Can't Finesse This One

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Archbishop Chaput had a good essay on the First Things web site yesterday.

Second, there's no way for Catholics to finesse their way around the abortion issue, and if we're serious about being "Catholic," we need to stop trying. No such thing as a "right" to kill an unborn child exists. And wriggling past that simple truth by redefining the unborn child as an unperson, a pre-human lump of cells, is the worst sort of Orwellian hypocrisy--especially for Christians. Abortion always involves the deliberate killing of an innocent human life, and it is always, inexcusably, grievously wrong. This fact in no way releases us from the duty to provide ample and compassionate support for unwed or abandoned mothers, women facing unwanted pregnancies, and women struggling with the aftermath of an abortion. But the inadequacy of that support demands that we work to improve it. It does not justify killing the child.

I remember when, at the time the Roe decision first came down, that it was spread about how this decision would have all kinds of beneficial consequences, such as stronger families, less child abuse, fewer unwanted children, etc, etc., etc. Needless to say, none of these things has occured, in fact, just the opposite. Now, we are faced with an ever growing numbers of cases of child abuse, single parent families, and even mothers murdering their children. We are now faced with the tremendous social problem of creating more and better ways of providing help to mothers dealing with unwanted pregnancies and all the rest. Still, people persist in denying the plainly obvious.

In the article I cited yesterday from Time.com, Ms. Gibbs carried through the logic of a pro-life point of view and realized that, why, even people's "reproductive choices" would have to change. In other words, they might even have to practice abstinence or NFP. My heavens! It seems never to have occurred to her that, along with a bit more abstinence, we might have the benefits falsely promised by Roe: fewer unwanted pregnancies, fewer abused children, stronger, more stable families. She was willing to take the logic only so far.

So, we are left with finesse and nuance. We have a presidential candidate who is willing to go through all sorts of verbal gymnastics to avoid the question of when life begins. It seems he is so obtuse that he can't even entertain the question.

But, as Bishop Chaput says so well, Catholics just don't have that option, and I wish they would quit pretending they do.

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This page contains a single entry by Ron Moffat published on August 20, 2008 12:05 PM.

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