Blogs For Victory

Fr. Neuhaus, in an address to the National Right to Life Committee, lays it out:

Some say it started with the notorious Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 when, by what Justice Byron White called an act of raw judicial power, the Supreme Court wiped from the books of all fifty states every law protecting the unborn child. But it goes back long before that. Some say it started with the agitation for “liberalized abortion law” in the 1960s when the novel doctrine was proposed that a woman cannot be fulfilled unless she has the right to destroy her child. But it goes back long before that. It goes back to the movements for eugenics and racial and ideological cleansing of the last century.

Whether led by enlightened liberals, such as Margaret Sanger, or brutal totalitarians, whose names live in infamy, the doctrine and the practice was that some people stood in the way of progress and were therefore non-persons, living, as it was said, “lives unworthy of life.” But it goes back even before that. It goes back to the institution of slavery in which human beings were declared to be chattel property to be bought and sold and used and discarded at the whim of their masters. It goes way on back…

…The culture of death is an idea before it is a deed. I expect many of us here, perhaps most of us here, can remember when we were first encountered by the idea. For me, it was in the 1960s when I was pastor of a very poor, very black, inner city parish in Brooklyn, New York. I had read that week an article by Ashley Montagu of Princeton University on what he called “A Life Worth Living.” He listed the qualifications for a life worth living: good health, a stable family, economic security, educational opportunity, the prospect of a satisfying career to realize the fullness of one’s potential. These were among the measures of what was called “a life worth living.”

And I remember vividly, as though it were yesterday, looking out the next Sunday morning at the congregation of St. John the Evangelist and seeing all those older faces creased by hardship endured and injustice afflicted, and yet radiating hope undimmed and love unconquered. And I saw that day the younger faces of children deprived of most, if not all, of those qualifications on Prof. Montagu’s list. And it struck me then, like a bolt of lightning, a bolt of lightning that illuminated our moral and cultural moment, that Prof. Montagu and those of like mind believed that the people of St. John the Evangelist—people whom I knew and had come to love as people of faith and kindness and endurance and, by the grace of God, hope unvanquished—it struck me then that, by the criteria of the privileged and enlightened, none of these my people had a life worth living. In that moment, I knew that a great evil was afoot. The culture of death is an idea before it is a deed.

In that moment, I knew that I had been recruited to the cause of the culture of life. To be recruited to the cause of the culture of life is to be recruited for the duration; and there is no end in sight, except to the eyes of faith.

I can’t identify the moment that vividly where I switched from acquiescence to the Culture of Death to opposition…but I do remember the moment when I became a pro-life absolutist, a happy warrior for the Culture of Life: it was when I was honored to listen to some women who had been victimised by abortion, and heard them urge me – a man – to stand tall for life and in the defense of women and their unborn children. It became so entirely clear to me that the issue of life transcended everything else – that there really was no more important issue. If we can’t respect the dignity of our fellow human beings – from conception to natural death – then all talk of “rights” and “liberty” was so much nonsense. People have to be alive for us to be concerned about them.

The title of Fr. Neuhaus’ speech is “We Shall Not Weary, We Shall Not Rest” – speaking to the fact that once recruited to the pro-life cause, one never gives up and never gives in. We are sustained by the knowledge we are backing basic decency – and the knowledge that in spite of all lies designed to throw dust in everyone’s eyes, the basic fact of our nation – the Declaration of Independence – proclaims what we proclaim, that all human beings are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, including – most importantly – the right to life, with no quibbles about whether or not a pregnancy 6 months along or a 96 year old alzheimers patient are really alive. They are. We know it. The Culture of Death knows it, too. We just act on that knowledge, the Culture of Death ignores it because, for humanity, cowardice and evil are the easy course of action – doing wrong or just ignoring wrong is much easier, and seemingly safer, than doing right or opposing wrong.

I, too, shall not weary nor shall I rest in this battle – not only am I not discouraged, there is no way to discourage me on the issue of Life vs Death. As I live so do I battle for Life, and as long as I live – which, after all, is actually forever – I shall fight for Life against all of those who hold that Death is the better alternative.