“…that unborn child has been carved in the hand of God from conception and is called by God to love…” – Mother Teresa
Mountains are neither fair nor unfair to those of us who scale them. Those who resolve to make it to the top, do so step-by-step, with no favors from the mountain. I thought about this today while on an 8-mile mostly uphill cleat-clad run. With Alaskan temperatures pleasingly mild for this time of year, I had to get outside to clear my head after a week filled with toxic politics and disappointing news about our president whose choice of words goes from bad to worse.
I thought about the slow but steady uphill journey pro-life Americans have traveled since the passage of Roe v. Wade. I also remembered the incredible sacrifice of an estimated 500,000 people on a frigid and snowy day last week in Washington D.C., who suffered the cold to remember the least among us, those lives snuffed out before their time.
From the Vatican, Pope Francis sent out a tweet in solidarity: “I join the March for Life in Washington with my prayers. May God help us respect all life, especially the most vulnerable.” The same day, President Obama offered his take on things, by way of an official statement, extolling Roe v. Wade, as if the estimated 57 million unborn children who have been denied their fundamental right to life is something decent people should celebrate. May God help us indeed.
The President said we should “recommit ourselves to [Roe v. Wade’s] guiding principle,” suggesting the act of abortion somehow helps women “fulfill their dreams.” The “fulfillment of dreams” is not quite how two friends of mine who had abortions would choose to describe their experience. Both are regularly haunted with the “could-ofs, should-ofs, would-ofs,” post abortion. One friend has found the peace that comes through God’s grace and forgiveness, and looks forward to sharing eternity with the one to whom she never gave a chance. The other, not so much. Like Greek mythology’s King Sisyphus, she rolls the burdensome boulder of her choice uphill, only to see it roll back down. If only she’d let go…
As Obama says, we should recommit ourselves, not to a Supreme Court decision, though, but rather to those ten guiding principles originally etched in stone concerning the value of human life, as alluded to by Mother Teresa in 1994, during the National Prayer breakfast.
Mother Teresa shared her burden for the unborn, where she humbly asked American women to give “until it hurts” of her “plans,” “free time” or those “dreams,” as Obama put it. Mother Teresa described abortion as a war against children, saying if society accepts that a mother can kill her own child, the rest of society cannot be held to a higher standard.
She was right, but sadly, her words fell on deaf ears. During 2010, in New York City alone, enough abortions were performed to pack out the MetLife Stadium. If she were alive today, she would weep over the loss of 83,000 souls, but she would have to mourn from a distance. If Governor Cuomo and Mayor De Blasio are true to their words, she would have been held at the state line as one of those unwelcome pro-life “extremists.”
Like any battle, the “war against children” has its foot soldiers. And like the 500,000-plus in Washington D.C. would tell you, the war is fought one step at a time, and it’s mostly uphill.
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