s reasons for giving up. And there are positive signs for sure. That tone of hysterical panic you hear coming from Planned Parenthood? The recent article in a pro-choice magazine claiming that the pro-choice side is losing? The constant changing of the subject, refusal to face arguments, refusal to engage those who disagree with them? These are not signs of strength. 

Young people are more pro-life than their parents’ generation. In 2009, for the first time in a few decades, Gallup pollsters found more people calling themselves “pro-life” than “pro-choice.” Even if we were losing, this would be a fight worth fighting. But we’re not losing. We have to keep at it because silence is the friend of the status quo. More and more I hear the pro-abortion side trying to shut down the debate, gag the discussion, because silence is the friend of the status quo.

Charity, persistence,... reason. They’ll try to tell you that it’s just a religious argument, and we’re trying to impose our religion on everyone. Hogwash. I can argue against abortion on grounds of reason - logic - without recourse to Christian doctrine or revelation. Anyone can. I think you’ll find that in practice, the calm scientific reasoning is almost all on the pro-life side. It’s not easy to find a pro-abortion person willing to engage a logical argument. Most of the time they will dodge and deflect, or change the subject, anything to avoid actually using reason and logic to think clearly about the issue. They’ll say logically insane things like “we can’t force our morality on others.” Are you kidding me? Tell that to a Holocaust survivor.

We need reason. We don’t win this fight by screaming and calling people names. We win it by convincing people that they’ve made a mistake in their thinking. By making an honest effort to understand how they came to their position, why they believe it, and saying, “here’s where I think you’re wrong,” and making a reasonable, logical argument. Even if you don’t change their minds right then and there, maybe you’ll at least plant a seed of doubt that will grow over time. Silence is the friend of the status quo. Shouting at each other is the friend of... nobody. Reason is the friend of the truth. 

We have to keep the debate going. It has to happen at the grass roots. The pro-life movement will not triumph by winning elections, although public policy is a key part of this fight, it is not the only part and is not sufficient by itself. We aren’t going to win this by changing our politicians. We’ll win it by changing minds.

Charity, persistence, reason, and finally: prayer and fasting. Jesus said there are some demons that can only be cast out by prayer and fasting. I think we are in the grip of one of those.

One time in college I was walking down the sidewalk thinking about Illinois State Collegians for Life, which I’d just started because there was no pro-life organization at my college. And I was praying about it. And I was granted a certain kind of gift: for a moment I saw abortion through the eyes of Mary. Maybe you won’t want to take my word for that and that’s okay, I can’t prove it to you, but I’m quite sure of what happened. For just a moment, I saw what we’re doing through Mary’s eyes.

We’ve all felt deep sadness in our lives, and like anyone I know something about sadness. But there is nothing, nothing in my life that can begin to compare with this. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that I put a hand out to brace myself on a fence pole because otherwise I would have hit the ground. It took me some time to recover from one moment of seeing abortion through Mary’s eyes.

About the same time in my life I had an experience I won’t call a gift, but was kind of the reverse of that one. I saw a film of a ‘dilation and extraction’ abortion, which is a nicer word than dismemberment, and the results thereof. And for a moment I could just feel the laughter of Satan. Here again, I understand if you’re skeptical and maybe you should be, but I’m quite sure. I won’t describe the images to you, although I think it might do us all some good to see them, but I will tell you it was like I could almost physically hear twisted squeals of delight coming from Hell.

What can we do against such a great darkness? Prayer and fasting.

Tuesday will be the 40th anniversary of the day when seven Supreme Court Justices overturned the democratically enacted laws in all 50 states protecting the unborn. Based on legal reasoning that even liberal constitutional scholars no longer bother to try to defend. And based on testimony like that of Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who testified under oath that 40,000 women were dying each year in back-alley abortions, a number he has since admitted he made up out of thin air. He later converted to Catholicism and became a pro-life activist, by the way.

Forty years on Tuesday. During which something like 55 million human lives have been legally extinguished. How do we deal with that? I don’t know what’s appropriate for that, but surely something. Prayer and fasting. And going forward: persistence. And reason. And always, always charity.

And take heart, Christians. We remain people of joy and hope because Jesus has conquered death. Death will not win. Not forever. Love is stronger than any sin, stronger than any despair, and stronger than death itself. 

But... there is a time for everything. There is a time to laugh and a time to weep, and in the week of this tragic anniversary, we just can’t slap a smiley-face over the bloodstains. This homily could have been much better written, because I procrastinated so much in writing it. Because it hurts to think about. But let us not be cowards. You and I live in a time of holocaust, and even though we are called to be people of joy, there is a time to mourn. 55 million extinguished lives in our nation since 1973 deserve at least that.

Later this week some hundreds of thousands of people will march in Washington in defense of human life. There will also be a few hundred pro-abortion counter-protestors. The counter-protestors are on average at least a few decades older than the pro-life marchers, whose average age is probably somewhere around 20. The other striking difference between the two groups is that while the typical counter-protestor looks joyless and dour, the pro-life marchers are so vibrant, alive, and even joyful. It seems a little strange when you’re there that you’re protesting this horribly evil thing, and yet there’s so much youthful, joyful energy. But it shouldn’t seem strange at all. If Christians know anything, it’s that life gets the last word after death.