Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children

Lectionary: 516

Hear me, O coastlands,
listen, O distant peoples.
The LORD called me from birth,
from my mother's womb he gave me my name.

Abortions, it would seem, happen without human intervention. A woman feels compelled to terminate her pregnancy due to certain ineluctable forces. They may be financial considerations, social or familial pressure, requirements of her career, or emotional fragility. She has no choice; the unborn cannot live. 

Twenty-eight states have "three strikes laws," which deny a judge the authority to show mercy to a felon after their third conviction. Offenders are imprisoned without parole for the rest of their lives. The law is applied automatically, like the functions of a machine, without human interference, 

Sister Helen Prejean CSJ, an advocate for condemned prisoners on death row, has pointed out that no one makes the decision to take the life of people on death row. Although they are trapped, unarmed, and defenseless -- effectively harmless -- they are executed without mercy. 

When they were tried, the judge and jury convicted them with the assurance that their decision would be challenged in a higher court. They were not responsible for the death. The appellate court did not condemn the convict; they only found that the proper procedures had been followed; the lower court's decision was not overturned. Later -- usually several years later -- the state governor did not block the decision despite innumerable appeals for clemency from local, state, federal, and international parties. These elected officials could not risk their office or career for a convicted killer. The prison wardens and staff carried out the sentence because it was their duty; they had no say in the decision. No one decided to kill the condemned persons, but they died.

However: 

In 2015 Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky, refused a marriage certificate to two gay persons. Her decision was overthrown by a court and she is being sued by the offended "couple."

Shenna Bellows, Maine’s secretary of state, has decided that Donald Trump is not eligible to run for the Office of President of the United States because of his involvement in the insurrection of January 6, 2021. Her decision will be tested by the Supreme Court but, in the meanwhile, it stands. 

I  recall these five stories as I hear Isaiah's promise of a Messiah. This One will make choices and a difference. He will not be controlled by the limits of an office, by political or financial considerations, or by certain ineluctable forces. There will be no bureaucracy, policy, or standard operating procedure to tell him what he must do. 

But he will not act arbitrarily; he will be governed by his love for, and obedience to, the God he knows as Abba. 

We're all familiar with Saint Paul's complaints against the Pharisees and their Law. The Apostle had met the Lord on the road to Damascus. He found freedom in knowing Jesus Christ; and he would not be misled by anything as impersonal as "the Law." He loved his Jewish people and was loyal to their tradition because the core of that ancient way of life is the Messiah, Jesus Christ. 

The Catholic Church and its many allies challenge the forces which strip human life of its humanity, forcing it into a mode of automatic, impersonal, irresistible decisions that have already been made and cannot be reversed. These demonic powers demand abortion, capital punishment, weapons of mass destruction, and euthanasia. They insist that we have no choice but to fight, kill, and go to war against our enemies, whether they are Russian imperialists or unborn babies. 

Some anthropologists describe an arc of evolution guided by human decisions which created the human being as we know it. They urge a more intentional, deliberate course of action, guided by the best scientific theories and data. They promise an end to poverty and injustice as the species finally attains rationality. Theories like original sin and divine intervention will be shown as irrelevant and misguided. There will be no need for the hypothesis of God. 

Their goal is eugenics. But eugenics is no longer the effort to purify the Caucasian race; it would remake the human being into a plastic, manipulable organism which cooperates with bureaucratic regulations and its own destruction.  

Individuals like Sister Helen Prejean, Kim Davis, and Shenna Bellows still make a difference. As we choose human life in all its manifestations -- from conception to birth to natural death -- we obey the God who created us to know, love, and serve him in this world, and be with him in the next.