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Choose Life: Toward a Culture
of Life
in the New Millennium
Respect Life Month
By Archbishop Charles J. Chaput
Americans could sell sand in the desert. We're the world's best marketers.
That's the genius, and also the weakness, of our talent as a people. We use words with great skill, but without thinking too deeply about their consequences. In fact, we often use them precisely to prevent ourselves from thinking too deeply. Words can sell anything. They can also justify anything. The result is that fewer and fewer of us have confidence in the honesty of our public debates.
Twenty five years after Roe v. Wade, this means that any reflection on the "culture of life" begins from a deficit: The language of idealism has been so strangely misused for so long that many citizens simply don't listen anymore to principle or conscience. About the only thing that remains irrefutable is experience. So let me begin with the story of a colleague.
Bill has a Down syndrome child. The striking thing about Dan, according to Bill, is not how different he is from others, but how similar. He has all the usual Down syndrome characteristics that seem to soften the hard edge of a birth defect: a sweet temper, a gentle smile. He is also trouble on wheels, like every other first-grader. Dan is a person. He merely wears his imperfections on the outside, where they remind us uncomfortably of our own.
The thirst for perfection in our children, in our friends, in the strangers we encounter, is really a thirst for perfection within our wounded selves. The irony of God's design is that only our weakness, our imperfection, can drive the economy of love. It's what makes us human. We need each other. Fortunately, in all Dan's limitations and in all his possibilities, Bill has learned that his son is a treasure and not a mistake. The story of Bill and his son can serve to remind us that we need to begin with the specific and concrete in order to arrive at the general principles which we once all instinctively shared. Abortions kill people like Danny. In fact, Down syndrome children are becoming extinct because the defense of reproductive choice and the pursuit of human "perfection: have been elevated to modern dogma.
Some observers criticize the use of graphic fetal images to show the brutality of abortion techniques. It's true that sometimes the use of such images is inappropriate -- for example, when small children might see them and be traumatized.
But these pictures of broken bodies reconnect the hot air balloon of political debate to the gravity of the consequences, which involve flesh and blood. Pictures show what "pro-choice" rhetoric tries to hide. "Terminating a pregnancy" means killing a child prior to birth. "Partial-birth abortion" means stabbing and collapsing the skull of an infant who is partially born. Our society markets this as "choice." And, as a result, people are duped; society is soothed into indifference. When it's just a matter of choice, social and economic concerns can easily trump any claim that a "potential" baby might have.
Today's marketing of physician-assisted suicide is, perhaps, even more ominous because we have even less reason to be naive about it. The German medical establishment's inclination toward euthanasia predated the Nazis and can be traced to the eugenics movement of the early part of this century. That same eugenics movement persists today, in this country, albeit with a laundered vocabulary and better public relations advisers.
Nor can we plead innocence due to ignorance. We've had too many warnings. Society may start, as Oregon has, by allowing physician-assisted suicide in limited circumstances.
But it can only end as a social "necessity." Safeguards against the abuse of physician assisted suicide were trumpeted as stringent in the Netherlands. But the safeguards don't work because the logic of physician-assisted suicide is to relentlessly expand. As Michael Burleigh notes in Death and Deliverance: Euthanasia, 1900-1945 (Cambridge, 1994), the Nazi euthanasia campaign began on the merciful-sounding pretext of relieving people of unbearable pain. It ended with killing the mentally and physically disabled, the infirm, the insane, the anti-social, the merely troublesome and, of course, six million Jews. It is perhaps most disturbing of all that those who carried out the killing were often "normal" citizens who, in many cases, found the habit of "therapeutic killing" remarkably easy to acquire. One reason the human cost of abortion is so catastrophically high is that seemingly disparate things are interconnected and impact on our cultural character. The deaths by abortion of more than 37 million children have had a corrosive effect on our attitude toward life itself. Instead of families, neighbors and communities helping women welcome and care for their children, they are left to the mercy of an industry which makes its profits from killing unborn children. And after an abortion, a woman is left alone to bear the grief of her baby's death. a woman may suffer from guilt and even self-hatred for not having protected her child. She may also have no one to turn to for comfort, often because she concealed her pregnancy from family and friends, or because they encouraged her to have the abortion. Everyone is affected by the hardening of the heart which comes when a culture tolerates killing. In denying that human life is sacred, abortion undermines the very concept of human rights. Human life can be violated in many ways: when we tolerate euthanasia, treat others unjustly, or neglect those who are alone, in need or in despair. But efforts to protect and advance human rights cannot succeed if we do not first recognize that the right not to be killed is the base upon which all other rights rest. But how does one help others to understand this?
To penetrate the rhetoric of choice and highlight our capacity for violence and self-delusion are not enough. To transform our culture into one which respects and defends human life, it is necessary to speak of another and greater truth: All human life is sacred. God is its author. We do not own it. That is why we are called to be a people of life, people who respect and actively promote life. Our particular responsibilities flow from our state of life and our personal talents and no one is exempt. Bishops, for example, are called to teach and to encourage their brother priests and seminarians to hand on the Gospel of Life in its entirety. Catechists, teachers and theologians are asked to teach persuasively on behalf of unborn children and their mothers because this is where today's struggle is most costly in human lives. Parents face the challenge of raising their children to welcome new life as a gift from God, to respect those who are advanced in years, and to comfort the sick and the lonely. Political leaders have a responsibility to make courageous choices in support of life, especially through legislative measures that protect those who are mortally threatened -- children not yet born and those who are very old or very sick, and those who, like Danny, wear their imperfections on the outside. We can build a culture of life in the third millennium. To transform society, we are called to live and celebrate the Gospel of Life in our daily lives, lives marked by self-giving love for others. "Thus," says Pope John Paul II, "may the 'people of life' constantly grow in number and may a new culture of love and solidarity develop for the true good of the whole human society."
Archbishop Chaput of Denver serves the NCCB Committee for Pro-Life Activities.
Copyright ©1998 Arlington Catholic Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
This article was published in the Arlington
Catholic Herald,
200 N. Glebe Rd., Suite 607, Arlington, VA 22203; Vol 23, No 43;
dated Oct 29, 1998, on page 9.
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A note from the Web Master:
It is noteworthy and honorable that some folks are willing to stand up for a ban on Partial-Birth Abortion. Let us not forget that Abortion is also murder. We must understand that murder is murder no matter the method. Because one method of abortion seems to be horrible does not justify the other methods. We should be horrified and sickened by any Abortion regardless of the method. The Fifth Commandment spells it out clearly: "Thou shalt not kill." A fetus is a person, a human being with a God given soul. Imagine the pain the Lord must feel when any Abortion occurs. Please contact both of your Senators and Representative, via letter or phone, to let them know how horrified you are that Abortions are legal and to stop Partial-Birth Abortions and all other Abortions as soon as possible.
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