Happy Priest: March for Life, Political Conservatives and Abortion

Can someone claim to be a true political conservative and not be against abortion?  I would argue that this is an impossible position to hold.  America will change if Americans get back to God and true conservatives will only be authentic and coherent if they stand up and fight against abortion.  No true conservative can claim to be one if they ignore the horror of abortion.  If we do not end abortion, we will soon not even have a country.

CORPUS CHRISTI, TX (Catholic Online) - Every year is it is a given that the mainstream media will ignore the Washington March for Life.  Yet, I found it upsetting that many politically conservative news websites ignored the march which was attended by over 400,000 people on Monday, January 24, 2011.  Most of the people in attendance were young people. 

Thankfully, Fox News provided coverage and so did C-Span, but other conservative news sites seemed to harp on the economy and Obama's missing birth certificate.  Granted, these are important issues, but the biggest and most important issue of our day is abortion and most conservatives ignored the biggest pro-life activity of the year. 

Can someone claim to be a true political conservative and not be against abortion?  I would argue that this is an impossible position to hold.  Of course, fidelity to the faith is neither "conservative" or "liberal." However, conservatives have lately become identified with those who seek to inform their political participation by the truths of the faith in an age reeling under what the Pope called a "dictatorship of relativism".

Looking at the abortion issue solely from the prism of American politics, conservatives need to focus on the abortion issue as the most pressing issue of our times. 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." (The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776) 

We have heard and read these famous words many times.  Yet, it should be interesting for us to note that of the three fundamental rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the founding fathers of our nation recognize life as the first of these three unalienable rights.

Why is the right to life the first of these God given rights?

Life is a gift from God.  The first pages of the Holy Bible direct our gaze to the awesome gift of life.  "And now, from the clay of the ground, the Lord God formed man, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and made man a living person." (Genesis 2: 7)  Life is entrusted to man as a gift.  Thus, man has a responsibility to this gift. 

Freedom and the pursuit of happiness are impossible without the fundamental right to life. 

If anyone has the right to terminate the life of an innocent human being, not only are those who are being terminated no longer equal under the law, but proponents of abortion are laying the ground work for choices to be made about the extermination of other groups of people.

Was this not the case in Nazi Germany?  Not only were Jews, Gypsies and Catholics considered less equal than others, but a favored few took upon themselves the right to determine which individuals had the right to live. 

Is not this the case of slavery?  Not only were Africans considered to be less equal, but also once again the strong exerted their power over the weak, giving themselves the right to choose who would be enslaved and who would go free.

If a woman has the right to kill her baby, what is to keep a sniper from executing his next victim?  If a doctor has the right to murder an innocent child, what is to keep a child from killing his own classmates?  If a hospital has a right to sponsor homicide, what is to keep a state from supporting terrorists?

The right to life is the most fundamental of all rights.  All other rights depend upon the right to life.  Abortion is a horrific evil claiming over 4,000 lives every day.

Man is not autonomous.  He is created by God and therefore, must live in union with his Creator.  When humanity rebels against God the results are obvious for all to see in the news every day. 

James Madison, the fourth president of our nation and one of our founding fathers once said, "We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."

As you walk up the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, you can see Moses holding the Ten Commandments. As you enter into the Supreme Court courtroom, the two huge oak doors have the Ten Commandments engraved on each lower portion of each door.  As you sit inside the courtroom, the Ten Commandments are displayed right above where the Supreme Court judges sit.

The Fifth Commandment states, "Thou shall not kill."  On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court legalized abortion in America. 

More than 52,000,000 children have been murdered through abortion since January 22, 1973. 

Should we be surprised at the seemingly endless accounts of murders, bombings and wars throughout the world that fill the media each day?  If we can kill inside of the womb, what is to keep us from killing outside of the womb?

There have been more babies killed by abortion since Roe v Wade than people killed in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and both Iraq wars combined.  

Consider the estimated populations of some of our major U.S. cities: New York - 8,143,197; Los Angeles - 3,844,829; Chicago - 2,842,518; and Houston - 2,016,582.  Are we not destroying our work force and the base for Social Security?

America will change if Americans get back to God and true conservatives will only be authentic and coherent if they stand up and fight against abortion.  No true conservative can claim to be one if they ignore the horror of abortion.  If we do not end abortion, we will not have a country.  Our country will collapse. 

As I mentioned this past Sunday in my homily, very few people are paying attention to what Pope Benedict XVI told the College of Cardinals in an end of the year speech with these dramatic words:  "For all its new hopes and possibilities, our world is at the same time troubled by the sense that moral consensus is collapsing, consensus without which juridical and political structures cannot function. Consequently the forces mobilized for the defense of such structures seem doomed to failure." (December 20, 2010) 

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Father James Farfaglia, the Happy Priest, is the pastor of Saint Helena of the True Cross of Jesus Catholic Church in Corpus Christi, Texas and is a member of the Board of Directors of Human Life International.  You can visit him on the web at www.donotbediscouraged.com.  There you can find his books, homilies, articles and blog posts.  You can click here for the audio podcast of this Sunday homily.  

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