cormacburke.me.ke

           The campaign for legalized abortion has assumed worldwide dimensions.  There is probably not a single country that has not felt its impact in the past few years. Where abortion was already legal, on restricted grounds, the campaign has been aimed at removing these restrictions. And those countries where abortion is still illegal (countries like Ireland or Spain) are under growing pressure to legalize it: perhaps on restricted grounds, to begin with, but the campaign, here too, is evidently aiming at the ultimate goal of abortion "on demand."

Legality is not the same as morality

           It would be good to make one point clear, from the very start, which is that legality and morality are not synonymous. An action is legal or illegal insofar as it is, or is not, in accordance with the civil law, i.e. with the particular laws that a country or government maintain or introduce at any given moment. An action is moral or immoral, insofar as it is, or is not, in accordance with the law of human nature, which is part of the eternal law of God.

           It is curious, but some people today do not seem keen on admitting this distinction. They seem to believe -or at least to suggest— that a human law can, of itself, create or change the morality of an action. They believe —so it seems— that once an action has been declared legal, it may be carried out without any possible scruple of conscience. One does not need to reflect very much to realize that this is just not so. If a government, for example, introduces some measure of racial discrimination, does this mean that its citizens are without fault if they practice discrimination? If the sale of marihuana or pornography is legalized in a country, does this mean that the selling or buying of such merchandise is a morally solved question? Those who maintain that actions find their only source of morality in the laws of the state could have no complaint against the doctors in Nazi Germany who signed the certificates that sent millions of Jews to the gas chambers. Their action in signing the certificates was a legal action, envisaged and approved by the legal decrees of the state. The positivists, in virtue of their own principles, would have to approve of such actions since, being legal, they were necessarily moral ...

           No.  Morality and legality do not necessarily coincide. There are actions that have their intrinsic morality or immorality which no positive human law can affect or change. Therefore, if abortion is immoral before God and before the natural law, all the legislations of all the countries in the world cannot make it moral. They can make it legal, in such a way that if a person commits an abortion he will not commit a crime or civil offense. But he will continue to commit a grave sin against God and a crime against human nature, a crime against humanity.

The new "moralities"

           We will return to this point of the relation between morality and legality, since it is a point on which it is essential to have clear ideas. It is a grave matter if the civil laws depart from morality, from the principles of the natural law. It is worse if (as is usually the case) this departure is backed up by an attempt to create a new "morality" to justify these laws, if it is sought to base these laws on new "moral" principles (which would really imply basing them on a new concept of human nature, a concept which, as is logical, would be false). And it would be much graver still if, in criticizing these new laws as immoral, we were not able to uncover and criti- cize the principles of false morality by which it is sought to justify them. Let us try to do just this in relation to our present subject. We can begin our attempt by simply asking: What is abortion?

What is abortion?

           The answer to this question, until the early 1970s, was very simple. Abortion meant killing an unborn child, killing a hu­man being whose peculiar weakness consisted in his inability to survive outside his mother's womb. And there were two moral evaluations of this action:

           1) that it was a justifiable homicide - in certain cases. This was the position of many non-Catholics, although hardly of all;

           2) that it was an unjustifiable homicide, that is, that it was always murder, and therefore could never be licit. This was the Catholic position, shared by the Greek Orthodox Church and by many other religious and nonreligious people.

           The reasoning behind the first position - justifiable homi­cide - was simple: that in the extreme case (the only one contemplated) of conflict between the life of the mother and the life of the child, the mother's life is more valuable, and the child's life should be sacrificed so that the mother can survive. The extreme case would be a pregnancy such that, if allowed to come to term, the mother - and perhaps the child too - would die.

           What is one to think of this position?. Two things: a) one can easily accept that it was inspired by a sincere humanitar­ian feeling; b) that the principles on which it was based - that one human life is worth more than another, and that one can kill an innocent person in order to save an­other - opened the door inevitably to the position on abor­tion that has rapidly become generalized today: the position of those who campaign for abortion "on demand," with no more justification than the fact that the mother-or perhaps the State-demands it.

           As regards the Catholic position, it is enough to say for the moment that it is based on the clear principle that every hu­man being receives his life directly from God, and only God can take that life away, unless a person fortifies his right to life by a voluntary criminal aggression. It is not possible to imagine a more innocent person than an unborn child; therefore, one cannot directly kill the child for any reason whatsoever

           Such was the situation as regards abortion not very many years ago-overall, a situation where it was easy to indicate and describe the points of agreement and the points of dis­agreement. There was agreement, between both sides, as to the nature of abortion: that it meant killing a child, that it was homicide, that the being in the mother's womb was a human being. And there was disagreement as to the licitness of this homicide: for some it was always illicit; for others it was, in certain grave cases, justifiable and licit. It is worth adding that even in the countries where this latter viewpoint prevailed and the civil law recognized the legality of abortion in such extreme cases, the same legislation forbade and punished abor­tions performed in the absence of such exceptional cases or circumstances.

The position today

           Now, if we examine the present-day situation, it so happens that to this question - what is abortion? - we find not two but three answers:

           1) that it is a nonjustifiable homicide - this is the Catholic position, reaffirmed by Vatican Council II in the strongest terms, in the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, where abortion is referred to as an "abominable crime" (no. 51);

           2) that it is a justifiable homicide in certain circumstances; i.e. the position - already commented on - of certain non-Catholics;

           (3) that it is not a homicide at all! This is the position with which I wish espe­cially to deal, for it is generally the position of the modern campaigners for the so-called reform or "liberalization" of the laws on abortion, and it is the ideological position - the new "moral" basis - by which they seek to justify what cannot be justified.

Reformulating the problem

           Abortion, say the liberal reformers, is not a homicide at all, for a very simple reason: that what is killed is not a human being, that what is in the uterus is not human.

           It is obvious that this supposition means a complete refor­mulation of the abortion problem. The reformulation is in fact so complete that if the supposition on which it is based is accepted, the problem aspect of abortion practically disappears for many people, and abortion becomes a matter - so they sug­gest - almost devoid of any difficulties of a moral nature.

Why the reformulation?

           Perhaps the first thing to do in relation to this new position is to ask why and how it should have arisen in such a few years. It is not difficult to find the answer

           Everyone likes to feel humanitarian. The "liberals" of today's moral positivist school like not only to feel humani­tarian but also to be able to proclaim themselves such.

           The liberal humanitarian sense of non-Catholics of 30 years ago found no excessive difficulty in accepting that the life of an unborn child should be sacrificed to save the life of a mother. The years have passed, and, with the years, two main factors have intervened. One is that the advance in medicine has practically eliminated the extreme case of having to choose between saving either the mother's life or the child's. Despite this - and here is the second factor - the demand for abortions has increased. There are many motives behind this increase. They include some "indications" of a more or less medical nature: the mother's poor health, the strain that a pregnancy imposes on her nerves, and so on. The main mo­tive, however, is simply the growing birth-control mentality.

           Despite their being wrapped up in apparently disinterested references to world population problems, the motives for abortion in one individual case after another - at least in the more developed countries - can almost always be reduced to an inability to look on the child with love. It is, after all, an incapac­ity to love that makes a couple think of their unborn baby as nothing more than a burden: the burden of the pregnancy and of the care the child will require after birth. It is an incapacity to love that makes a family dwell on the fact that, if the child is born, they will have to give up some material comfort. It is an incapacity to love that makes a mother not want to bear and give birth to the child she has conceived.

Turning the fetus into a "thing"

           To kill a child in order to save the life of a mother was not repugnant to the humanitarian sense of some liberals of 30 years ago. To kill a child in order to save the convenience of the mother - her reluc­tance to go through with an existing pregnancy - or to save the well-being of the other children or the financial position of the family: to accept this is to ask a lot of the humanitarian sense of anyone, however liberal he or she may be.

           The solution has been found quite simply. So, is it too much to sacrifice a child's life for the sake of a mother's ca­price, or a family's standard of living, or a society's wel­fare?.. Then, let it not be the life of a child that is sacrificed; let it be no more than the life of a fetus. Let us conclude, moreover (according to someone's happy theory), that the fe­tus is not human (let us conclude it, I say, because we certainly cannot prove it), and what we are left with, after all that, is neither homicide nor infanticide, but only feticide - which (let us be persuaded) is no more significant in the moral order than the killing of some microbes (also foreign and un­wanted bodies) by means of an injection of penicillin.

           Here is the new moral view of the abortion question. We are going to have to face the objection (so they would seem to have reasoned) that abortion is homicide; and certainly, at least in the new cases we are interested in, it would be difficult to justify a homicide... Let us not waste time trying to justify it. Let us say, in all simplicity, that it is not a homicide, because what is aborted has not a human nature; it is therefore not a person, it is a thing. And because things possess no rights, the problem quite disappears.

Two-stage abortion

           What this view offers us is, so to speak, a two-stage abortion: a physical operation preceded by a metaphysical operation, a physical abortion with a metaphysical prerequisite: namely, that of suppressing the human identity of the living being in the womb. Once this metaphysical operation has been performed (a truly painless operation - rovided one applies a little anes­thesia to one's conscience), the surgical or pharmacological operation necessary to suppress what "remains" in the uterus offers no special difficulty, since this "remainder" - duly disen­franchised from among the race of man and deprived of its human status and rights - is not a human being; it is no more than a non-human thing.

           Let us grasp this clearly. The essential argument of abortion­ists is not (except in two cases we will examine later on) that new indications or reasons for abortion have been discovered, new reasons of note that were hitherto unknown. Their argu­ment is different, and it is important, I repeat, to grasp it. They are not mainly saying that there are more reasons than those formerly known, to justify killing what is in the womb. They are saying that what is in the womb has less importance than what was formerly believed; it has less value. It has no human value and possesses no human rights.

The Catholic argument

           The whole of the Catholic argument - and I would maintain that, from whatever angle one may consider the matter it is the only truly rational, truly scientific, and truly humanitarian argument - is that the unborn child is already a human being and enjoys all the natural rights of every human being, among which the main right is the right to life; and moreover, that its particular situation as a defenseless human being confers on it the right to special protection from the civil law.

           It is interesting to recall that the United Nations, in plenary session in November 1959, unanimously approved a declara­tion of the rights of the child in the following terms: "The child, in virtue of its lack of physical and intellectual maturity, needs special protection and care, including adequate legal protection, both before and after birth." This declaration was renewed later on at the International Human Rights Confer­ence, in Teheran, in May 1968.

Embryology gives supporting evidence

           From the theological viewpoint, specifically human life begins with the infusion, by God, of the soul into the new embryonic organism. Although there has been no dogmatic declaration on this point, the Magisterium of the Church has crystallized in the clear teaching that the beginning of this personal human life should be computed from the moment of conception: the moment in which the ovum has been fertilized. This teaching is reflected in the relation between certain liturgical feasts- the Annunciation (March 25th) and Christmas; the Immacu­late Conception and the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady (September 8th) - and is supported by the dispositions of Canon Law (see canon 71). Much more significant and inter­esting is the fact that this universal teaching of the Church is supported and fully borne out by all the scientific advances in modern embryology. So true is this that one can affirm that, from a scientific viewpoint, the truth of the Catholic teaching on this point has been placed beyond all doubt. Modern embryological research has shown that the human being, organically speak­ing, is fully constituted by the fertilization of the ovum, and that everything that follows is simply the process of develop­ment of an already existing human organism, without it being possible to indicate any subsequent datum or fact on which one could reasonably base the supposed beginning of a per­sonal human life.

The arbitrariness of the abortionist position

           It is significant that abortionists or pro-choice people never speak of an unborn child. They rigorously use the term "em­bryo" or "fetus." If they are asked (a question not much to their liking) to define what is a fetus, they define it as "potential human life," speaking of it on occasion even as "potential life." And if they are obliged to pursue their pseudo-philosophical or pseudo-juridical line, they maintain that this potential life does not become real and actual human life - with its corresponding rights - until birth, or at least until the fetus is viable. This, as anyone can see, is pure arbitrariness. It is impossible to advance any rational or scientific principle or fact on which it can be based. It is simply the product of prejudice. Is anyone prepared seri­ously to maintain that what is born today is human, but that what was in the womb yesterday was not?. If one tries to make an argument out of viability, can one say that a newborn child is significantly more viable than a child still in its mother's womb&. If anything, he is definitely less viable. One has to put more care, and not less, in feeding him. One has to take greater precautions to make sure, for example, that he does not fall down the stairs, precautions that his mother guar­anteed him far more effectively when he was still in the womb.

           If human personality and human rights are not acquired until one is really viable, until one can get by and survive by oneself, it is doubtful that any child less than six or seven years old is really a human being.

           I repeat: all the scientific arguments are against the position of the abortionists and in favor of the Catholic position. If someone wants a practical test of this, then let him simply ask a non-Catholic doctor who has performed an abortion whether what he has extracted from the womb is no more than a thing; or whether it is a living being. And if it is a living being, of what species is it?. No; the abortionist position is not based on sci­ence or on reason; it is based on prejudices and interests, nei­ther of which have anything very humanitarian about them.

The legality complex

           Those who seek to "liberalize" our modern legislations (and not just in relation to abortion) are characterized by a curious combination: a marked complex about legality without the least concern for morality; a complex that the actions they wish to perform or see performed, whatever their moral nature, simply must be permitted by the civil law. One does not have to analyze this complex very deeply in order to see in it an ultimate expression of hypocrisy, decadence, and impotence. It is to rebel at seeing one's own interests or caprices restricted externally or threatened with legal compulsion or punishment, without the least movement of indignation or rebellion against one's personal incapacity to regulate these caprices or to control them internally, from within; an incapacity which is due, in the last analysis, to not really listening to the voice of one's conscience, or to no longer being able to obey it (bearing in mind that one's conscience is not a servile appendix of our selfishness which is already to say "Yes," but an exacting voice of God that often tells us "No").

           It is a poor hypocrisy which, when it sees it can no longer count on an interior approval, thinks that it is enough to remove the exterior prohibition.

Does "liberalization" really favor liberty?

           Given this basis, it is no wonder that the legality complex of the liberalizers pushes them along curious paths. If an action is to be legal, there must obviously be agreement between the action and the law. Formerly, this normally meant that the action had to agree with the law. The solution that our present-day liberalizers are trying to generalize is the much handier solution of making the law agree with the action . . . When one reflects that this has been the favorite resort of some of the biggest tyrants of history - Nero, Henry VIII, or Napoleon, for instance - one begins to wonder if this resort, this process, is really one of liberalization, if it really favors liberty.

Back to nineteenth century liberalism

           No one, I should hope, wants to have more laws. We already have more than our fair share of them. But a minimum of laws is necessary if there is to be any civilized society. If there are fewer laws, or if the laws prohibit fewer things, it is obvious that there will be fewer illegal actions. Does this mean that there will be more freedom? For some people, undoubtedly. But history proves that a state of affairs where there is little or no legal control over personal actions, tends to favor a minority: precisely the most powerful. The majority —and above all those who are weakest— suffer; their freedom is lessened. It should scarcely be necessary to recall all that has been said and written about the effects, in the economic and social fields, of a nineteenth century capitalism which also styled itself liberal . . .   Well, the philosophy preached by the abortion liberalizers is also a nineteenth century philosophy, and it is not rendered any less calculating or self-seeking by their efforts to hide it under the banner of freedom.

           With a little bit of juggling practically any action can be made legal. It is just a matter of changing the laws, and for that all that is needed is a vote in Parliament or a governmental decree. But morality cannot be subjected to the same juggling, for morality —the norm of morality— does not lie in men's hands nor does it fall under the power of parliaments or governments; it depends on God.

           Therefore, even if one were to imagine the extreme and absurd case of all civil laws being abolished —in such a way that there would no longer be any illegal action— the morality of actions would not be in the least affected, for it is governed by another order of things.

The effects of abortionism

           The attempt to justify abortion can be worse than abortion itself. I am thinking especially of the efforts of modern abortionists who having first presented abortion as an indifferent action, afterwards make it out to be a benefit, a right, and a positive good.  The effect of these attempts to justify the unjustifiable are disastrous as much in the case of the advocates or practitioners of abortionism as in that of the poor women who are led by the abortionist propaganda to yield to the temptation to abort.

Aborters versus abortionists

           Let us consider, in the first place, the case of the advocates of the new abortionism. I have had the occasion to know quite a number of non-Catholic doctors who accepted abortion —in extreme cases— and had practiced it. They regarded it, however, with absolute repugnance and were quite clear in their minds that what they had aborted —what they had killed— was a human being. For them, abortion was always a tragic event, even though they regarded it as a necessary and justified tragedy. I was able to understand their reasons, although I was unable to accept them - simply because they seemed mistaken to me, as some of them have in fact since come to acknowledge. In any case, their reaction in the face of the "liberalizing" campaign of these past years gives grounds for thinking that their previous attitude towards abortion, however mistaken, was held in good faith. These same doctors have been the founders and promoters of the "Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child," a society founded precisely in order to fight against the proponents of "liberal" abortion, against the attitude of those for whom abortion is a trivial event, justifiable for any or for no reason whatsoever.

Are the new abortionists sincere?

           As a priest I have learned to distinguish between the sin and the sinner. I have also learned that, although one can and at times one must judge actions and facts, it is difficult and risky to judge persons. My training and natural instinct lead me to believe in the good faith of others. It is not hard for me to accept, for example, that many non-Catholics can, in good faith, believe that divorce is licit. Even in the case of contraceptives, I can see how a non-Catholic can in good faith maintain that their use in marriage may be licit in certain circumstances. I believe that these non-Catholics are mistaken in both cases, and that it is possible moreover to prove that they are mistaken. I acknowledge, however, that the process of reasoning, by which their error can be demonstrated, is delicate, and I can see how a non-Catholic may not follow this reasoning and sincerely maintain the contrary opinion.

           But I cannot see this at all in the case of the new abortionists. The nature of the act - i.e. the killing of a living and innocent human being - is so evident (and all modern scientific research bears out the fact that it is a human being that is killed) that I cannot see how a normal person can sincerely go wrong on this point. I am sorry, but if someone argues that what is killed in an abortion is not a human being —is not a member of our human race already constituted in its own existence and personality— I simply cannot believe him. I cannot believe in his sincerity. Or if I am pushed, I am prepared to say that I can believe in his sincerity, but only at the cost of not believing in his intelligence. Either he is lying or else he is stupid. I see no further alternatives.

The woman who aborts ...

           Let us now think for a moment about the woman who procures an abortion. I repeat that we cannot judge persons. Only God can do that properly.   In a moment of temptation, a pregnant woman —who does not want to have her child— can have been swayed by countless factors: factors of personal formation, of the influences coming from her environment, her relatives or friends, factors of loneliness, of fear, of nervous strain ... We cannot judge the degree of blame which may rest on a woman in such a situation. Only God, who takes everything into account, can judge this. We can however judge something else, or at least form a good opinion about it, i.e. what will become of this woman, in human terms, according as she repents or not of what she has done.

           Let us not fool ourselves. The woman who has procured an abortion knows that she has procured the death, the murder, of her own child, the fruit of her own womb.  And she remains with a deep wound in her conscience. A permissive society may find no difficulty in forgiving her. The worst of it is that she will not be able to forgive herself, or to forget. And my experience is that in the exceptional cases where a woman does succeed in silencing her conscience, she does so at the cost of moral suicide: she destroys her very conscience and her sense of values, she de-feminizes and dehumanizes herself. Her maternal instinct in particular, and her whole capacity of loving, suffer enormous and irreparable damage. The Church never wants to condemn persons. If it condemns sin, if it condemns wrong actions, it is in order to help people have clear ideas, to help them look into their conscience (which, if they have done wrong, will also accuse them) so that, by repenting, they can find pardon and peace. It is those that condone immoral actions who may be condemning a person to a terrible life of mental anguish.

Personalization and depersonalization

           This leads us to touch on another pseudo-argument of the abortionists, according to which the determination that the unborn child is a person should depend not on biological facts, nor even on time factors (viability or birth), but on a psychological factor.  Playing with concepts drawn from modern psychology —concepts that emphasize the importance of intersubjective relationships in the process of "personalization"— some abortionists have suggested that the unborn child cannot properly be regarded as a person before it has been accepted by its parents; if this acceptance is lacking- so the argument runs- it cannot be considered a person nor does it possess personal rights.

           This argument runs into the same sort of trouble as the "viability" argument. It "proves" too much. On its basis, nei­ther a one-year-old child nor a five-year-old child would be a person either, if its parents have not "accepted" it. Obviously it is before, and not after, begetting a child that the parents have to decide if they want it or not. Before, he was a possibility, precisely no more than a potentiality. After, he is a reality, and that reality is a person just as much as the one-day-old or the one-month-old baby. He is a person, who therefore possesses a personality in the fullest human sense, a personality that makes him or her the subject of rights. (We might note here that to the arguments given earlier taken from embryology, we can add an argument taken from juridical science. All ancient and modern jurisprudences attribute to the unborn child full juridical person­ality, expressed, for example, in the child's capacity to inherit or be the beneficiary of a will).

           There is, of course, an ambiguity in the personalization ar­gument. But it is an ambiguity that, when brought to light, rebounds back against the very proponents of the argument. Evidently, if one asks whether the unborn child has its own "personality" in the popular sense -in the sense of possessing a whole personal manner of being, of thinking and speaking and acting- the answer is No. In this sense the unborn child is not "personalized," nor is the one-day-old, nor the one-month-old child; just as, in this same sense, the three-year-old or the five-year-old child is only very slightly personalized.

           Since "personalization" really means the process of the de­velopment of one's individual personality, this is evidently a process that takes years: all the years of one's life, in fact. Only with the years -with all that the years bring in terms of human experience: of generosity or selfishness, of virtues and sins, of learning to respect and love others or of failing to learn to love, of having faced up to one's responsibilities or of having rejected them- does a person develop his or her distinctive personality.

Self-realization for "liberated" women?

           The personalization argument -which has no application to the case of the unborn child (what personality can be developed by a person who is killed?) -does, however, apply very clearly precisely to the case of the mother who aborts. For here one can ask, and largely foresee, what sort of personality is going to be developed by a person who kills.

           Modern psychology insists that men and women "realize" themselves above all in their relations with other people, and that one of the clearest proofs of the presence or absence of personality is the capacity or incapacity for estab­lishing interpersonal relationships.

           What personality is going to be developed by a woman who, before the most intimate interpersonal relationship imagin­able -the relationship between her own person and the person of the child she has conceived; the (truly unique) relationship between her own body and the body of the child in her womb-, rejects and destroys that relationship, killing her child and having its body consigned to a hospital incinerator?.

           Through what type of later relationships will a woman be able to "realize" herself if her reaction to this sacred mother-child relationship has been to extirpate her most intimate in­stincts of motherhood and pity from her heart, by extirpating her child from her body?

           It is sad to see pro-choice propaganda present abortion as a "right" of every woman, claiming this right precisely in the name of women's "liberation." It is sad propaganda that can only turn the women who use this "right" into sad and embit­tered women. Who is going to liberate them afterward from the awareness of what, in violation of their most intimate human instincts, they have done?

Two new "indications

           I would now like to examine two points: two new "indica­tions" or arguments that tend to make ever more frequent appearances in the pro-abortion campaign. I will consider them briefly, not because these arguments are less impor­tant -they are very significant and important- but simply because space does not permit any more extensive treatment.

The "eugenic" argument

           The first argument is that of the so-called "eugenic" indica­tion: in other words, the probability (or possibility) that the already conceived child may be born with some physical or mental defect. All modern abortion-law reform includes a clause legalizing an abortion carried out for eugenic reasons. The clause containing the eugenic indication tends to be very short, and many people probably look on it as another indica­tion, more or less of the same order as the others.

           It is no such thing! If the philosophy of life that underlies the other indications is repellent, the ideology underlying this clause is of an infinitely worse order Let us state it very clearly: this indication is the fruit of no mere selfish hedo­nism; nor is it the product of an individualistic materialism that has lost its sense of direction and values. By means of this little clause, a clear, powerful, and repugnant philosophy is opening a way for itself -a legal way- into our Western societies. The philosophy, or rather ideology, of this clause is that of racial purity and has little or no essential difference from the Hitlerian ideology. For eugenicism, after all, simply means this: we don't want any inferior stock, we don't want any "substandard" specimens who could disturb the tranquil contemplation of our Brave New World, demanding compas­sion, appealing for charity or affection, or simply reminding us that there is a God to whom we ought to be grateful for the good things we enjoy.

Lives not worth living

           Let us not forget what this phrase - lives not worth living - means in practice. It means, each time it is applied, that one person or several persons are making the following judgment: "In our opinion, this life - and they are speaking of another human being already in existence - is not worth living. It is (or rather, it may later turn out to be) so defective that it is better for it to die now."

           The criticism, it should be noted, is valid even for those who maintain that the fetus is not yet a human person. They are saying: "This life, which - unless we kill it - will de­velop into a human person, will develop into a human life unworthy of being lived. Therefore, let us kill it."

           The essential and only basis for what we call democratic rights is that every being has inviolable value; and that no one - no State, no authority, no person - can decide that any­one else's life is useless and dispensable.

           One can make the judgment that someone is living in conditions unworthy of a human being, and then make every effort to remedy those conditions. That is humanitarian.

           What one cannot do - in the name of humanitarianism - is to make the judgment that someone is not worthy to live, even if he may have to live in conditions unworthy of a human being. That Is not a humanitarian but a totalitarian judgment. When one makes that judgment, one has put an end to humanitarianism.

Consequences of eugenicism

           The eugenic argument is subject to many further criticisms. I will limit myself to two:

           a) The prognosis that the child may possibly be born de­fective cannot be made with absolute certainty If abortions are performed on this ground, the result will be that in a high percentage of the cases (some estimates say that it could be as high as 50 percent) quite normal children will be killed. It would be much more logical, from the eugenicist viewpoint (and if the eugenicists consider themselves humanitarian, it would also be, for them, much more humanitarian) to let all these pregnancies come to term and, once the children have been born, kill those who in fact prove defective. If anyone says that this would be too repugnant, I could not agree more; but it is the logic of eugenicism that is repugnant.

           b) If, in virtue of the principle that defective lives are not worth living, it is humane to kill in order to prevent a persons being born who may turn out to be defective, it is unquestion­ably more humane still to kill a person who has already turned out to be defective, to kill a defective person already born whether one day old or one year; or twenty or forty or sixty. And that person can be killed because (it is a point inherent in the same principle) he is not possessed of human life by a sufficiently good title. His physical or mental defect has made his very right to life defective. He can be killed, not perhaps for the "defect" of being a Jew, but for that of being crazy or disabled or chronically ill, or simply aged.

           The acceptance of eugenicist abortion means - whether the public at large is aware of the fact or not - the acceptance not only of the principles underlying euthanasia, but of all of the prin­ciples of the politics of racial purity: the policy of the elimina­tion of the unfit of those unworthy of life, of those who do not measure up to the quality standards laid down -by the controllers-that-be -for the human stock...

What sort of world are we heading for?

           But surely - I hear the objection - all of this is rather exaggerated No. It is not exaggeration. It is simply a projection. It is simply to follow out the logical consequences of the new abor­tionist philosophies, and to project them on to the practical life of a perhaps not-very-far-off future.

           Tomorrow's world will be the product of the tendencies and ideologies that have prevailed in the world of today. What will that world be like? It is something to think about, while there is still time to think. This is not the moment to play the ostrich, burying our heads in the sand. It is an elementary responsibility to read the signs of the times, to see where a large part of our civilization is heading, and to ask ourselves if we too want to go in that direction. To prefer not to ask oneself the question is the surest way of finding oneself eventually dragged in that very direction.

           I would therefore reemphasize something I said earlier. Abor­tion - tolerated or legalized; looked on with indifference or with approval -represents an extreme of barbarity that is hard to surpass. One could well see in it a symbol of how our civilization seems bent on destroying the very seeds of survival that it bears within itself.

           It is difficult to imagine a more inhuman or more dehumanizing act than that of a mother who permits or procures the killing of the child to whom she has given life and whom she bears within. Some years ago, when the proposal to "liberalize" the abor­tion law in England was being debated, I recall seeing a televi­sion program which included interviews with a series of women who had each had a number of abortions. The interviewer's questions were evidently aimed at "proving" one point: that neither physically nor psychologically had they suffered any adverse effects from the abortions. What the women said, in answer, corroborated the thesis fully. However, I still retain a vivid memory of their hardened faces, their way of answering, their evident concern to justify themselves, their insistence that they had never been troubled by the least feeling of repug­nance or remorse, their air of proud and sad loneliness; in a word, the impression of what I have mentioned earlier: a bru­tal defeminization and dehumanization.

Excommunicating oneself from humanity...

           It is understandable that the Church should wish to empha­size the gravity of this "abominable crime" by decreeing an ipso facto excommunication not only for the woman who procures an abortion, but also for all who have effectively intervened in the abortion, even though this has been no more than by sim­ply advising it (Code of Canon Law, can. 2350)

           An abortionist - again I am thinking above all of those who try to justify this crime - excommunicates himself from the most elementary human community, the community of those who strive to respect the human rights of others whatever their religion, race, color, sociaL position, state of physical or mental health, or age.

Time to wake up

           It is time to wake up. And it is time to speak clearly. I have no doubt that the Catholic Church is going to draw on to itself the resentment of many because of its clear and inflexible attitude in defense of the life of the unborn. And those who see and feel the truth of this teaching of the Church, and are ready to defend it and proclaim it, should be prepared to become objects of mockery, ill will, and perhaps physical persecution. After all, if there exist people who are ready to kill an innocent child for no more reason than that it will be a burden on their material or financial position, one may well suppose that they would be more than ready to eliminate those who, by their insistence on the truth, create or maintain a burden on their conscience. It is true that, in order to eliminate them, they might find one factor wanting, which is legality. But, as we have seen, that need be no insurmountable obstacle for them. With another campaign ...

The demographic argument

           The second new argument which is used (although not yet very openly) to support abortion is the demographic argument. The cases in which abortion is recommended as a means to solve the demographic problem are still few. For the moment, the matter rather works the other way around; i.e. the constant propaganda about over­population acts as a factor in favor of abortion. As public opinion is "mentalized" so as to think that it is not quite right to have more than one or two children, that one ought not to have more than one or two, that this is an urgent and imperative duty, that its non-observance must be regarded, initially, as a total lack of responsibility and next, as a flagrant crime against society ... then it becomes progres­sively easier to persuade the public that abortion is not a crime at all; that, far from being a crime, it may he the best and most appropriate means to get people to fulfill a strict duty.

           It is logical that those to whom this "argument" appeals should be attracted also by the fact that abortion is, without the slightest doubt, the most effective means to check popula­tion growth. It requires no exceptionaL degree of intelligence to figure out that the best means to ensure that there is no excess population is to kill the "surplus. This, in all its true crudeness, is the way of thinking among some people, although they do not - as yet - dare to present it quite so bluntly But it is as blunt as that; so much so that one could well ask those who think this way to explain if there is any real difference. as a means to their end, between the scalpel and the machine-gun.

           It is, in fact, because of demographic considerations that many individuals and not a few politicians support the legalization of abortion on demand. It comes as a nasty shock to most people to learn that the number of abortions in Japan in recent years has been over one million annually, equalling or exceeding the number of live births, or that in Hungary, in 1964, for each 100 children born there were 140 abortions.

Humanitarianism and capital punishment

           The campaign to abolish capital punishment has been one of the major expressions of the modern human rights movement. I understand the arguments advanced, and I respect the movement. I cannot, however, fail to remark on one striking inconsistency: those who defend the abolition of capital punishment are very often the same people who campaign for the legalization of abortion.

           It is curious, and much more than curious, that those who want to get rid of the death penalty for criminals (or for those whom the law courts have declared to be criminals) should want to introduce it for those who are undeniably innocent.

           All this compassionate and humanitarian striving in favor of criminals, or of presumed criminals, is admirable. I have absolutely nothing to object to it. But, I ask, do the innocent not also deserve some compassion?

           The fact is that I find it hard —very hard— to believe in the sincerity (or in the intelligence) of those who get indignant about the death penalty and do not get indignant —infinitely more indignant— about legalized liberal abortion. It seems a pretty example of what Arnold Lunn, in another context, calls "selective indignation."

Selective indignation

           I have, I repeat, nothing whatsoever against those young or not so young people who get indignant at the application of the death penalty in the few countries where it still exists. I may or may not join them, but I will defend their right to go on strike, organize protest marches, distribute leaflets, and chalk up street signs as they please. If, however, they do not get much more indignant each time the subject of abortion comes up, if they do not rise up in anger whenever they think of the thousands of defenseless children who are killed all over the world - not once or twice a year, but every day - then I confess that I cannot take their sensitivity or concern about human rights seriously. They are being too selective. And I would apply to selective indignation the alternatives I mentioned earlier on: if it is not a sign of lack of sincerity, it is at least a sign of little depth and lesser intelligence; and I feel not the slightest respect for it.

           If someone objects that I am —once more— exaggerating, I would deny it. If the objection is that these and previous arguments are emotionally charged, I would concede the point, but would ask to be shown their falsehood. This is what matters: to know which of the different positions in this question corresponds to truth; and which to falsehood, to vested interests, prejudice, or hypocrisy. It is only logical that one should feel moved by the truth. And it is logical that one should feel even more moved by the spectacle of the truth being warped, sold, prostituted, and betrayed.

The Church reaffirms her teaching

           The present Pope, echoing the teaching of his predecessors, has repeatedly condemned abortion in these past few years. Of particular note was his address of December 9, 1972, to a congress of jurists assembled in Rome.

           The worldwide pro-abortion campaign has drawn forth pronouncements from practically all the hierarchies of the western countries, reaffirming the Catholic position particularly in view of the new attitudes or philosophies of the abortionists. Since 1971, the hierarchies of France, West Germany, East Germany, Italy, Beligum, Holland, Austria, Switzerland, United States, and Canada have issued declarations drawn up in the clearest possible terms, emphasizing that the Church has not changed her position in this matter, nor will she change it; that abortion continues to be, for her, what it has always been: murder.

The call to civil disobedience

           In February, 1973, the United States hierarchy responded to a decision of the Supreme Court - legalizing abortion - with a particularly strong declaration. The subsequent advice given to the U.S. Catholics has been just as strongly practical.

           The legalization of abortion necessarily brings in its wake a tremendously increased pressure on Catholic nurses and doctors to practice, or help in, abortions. Facing up to this situation, the American bishops have issued a call to civil disobedience, in virtue of the clear principle that when the laws of the state are opposed to the law of God, one has the right and the duty to disobey those laws. In many countries this is what is being asked of Catholics: an open and fearless attitude of resistance - and, if needs be, of rebellion - against unjust and inhuman laws. Their firmness and fearlessness in so acting may be, humanly speaking, the only thing capable of stirring the drugged consciences of so many, and of saving a civilization which seems blindly bent on rejecting the few truly human values left to it, and sinking into barbarism.