Dear Parishioners,
Since 1973 when Roe v. Wade opened the door to legal
abortion in our country, America has been on a continual downward spiral. What started as a 7-2 decision by US Supreme
Court Justices who legislated rather
than interpreted the law, over 60 million innocent children have been surgically or chemically killed. The dissenting opinion of Justice Byron
White (with Chief Justice William Rehnquist concurring) stated the following:
I find nothing in the language or
history of the Constitution to support the Court's judgment. The Court simply
fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant women and, with
scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with
sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes.
A member of the Pro-Life
movement since 1995, Norma McCorvey, who was the Jane Roe in the 1973 Supreme
Court decision, had the following to say years later:
It was my pseudonym, Jane Roe, which
had been used to create the "right" to abortion out of legal thin
air. But Sarah Weddington and Linda
Coffee [her lawyers] never told me that what I was signing
would allow women to come up to me 15, 20 years later and say, "Thank you
for allowing me to have my five or six abortions. Without you, it wouldn't have been
possible." Sarah never mentioned
women using abortions as a form of birth control. We talked about truly desperate and needy
women, not women already wearing maternity clothes.
The simple reality is that unless human life matters, nothing else matters. This world and all that is
in it are important because all human
beings are important. Pope St. John Paul II's words at the Denver airport (August 12, 1993) remind us of this:
America has a strong tradition of
respect for the individual, for human dignity and human rights. I gladly
acknowledged this during my previous visit to the United States in 1987, and I
would like to repeat today the hope I expressed on that occasion:
"America, you are beautiful and blessed in so many ways . . . But your best
beauty and your richest blessing is found in the human person: in each man,
woman and child, in every immigrant, in every native born son and daughter . . .
The ultimate test of your greatness is the way you treat every human being, but
especially the weakest and most defenseless ones. The best traditions of your land presume
respect for those who cannot defend themselves. It you want equal justice for
all, and true freedom and lasting peace, then, America, defend life! All the great causes that are yours today will
have meaning only to the extent that you guarantee the right to life and
protect the human person".
When people argue that abortion
is only one issue in this or any presidential election, the response of Priests for Life is worth noting:
The foundation of a house is only one
of many parts of the house, but it is essential in order to build the other
parts. That is why the Catholic bishops
have repeatedly asserted that among the many interrelated issues within a
consistent ethic, abortion deserves "urgent attention and priority."
St. Teresa of Calcutta's words at the National Prayer Breakfast,
(Washington, DC on February 3, 1994)—given in front of then President Bill and
Hillary Clinton—included the following:
But I feel that the greatest destroyer
of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct
killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even
her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an
abortion? As always, we must persuade
her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give
until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life
to love us. So, the mother who is
thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts
her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must
also give until it hurts. By abortion,
the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her
problems. And, by abortion, the father
is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child
he has brought into the world. That
father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not
teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and
peace is abortion.
I hope that you take the time to
reflect on all of the above.
Do not be
deceived by arguments that omit or minimize the vital importance of voting Pro-Life!
Fr. Ed Namiotka
Pastor
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