Homily for Respect Life Sunday
Today, which the American Bishops have designated as Respect Life Sunday, there are many life issues that we could consider. But there is one that I think is worth our attention since it is, I think, a major stumbling block to the pro-life message. It concerns abortion and the welfare of women. The media often structures the abortion debate as a conflict between women and those who claim to represent the unborn child. The message is conveyed that pro-life equals anti-women. Those who promote respect for the rights of the unborn child are said to be against women. Once this assumption is accepted, the pro-life position is cut off before it is even heard. After all, what woman wants to listen to someone who is, they are told, anti-woman?
For this reason, leaders in the pro-life movement have recently tried to stress that they are not, and never were, anti-women or anti-women's rights, properly understood. One sees this idea put forward in some of the posters displayed at the March for Life in Washington D.C. last January. They said, "Here till no more women cry, till no more children die." The title of a pro-life handbook by Dr. John Wilke expresses a similar idea. It is, Why Can't We Love Them Both?
This love for women as well as their unborn children is not just a matter of words, or a pro-life public relations ploy, but a proud twenty-five year legacy of the pro-life movement. The Catholic Church has manifested this love in concrete ways, especially in direct services to women experiencing problem pregnancies. As the United States Bishops said in a 1995 pro-life statement:
When pregnant women and girls don't know where to turn, thousands of committed Catholics in our dioceses-and others to be sure-are there both to sustain and to challenge them. Ten to fifteen million each year, including many experiencing distressed pregnancies, turn to Catholic Charities for social and emergency services. Across this nation there are more than 3,000 emergency pregnancy centers [by the way, the number is now close to 4,000] that offer assistance for prenatal care and related needs, as well as numerous programs of reconciliation and healing to help women and men deal with the emotional and spiritual aftermath of abortion.
But beyond the offering of services to pregnant women, we should consider this too: that the Church and the pro-life movement helps women specifically by helping them to choose life. By educating people's consciences about the importance of respect for life and the serious moral evil of abortion, the Church is in fact serving women.
It is always a benefit to a person to support them in doing what is right. And when we support a woman and help her choose life, we help her in a way that touches the very core of her person. We help her walk the path of virtue and confirm and strengthen her in making rightful moral choices. When a woman has chosen life, she has manifested good moral judgement, inner strength, and love for the child within her. While her choice may have painful, she maintains an inner self-esteem, because she knows that another person has benefited immensely from her sacrifice. And the spiritual reward God will give her we can only begin to imagine.
Helping a woman choose life affirms and empowers her. It shows confidence in her strength, in her moral judgement, in her generous concern for others. It recognizes that women have the strength and wisdom to respect life, even when life is conceived in tragic circumstances.
If we are going to say then that the pro-life movement seeks to help women as well as unborn children, we have to look at the other side of the coin as well. In other words, we should consider that abortion hurts women.
That abortion is a violation of the human rights of unborn children must be affirmed. As John Paul II wrote in his encyclical, the Gospel of Life, 58:
Among all the crimes which can be committed against life, procured abortion has characteristics making it particularly serious and deplorable. The Second Vatican Council defines abortion, together with infanticide, as an "unspeakable crime."(54)…The one eliminated is a human being at the very beginning of life. No one more absolutely innocent could be imagined… He or she is weak, defenseless, even to the point of lacking that minimal form of defense consisting in the poignant power of a newborn baby's cries and tears.
But in addition to this, what has also come to light during the last twenty-five years of abortion on demand, is the destructive effects of abortion on the women themselves who choose it. A woman does not help herself by taking the life of her unborn child. Rather she hurts herself. Abortion is a lose-lose proposition.
For example, by choosing legal abortion, women have suffered medical complications and even death. The substandard care they have received at the hands of abortion providers is documented extensively. This is as one would expect it. Why would the best and brightest obstetricians want to dedicate themselves to a procedure that is repetitive, destructive, unchallenging, and largely disreputable within their own profession?
Regarding the psychological effects of abortion, one can say at the very least that there is no evidence of its having positive therapeutic value. On the contrary, there is substantial evidence of its ill effects on women. A number of psychologists have identified what they once called Post-Abortion Syndrome, now re-defined as Post Abortion Trauma. This condition usually manifests itself five years after an abortion, when a woman begins to experience problems such as depression, nightmares, low self-esteem, unexplained anger, or substance abuse. The roots of these problems are repressed guilt and the lack of an opportunity to grieve the loss of one's child. To help women dealing with Post Abortion Trauma, the American Bishops have supported programs such as "Project Rachel" and another called, "At Peace With Your Unborn." These and other similar programs help women face the truth about what they have done, and to open their hearts to God's healing love and mercy.
But as bad as such effects may be, the most serious harm women suffer from abortion is the harm done to the conscience itself.
We never help another person by conspiring with them to silence the voice of conscience. And in the case of abortion, as Post Abortion Trauma manifests, the voice of conscience is screaming. We never help a person by confirming them in a state of denial about what is really in the womb, or about the moral wrongfulness of what they are doing. As much as a woman may feel that abortion is the answer to her problem, we must never cooperate with her efforts to obtain one. To do so would be to conspire with a woman against herself.
One can see then, that when a woman is with child, her life and the life of the child are already so closely bonded that to help one is to help the other, and to hurt one is to hurt the other. The pro-life movement and the Catholic Church are actively committed to helping and loving both, and have proven that commitment in a way worthy of praise.
Pope John Paul II met last Friday with a group of American Bishops, and told them, "The pro-life movement is one of the most positive aspects of American public life, and the support given it by the bishops is a tribute to your pastoral leadership." On this Respect Life Sunday, instituted by the American Bishops, let us be grateful for their pastoral leadership, and answer their call to promote respect for the lives of unborn children, and to serve women in problem pregnancies with a love and compassion worthy of the name "Christian."
This item 554 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
