Life Insight
A Publication of the NCCB Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities
Vol. 9, No. 1 January/February 1998
Dear Reader:
As over 6,000 pro-life pilgrims assembled in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception for the Vigil Mass marking the 25th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, Pope John Paul II was making an historic visit to Cuba. Despite his other duties, the Holy Father extended his thoughts and prayers to our nation that night through his apostolic nuncio Archbishop Agostino Cacciavillan. Before Mass, the Archbishop read aloud a special message from John Paul II to Cardinal Law marking this somber anniversary. His words transcend the occasion and speak to each of our hearts. Copies of his message, printed on 5½" x 8" cream-colored cards, bearing a specially-commissioned portrait of the Holy Father, are available from the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities at cost: fifteen cents each, plus postage.
As you, your Brother Bishops and great numbers of the faithful from throughout the United States gather at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to pray for an end to the tragedy of abortion in your country, I assure you of my spiritual closeness and my sharing in your concern for the continuing holocaust of innocent human lives. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the decision which effectively legalized abortion on demand in the United States is a call to people of good will to reflect seriously on the devastating consequences of that step. Now is the time for recommitment to the building of a culture of absolute respect for life from conception to natural death.
As the experience of the past twenty-five years has shown, legalized abortion has been a destructive force in the lives of many individuals, especially women who are often left alone to bear the deep sorrow and regret which follows the decision to destroy the life of an unborn child. But the proliferation of procured abortion has also had deleterious effects on society at large, not least in a weakening of respect for the life of the elderly and the infirm, and a coarsening of the moral sense. When the killing of the innocent is sanctioned by law, the distinction between good and evil is obscured and society is led to justify even such clearly immoral procedures as partial-birth abortion. Amid the grave threats to human dignity and freedom represented by abortion, euthanasia and other crimes against God's gift of life, it is a positive sign of the times that, through the efforts of a broad spectrum of concerned citizens, there has been a gradual mobilization of consciences in support of life. As part of this great affirmation of the Gospel of life, I urge you to continue your praiseworthy efforts to educate people about the evil of abortion, to offer counsel, encouragement and help to women and families in difficult situations, and to continue to seek full legal protection for the unborn.
In particular, I call upon young men and women to involve themselves in this great campaign in defense of God's gift of life. You are a sign of hope to the Church and the world. Do not be discouraged or afraid! The Risen Lord calls us all to proclaim, celebrate and serve life, and he will give us the strength to accomplish his will.
In union with all who have assembled to pray for a new culture of life in the United States and throughout the world, I place this intention before Mary Immaculate, Mother of the Redeemer. As a pledge of joy and peace in our Lord Jesus Christ, I cordially impart my Apostolic Blessing.
From the Vatican, December 29, 1997
Joannes Paulus II
One reason that God tolerates evil—we explain a bit simplistically to children—is that He can draw so much good out of it. A hurricane brings devastation to an area, but it also brings forth the "better angels of our nature." Communities unite in compassionate and heroic acts of sacrifice. Charity and brotherhood flourish for a time. That is why, in the midst of death and destruction, it is not inappropriate to celebrate the accomplishments brought about by God's spirit working through humanity. Even when much work remains to be done, one can still take heart in measured progress toward a community's restoration.
It is scarcely possible to imagine a tragedy greater than twenty-five years of abortion on demand. If ever there were an occasion for mourning, this was surely it. The anniversary of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton forced us to confront the deaths of over 37,000,000 innocent children, and the pained remorse of millions of mothers, fathers, and grandparents. We were called to assess the deep and lasting damage to our society wrought by a Court-sanctioned "ethic" that promotes selfishness, promiscuity, and violence as a solution to social problems. And we had to acknowledge some painful realities. Children are still dying at the rate of over a million a year. With rare and minor exceptions, the courts continue to thwart efforts to regulate or restrict abortion. And in two years we have yet to summon the votes to stop that grotesque method of infanticide known as partial-birth abortion. On this sober anniversary we could neither deny nor escape our personal and communal responsibility for a culture that allows this evil to flourish. A sad day, indeed. In the face of such tragedy, NARAL's celebratory luncheon (again featuring the First Lady and the Vice President) and black-tie evening gala were obscene.
And yet, it is we who had something to celebrate on that sober anniversary. So much good has been accomplished and so much is being done. The pro-life movement grows daily larger, stronger, better financed, and better able to get its message into the public square where it is changing hearts and saving lives.
To illustrate the remarkable history of the pro-life movement in America, the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities and the Knights of Columbus sponsored a museum-quality exhibit entitled "The People of Life: A Story of Faith, Hope & Love." The display was unveiled at the Shrine in January and is now on tour, at diocesan request, across the country.
Through simple words and unforgettable photos, designer Lisa Toscani records the four great "themes" of the past twenty-five years. A descriptive flier explains:
This exhibit tells a story.
It tells the story of the broadest grassroots movement this nation has ever known.
It tells of the spirit of a people of life,
people at the service of life.
The Pro-Life Movement.
We come from every neighborhood, parish, age group, religious and ethnic background.
Each of us has a story.
Yet there are common threads in all our efforts that mark the pro-life spirit.
This exhibit provides a glimpse of who we are and what we have accomplished.
The text accompanying each of the four panels reads:
Remembering the Child
No one more absolutely innocent
could be imagined.
She is weak, defenseless.
The wondrous mystery of creation.
Hidden from the world.
Dependent upon others for survival itself.
A chapter in everyone's story.
Declared non-persons by the Supreme Court.
With no voice of their own, children not yet born needed a champion.
Pro-Life Americans became that and more.
They told of the unborn child's beauty, her value, her God-given dignity.
And in doing so, they helped many to see that every human life has great dignity — no matter who, no matter what — all life long.
Remembering the Woman
"Everything I read on abortion before I experienced it told me that women do not suffer from depression or regret afterwards....
I could expect to feel relieved....
Where did they get that from?
I will never be the same again."
Mothering is hard.
So is being pregnant and scared.
The scars from abortion, whether physical, emotional or spiritual, are even harder.
But few are willing to speak this truth.
In word and in action, pro-life Americans reached out to women and children, establishing more than 3,000 pregnancy help centers.
They founded programs like Project Rachel to help women and men deal with grief after abortion. Grief that society claims does not exist. They bring healing and hope to those recovering from an abortion through reconciliation with God, with the child they lost and with themselves.
Remembering God
In Christ, our cause has received its final verdict: Life will overcome death.
"Have confidence. I have overcome the world."
In the heart of every man and woman beats the persuasive echo of the Gospel of Life.
It fulfills all the heart's expectations
while infinitely surpassing them.
Each of us is called by God to honor the life of every human person.
To work with perseverance and with courage.
To help build a culture of life.
It is in knowing God
that we understand who we are.
It is in knowing God that we understand that we are called to defend and nurture all human life.
"I have set before you life and death. Therefore, choose life."
Speaking the Truth to Power
"Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want." M. Teresa
Once universally deplored, aborting a child anytime before birth was legalized by the Supreme Court in 1973.
The child's every legal protection was cast aside. Today, some even extol abortion as virtuous. Yet most remain uncomfortable with abortion. Knowing, if only intuitively, that it is wrong.
But it has support from many in privileged positions and from prestigious social institutions.
Pro-life people had to learn to overcome their fears and speak truth to power. For life.
Finding strength in one another.
Yes, the pro-life movement can take pride in its efforts, now bearing fruit in the steady decline in the number and rate of abortions. Success can also be measured by changed hearts.
Winning the Battle of Hearts
With heightened media attention drawn to the anniversary, surveys were taken. Statistics were analyzed. And scores of articles reported—with frank surprise—that most Americans disapprove of the law and the practice of abortion. Overwhelming majorities want to see abortion restricted to the earliest stage of pregnancy and to those circumstances which elicit particular sympathy for the woman: circumstances like risk to life, rape and incest. While the phrasing of survey questions can yield seemingly contradictory results, taken as a whole the surveys reveal a dramatic turnaround in our favor over the past two years—coincident with the public debate over partial-birth abortion. A few excerpts from polling data tell the story:
Those in the abortion industry, their lobbyists and cheerleaders were remarkably subdued on the anniversary. Instead of the usual "look at all we've done for women" rhetoric, abortion advocates issued dire warnings about the continued erosion of abortion "rights" due to an extraordinary burst of state-level pro-life legislation in the past few years. The face of the U.S. Senate is not quickly changed given its six-year staggered terms. At the state legislative level, however, voters are electing pro-life majorities in a record number of states and are now reaping the benefits. Here is how NARAL's Kate Michelman describes its recent survey of state legislation:
"Unfortunately, the report paints a bleak picture for women who face unplanned and unintended pregnancies. The strategy of the anti-choice movement to shift from broad public attempts to overturn Roe in favor of a more incremental approach is working. Today there are more obstacles to women seeking to exercise their constitutional right to choose than at any time since Roe.... Consider these findings:
"For the first time since Roe, seventeen (17) states enforce three or more abortion restrictions, up from three (3) states just six years ago.
"In 1997, state lawmakers introduced at least 405 anti-choice measures, an 84% increase over the previous year when 220 measures were introduced.
"In 1997, 31 states enacted a total of 55 anti-choice measures, compared with nine states that enacted 14 anti-choice measures in 1996.....
"Since the 1992 Supreme Court decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the number of states enforcing mandatory waiting period laws has increased from 0 to 12.
"Since Casey, the number of states enforcing mandatory parental consent or notice laws for minors has risen 76 percent, from 17 to 30.
"The number of states partially or fully enforcing bans on so-called "partial birth" abortion and other abortion procedures has increased form 0 to 9."
Each state proposal is another opportunity to educate the public about abortion, another opportunity to demonstrate who the real extremists are. A majority of Americans fully supports the measures being enacted and, indeed, is begging for more.
In the medical arena, as in the legislative, there is good news for the pro-life movement. In an article for
The New York Times Magazine, a journalist named Jack Hitt reached two conclusions which should add to NARAL's depression: "that the medical infra-structure undergirding the right to an abortion is strained to the breaking point and that the practical reality of abortion is retreating into the half-lighted ghetto of pseudonyms, suspicion and fear" (Jan. 18, 1998, pp.21-22).
Why is the abortion infrastructure strained? Hitt explains: "Today, 59 percent of all abortion doctors are at least 65 years old" (Id. at 22). Only about 2% of ob/gyns commit the "overwhelming majority" of abortions (performing more than 25 per month). (Id. at 23).
Ninety percent of abortions are being done in clinics because most ob/gyns don't want a partner who performs abortions. The Alan Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood's research affiliate, found an 18% drop in the number of abortionists in the decade ending in 1992, a decrease from 2,908 to 2,380. That is the lowest number since 1976. Few medical residents are interested in the specialty. Only 12% of ob/gyn medical residency programs were routinely teaching abortion in 1991 and a professor was quoted as saying that the "percentage is 'still trending down'" (Ibid.).
Predictably, "antiabortion violence" is cited as one reason for the declining numbers of abortionists, but Hitt suggests that the reality of abortion and changing rhetoric are equally good reasons. "These days it has become impossible to talk or think about abortion in any terms other than those of moral revulsion. It's either pure evil (the 'pro life' view) or a necessary evil (the 'pro choice' view). Even feminists have, in recent years, engaged in a discussion to redefine abortion in terms of transgression and mourning" (Ibid.).
Observations of some ob/gyn medical residents who are currently receiving training in abortion offer the best explanation for the dearth of abortionists. Some, Hitt noted, "have the kind of revulsion you expect to find among abortion protesters" (Id. at 26). A "weary" ob/gyn resident whose "voice grew slow and sad" talked about a patient who was having her sixth abortion, using the procedure as birth control. A chief resident at the same hospital agreed: "Some days you just want to shake these people." The chief resident admitted performing abortions "makes you feel low," while another resident added, "I guess I never realized I would find it as unpleasant as I do. I really don't enjoy it at all. It's not a rewarding thing to do" (Ibid.). And they had nothing but contempt for abortionists and their clinics. One ob/gyn explained: "It is seen as the dirty work of our field. The sad truth is that the people who moonlight at clinics are grade-B doctors. They're not the cream of the crop. And it's not because they're committed. It's because they can't find steady work" (Ibid.).
Oddly, Hitt neglects to mention one of the most obvious reasons why ob/gyns are repulsed by abortion: remarkable developments in maternal-fetal medicine in the past 20 years. Not only does the whole wonderful drama of fetal life unfold before our eyes through ultrasound imaging, but doctors are now able to correct hernias, bladder obstructions and other defects in utero. Palm-size preemies can survive outside the womb. Today ob/gyns don't want to lead a Jekyll and Hyde existence: using their skills to save some tiny patients in the ICU and then, in the next ward, killing others equally developed using barbaric techniques like dismemberment and stabbing.
The hundreds of news articles about abortion during the month of January were uncharacteristic of earlier reporting. Perhaps the litany of lies about partial-birth abortion from abortion-advocates—lies which they reported as fact until belated exposure—has chastened reporters. Perhaps the mountains of evidence on public opinion have precluded any other approach. Perhaps they are just more willing to write copy that is mainly generated by the facts rather than by their biases. The fact is, story after story reveals ugly, chilling, and heart wrenching aspects of abortion. On the front page of
The Wall Street Journal not long ago, a doctor gave a blow-by-blow description of a "selective reduction" he committed on a sibling in a multi-baby pregnancy. The
N.Y. Times Magazine article discussed earlier includes an eyewitness account of a partial-birth abortion. The journalist was apparently able to maintain detached neutrality until he observed, accumulating in a jar at his feet, "a half-inch of pinkish fluid marked by tiny whitish-gray globules"—the child's just-suctioned brain. He then recoiled in "fear." He summed up his reaction, saying: "The procedure is profoundly upsetting. The image of that limp suspended fetus has not left me. By the time I traveled back home—two days later—I had trouble holding my 8-month-old daughter. That fetus appeared in my dreams ..." (
Id. at 54).
Numerous articles in publications ranging from U.S. News & World Report to Cosmopolitan and other women's magazines presented a side of abortion rarely displayed in the secular press. Story after story told of abortions forced upon a young woman by parents or the child's father. Other stories described abortions sought for social reasons that even "pro-choice" Americans find disturbingly trivial. Story after story spoke of emotional pain and remorse that did not lessen with the years. There were no ringing affirmations of "the freedom to choose" that abortion advocates would have hoped to find in the liberal press.
The freedom to choose was exposed for what it is: no choice for many and the wrong choice for all.
Another type of abortion reporting is beginning to surface in newspapers—brief but explosive accounts of criminal charges against abortionists. Seemingly violating the unwritten commandments of journalism—to never speak ill of "abortion providers" or politicians who support abortion—Americans are learning, belatedly, that there's only a half-step between the prettily-named "women's health center" and the back alley. The latest criminal defendant is Californian Bruce Steir. Long before he was charged with second degree murder for a fatally botched abortion, he had lost all hospital privileges in the state and was on disciplinary probation for innumerable acts of abortion malpractice, perforations and lacerations which often necessitated hysterectomies and bowel resections by competent physicians. Dr. Steir and his ilk take all the terror out of NARAL's frequent threat of the return to the "back alley." How much worse could the alley be?
All in all, the 25th anniversary brought some welcome news that should renew our determination to do all in our power—through prayer, education and action—to assist women and families faced with difficult pregnancies and post-abortion problems, and to continue building a consensus to end legal abortion.
Abortion advocates are still using the same slogans that served them so well in the '70s: freedom of choice, the dreaded back alley, and that abortion is a matter of "privacy," a "personal" decision between a woman, her conscience, her doctor, and her God. Polls have shown that the addition of "doctor" and, especially, "God" dramatically raise the approval rating for this formulation!
Clearly, we have the moral arguments and the data to refute the notion of "choice." We can also make the argument that, if anywhere, the alley is precisely where you might expect to find abortionists. A dark alley is where innocent victims are stabbed and maimed and killed for money, right? And (ignoring for the moment the lives of over 37 million children) with over 200 women dead, thousands injured physically and millions emotionally from legal abortion, the situation will surely improve when abortion is banned outright.
The claim of privacy deserves some reflection (a reflection which was inspired by a similar discussion con-cerning euthanasia by Australian pastor/poet Andrew Lansdown in an essay entitled "Euthanasia: A Dangerous Enthusiasm.") When abortion supporters ask "Who decides?" to pit the pregnant woman against the huge machinery of government, the issues being decided are far broader than the child's right to life. There is nothing personal or private about abortion ...
- when it requires society to abandon its attitude about the sanctity of human life.
- if it encourages a community to view killing as a solution to an unintended pregnancy and as a part of health care.
- if it requires governments to amend their laws to countenance certain types of homicide.
- if it employs doctors to be killers instead of healers.
if it deprives mothers, fathers, grandparents and siblings of a family members whom they could love and be loved by.
- if it weakens a family's will to accept the sacrifices involved in raising and caring for one of its members.
- if it increases the incidence of child abuse many times over.
- if it precipitates the breakdown of the family, permitting predatory males the freedom to accept no responsibility for the child they helped to create.
- if it facilitates the sexual abuse of teenage girls, if it scars their bodies and their lives, making it difficult for them ever to form a trusting relationship with a spouse.
- if it fuels a sexual revolution that has brought about an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases.
- if, in one generation, we stop thinking of children as a precious gift from God, the expression of the love and commitment of a lifelong marriage, and instead, think of children as burdens, obstacles to self-fulfillment.
- if we no longer respect and value woman's fertility, her distinctly feminine nurturing qualities, her willingness to sacrifice her own self-interest for the good of others; if in one generation, we have come to measure a woman's worth by how much she resembles a man. They claim pregnancy is a disease to be cured; fertility, a disability to overcome. And this is progress?
Tremendous thanks go to all who participated in the Bishops' recent postcard campaign to U.S. Senators urging them to override the President's veto of the bill banning partial-birth abortion. Cards are still being deli-vered to the Hill. With most dioceses participating, about 14 million postcards were ordered from the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment (NCHLA).
Many dioceses undertook an intensive letter-writing campaign, aided by an invaluable video from NCHLA which gives up-to-date information about partial-birth abortion and instructions on how to run a successful letter-writing effort. The video costs $7.50 each; $6 each for 10-99 copies; $5.50 each for 100 or more. Add shipping costs to each order. Contact NCHLA: 1511 K Street, N.W., Suite 335, Washington, DC 20005; phone (202) 393-0703; fax (202) 347-1383. A veto-override vote has not been scheduled and is not likely to occur before May.
Virginia is the most recent of now 20 states to enact legislation banning partial-birth abortion. In 11 states the laws are enjoined, or not enforced, pending litigation. In 6 states they are enforced, and in 3 enforced post-viability.