Embrace life
Charles Rice
Issue date: 1/23/08 Section: Viewpoint
Would you call it an exercise in futility? On Jan. 22, Notre Dame and Saint Mary's students joined the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., calling for reversal of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling on that date in 1973 which mandated, in effect, elective abortion at every stage in pregnancy. The Court defined the unborn child as a nonperson who is therefore not entitled to the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution to persons.
The Supreme Court will not reverse that holding of Roe. Even the Justices who say that Roe should be "overruled" define that as a "states' rights" approach that would allow the states to permit or forbid abortion. That would affirm the holding of Roe. If your life is subject to extinction whenever a state legislature so decrees, then, so far as the United States Constitution is concerned, you are a nonperson.
Depersonalization is the theory of the Nazis' treatment of the Jews and of the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott case in which the Court held that freed slaves could not be citizens and said that slaves were property rather than persons.
Abortion is not simply a legal issue. It is embedded in American culture. The Alan Guttmacher Institute reports that from 1973 to 2005, more than 45 million surgical abortions occurred in the United States, with 1.21 million in 2005, down from 1.31 in 2000. Twenty-two percent of all pregnancies in the United States end in abortion. These figures do not include the uncountable number of early abortions by abortifacients, including most "contraceptive" pills.
Abortion is a symptom of what Pope Benedict XVI called "a dictatorship of relativism… that recognizes nothing as absolute and which only leaves the 'I' and its whims as the ultimate measure." The secularism, relativism and individualism of that culture affect the most fundamental human activity, the generation of life.
Abortion is a product of the contraceptive ethic. "[D]espite their differences," said John Paul II, "contraception and abortion are often closely connected, as fruits of the same tree…. rooted in a hedonistic mentality unwilling to accept responsibility in matters of sexuality, and … a self-centered concept of freedom, which regards procreation as an obstacle to personal fulfillment."
The Supreme Court will not reverse that holding of Roe. Even the Justices who say that Roe should be "overruled" define that as a "states' rights" approach that would allow the states to permit or forbid abortion. That would affirm the holding of Roe. If your life is subject to extinction whenever a state legislature so decrees, then, so far as the United States Constitution is concerned, you are a nonperson.
Depersonalization is the theory of the Nazis' treatment of the Jews and of the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott case in which the Court held that freed slaves could not be citizens and said that slaves were property rather than persons.
Abortion is not simply a legal issue. It is embedded in American culture. The Alan Guttmacher Institute reports that from 1973 to 2005, more than 45 million surgical abortions occurred in the United States, with 1.21 million in 2005, down from 1.31 in 2000. Twenty-two percent of all pregnancies in the United States end in abortion. These figures do not include the uncountable number of early abortions by abortifacients, including most "contraceptive" pills.
Abortion is a symptom of what Pope Benedict XVI called "a dictatorship of relativism… that recognizes nothing as absolute and which only leaves the 'I' and its whims as the ultimate measure." The secularism, relativism and individualism of that culture affect the most fundamental human activity, the generation of life.
Abortion is a product of the contraceptive ethic. "[D]espite their differences," said John Paul II, "contraception and abortion are often closely connected, as fruits of the same tree…. rooted in a hedonistic mentality unwilling to accept responsibility in matters of sexuality, and … a self-centered concept of freedom, which regards procreation as an obstacle to personal fulfillment."