Celebrating Life: a Conversation on Morning Air

This morning I joined Morning Air to talk about the one-year anniversary of the overturn of Roe v. Wade. You can catch the audio here, starting at 10:25.

On the one-year anniversary of the celebration of the overturn of Roe v. Wade, there was celebration, both in the nation’s capital and elsewhere. As I mentioned in my last post, the literal increase in life certainly is reason to celebrate! And yet, the mission is not over, and there is much work to be done.

Mary Margaret Olahan has a good thread here on some of the ways laws have changed to protect life in the past year. For example, she states that abortion is completely banned in Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. Spaces previously used by abortion clinics are now operating as totally new businesses, having nothing to do with abortion or even healthcare (though the greatest justice is when an abortion clinic becomes a pro-life pregnancy center, in my humble opinion).

But why should we care? What if you don’t have kids, or don’t get what all the fuss is about? I come back again and again to the fact that it’s not just about the evil of abortion, but the cultural and moral downstream effects. To applaud abortion is to applaud violence against women and children, and to state that there are certain lives that just don’t matter that much. From, there, what? Do we say it’s okay to end the life of a disabled child after it’s born? What would be the difference, really? The issue of abortion is connected to our overall throwaway, self-driven culture. It is, as Pope Saint John Paul II called it, a culture of death.

And what else has happened in the past year? Well, those who support life, whether as pray-ers, or clinic workers, have suffered persecution and violence. CatholicVote has been tracking these instances, noting, “CatholicVote has tracked nearly 80 pro-abortion attacks since then, including arson, vandalism, and firebombing. In addition, CatholicVote has tracked 116 attacks on Catholic churches since May 2022, and 273 such attacks since May 2020.” This is not being reported in the mainstream news, naturally.

So what is the future? That remains the question. Those who are on the side of life - probably you, reading this - have a call to become involved. You just do. And if the idea of praying outside an abortion clinic, or volunteering at a pregnancy center, is too much, then pray within your own heart. Prayer is powerful, and it is needed. In the words of St. Paul: pray without ceasing!

In the meantime, trust in God to take care of everything, in His time. It took nearly 50 years for Roe to be overturned. Let us see what He will accomplish next.