{"id":238626,"date":"2021-01-24T13:04:50","date_gmt":"2021-01-24T19:04:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=238626"},"modified":"2021-01-23T16:01:18","modified_gmt":"2021-01-23T22:01:18","slug":"catholic-church-not-letting-abortion-issue-slide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/catholic-church-not-letting-abortion-issue-slide\/","title":{"rendered":"The Catholic Church is correct in not letting the abortion issue slide"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(National Catholic Register<\/a>)\u00a0Catholics have an even better argument than we are currently deploying regarding why we won\u2019t let the abortion issue \u201cgo.\u201d Regarding why we insist on bringing abortion up even at a political moment and regarding a new U.S. president promising several positive steps on other<\/i> Catholic social-justice hopes and dreams: Not a few commentators wrongly believe<\/a> that many Catholics in the United States, including prominent bishops, are simply expressing their politics \u2014 specifically their claimed political conservatism \u2014 when they refuse to give the incoming administration a pass on abortion. Of course this is ridiculous on its face, as opposition to killing easily finds a home in both liberal as well as conservative philosophies and politics. Other commentators wrongly believe<\/a> that when the Catholic Church flags the abortion issue, it is merely another expression of its aversion to sex and everything related to it. Wrong again.<\/p>\n

First, abortion is the destruction of a human life, not a sexual act. And although the Church has had its ups and downs on matters sexual for quite a while now, it has settled on the healthy position that sex is a good gift from God that, at the same time, can be misused to harm another. (See, e.g., Pope Benedict XVI\u2019s Deus Caritas Est<\/i><\/a>, 4-15.)<\/p>\n

No, the Church is right not to let the abortion issue slide, even were there an avalanche<\/i> of good political news on the horizon for other parts of our social-justice agenda. The reasons are two.<\/p>\n

The first \u2014 the unmistakable inhumanity and irrationality of abortion advocacy \u2014 was expressed brilliantly in John Paul II\u2019s encyclical The Gospel of Life <\/i>(Evangelium Vitae<\/i><\/a>) and echoed and expanded in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops\u2019 response to it, \u201cFaithful for Life: A Moral Reflection.\u201d<\/a> From Evangelium Vitae<\/i>:<\/p>\n

Here though we shall concentrate particular attention on another category of attacks, affecting life in its earliest and in its final stages, attacks which present new characteristics with respect to the past and which raise questions of extraordinary seriousness. It is not only that in generalized opinion these attacks tend no longer to be considered as \u201ccrimes\u201d; paradoxically they assume the nature of \u201crights,\u201d to the point that the State is called upon to give them legal recognition and to make them available through the free services of health-care personnel. Such attacks strike human life at the time of its greatest frailty, when it lacks any means of self-defense. Even more serious is the fact that, most often, those attacks are carried out in the very heart of and with the complicity of the family <\/i>\u2014the family which by its nature is called to be the \u201csanctuary of life.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Catholic bishops in Argentina vow to protect life despite abortion law: \u2018All is not lost\u2019<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And from the USCCB\u2019s \u201cFaithful for Life\u201d:<\/p>\n

How has it come to pass that the elimination of one’s child or one’s parent, acts of desperation wrought in every age, are now described as sensible and even attractive alternatives?\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

It is for good reason that many find the roots of this disdain for life in the breakdown of the family. The family has a special role to play throughout the life of its members, for it is within the family that neighboring begins \u2014 or does not. The family is the first haven where those who are dependent \u2014 by being too young or too old, too disabled or too sick to care for themselves \u2014 find their closest and surest support. For this reason it can be called the \u201csanctuary of life\u201d (<\/i>Evangelium Vitae, 11). At the heart of this sanctuary is fidelity \u2014 unwavering loyalty both to those we choose and to those who have been given to us. The unraveling of that fidelity in our time leaves dependents to become lawful victims of their guardians.<\/i><\/p>\n

In short, how appalled must we be when the state makes it nothing short of a \u201chuman right\u201d for one person to kill another at perhaps the most vulnerable moment of the latter\u2019s life? And when the person given the \u201cright to kill\u201d is actually the designated protector of the child, although the hearts of women rebel against abortion? And when the government is essentially proclaiming that there is only one legitimate kind of homicide in the U.S.: killing within the family?<\/p>\n

Legal abortion is unreason itself. No one disagrees that it ends a human life. Watching politicians and activists defend it \u2014 glorify it as a human right, no less \u2014 is watching leading voices call up, down and light, dark and heaven, hell. It has the feel of dark, Soviet-era jokes, which always ended with the \u201cpowers that be\u201d telling the powerless masses that an obvious untruth<\/i> is clearly true. It makes listeners doubt the sincerity of every word from the lips of the \u201cpowers that be,\u201d even if we agree with other pronouncements they make<\/i>. It\u2019s unsettling in a society supposedly committed to reason.<\/p>\n

There is a second reason why abortion \u201csticks out\u201d among social-justice issues. With abortion, legalized killing is advanced, so often by powerful men, in the name of \u201cwomen\u2019s rights.\u201d In fact, it is often made synonymous with feminism. The cascade of negative results cannot be cabined to one essay, and I can list here just a few. At the political and cultural level, the whole category of \u201cwomen\u2019s rights\u201d is tainted, even as women need such a movement. Most people still think abortion is morally distasteful at best and very problematic at worst. They don\u2019t even want to think on it for long. But when abortion is valorized as the heart of women\u2019s rights, advocacy for women\u2019s real needs is dampened or goes undone. And women suffering terribly from post-abortion distress receive no help from the government. Social measures to welcome women with their children \u2014 including paid leave, affordable day care and policies promoting family life, marriage, better education and work opportunities \u2014 are not prioritized at best and are utterly neglected at worst.<\/p>\n

And what an insult to women! What hypocrisy, for the \u201ccause of women\u201d \u2014 so often advanced on the ground that women have an enhanced sympathy for the \u201cother,\u201d the vulnerable \u2014 to insist that they oppress another as the answer to the history of the oppression of women!<\/p>\n

Who knows for how long both Catholics and others will be debating the \u201cplace\u201d of abortion in the political and legal landscapes? Likely a long time. But we can\u2019t go on as if other laws call killing defenseless children a \u201cright,\u201d a \u201cwomen\u2019s right.\u201d Laws supporting abortion do so \u2014 and must be called out, no matter what else is happening in law and policy.<\/p>\n

Editor’s Note: This article was published at the National Catholic Register<\/a> on January 20, 2021. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2021 EWTN News, Inc. Reprinted with permission from the National Catholic Register<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(National Catholic Register)\u00a0Catholics have an even better argument than we are currently deploying regarding why we won\u2019t let the abortion issue \u201cgo.\u201d Regarding why we insist on bringing abortion up even at a political moment and regarding a new U.S. president promising several positive steps on other Catholic social-justice hopes and dreams: Not a few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":789,"featured_media":238630,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[7077,4,3],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Catholic Church is correct in not letting the abortion issue slide<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""When abortion is valorized as the heart of women\u2019s rights, advocacy for women\u2019s real needs is dampened or goes undone." ~ Helen Alvar\u00e9\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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