For many if not most Americans “The Issue of Our Time” is abortion. No other topic sparks so much conversation, bitterness, hatred, divisiveness, and emotion. The overturning of Roe versus Wade by the Supreme Court was an awakening for all of us. This shift in the discussion should have forced us all to think deeply about what we believe and why.
The Supreme Court decision did not end abortion in America, it merely made it a State and not a Federal issue. The interpretation of the law by the Court was correct since abortion is certainly not one of the enumerated powers in the Constitution. As such, placing the decision at the State level gives voters a chance to tailor their access to abortion to the community where they live. If they do not like their State’s position on abortion they are free to move to a different State where abortion is legal.
Our family has always been either Presbyterians or Methodists, so our knowledge of Catholicism is limited to what we read or the Catholics we know. The Catholic Church’s official stance on abortion has been steadfast and unbending, and for that we are thankful. Since Roe versus Wade was overturned, and our dream realized, we began to study why we are so adamantly pro-life. In the Protestant Churches my wife and I have attended, we have never heard a sermon or a Bible Study discussing abortion. We began to read what Catholics and others who have been steadfastly pro-life have to say. In many cases these statements are by individuals who have spent their whole lived studying the implications of abortion.
What follows is a list of quotes and observations made by people (most Catholic) whom we believe have thought long and hard about the issues surrounding abortion. These quotes capture the essence of the issue, the mother, father, and child, and not the irresponsibility that leads to the ending of life.
Mother Teresa
“I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself.”
“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.”
“And if we can accept that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?”
“We must not be surprised when we hear of murders, killings, of wars, or of hatred. If a mother can kill her own child, what is left but for us to kill each other?”
“The greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion, which is war against the child. The mother doesn’t learn to love, but kills to solve her own problems. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want.”
Pope John Paul II
“You are called to stand up for life! To respect and defend the mystery of life always and everywhere, including the lives of unborn babies, giving real help and encouragement to mothers in difficult situations. You are called to work and pray against abortion.”
“That is the dignity of America, the reason she exists, the condition of her survival, yes, the ultimate test of her greatness: to respect every human person, especially the weak and most defenseless ones, those as yet unborn.”
Pope Francis
“Defend the unborn against abortion even if they persecute you, calumniate you, set traps for you, take you to court, or kill you.”
“Unfortunately, what is thrown away is not only food and dispensable objects, but often human beings themselves, who are discarded as “unnecessary.” For example, it is frightful even to think there are children, victims of abortion, who will never see the light of day …”
Author and Broadcaster Peter Hitchens
“Abortion is the only event that modern liberals think too violent and obscene to portray on TV. This is not because they are squeamish or prudish. It is because if people knew what Abortion really looked like, it would destroy their pretense that it is a civilized answer to the problem of what to do about unwanted babies.”
“I saw a little bumper sticker in the US: ‘Against abortion? Don’t have one,’” he relates, “I always thought that someone should produce a bumper sticker saying, ‘Against murder? Don’t commit one,’ which is the same logic.
The reason our nation struggles with the abortion issue is indoctrination, “brain washing” over a long period by activists who favor infanticide as a solution for irresponsibility.
- They work to convince us that the baby isn’t a baby just a lump of cells. Some even propose this answer up to and including the time of birth.
- The activists espouse that the decision to have a child is a financial one and not one concerning a life.
- They contend that because the parents are so sensitive to the needs of the child, they could not bear to have it adopted.
- They point out that the parents are young and are just not ready to have children.
In all four cases the justification focuses on the parents and not the unborn child. A direct and uncomfortable comparison comes with pets. Let’s assume you adopt a puppy. The puppy proves to be a mess, costly, and the neighbors are complaining because it barks all night. Shortly thereafter you are transferred overseas to a country where dogs cannot be imported, and you are faced with three difficult options.
1. Take the puppy to a friend, shelter, or pet adoption agency.
2. Turn down the job.
3. Take the puppy out back, kill it, and then dismember it to sell in pieces.
We should have no hesitation with the right answer, killing neither a child nor the puppy should be the right answer.
According to information compiled by the American Life League from the Guttmacher Institute, since the passage of Roe versus Wade in 1973, there have been more than 63 million abortions in the United States. Other sources believe this number may be under reported significantly, but let’s stick with this one since it is at least directionally correct and accurate for our purposes. The CDC reports a slightly smaller number, but they have an incentive to underreport.
If we assume that abortion did not exist, and that non-aborted children began to have children of their own at age 22, then the real loss of U. S. population through abortion since 1973 is closer to 107 million according to data from the Guttmacher institute. With the 2020 U. S. population estimate of 331 million, that means that our population has declined by 25% because of abortion. This would make abortion the number one killer of life in the United States, and it is preventable.
Declining birth rates, labor shortages, destruction of the core family, declining marriage rates, and falling away from a religious centric life, all begin and end with this one issue. Within the 107 million lost lives could be the next President, the scientist that finds the cure for cancer, great authors, great industrialists, and a host of others needed to advance civilization.
It is “The Issue of Our Time.”
Mother Teresa
“Saying that there are too many children is like saying there are too many flowers!“
