Social Justice and the Holy Innocents
Today on this feast of the Holy Innocents, let’s review why it is impossible to make the claim that you care about the poor or about social justice or about human rights and yet vote for anyone who supports abortion. Those claims are diametrically opposed. It is just a ludicrous as insisting that Herod cared about social justice and human rights. This is not a matter of pitting one political party against another because we are enjoined by our shepherds to eschew party loyalty and vote for the common good [Footnote 1]. We care more about what is right than about who is right.
How best to improve conditions for the poor, handle health care inequities, protect the sovereignty of the county while opening our society to immigrants, or any other such “policy issues” are things that Catholics are allowed by Church teaching to disagree on. But abortion isn’t just one policy issue among many — it is murder; it is a Holocaust happening under our noses [Footnote 2]. Our position on it as Catholics is not negotiable — there is only one position on it and we are called by the Church to oppose it and every party, politician, and law that supports it, unequivocally, because failure to do so undermines and will ultimately — if not opposed — result in the destruction of civil society [Footnote 3].
No political party or politician that favors abortion can make the claim to favor the poor for the unborn are the poorest among us, and the unborn of the poor are special targets of the abortion industry [Footnote 4]. No political party or politician that favors abortion can make the claim to be against bigotry because they deny the personhood of, and the protection of the law to, a class of human beings based solely upon their state of dependency and their stage of development. And abortion targets the offspring of minorities for its eugenic agenda of death [Footnote 5]. No political party or politician that favors abortion can make the claim to favor the oppressed for no class of people is more oppressed in this country than the powerless unborn, who are slaughtered at the rate of 1,200,000 per year, 3,288 per day, 137 per hour, 1 every 26 seconds — over 53 million since 1973. They oppress poor women by supporting funding for forced abortion and sterilization among the inhabitants of Third World countries and oppressing pregnant women in even wealthy countries by colluding in the coercion of them by boyfriends, family members, and even child rapists to kill their babies for convenience or even to cover up crimes.
A political party or politician that favors abortion does not care about the disabled because abortion is the weapon of choice in the war being waged against the disabled unborn. They cannot claim to care about drug safety because the abortion industry supports the distribution of the very unsafe RU-486, a chemical cocktail used to cause abortion — which is not only unsafe obviously for unborn human beings, but is also very dangerous to the women who take it with numerous, serious, reported side effects (besides death).
No political party or politician that favors abortion can make the claim to care about human rights because they deny the most fundamental right — the right to life — to millions of Americans [Footnote 6]. They do not care about the human right to due process of law as abortion allows the unborn to have their home and life taken from them arbitrarily without any legal process [Footnote 7]. They do not care about the right of a person undergoing a medical procedure to have full and complete disclosure of all risks associated with the procedure as the abortion industry blocks every attempt to give women complete information about the risks and possible consequences to them of abortion and to show them through ultrasounds the visual evidence of the unique humanity of their unborn children. They do not care about the human rights of freedom of conscience and religion of pharmacists and nurses who conscientiously object to being forced to be complicit in murder. They do not uphold the human rights of parents to guide their underage offspring but instead seek to undermine and override parents by obstructing parental consent laws regarding abortion.
Genuine care for the physical environment, if it is to be humane and not idolatrous, must emerge from a recognition that man is the crown of creation and its steward. The historical record bears out that only societies that have reached a certain level of development can afford to be environmentally conscious. Waging war on the unborn causes demographic contraction that shrinks the economy, reducing the resources available to deal with environmental issues. It also destroys the innovation and creativity that unborn humans being carry in their souls — gifts to all of humanity by their Creator — to the point of crushing small skulls and vacuuming out the very brains created to find solutions to the problems we complain about. A determination to destroy human life in the name of the environment could not be further from the Catholic understanding of man and creation.
In short, it is a travesty to say that any party or individual politician that supports abortion is aligned with Catholic values. It is even more of a travesty that Catholic politicians and citizens adhere to a party that has a heartless platform toward the very least of Jesus’ brothers: the unborn humans awaiting at this moment the horror of unjust execution by the legal destruction of their precious innocent lives.
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Footnote 1: From Living the Gospel of Life (US Bishops November 1998): “[W]e urge our fellow citizens to see beyond party politics, to analyze campaign rhetoric critically, and to choose their political leaders according to principle, not party affiliation or mere self-interest” (34).
Footnote 2: This is clear from the Catechism:
2270 Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person — among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth .2271 Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law: You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish .God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to men the noble mission of safeguarding life, and men must carry it out in a manner worthy of themselves. Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.2272 Formal co-operation in an abortion constitutes a grave offence. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. ‘A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae‘ ‘by the very commission of the offence’, and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law. The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society.
Footnote 3: Again from the Catechism:
2273 The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation:
‘The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority. These human rights depend neither on single individuals nor on parents; nor do they represent a concession made by society and the state; they belong to human nature and are inherent in the person by virtue of the creative act from which the person took his origin. Among such fundamental rights one should mention in this regard every human being’s right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death. The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law. When the state does not place its power at the service of the rights of each citizen, and in particular of the more vulnerable, the very foundations of a state based on law are undermined. . . As a consequence of the respect and protection which must be ensured for the unborn child from the moment of conception, the law must provide appropriate penal sanctions for every deliberate violation of the child’s rights.’
Footnote 4: James R. (Ron) Weddington, one of the co-counsels for Roe v. Wade, the famous Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion as a “right” in the United States, wrote to president-elect Bill Clinton in 1992, advocating elimination of the lower class through birth control and abortion:
But you can start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country. No, I’m, not advocating some sort of mass extinction of these unfortunate people. Crime, drugs and disease are already doing that. The problem is that their numbers are not only replaced but increased by the birth of millions of babies to people who can’t afford to have babies. There, I’ve said it. It’s what we all know is true, but we only whisper it, because as liberals who believe in individual rights, we view any program which might treat the disadvantaged differently as discriminatory, mean-spirited and… well… so Republican….
Condoms alone won’t do it. Depo-Provera, Norplant and the new birth control injection being developed in India are not a complete answer…. No, government is also going to have to provide vasectomies, tubal ligations and abortions… RU 486 and conventional abortions. Even if we make birth control as ubiquitous as sneakers and junk food, there will still be unplanned pregnancies. There have been about 30 million abortions in this country since Roe v. Wade. Think of all the poverty, crime and misery… and then add 30 million unwanted babies to the scenario… We don’t need more cannon fodder. We don’t need more parishioners. We don’t need more cheap labor. We don’t need more poor babies. (James R. (Ron) Weddington, Letter to President-elect Bill Clinton, January 6, 1992).
Footnote 5: In America today, almost as many African-American children are aborted as are born. A black baby is three times more likely to be murdered in the womb than a white baby. Since 1973, abortion has reduced the black population by over 25 percent. Twice as many African-Americans have died from abortion than have died from AIDS, accidents, violent crimes, cancer, and heart disease combined. Every three days, more African-Americans are killed by abortion than have been killed by the Ku Klux Klan in its entire history. Planned Parenthood operates the nation’s largest chain of abortion clinics and almost 80 percent of its facilities are located in minority neighborhoods. About 13 percent of American women are black, but they submit to over 35 percent of the abortions (for more on the abortion industry’s genocidal agenda against black Americans visit BlackGenocide.org).
Footnote 6: From Living the Gospel of Life (US Bishops November 1998): “Adopting a consistent ethic of life, the Catholic Church promotes a broad spectrum of issues…. Catholic public officials are obliged to address each of these issues as they seek to build consistent policies which promote respect for the human person at all stages of life. But being ‘right’ in such matters can never excuse a wrong choice regarding direct attacks on innocent human life. Indeed, the failure to protect and defend life in its most vulnerable stages renders suspect any claims to the ‘rightness’ of positions in other matters affecting the poorest and least powerful of the human community” (23).
Footnote 7: Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause reads: “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law.”
