Missionaries of the Sacred Heart

FROM THE DESK OF BROTHER WARREN PERROTTO, MSC

IN DEFENSE OF THE UNBORN

Many social justice activists rightly accuse the pro-life groups of being selective with their agenda because while they oppose abortion, many of them support the death penalty, strong anti-immigrant legislation, etc. On the other hand, social activists groups cannot be exempt from criticism. Noticeably lacking from these groups is the defense of the unborn. Indeed, many of them support the right to terminate the life of an unborn child, respecting the wishes of the mother’s choice. They also support embryonic stem-cell research as well as euthanasia. So one can safely assert that both groups--pro-life and pro-choice—are selective in their choices regarding who should live or who should die.

This article, however, is to affirm that abortion is a justice issue, which is having devastating effects on individuals and on society at large. Abortion is not only a matter of individual justice (the rights of the unborn child) but also a social justice issue. All individual choices for abortions have social consequences.

The late Pope John Paul II warned, “The history of our times has shown in a tragic way the danger which results from forgetting the truth about the human person.” He described our world as a culture of death, whereby we use death as a means to resolve our moral dilemmas. It has taken root in the mind and hearts of those who have false images of God and of the human being. It is neatly packaged in an “all encompassing vocabulary of dehumanization directed against society’s most vulnerable individuals, both before and after birth. It includes the language of contemporary society as well as past societies.”

A central element of morality is one’s vision of reality. A person’s vision of reality strongly influences and determines his/her understanding of who is a human being. Throughout human history the distortion of reality in identifying who is and who is not a human being has been tragic. Groups of all races, ethnic origins, nationalities, associations and individuals have been labeled as less than human or non-human. The unborn human child has no less suffered from this injustice since the Roe v. Wade legalization of abortion in 1973. Proponents of abortion continue to identify the unborn child as a non-human with labels such as “mere cells, material, tissue or nondescript matter…parasitic creature, virulent disease, infected body…noxious waste product…entirely subhuman, and cannibalistic…that feeds on the mother’s body.” Astronomer, Carl Sagan named the unborn child as a “parasite that destroys tissue and sucks blood from capillaries.”