Dear Parishioners,
Last week, I said that I would describe what is the best argument for abortion and why I do not believe it holds up. As best as I can understand it, people desire for abortion to be legal because they really believe abortions are sometimes a necessary medical procedure to save women’s lives. They can easily point out particular cases where doctors did not want to perform an abortion in certain states where abortion is illegal and then the woman unfortunately died.
I do not want to minimize the seriousness of this issue nor the risk pregnancy has for women’s lives. If I really believed that a woman’s life is in danger and did not believe that a fetus is a human being, I would be proabortion as well. However, the truth is that every state that has banned abortion has also added life exceptions to the ban. In every case where these women unfortunately die, it was not because of the law but a misunderstanding of the law. When you get into the actual facts of each case, there is often some other circumstance that muddies what role the law played in these deaths. For instance, I heard of one death that was related to an abortion ban where the woman actually delayed seeking medical attention and died of infection. In another case that was cited during the election by pro-abortion advocates, it described a woman who miscarried, not one who was seeking an abortion.
It is still wrong to seek abortion even if one’s life is in danger. However, pro-life people can work incrementally to limit abortion before banning it outright. This is how pretty much any social change has occurred: step by step to convince people that the change is good. Even if we had a complete abortion ban, without any exceptions, the chance of a woman’s life to be in danger would be exceptionally rare. After all, certain procedures that might result in the death of a child are not an abortion because the death of the child is not the intended result of the act. (Like treating an ectopic pregnancy or administering chemotherapy.) Furthermore, in cases where the child is viable,it should be preferred to spare that child’s life.
When judging medical cases we need to hold both the life of the mother and child with equal value. We cannot kill one so that the other may live. This is a truth that we cannot back away from or else we will be violating the dignity of many people. Because the moment we allow for any exception, we are saying that there are circumstances where it is permissible to directly murder another human being. Once we allow that, it is just a matter of arguing in which situations murder is permissible and then we will always have legalized abortion. In other words, we would lose all moral consistency to say abortion is wrong in the first place.
God Bless!
Fr. Carter
P.S. If you have participated in the sin of abortion, confession is always available and God will forgive you! Never be afraid to reach out for the mercy of God.