EDITORIAL: Abortion, Forced Eviction from our First Home

Abortion is a forced eviction of an entire class of the poor, those with no voice but our own, from the first home of the whole human race.

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) - "I was listening to Michelle Obama's speech and she commented that Senator Biden hasn't forgotten where he came from. Maybe he and all those who support abortion have forgotten where we came from: the womb." Bill Donohue

One of the things I enjoy these days is reading the robust and plentiful responses which are being generated by our articles on Catholic Online. However, every so often, one stands out for its brevity, simplicity and stark clarity of expression. So it was with the two sentences written by our friend from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights with which I began this editorial.

Personally, I am growing increasingly tired of the efforts of those commentators who are, like me; Irish Catholics from the Northeast who grew up when there was a discernible blue collar Catholic Culture in those major metropolitan centers. They have decided to equate their nostalgia with the past with what it means to be a Catholic today. It is questionable whether their image is even an accurate account of what it really meant to be a Catholic back then.

For example, Chris Matthews, the feisty Irish Catholic who hosts "Hardball", has been attempting to join the chorus of those who maintain that the Vice Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, Joe Biden, is a "blue collar Catholic kind of guy". In other words, Matthews is arguing that Biden will attract people like me back to the Party I grew up in and somehow capture my vote. He won't Chris - and you won't succeed in your nostalgic effort to paint Catholic faith in this manner. I would be happy to vote for a Democratic candidate who was pro-life. In fact, I watch with eagerness and hope as groups like Democrats for Life try to help that once great Party recover their soul and hear the cry of all the poor, including our neighbors in the first home of the whole human race, the first neighborhood, our mothers womb.

Matthews tried very hard the other day to attribute the growing outcry against Biden's selection in the Catholic community to the fringes of that community. He told his guests that the issue of whether life begins at conception was a "metaphysical" one. (This was an apparent effort to disparage metaphysical issues I guess.) He further opined that it had no place in politics. Nonsense! It is actually about the foundation of fundamental human rights and Chris Matthews knows it. C'mon Chris, just remember your excitement when you found out that your wife was pregnant with first your first child. How about when you felt that little foot kick from inside her womb? This is all about real human life, like you and me, our wives, our children, our loved ones. As the comment with which I began this editorial from another Irish guy from the Northeast put it, we all came from the first neighborhood of the womb.

In addition, the effort of the Democratic Party to trot out historically inaccurate, theologically incorrect and disingenuous arguments about what the Catholic Church teaches concerning the Right to life has likewise failed. The Vice Presidential nominee Joe Biden and the Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi tried to confuse Catholics and other Christians as to the clear, unbroken teaching of the Catholic Church on the inviolability and dignity of every human life at every age. It backfired terribly. The backlash has only just begun. I predict it will grow in intensity unlike any other election in our lifetime.

People are sick and tired of the lie behind the claims of compassion and the expression of "concern for the common good" coming from some who are attempting to persuade Catholics and other Christians that it is OK to accept what the current leadership of the Democratic Party is offering concerning the Right to Life. It is never compassionate to take the life of innocent persons, it is always and everywhere wrong and it should be illegal, as is the taking of all other innocent human life. The Archbishop of the host City of Denver, Colorado, Archbishop Chaput, along with his auxiliary Bishop, published a clear letter in response to Speaker Pelosi's error and obfuscation. He is only one of a growing chorus of Catholic voices rising united against this subterfuge. We refuse to allow Chris Matthews Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and others to call their own dissent from Catholic teaching legitimate.

Let me quickly cite from a sourcebook which Chris Matthews, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden and I point to as an accurate statement of the Catholic Christian faith, the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Paragraph 2271 of that Catechism and the many, many paragraphs following affirm: "Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law." The facts are clear and Church teaching has been consistent for over two thousand years. It, along with the true history and not the Biden/Pelosi version is laid out for all to see in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, along with copious historical citations.

The Catholic teaching against killing innocent human life throughout the entire spectrum of life, from conception to natural death, has never and will never change, period, end of discussion. It has also been taught infallibly. Therefore, every Catholic who professes the Catholic faith assents to accepting it. To pretend to be well versed in Church history and then misstate the teaching of the Church Fathers, like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi have done, is simply to lie and to deceive, or, to be woefully ignorant of the teaching of the Catholic Church. If it is the latter, they are still without excuse. Medial science confirms what our conscience has known all along, the child in the womb is our neighbor. It is wrong to kill our neighbor. The truth concerning the humanity of the child in the womb is incontestable. It is knowable by reason, revealed by the Natural Law, and confirmed by all good science.

They are waiting for you. Will you answer?

As we follow both conventions we should ask another question about the current law of our beloved Country which allows someone more powerful to reach into the first home of children and kill them through the use of chemical weapons, surgical strikes, saline burning, dissection or evacuation: Why are some who purport to be so concerned about the poor and the homeless in support of evicting an entire class of our neighbors from the first home in which we all once lived, our mother's womb? Aren't we supposed to be welcoming all? Why are some who were properly opposed to "pre-emptive" wars not concerned about what is the first preemptive war, the war on the womb? After all, in allowing abortion by personal choice we treat children in the womb as enemy combatants.

I agree with those who say that we need to be concerned about all of the life issues. I always have and my writing reflects it. We do need to provide care for the child after he or she is born and for the mother who carries and bears him or her to term. I have written repeatedly of the need to discard the labels "liberal" and "conservative" and to truly put the full depth and breadth of Catholic Social teaching in the mix of our public policy debate. Catholic teaching is pro-life (through all of life), pro-freedom (rightly understood), pro-poor (including all the poor), pro-peace and pro-solidarity. The truth cries out over the din of those who attempt to confuse others, legal abortion on demand is pure evil. The right to life is the first right and when it is put in jeopardy, the entire structure of human rights is at risk.

Bill Donohue's comment on Catholic Online is profoundly on point. We must never forget where we all came from. Oh, I know what Michelle Obama and Chris Matthews are attempting to say when they make these kinds of comments about folks like Joe Biden. I am 53 years old. I grew up in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in a blue collar Catholic neighborhood. I will never forget the values which were instilled within me. However, at the very foundation of those values was a respect for absolutely every life, no matter how young, sick, elderly or impoverished. Joe Biden knows that. He, like so many others, was pro-life and sold out. Abortion on demand raises a serious solidarity issue. It is a forced eviction of an entire class of the poor, those with no voice but our own, from the first home of the whole human race.

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I end with insightful words from Archbishop Chaput in a great piece which he recently wrote for the Journal "First Things" on August 19, 2008. It is entitled "Vote for Real Hope and Change":

"Obviously, we have other important issues facing us this fall: the economy, the war in Iraq, immigration justice. But we can't build a healthy society while ignoring the routine and very profitable legalized homicide that goes on every day against America's unborn children. The right to life is foundational. Every other right depends on it. Efforts to reduce abortions, or to create alternatives to abortion, or to foster an environment where more women will choose to keep their unborn child, can have great merit--but not if they serve to cover over or distract from the brutality and fundamental injustice of abortion itself. We should remember that one of the crucial things that set early Christians apart from the pagan culture around them was their rejection of abortion and infanticide. Yet for thirty-five years I've watched prominent "pro-choice" Catholics justify themselves with the kind of moral and verbal gymnastics that should qualify as an Olympic event. All they've really done is capitulate to Roe v. Wade."

Let's not be deceived, let's not capitulate to Roe v Wade. Rather, let's do all we can to overturn that heinous decision and build a true culture of life and civilization of love. To do so requires voting against anyone who fails to recognize the Right to Life.

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