RESPECT, PROTECT, LOVE and SERVE EVERY HUMAN LIFE

This Monday, January 22, we note and observe a grim and sad anniversary. Thirty four years ago, on January 22, 1973, Supreme Court of the United States legalized abortion on demand. This gave our citizens, who wanted it, a right approved by law to choose to destroy human life. This decision ran contrary to 200 years of valuing, defending and protecting all human life, especially of the weak, small, defenseless and vulnerable.

Science has verified that the human embryo is alive and all that follows in human development is a marvelous continuum that begins at conception. Science uses terms like zygote, embryo, fetus, etc. to describe stages of human development. Each is a unique human being with a unique DNA. It is the same unique DNA at every stage of development and throughout life. These truths are deemed irrelevant and deliberately ignored by many. The basic questions: ‘Is this human life” When does human life begin?’ have been settled by science. There are other vital questions for people who think and love. ‘Who belongs to humanity? Whom do we welcome, accept responsibility for and share life with?’ How we respond reveals our own humanity. What one thinks of the human life of others has inescapable consequences for our lives.

Sadly, all of this is trumped and ignored by a gross and destructive nation of human freedom masked by ‘pro choice’. Such freedom recognizes no truths or values by my own. I create my own values and norms. What I am comfortable with determines what I do. Feeling good about myself is my primary guiding moral principle. Choosing to destroy human life is destructive to the victims, but more so to those who make this choice and carry it out and to our society.

There is another question that seeks truth - “What exactly happens in an abortion, euthanasia, partial-birth abortion and embryo stem cell research? What is done?” It is an act of ending human life - killing. No matter how ‘hidden’ or ‘clinical’ it is still killing human life.

That ‘my freedom’ is supreme over the life of other humans is disturbing and alarming. Are there no limits to ‘pro choice’? In our recent 20th century and now the terminally ill, the severely (and others) disabled, the unborn, the elderly, are threatened by ‘pro choice’. The fully alive human embryo is the current target.

John Saward in ‘The Way of the Lamb’ (1999) writes of the last half of the 20th century: “In a whole climate of feeling and thought, the CHILD has become - a problem to be prevented, an enemy to be destroyed, a product to be manufactured, an object of experimentation, a commodity to be sold, an instrument of loathsome pleasure”.

In his first homily as Pope, Benedict XVI affirmed the dignity and value of each human. That was during the Mass of the Inauguration of his Petrine Ministry on April 24, 2005: “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is a result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed. Each of us is loved. Each of us is necessary”.

Using human reason, scientists have with certainty established the fact of human life from conception and on. For some it makes little or no difference. But, ignoring truth and its consequences does not change either.

For others, the truth about human life confirmed by science is fundamental. But even greater and more important is faith that confirms reason. We are people of reason and faith. For us, human life is not negotiable, is not a commodity for our use, is not a product to be harvested, is not a means to an end.

Pope Benedict says of each human: “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is a result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed. Each of us is loved. Each of us is necessary”.
Next week - How We Make a Difference