Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children

Lectionary: 315​

Now our high priest has obtained so much more excellent a ministry
as he is mediator of a better covenant, 
enacted on better promises.

 

Forty-eight years ago today, the United States Supreme Court surprised the nation and the world by overturning virtually all legal protections for unborn children. They based their decision on a “right to privacy” that was unknown to writers of the American Constitution, a right undesired and unimagined until recently. The decision permitted not only the destruction of millions of infant humans, it also encouraged the willy-nilly spawning of “rights” which, if unwritten in the heavens were somehow implied in the Constitution.

Rights in the real world, of course, are privileges we grant to one another. A wife gives her husband, and perhaps her brother, her son, and her father, the privilege of kissing her on the lips. She does not grant that privilege to strangers or acquaintances; and she may withdraw the privilege even from her loved ones at any time.

However, rights in the idealized world of the Supreme Court have a different kind of existence. They simply exist up there and cannot be revoked. Rights are supposed to permit one to do whatever they choose within their limited field. 

That privileged space is like the backyard of a family home. Protected by a high wall or fence, equipped with proven-safe toys, it permits confined children to go berserk if they so choose, without fear of hurting themselves. Parents can send their children into this secure area and go about their business, assured that no harm will come to their young ones. Both parties are free to do as they please, free of responsibility, free of oversight, free from anyone who might care about them. Everybody wins in this ideal world!

That model of freedom fits the deism of America’s Founding Fathers who supposed that the Creator had finished his work and had little interest in what humans did with his creation. Guiding principles of good and evil were theoretically woven into the moral structures of this world; they were evident to any reasonable person. We needed neither revelation nor divine intervention to know right from wrong. The deists' ideal God was not supposed to interfere in human affairs and, so far as they could tell, never had. He simply didn’t care. Or, if he did, he didn’t act like it, which was the same thing. Given God’s absence, men could enjoy their rights without constraint or fear of judgment. 

Oddly, these men never thought of abortion rights in the backyard that was America. The Supreme Court, in 1973, filling in the apparent gap, created those rights ex nihilo.

 

Opposition to “abortion rights” has accepted and assumed the same deistic language of rights by promoting the “right to life.” Proponents of abortion, realizing that abortion is an ugly word – no little girl looks forward to her first abortion – then invented the “right to choose.” Suddenly rights were spreading like dandelions in a manicured lawn. Where two or more Americans were gathered together, new rights appeared. 

 

The freedom of the Gospel, that freedom for which Christ died, (See Galatians 5:1) supposes that God cares about everything we do, think, and feel. There is no backyard he does not watch with loving eye; there is no dark place in the heart where God should not govern. Any student of the Ten Commandments must notice God’s prohibitions against their most private thoughts, like coveting the neighbor’s property or spouse.

Christian freedom revels in God’s omnipresence and under God’s benevolent gaze. We seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit continually. We understand that the smallest decisions can become habitual and dictate largest decisions. Carelessly indulging in lustful thoughts, for instance, can lead to obscene entertainment, fornication, unintended pregnancy, great personal distress, and abortion. The Holy Spirit urges us, “Don’t go there.” God neither gives us that right nor leads us into that temptation.

Catholic opposition to abortion begins with our welcome to God’s benevolent omnipresence. We are a holy people, and we are sent to represent God’s presence to a society that prefers a godless, fantasy world of fabricated rights. We do not condone abortion; we are frankly horrified by the thought. It cannot exist in our world. We revel in that real freedom which is life in the Spirit, and we invite everyone to join us.