Dear Parishioners,

It is hard to explain to people why you believe something especially if it is a truth they do not want to hear. Unfortunately, so many people have grown too used to abortion being an option. It is obvious to anyone looking at it objectively that the fetus is a child at an earlier stage of development. So, if you believe killing a child is wrong, it must be wrong to kill a child even in the womb. To anyone who agrees with these simple steps, you realize that you cannot support elected abortion for any reason. So, we ought to make it illegal. However, we as human beings have a way of complicating things to get the result we want.

Though there are some people who would argue against the right to life that all humans have, most people do not try to defend abortion this way. Most people would try to deny the humanity of the child: tying humanity to a certain stage of development or consciousness. However, it does not bear out in science since there is nothing special about being born that makes the child into something other than it is. The change from fetus to baby is a matter of location, not a matter of substantial change. If we take consciousness as the trait needed to be human, there is a plethora of issues that must be answered and it would lead someone to be pro-infanticide if they take it seriously.

Another way people might try to argue against the prolife position is by talking about how hard it would be on the mother to bear the child and that it would be cruel to ask her to give birth to it. To this, I would like to quote myself from a previous bulletin talking about Trent Horn’s book, “Persuasive Pro-Life.” In it, I wrote:

“Trent Horn then gives a clever technique in his book called Trot-Out-a-Toddler. He knows that the more distracted we get with side issues, it takes away focus from our main claim: an embryo is a child and therefore has an inalienable right to life. If this really is a human life, we should not be able to kill it because of how it was conceived or how it is going to grow up. To make this clear to people, he takes whatever example is given and then apply that logic to a toddler. For example: Would you kill a toddler conceived in rape or who has to grow up in poverty? Most people would agree that that would be monstrous but a pro-choice person would then say that an embryo is very different. The pro-life person can then ask, why these two lives are different? And then we are back on topic: is it really a child or not? That’s the real discussion we should be having.”

Overall, I encourage you all to be a pro-life people. Help out mothers in need and pray for the conversion of our country. I know that our Respect Life Committee is praying in front of the Planned Parenthood in Shrewsbury every Wednesday at 11 am for the 40 Days For Life events. I encourage you to join them and pray for our nation.

God bless!

Fr. Carter