Abortion, Civilization & Chivalry
By John Mallon
From the Sooner Catholic, May 5, 1996
In the Sooner Catholic of November 6, 1994 we featured a statement of the voting records of Oklahoma politicians on the abortion issue. This released a storm of protest over "single issue" voting, although an article inside entitled "Why Abortion is the Single Most Important Issue" explained our reasoning. Some protested we were on shaky ground regarding Church/state issues, although the Catholic Press Association had high praise for the feature and saw no difficulty with the issue. Some people even wrote in accusing us of being a front for the Republican Party! What nonsense!
The sad thing is that people-even Catholic people-persist in viewing these crucial life issues in terms of Republican/Democrat, Liberal/Conservative, Right Wing/Left Wing. They are not. The Church, and by extension, the Sooner Catholic, is not concerned with Right Wing/Left Wing but Right Thing/Wrong Thing.
Abortion is a crime which cries out to God for justice.
And lest we be accused of being "uncompassionate" and putting troubled women (whom the Church considers victims of this crime) under condemnation, the Church can stand proudly on her record of being there to help women who are considering abortion to choose life with all the help she needs: financial, medical, with counseling, in order to help her carry her baby to term, whether she intends to keep her baby or chooses adoption. And, as the Sooner Catholic documented in a three part series last year, the Church is also there with open arms for women (and men) experiencing trauma from a past abortion.
Sin is not something airy-fairy spiritual, and invisible. Its effects are visible, tangible, and palpable. It rips the human heart to pieces, it destroys families, it break hearts, it emaciates the body as well as the soul. If it is not turned from in repentance it results in certain destruction.
So why should the pope, cardinals, bishops—or anyone else for that matter—have to be standing on their heads to get across in convincing language that something as hideous as partial birth abortion is unreasonable? All you have to do is look at it. (When the Sooner Catholic put a rather tame graphic depicting the process on the front page, that caused another firestorm.)
Only pathological denial or willed moral blindness can fail to see that this procedure is straight out of hell. Comparisons to the Nazi death camps are not hyperbole or mere rhetoric. If anything, we are in far worse condition. The devil has refined his methods. Instead of Hitler's lunatic ravings about "a master race" our genocide is arrived at under the cloak of "compassion." Instead of the filth of Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen our killing is carried out in sterile, well-lit, "procedure rooms" with reassuring receptionists and "nurses."
Someone once said you can judge a civilization by how it treats its women and children (not to mention the sick or elderly). Some argue that we have come a long way in the advancement of women, and in some ways that's true. But what kind of people are we that a woman should find herself in a position of even thinking an abortion will solve her problems? Are our hearts so closed to her and her child that she thinks she has nowhere else to turn? Is our world (i.e. us) so inhospitable to her?
The "health of the mother" argument is misleading - the "hard cases" - rape, incest, danger of death, make up only 3 percent of all abortions, and a true physician, a healer, always does all he or she can to save the lives of both mother and child. The bill presented to the president already contained a life of the mother exception. The president vetoed it holding out for a "health of the mother" clause which is open to such wide interpretations as to be meaningless, and therefore amounts to abortion on demand. That is to say, "safe," (not really) "legal," (except in the eyes of God) and commonplace.
Julie Loesch Wiley, a Catholic writer on women's issues, says that abortion treats a woman like a used car: it vacuums her out so she's ready for the next user.
The sexual revolution effectively gave men permission to indulge their baser instincts to treat women like kleenex - to be used and discarded. The deeper lie of the sexual revolution was to convince women that this was a good deal - that they were now free to engage in behavior they previously thought despicable in men and call it "liberation."
Except that women ended up with the bad end of the deal as always happens in this sort of social "innovation."
Women live in such fear today-of walking down the street, of what they're getting into when they enter a relationship-will he be abusive, a deadbeat, a seducer, a drunk, a crybaby? All too often women are exploited, valued only for their looks, and again, used and discarded.
And we think the solution is what? Abortion?
Feminists decry chivalry as a male plot used to oppress women throughout history. On the contrary. Chivalry is that virtue whereby we men protect women from ourselves - that is, from our baser nature. We do this out of reverence and respect for the woman who is a model of the life-giving Church while the man is called to model Christ in laying down his life for her greater good. This is Christian manhood. It is not an unattainable ideal, it is the way we are expected to live. Christ's death and resurrection made it possible. He showed us the way.
The Church is often mocked for her view of women. The view that women, created with men in the image and likeness of God, are to be reverenced for their inherent human dignity. Not placed on pedestals as objects, but respected, honored, cherished and loved. A society which promotes abortion is not doing that. Abortion and related crimes are destroying our civilization. Our aim ought to be to turn our society back into a civilization. Abortion is the wrong way to go.
John Mallon is contributing editor to Inside the Vatican magazine and an editorial consultant and contributor to The Daily Oklahoman editorial page.