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Respecting life: Now is the time for action

Pro-life demonstrators are seen outside the Supreme Court in Washington June 26, 2018. (CNS photo/Leah Millis, Reuters)

October is Respect Life Month, but what we highlight during this time should be happening year round:  praying, speaking out, and acting to limit or end threats to human life and dignity, including abortion, assisted suicide, the marginalization of the disabled, neglect of the sick, elderly, and disadvantaged, social division, racism, and degradation of our common home which sustains us, while also offering material, emotional and spiritual assistance to women facing crisis pregnancies and families otherwise in need.

This year, however, is different and it compels us to action as never before possible beyond these perennial efforts. For decades, we have worked to build up a culture of life with the knowledge that we were powerless to actually enact laws to protect all human life in the womb, but that may soon change.

Nearly 50 years ago in the case of Roe v. Wade, and reinforced three decades ago in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the U.S. Supreme Court created by judicial fiat a pervasive “right” to abortion that even scholars supporting Roe admit is not really present in the Constitution, thereby allowing the taking of the lives of innocent prenatal children with impunity.

In December, the Court will hear the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which takes aim at a central component of Roe and Casey – the notion that some human beings are less worthy of respect or legal safeguards, and the counterfactual assertion that a developing child is merely “potential life” as a matter of law until she is able to maintain a “meaningful life” on her own outside the womb, which is deemed to be “viability.” If the Court corrects itself on these points, as many observers believe it will, then Roe and Casey could very possibly be overruled.

As this drama unfolds, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed the so-called “Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021” (H.R. 3755), which would make the taking of prenatal life legal throughout pregnancy nationwide and would also restrict many regulations to genuinely protect the health and safety of women seeking abortions.  The bill is now before the Senate.

The nation’s bishops have joined in the call to defeat H.R. 3755 and overrule Roe and Casey, citing in their brief to the Supreme Court the “intentional destruction, on an unprecedented scale, of the most innocent and defenseless of the human family.” However, religion itself does not have a place in the arguments before the Court.

That the life of a distinct human being begins at conception is not a sectarian decree of the Catholic Church, much less is asserting this fact an imposition of our faith on anyone. Rather, it is a matter of natural science, as Pope Francis recently affirmed.  “Whoever has an abortion, kills. No mincing words,” he said. “Take any book on embryology for medical students. The third week after conception, all the organs are already there, even the DNA. It is a human life” (Sept. 15, 2021).

Where our Catholic faith does have a crucial role to play is in engaging society as an unwavering and insistent voice and witness that all human life must be respected at every stage. As Christians, we are also called to be instruments of reconciliation in a discordant and wounded world.

Overturning Roe and Casey will not mean that abortion is outlawed nationwide. It will simply leave the legal matter to the states under our system of federalism. This imperfect result will allow innocent developing life to be protected in some states, but elsewhere, like the District of Columbia and Maryland, the taking of human lives before birth will continue to be allowed. Meanwhile, physician-assisted suicide was legalized in the District a few years ago and there may be another attempt to legalize it in Maryland next year.

When it comes to great injustices, it’s easy to rely on others to take care of it. But our obligations here are quite concrete. Lives depend on us.

We need to pray for wisdom and fortitude for everyone to do what is right.  We need to boldly stand up and help those who believe differently to see how no human life, regardless of stage of development or physical condition, is lesser than any other, including working to change hearts and laws in D.C. and Maryland. We need to be there with love for those who might fall prey to the lie that eliminating their child is the answer to pregnancy in order to have a career or get an education, or are tempted to simply “end it all” in the face of illness. We need to help those who have been wounded to heal.

Now is the time for action.

(Mark Rothe is an analyst with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington’s Office of Public Policy and the D.C. Catholic Conference.)

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