Tag Archives: pro-life

What Happens to Aborted Children?

Abortion, Martyrdom, , , , , , ,

At the heart of the Pro-Life movement is the overwhelming concern not just for the temporal well-being of members of society, but for their eternal salvation.  Christians are, by definition, Pro-Life because they desire that society at its core be built upon conditions that are conducive to the salvation of souls.  That is what makes abortion and particularly pernicious offense against life—it puts not only the soul of the mother and those who cooperate with her in jeopardy, but the eternal destiny of the child in danger as well.  Many Catholics are quick to declare these children martyrs and assume that they are in heaven because of it.  However, this belief is by no means definitive and there are good reasons to think that this might not be the case.  Once our gaze is turned towards these innocent victims and the question of their eternal destination, we find that our zeal for souls drives us to eliminate abortion all the more.

To grapple with this issue, we must start with what we can say with assurance.  Despite not being healed from Original Sin and its wounds, these children are not necessarily destined for hell.  Original Sin is not a condition of guilt but one of deprivation.  Mankind is deprived of the gift of sanctifying grace, a necessity for entrance into the Beatific Vision, at their conception.  This does not make the child guilty, only unequipped.  Hell is a punishment for actual sin, and with no actual sins committed, the child does not merit hell.  This is why Pope St. John Paul II said in Evangelium Vitae that mothers can entrust their aborted children “with sure hope [to] the Father and His mercy” (EV, 99, Acta Apostolicae Sedis version).

In the Summa, St. Thomas draws a very important distinction in this regard that is worth discussing.  He says that often “children are punished in temporal matters together with their parents, both because they are a possession of their parents, so that their parents are punished also in their person, and because this is for their good lest, should they be spared, they might imitate the sins of their parents, and thus deserve to be punished still more severely” (ST II-II, q.108, art.4 ad.3).  The “good” that St. Thomas is referring to presumptively would refer to not just towards their temporal welfare but their eternal as well.  But this could refer not only to the good of reward but also the good of receiving less of a punishment than a person might otherwise.

So we can say that the child is not destined to hell per se, but this does not mean that they are destined for heaven either.  There is still the open question of Limbo as an option.   Assuming that John Paul II’s comment about a “sure hope” means hope in the theological sense then the eternal salvation of the child is at least a possibility.  In other words we can now turn to the question about how it is that a child might be equipped for Heaven through the infusion of sanctifying grace.

How then might their salvation be possible?  The first would be through a special miracle akin to the sanctification that is presented in Scripture.  Our Lady, St. John the Baptist, and the prophet Jeremiah whom St. Thomas said were sanctified “outside of the common law as though miraculously in their mother’s wombs” (Commentary on the Sentences, dist.6, q.1).  Although this means it is theologically possible, the acts of sanctification were extraordinary and a result of the mission of the three children.

Deprived of the ordinary means of salvation through baptism, it is also possible to posit that they received a Baptism in Blood.  In short, the children would be classified as martyrs.  Scripture once again offers us an example in the Holy Innocents.  In adults martyrdom occurs when a person dies for some supernatural reason such as in defense of some Christian virtue or as testimony of faith.  Despite being deprived of the use of reason, the Holy Innocents have long been considered to be martyrs because they died in defense of Christ.  This consideration is based upon both Divine Revelation and the Church’s binding and loosing authority.  The Church may have the authority to declare martyrdom, but it cannot be without reason.    It is not clear that the children are being put to death for a supernatural reason as in the case of the Holy Innocents.  Either way though the Church would need to officially declare them as martyrs in order for us to consider them to actually be martyrs.

There is a third option.  Because “God wills that all men be saved” we might assume that prior to death each child is given an opportunity to be saved.  This would include infants in the womb.  We can posit then that they are each tested in some way and given a chance to accept the gift of sanctifying grace.  The problem with this view is that it would require cooperation with actual grace and the ability to use their reason.

Given the inherent difficulties which each of these the solutions, we can begin to see why Limbo remains as a theological possibility not only for unbaptized children, but children in the womb.  What is clear however is that we need to treat the issue of abortion as a real threat to the eternal salvation of the child in the womb and continue to fight for its elimination in our society.   

The True Christian History of Abortion

Abortion, Apologetics, Contraception, Culture, Culture of Life, History, , , , , ,

As the battle over legalized abortion continues rage as specific states more clearly draw their battle lines, there is a growing number of Christians who are attempting to make a Christian argument in favor of abortion.  In truth, there is no Christian defense of abortion and there never has been.  Not surprisingly, the abortion apologist’s arguments fall flat, even though they continually recycle the same talking points irrespective of truth.  Even if there are different variations on the propagandistic talking points, they seem never to grow weary of repeating them.  Given the increased frequency in which we are seeing them, it is important that we have a ready defense.

In order to avoid toppling over a straw man,  we will refer to an example that was printed in the Huffington Post last year entitled “The Truth About Christianity and Abortion”.  We use this one not because it was a particularly convincing argument, but because it invokes almost all the common arguments for Christian support of abortion in one place. 

Before diving into the exact arguments, it is a helpful to remember that there are plenty of arguments against abortion that don’t rely solely upon religious convictions.  Instead you can use philosophical reasoning and science.  Since that ground has already been covered, we will stick to the Christian-based arguments since that is terrain over which these abortion advocates like to stomp.

“There are no specific references to abortion in the Bible, either within Old Testament law or in Jesus’ teachings or the writings of Paul and other writers in the New Testament.”

This first argument, namely that the Bible doesn’t say anything about abortion is a bit of a red herring, at least as far as Catholics are concerned.  Not everything we believe need to be mentioned in the Bible explicitly.  If Scripture tells us that the pre-born being in the womb of Elizabeth (somewhere between 20-24 weeks) and the pre-born being in the womb of Mary (somewhere between 0-4 weeks) are both persons (Luke 1:26,41) and that directly killing an innocent person is always wrong (Exodus 20:13) then we could conclude that abortion, that is the direct and intentional  killing of an infant in the womb of the mother, is wrong.  The Bible need not, nor could it list out all the ways that a person might be murdered but can simply articulate the principle in what amounts to a blanket condemnation. 

That being said, the premise that the Bible does not mention abortion is also false.  In the ancient world, they were not nimble enough to play verbal gymnastics like us.  We are fall more sophisticated in the true sense of the word.  Even amongst the pagans, abortion was considered to be baby killing.  In fact, the device that they used to perform the abortion was called embruosqakths, which means “the slayer of the infant, which was of course alive.” (Tertullian, On the Soul, Ch. 25). 

They also used chemical potions to cause abortions, although they were far more dangerous to the mother than using the “slayer of the infant.”  This type of abortion is mentioned in Scripture, even if only implicitly.  We shall expound on this in a moment, but these potions fell under the broad Greek term pharmakeia, the same term St. Paul uses in Galatians 5:20 and we translate as “sorcery”.

“Likewise, throughout the history of the early church into the middle-ages, there is little to no mention of abortion as a topic of great alarm – from the days of the Old Testament until modern history. Hence, there is no case to be made for a definitive Christian stance throughout history on the spiritual or moral aspects of abortion.”

While it may have been convenient in supporting the point, the connection of pharmakeia to abortifacient drugs was not an exercise in originality, but something that the early Church did when they spoke against abortion.  The Didache, written during the Apostolic Age (probably around 70 AD) of the Apostles in expounding on the commandment of love of neighbor it said, “You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions [pharmakeia). You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child” (Didache 2:1–2).  Likewise, the Letter of Barnabas (74 AD), which is a commentary on the Didache says, “thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born” (19).

We already heard from Tertullian in the 2nd Century, but the list of Fathers who spoke against abortion down to the beginning of the 5th Century reads like a who’s who of Patristic teachers: Athenagoras of Athens, Hippolytus, Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, and St. Jerome.  It is also included in the twenty-first canon of the Council of Ancyra and among the Apostolic Constitutions.  In other words, it is hard not to stumble upon a condemnation of abortion among the Early Church Fathers, unless of course you don’t actually look.

Given the unbroken teaching to Apostolic times, abortion was a settled issue and we should not expect to hear about it much unless it is challenged (that is why St. John Paul II included the infallible statement of the Ordinary Magisterium in Evangelium Vitae).  The relative silence of the Middle Ages is a non-sequitur for that reason—it was a settled issue within Christendom and thus did not need to be defended or expounded upon much.

The Augustinian Exception?

Among those Church Fathers listed above there is one notable exception: St. Augustine.  He is notable not because of his silence but because of the fact that he is often quoted out of context.  The Huffington Post author does the same thing quoting him as saying:  “The law does not provide that the act (abortion) pertains to homicide, for there cannot yet be said to be a live soul in a body that lacks sensation.”  Not surprising she doesn’t cite the source of the quote which would enable us to establish context, but it comes from a commentary on Exodus 21.  Taken in context Augustine is asking whether, given the primitive embryology of his time, whether abortion before the 40th day after conception could be classified as homicide or not.  In his mind abortion was still a grave evil no matter how old the infant, but he wasn’t sure whether it should be classified as murder.

To cite this is really disingenuous, for the author knows it is based upon an ancient understanding of human development.  She knows that modern embryology has established that there is sensation long before the 40th day after conception.  Anyone who has seen an ultrasound image (or has watched the movie Silent Scream) can easily attest to that truth.  Unless the author of the article is willing to accept the primitive thinking of the 5th Century, then this is actually an argument against abortion.  If Augustine has access to modern technology, then he would have concluded that it was murder at any stage.

“I’m not saying abortion cannot be an important issue to a Christian, but there is no scriptural or historical backing for it to be the number one issue, at the expense of the ‘least of these’ who are suffering now.”

This line of reasoning really sets up a false dichotomy that pits poverty against abortion.  This is recycled secular thinking.  There are those who suffer because of destitution, and we ought to do what we can to alleviate that, but that does not mean you may alleviate it by reducing the number of mouths that need to be fed.  Why couldn’t the same argument be applied to the already born children of the poor, or even the poor themselves?  One definite way to end poverty would be to kill all the poor people.

As far as it being the “number one issue” is concerned, first we must admit that history is not a repeating cycle in which social ills always occur with the same frequency and intensity.  Perhaps destitution was a greater threat to human thriving than abortion was in ancient Rome or in the Middle Ages, but that does not mean it is still a greater threat.  In fact, we could argue that destitution (“poor” is a relative term and actually a Christian value, destitution is an objective measure) is at an all-time low.  What is not at an all-time low however is the number of innocent lives being snuffed out through abortion every day to the tune of about 125,000 per day worldwide (and this doesn’t include the number of abortions caused by birth control pills which could double or even triple that total).  Abortion, because it involves so many, all of which are the most vulnerable and voiceless, is by far the greatest injustice in the world today.  They are “’the least of these’ who are suffering now.”

A Pro-Life Video?

Abortion, ,

For obvious reasons (all of which are bad), abortion advocates tend to play their intellectual hand close to the vest.  Instead, they choose to hind behind emotivism and the smokescreen of the “right to choose.”  Every once in a while, however, their sinister logic escapes and their unvarnished train of thought escapes.  This is exactly what happened recently when a self-described “left-wing” advocacy group called the Agenda Project released a pro-abortion ad in support of Planned Parenthood.  The ad, dubbed “The Chosen” opens with video of a cooing baby shortly followed by a caption “she deserves to be loved.”  Flashing back to the baby, now smiling and laughing, a second caption follows, “she deserves to be wanted.”  Then a third time, “she deserves to be a choice.”   And there you have it, abortion logic untwisted and devoid of all verbal gymnastics.

Now, it is first worth noting that this particular video committed a capital sin when it comes to defending abortion.  Never, ever, equate the “fetus” or “embryo” or even a “clump of cells” with a child.  Usually their arguments are fatal, but not in this way.  Inadvertently or not, they made a very Pro-life argument by featuring a little baby.  That very same baby was at some point in her development an embryo or fetus just like she will be a toddler, a teenage girl and an adult.  And the video makes this very clear. Perhaps that is the point.  To drop all the ridiculous pretexts and simply finally admit what abortion really is.  Perhaps abortion advocates are “coming out” and finally admitting what they are exactly defending.  Maybe they are not actually talking about abortion but are now lobbying for infanticide.

Revealing the Logic

Maybe, but probably not.  More likely is that they tried to make a “reasonable” argument and ended up revealing just how unreasonable their position really is.  In an age where we often argue by meme, it is helpful to lay out the logic of an argument  piece by piece and see where it leads us.

The first line of the argument is that “she deserves to be loved.”  Some would say this is self-evident, but let’s state the reason why in order to connect the dots.  Borrowing from St. John Paul II we can say “She deserves to be loved” because a person “is a good toward which the only adequate response is love.”  In essence the first statement recognizes that persons have a unique value, not based upon anything they do, but solely because of what, or more to the point, who they are.  I think we can all agree that this is true.

Adding the “why” to the first statement helps to see why the second declaration, “she deserves to be wanted,” logically follows from the first.  Admittedly “want” is a rather vague word, especially when applied to a person.  We usually “want” objects but as premise 1 of their argument states, we should love subjects.  Nevertheless we can look at this as adding on to the first premise by saying that “because a person should be loved, then she should also be wanted.”  This too logically follows.

The fact that a child deserves to be wanted is not actually saying anything other than children are by nature “wantable.”  Unwanting adults are the real problem and this is because they see the subjects as objects that they can use to accessorize their life.  It is beginning to a “planned” parenthood feel to it.

Finally we get to the third premise—“she deserves to be a choice.”  This logically follows from the other two premises if all the caveats above are made.  Love requires an act of the will and a child has a right to be brought into existence through an act of love between the parents.

The Pro-Life Argument

The problem of course is that they are leaving out a hidden premise along with the conclusion.  Now if we trace out the line of argument we find a big problem

  1. A child, because she is a person, deserves to be loved.
  2. Because she is a person, they deserve to be wanted.
  3. Because she deserves to be wanted, she deserves to be conceived as an act of the will (i.e. chosen).
  4. (Hidden) But if she is not wanted, then the mother can choose to kill her.

But this is a contradiction with (1) since the right to be loved would include a right not to be deliberately torn apart in the womb and therefore by reductio ad absurdum we can conclude that the child has a right not to be killed.

And now we see why the pro-abortion people never resort to reason—it leads away from their position.  They almost distracted us with the cute baby and the lullaby music, but reason prevailed.  So perhaps rather than vilifying them, we should hire the Agenda Project.

 

What is the Pro-Life Movement?

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When thousands gather today in Washington to march to the steps of the Supreme Court, the Pro-lifers will be confirming what has in many people’s minds become a stereotype.  Pro-life has become synonymous with “anti-abortion.”  There are those who are trying to rebrand the Pro-life movement by imaginatively calling it the New Pro Life Movement by providing a more “consistent-life ethic” to other issues, especially those related to abortion.  Whether or not the rebranding of the movement will be better only time will tell, but they may not be addressing the larger issue.

Pro-life might be the only positive word (the Pro part) that has a negative definition.  The Pro-life Movement is more like a protest group defined by what it is against.  The problem is that when you define yourself solely as against something, the enemy of your enemy becomes your friend.  As we are learning with the new administration it can make for interesting bedfellows.

The anti-X label follows Pro-lifers wherever they go and they self-identify with those labels.  They might like the sound of Pro-life better than “anti-abortion” from a public relations standpoint, but can they define themselves positively?

Pro-lifers could say “we are for life.”  But their work doesn’t necessarily set them apart from any other group that is concerned with the just treatment of society’s most vulnerable, including those in the womb and approaching death.  Pro-lifers define themselves as against abortion, euthanasia, abject poverty, and the like.  Anyone who is Pro-life should oppose those things.  But you don’t need to be Pro-life to oppose them so much as pro-justice.  A just society may eliminate all those things and yet still not be Pro-life.  Pro-life must mean more than just obtaining justice for the weak, even if it most definitely includes those things.

Catholic Pro-lifers often speak more generally in terms of the Culture of Life and the Culture of Death.  Pro-lifers favor the former over the latter.  Over the past few weeks leading up to the March for Life I have heard these terms, Culture of Death and Culture of Life, invoked any number of times in Catholic circles.  But I have yet to hear them described in the manner that John Paul II did—namely as a battle between   a culture that is designed to encourage spiritual death and one in which earthly life is “a penultimate reality entrusted to us, to be preserved with a sense of responsibility and brought to perfection in love and in the gift of ourselves to God and to our brothers and sisters” (Evangelium Vitae, 2).

Being Pro-life means first and foremost about caring about the spiritual welfare of each person in society.  They are not only concerned about the welfare of the child in the womb, but the spiritual well-being of the mother.  They are not only concerned with the life of the elderly, but that they are given an opportunity to die in a manner that increases their dignity.  They are concerned not just with the plight of the destitute, but the spiritual dangers faced by the rich.  In other words, Pro-life means caring about the eternal welfare of all those involved—both victim and perpetrator.

In a society that is marked by its materialism, Pro-lifers often forget this and only focus on the material well-being of the person without any reference to their spiritual health.  Without making this distinction, the Pro-life movement could ultimately get burned.  For example, how many people identify themselves as Pro-life and still support contraception?  Whether or not availability of contraception reduces the number of abortions is an ancillary consideration.  They are both fruits plucked from the tree of the Culture of Death.  This is not to say that they carry the same moral gravity—only that they equally have the ability to kill the soul.

“Kill the soul?”  I mean this not so much in the sense of judgment and heaven and hell (although that may be part of it) but in their innate capacity to kill men and women interiorly by wounding their ability to give and receive love (i.e. in JPII’s words above, “brought to perfection in love”).

This is also why Pro-lifers must be slower to hail President Trump as some sort of long awaited Messiah.  This is where the distinction between pro-justice and Pro-life is important.  We can applaud his working for justice for the unborn, but that does not make him Pro-life.  He will have to show himself to be concerned with promoting an atmosphere in which he makes being the “pursuit of happiness” (happiness in the classical sense that that Jefferson meant—namely a life of virtue) easier.  The best measure of a good leader of men is always how morally good the people are that he leads.

All of this is not to reduce the work of things like the March for Life.  They are a vital part of what it means to be Pro-life.  You cannot change laws or change hearts, but change hearts to change laws and change laws to change hearts.  Think of how the Civil Rights Act of 1965 was a vital piece of the Civil Rights Movement.  The law is a great moral teacher and it forms the minds and hearts of the citizenry.  Good laws make it easier to take things like the value of human life for granted and then form your opinions based on that.  Roe v Wade did not invoke the Culture of Death, but was a sign of its presence already among us.  Removing it would not mean that the Culture of Death was in its final throes.  Overturning Roe v Wade would be victory but only of a battle and not the war.  If Pro-lifers are to be active participants in that war, then we must make sure we have our marching orders correct—“to build a culture that is designed to encourage the pursuit of eternal life.”