Commentary: Abortion and the Seeds of Violence

Will we ever understand that by turning the sword on the womb, we've left all of humanity bleeding? And will it be too late when we finally do?

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CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) - These are incredibly fast-paced times we're living in, and nothing is accelerating more rapidly than the moral decay of our country. It seems like a bullet train headed straight down, and the bitter truth is, it's the train we designed and built. We're only reaping the destruction we've sown for so long. There a multitude of specific sins we've sown that reap destruction, but I believe the one that underlies them all is our desecration of sex and human life through abortion. This sin contributes more than any other to our speedy descent into turmoil.

It's the origin of so many of our troubles because it is our origin. We were made to be holy, and the gift of conjugal love that creates new life is meant to be holy and cherished, and the more we trample and twist and abuse and distort that gift for a sinful and selfish purpose, the deeper we sow the seed that reaps only death. The roots sink lower and spread wider and grow larger and more difficult to pull out. The destruction spreads throughout every area of our lives because the sin is sown so deeply into our "soil."

Where sex and babies are concerned, it seems we've lost even the slightest inclination to aspire to the better angels of our nature. Today respect, responsibility, nobility, generosity, decency, trust, sacrifice, and love are discarded in favor of individual "freedom" and "choice." Why bother practicing self-control, why bother treating the opposite sex with respect and behaving with honor, when one can just eliminate any unintended "punishments" and carry on as though no one was hurt and nothing was lost.

Men are being reduced to simply their DNA (and only when that's needed), women are further reduced to objects used for bodily satisfaction, and sex is devoid of love, emptied of obligation, and cheapened as a merely animalistic activity. Then when a child is created but not wanted, our solution is violence.

We sow violence, and violence begets more violence, and more death, and now no one is safe. No human life at any stage in any condition is safe because brutality is rooted in the soil where we all begin. If human life isn't protected at every stage, it can't really be protected at any stage because sooner or later, someone somewhere will rationalize and justify their "choice" to kill another person. "She is too disabled..." "He is old and very sick..." "She won't have the quality of life she should have..." "His medical care will be too expensive..." "He has a terminal disease anyway..." "I just don't want to be pregnant..."

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It is this simple: Life is either sacred or it's not. If life is not sacred from the moment of conception until natural death then all of our lives are at the mercy of someone else's whim and choice. Our nation's (and the world's) unwillingness to acknowledge that all human life is sacred has crumbled the foundation we all stand on, and don't look now, but the ground is sinking beneath us.

Consider these recent events: a young woman decides to kill her full-term baby the day before delivery by shooting herself in the abdomen, and a court decides no crime was committed. The baby's death, or rather, execution, meant nothing.

Another woman induces the abortion of her own grandson and when he is delivered still alive, she finishes the job by bagging him in plastic and throwing him out with the trash. This depravity results not in a murder charge, but a charge of "improperly disposing of human remains." Human remains? A baby boy was born alive and suffocated to death in a plastic bag! He wasn't "human remains." He was a child, and he was murdered by his own grandmother.

Recall how a few years ago the world watched as two parents tried desperately to save their daughter from being starved to death, but they were left powerless to stop her murder. Terri was unable to speak for herself, and so her right to live was left up to an unfaithful husband who had made himself a new life with another woman. He and a group of doctors deemed it completely appropriate to starve Terri to death, despite the fact that her family wanted and begged to be allowed to care for her. She was loved by many, and yet ONE person had total authority over her life, and thus, she was killed. And amazingly, many, many people saw nothing wrong with it.

All this is evidence of grossly warped morality and a very sick society. Those are grotesquely twisted values. It means that only human persons who are useful, productive, and not inconveniencing anyone else are fit to live. A life too burdensome or unwanted can be snuffed out or cruelly butchered, whatever it takes.

Just remember: If they'll do it with you, they'll do it to you. Someday, you might not be so "useful" anymore. Someday, your body might be permanently injured. Is it alright with you if someone else decides to take your life away from you? Would it be alright with you if the state decided your son or daughter should not receive medical treatment because it is too costly, or because a doctor says it would be pointless?

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This is the road we're already on. It is simply the logical end. If judges, doctors, and law makers are able to decide when human life will be granted legal protection, it is only reasonable that they will also decide if life is worthy of protection at all. Where does it end? It ends with "choice;" each one choosing only for the sacrosanct "self," even if that choice means another person's death. Clearly, the right to choose is not equal. All opposed to tyranny, raise your hands - sorry - you don't get a vote.

I don't think it is too narrow or simplistic a view to say that our decaying morality finds its root cause in abortion. Abortion creates enmity between mother and child, planting the seed of death in the very spot where life is created, and thus the violence and strife is felt by everyone, generation after generation. It wreaks havoc on the entire human race. Nothing is sacred, because no one is sacred anymore. Mother Teresa so wisely warned us, "If a mother can kill her own baby, what is left but for you to kill me and me to kill you?"

We can and certainly should correct many evils and injustices in our society, but if we do not correct and eliminate the greatest evil of all - the devaluing and killing of innocent human life - it won't matter what other strides we make toward health and prosperity because we will remain broken and afflicted in the core of our being. LIFE trumps everything else. Would any architect out there build his family a house on a cracked and warped foundation?

When are we going to wake up? When will honor, sacrifice, commitment and love make a comeback? Will we ever understand that by turning the sword on the womb, we've left all of humanity bleeding? And will it be too late when we finally do?

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Jennifer Hartline is a Catholic Army wife and stay-at-home mother of three precious kids who writes frequently on topics of Catholic faith and daily living. She is a contributing writer for Catholic Online.

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