It Is Time!

motherhood, abortion, bodily autonomy

We live in an age when science can do amazing things. It can allow an unmanned mechanism to fly and maneuver on its own…It can see (and even reach) inside microscopic cells and even perform surgery with a laser so as to minimize recovery time…It can detect the heartbeat of an unborn baby, discover its gender and even identify defects.

Just shy of 50 years ago, when abortion was legalized in our country, science had not yet come this far.  Some people questioned if the growing wonder within the womb was really a human life yet.  They may have even referred to the unborn child as a “blob of tissue.”

Now, well into the second decade of this new millennium, we know better. We know that the wonder within the womb truly is a human life, an unrepeatable individual, with its own unique makeup, amazing potential, and God-given dignity.  As scripture says, “You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb.   I praise you, because I am wonderfully made” (Psalm 139)

If we are rational and realistic, we have to admit that there’s nothing special in being born that incurs life or personhood on the fetus.  He or she had this all along. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us that:

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 (CCC 2270).

When people advocate women’s rights or the ability to “do what you want with your own body,” they are gravely overlooking half of the equation.  They are pretending the rights and body of the unborn child are non-existent or at least vastly inferior.

Saint Mother Teresa once eloquently reflected:

By abortion the mother does not learn to love, but kills her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, that father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. The father is likely to put other women to the same trouble. So abortion leads to more abortion.

I am reservedly, prayerfully, hoping that, perhaps, the legal proceedings with the Texas abortion law may turn out for good, after all.

Wouldn’t it be an amazing blessing for the unborn (present and future) if this situation could bring legal protection for them?

When the Roe vs. Wade decision was made, science had not advanced to the point that it now has.  Disregarding the rights of the unborn might have been more easily ignored. Yet, the Church always understood that the inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of 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. (CCC 2273).

Now, in 2021, with what we now know, let’s pray that the Supreme Court has the opportunity (and wisdom) to make use of this advancement in knowledge to stop the legalized murder of our most vulnerable.  The original agent in the fateful hearing has had a change of heart; it is time that our courts and country did, too!

Pope Francis succinctly summed up the injustice of abortion and medically assisted death when he addressed the International Federation of Catholic Media Associations:

Every child who, rather than being born, is condemned unjustly to being aborted, bears the face of Jesus Christ, bears the face of the Lord, who even before he was born, and then just after birth, experienced the world’s rejection. And every elderly person…even if he is ill or at the end of his days, bears the face of Christ. They cannot be discarded, as the ‘culture of waste’ suggests!

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4 thoughts on “It Is Time!”

  1. Karen, You and Sr. Christine are both special because you both are made in the image and likeness of God. No one He has made is worthless. This is developed at length in https://catholicstand.com/you-are-precious-to-me/. It is true that many women have been abused by monstrous husbands. A child in a mother’s womb has never abused anyone and is innocent. Killing an innocent child will have no effect on an abusive man or make him stop the abuse. After abortion was unconstitutionally legitimized in the Roe decision, and now after over 62,000,000 baby deaths, there are still abusive husbands. Legal abortion changed nothing. In several ways, legal abortion made it worse for women living with an abusive man. Karen, God bless you and keep you and always hold you safe in the palm of His hand. Guy, Texas

  2. So what about the woman? You think women are supposed to be worthless doormats for men. You’re special because you’re a nun and now, if abortion is banned, you can bask in the misery of women who will now be the helpless, hopeless appendages of their abusive husbands.

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  4. Dear r. Christine, Your article is spot on for today. Sadly, many of the prodeath folks agree with what science is now telling us- the unborn child is just that – an unborn living human being. But the prodeath folks agree and then say still the woman or teenage girl has the right to kill this living human being because ______________. You can fill in the blank with several attempts at presenting a self-defense justification, a personal autonomy justification, or even a private-property justification. The most chilling is the I-want-what-I-want-when-I-want-it-me-me-me justification and, since I made it out of my Mom alive and this child hasn’t escaped from my womb, I can kill this child. The other chilling-although perfectly logical horror is those who then say, if our logic and reasoning is correct, then the woman or teenage girl has the right to kill the child who has been born [or who has survived an abortion] and is outside the Mom – some say this is so up to 1-2 years after birth. [Funny how they do not argue that, post-birth, the Daddy has any say so in the murder]. Still, I take comfort in knowing that in the end we win, because “we” is you and me and Jesus and all the other stalwart prolife folks. Guy, Texas

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