Catholic Exchange

To CE Editors:

I am a long-time Catholic, and it saddens me to see Catholic organizations embracing a party that stands for everything traditional Catholics do not, such as bigotry, oppression of the poor and disabled, a war on human rights, deregulatory policies that have turned this country into a sleazy x-rated sideshow carnival on our airwaves, a disregard for public food and drug safety, disregard for the environment for the sake of industry campaign contributors, all for only one issue: abortion. The Democratic Party has always been a party more aligned with the values of traditional Catholics, so why are Catholic organizations encouraging others to embrace a party that has brought the world nothing but misery?

Name withheld at editor’s discretion.

Dear Reader:

First off, we don’t care about political parties and we aren’t embracing any [Footnote 1]. We care more about what is right than about who is right.

Second, how best to improve conditions for the poor, handle regulations about food, control the airwaves, or any other such “policy issues” are things that Catholics are allowed by Church teaching to disagree on. But abortion isn’t just one policy issue among many — it is murder; it is a Holocaust happening under our noses [Footnote 2]. Our position on it as Catholics is not negotiable — there is only one position on it and we are called by the Church to oppose it and every party, politician, and law that supports it, unequivocally, because failure to do so undermines and will ultimately — if not opposed — result in the destruction of civil society [Footnote 3].

Finally, a political party that favors abortion does not favor the poor for the unborn are the poorest among us, and the unborn of the poor are special targets of the abortion industry [Footnote 4]. It is not against bigotry because it denies the personhood of, and the protection of the law to, a class of human beings based solely upon their state of dependency and their stage of development. And it targets the offspring of minorities for its eugenic agenda of death [Footnote 5]. It does not favor the oppressed for no class of people is more oppressed in this country than the powerless unborn, who are slaughtered at the rate of 1,200,000 per year, 3,288 per day, 137 per hour, 1 every 26 seconds — over 48 million since 1973. It oppresses poor women by supporting funding for forced abortion and sterilization among the inhabitants of Third World countries and oppressing pregnant women in even wealthy countries by colluding in the coercion of them by boyfriends, family members, and even child rapists to kill their babies for convenience or even to cover up crimes.

A political party that favors abortion does not care about the disabled because it wages war against the disabled unborn. It does not care about drug safety because it supports the distribution of the very unsafe RU-486, a chemical cocktail used to cause abortion — which is not only unsafe obviously for unborn human beings, but is also very dangerous to the women who take it with numerous, serious, reported side effects (besides death).

It does not care about human rights because it denies the most fundamental right — the right to life — to millions of Americans [Footnote 6]. It does not care about the human right to due process of law as it allows the unborn to have their home and life taken from them arbitrarily without any legal process [Footnote 7]. It does not care about the right of a person undergoing a medical procedure to have full and complete disclosure of all risks associated with the procedure as it blocks every attempt to give women complete information about the risks and possible consequences to them of abortion and to show them through ultrasounds the visual evidence of the unique humanity of their unborn children. It does not care about the human rights of freedom of conscience and religion of pharmacists who conscientiously object to being forced to be complicit in murder. It does not care about the human rights of parents to guide their underage offspring and seeks to undermine and override parents by obstructing parental consent laws regarding abortion.

Genuine care for the physical environment, if it is to be humane and not idolatrous, must emerge from a recognition that man is the crown of creation and its steward. The historical record bears out that only societies that have reached a certain level of development can afford to be environmentally conscious. Waging war on the unborn causes demographic contraction that shrinks the economy, reducing the resources available to deal with environmental issues. It also destroys the innovation and creativity that unborn humans being carry in their souls — gifts to all of humanity by their Creator — to the point of crushing small skulls and vacuuming out the very brains created to find solutions to the problems we complain about. A determination to destroy human life in the name of the environment could not be further from the Catholic understanding of man and creation.

A political party that favors abortion cannot possibly claim to care about sleaze on the airways because it has a record of obstructing legislation designed to fine purveyors of filth. It also has as one of its most avid supporters Planned Parenthood, which unceasingly targets the children of this country with pornography to sell them on sexual experimentation so that they will “need” the “[anti-]reproductive services” of this murderous company that through duplicity and manipulation sucks tax dollars with a gusto matched only by the rapacity with which it sucks the dismembered bits of unborn children from their mothers’ wombs.

In short, it is a travesty to say that a party that supports abortion is aligned with the values of traditional Catholics and what ought to really sadden you is that so many Catholics, for the sake of party loyalty, have become heartless toward the very least of Jesus’ brothers: the unborn humans awaiting at this moment the horror of unjust execution by the legal — thanks to the Democratic Party — destruction of their precious innocent lives.

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Footnote 1: From Living the Gospel of Life (US Bishops November 1998): “[W]e urge our fellow citizens to see beyond party politics, to analyze campaign rhetoric critically, and to choose their political leaders according to principle, not party affiliation or mere self-interest” (34).

Footnote 2: This is clear from the Catechism:

2270 Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person — among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth .2271 Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law: You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish .God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to men the noble mission of safeguarding life, and men must carry it out in a manner worthy of themselves. Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.2272 Formal co-operation in an abortion constitutes a grave offence. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. ‘A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae‘ ‘by the very commission of the offence’, and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law. The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society.

Footnote 3: Again from the Catechism:

2273 The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation:

‘The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority. These human rights depend neither on single individuals nor on parents; nor do they represent a concession made by society and the state; they belong to human nature and are inherent in the person by virtue of the creative act from which the person took his origin. Among such fundamental rights one should mention in this regard every human being’s right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death. The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law. When the state does not place its power at the service of the rights of each citizen, and in particular of the more vulnerable, the very foundations of a state based on law are undermined. . . As a consequence of the respect and protection which must be ensured for the unborn child from the moment of conception, the law must provide appropriate penal sanctions for every deliberate violation of the child’s rights.’

Footnote 4: James R. (Ron) Weddington, one of the co-counsels for Roe v. Wade, the famous Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion as a “right” in the United States, wrote to president-elect Bill Clinton in 1992, advocating elimination of the lower class through birth control and abortion:

But you can start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country. No, I’m, not advocating some sort of mass extinction of these unfortunate people. Crime, drugs and disease are already doing that. The problem is that their numbers are not only replaced but increased by the birth of millions of babies to people who can’t afford to have babies. There, I’ve said it. It’s what we all know is true, but we only whisper it, because as liberals who believe in individual rights, we view any program which might treat the disadvantaged differently as discriminatory, mean-spirited and… well… so Republican….

Condoms alone won’t do it. Depo-Provera, Norplant and the new birth control injection being developed in India are not a complete answer…. No, government is also going to have to provide vasectomies, tubal ligations and abortions… RU 486 and conventional abortions. Even if we make birth control as ubiquitous as sneakers and junk food, there will still be unplanned pregnancies. There have been about 30 million abortions in this country since Roe v. Wade. Think of all the poverty, crime and misery… and then add 30 million unwanted babies to the scenario… We don’t need more cannon fodder. We don’t need more parishioners. We don’t need more cheap labor. We don’t need more poor babies. (James R. (Ron) Weddington, Letter to President-elect Bill Clinton, January 6, 1992).

Footnote 5: In America today, almost as many African-American children are aborted as are born. A black baby is three times more likely to be murdered in the womb than a white baby. Since 1973, abortion has reduced the black population by over 25 percent. Twice as many African-Americans have died from abortion than have died from AIDS, accidents, violent crimes, cancer, and heart disease combined. Every three days, more African-Americans are killed by abortion than have been killed by the Ku Klux Klan in its entire history. Planned Parenthood operates the nation’s largest chain of abortion clinics and almost 80 percent of its facilities are located in minority neighborhoods. About 13 percent of American women are black, but they submit to over 35 percent of the abortions (for more on the abortion industry’s genocidal agenda against black Americans visit BlackGenocide.org).

Footnote 6: From Living the Gospel of Life (US Bishops November 1998): “Adopting a consistent ethic of life, the Catholic Church promotes a broad spectrum of issues…. Catholic public officials are obliged to address each of these issues as they seek to build consistent policies which promote respect for the human person at all stages of life. But being ‘right’ in such matters can never excuse a wrong choice regarding direct attacks on innocent human life. Indeed, the failure to protect and defend life in its most vulnerable stages renders suspect any claims to the ‘rightness’ of positions in other matters affecting the poorest and least powerful of the human community” (23).

Footnote 7: Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause reads: “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law.”

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