In 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision knocked down laws against abortion in all 50 states, fabricating a constitutional “right” to abortion that continues to haunt and divide our society. Within two days of that decision, the Catholic bishops rejected it as “bad morality, bad medicine and bad public policy.” We called for a comprehensive response: exploring “every legal possibility” for challenging the Court’s tragic error and restoring legal safeguards for the right to life of the unborn child; helping to pass laws to “restrict the practice of abortion as much as possible” in the meantime; and educating society to the need to safeguard the child and support “more humane and morally acceptable solutions” for women facing problems during pregnancy.
Recently, some have called on the Church to abandon most of this effort. They say we should accept Roe as a permanent fixture of constitutional law, stop trying to restore recognition for the unborn child’s human rights, and confine our public advocacy to efforts to “reduce abortions” through improved economic and social support for women and families.
[We have been very involved in manifold ways in seeking to provide such ministry and support]….
These efforts, however, are not an adequate or complete response to the injustice of Roe v. Wade for several important reasons. First, the Court’s decision in Roe denied an entire class of innocent human beings the most fundamental human right, the right to life. In fact, the act of killing these fellow human beings was transformed from a crime into a “right,” turning the structure of human rights on its head. Roe v. Wade is a clear case of an “intrinsically unjust law” we are morally obliged to oppose (see Evangelium vitae, nos. 71-73). Reversing it is not a mere political tactic, but a moral imperative for Catholics and others who respect human life.
Is it just me, or have the Bishops’ spines recently gotten visibly stronger?
I think that’s a reflection of the character of the current Pope, Chris.
Aside from the moral squalor of Roe, it was constitutionally offensive, too. Abortion is not a federal issue, pro or con.
Now this:
http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2008/10/martino-this-is-madness-people.html
is a bishop I really admire!
Besides the putative fact that abortion is not a right in any sense of the word, the decision was written without a single mention of the father, who, it would appear, is the parent of half the child, half responsible for its care and welfare, but has no rights in this matter whatsoever. This is worse than absurd. I’m not student of jurisprudence, but even I can tell that this decision is bad at every level – what happens when a liberal agenda is institutionalized by those with the power to do so. (And I might add, that such a decision came from liberalism’s agenda is the reason I will not vote for Obama, for he will put the court right back to where it once was, an agent of the left, making new law as it wished.) Larry
It’s excellent to have this clear statement posted and so easily accessible – thanks, Kendall/Elves. Because 1973 is so often the starting date used in discussions of the issue, I set out to find the story I read somewhere some years back about the Catholic state senators in NYS in 1970 who had voted for the permissive abortion law then, but eventually regretted it sufficiently to make a public statement. It seems to me there was something in it about how their consciences were in effect assaulted. I couldn’t quickly turn up that story on-line, but did find a TIME magazine article from Sept. 1970 which is instructive just in the historical perspective, and the cold matter-of-factness as well as quoting Dr. Bernard Nathanson who at that time was an abortionist:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,902721-1,00.html
I think it’s instructive to realize the way NYS under liberal Republican Nelson Rockefeller, and 3 other states, were the ‘bellwethers’ in this matter which led to Roe vs. Wade.
If anyone else knows of that statement some NYS Catholic senators eventually made could you please post any link or reference you have? Thanks.
“I think it’s instructive to realize the way NYS under liberal Republican Nelson Rockefeller, and 3 other states, were the ‘bellwethers’ in this matter which led to Roe vs. Wade”
Not to forget Ronald Reagan, who as governor of California signed liberalized abortion into law in 1967.
Evidently, yes #6:
“In May 1967, the Therapeutic Abortion Bill began to take shape. It was a measure to allow pregnant women to terminate embryos prejudicial to their “physical or mental health.” Reagan had to admit that he agreed with “the moral principle of self-defense.” If 100,000 California women were desperate enough to undergo illegal abortions every year, he could at least make it safer for some of them.
He signed it into law. Only as abortion became an extension of welfare, would he wish he had paid more head to the bill’s manipulative language. The very word “Therapeutic” was a medical euphemism, sanitizing essentially bloody procedures. It defined “mental health” as at-risk if a pregnant teen went out and smashed windows. In common with the more liberal laws it was to spawn at state and federal levels, the Act ignored the feelings of fathers.
Reagan was left with a sense of guilt. “If there is a question as to whether there is life or death, the doubt should be resolved in favor of life.” ”
The important point that I note there is that he was left with a sense of guilt (and also tacitly of having been fooled by language). Much as the group of NY state Catholic senators were. I’m not aware of any similar admissions from Nelson Rockefeller, for example.