RESPECT LIFE SUNDAY
Help us to proclaim the dignity of every person!
Bishop Paul S. Coakley
Diocese of Salina
“Babies are loud, smelly, and expensive, unless you want one.” It’s a catchy slogan, but the crass logic of this Planned Parenthood ad boldly proclaims that the value of a child depends on the parents’ attitude toward him or her. The fact that so many people have come to accept this logic demonstrates how little we really appreciate the inherent value of each human life.
If for just a moment we could see a human life through God’s eyes, we would realize that there is no such thing as an unwanted child, or an unloved person. God creates each child out of the immensity of his love. We do not earn his love and we can never lose it. It is not dependent on any arbitrary level of human functioning or even our moral behavior. It is this love that establishes the unshakable foundation of the dignity of every person from the first moment of conception to our dying breath.
This Planned Parenthood slogan expresses well what has been called the contraceptive mentality. This mentality ignores, or rather denies, the role of God’s fatherly love as the unique giver and source of life. It is a mentality which snakes its way into our attitudes, choices and behavior in a variety of ways.
Ultimately, it says we want to exercise supreme control over the gift of life. For example, despite their many harmful risks and side effects, annual sales of hormonal contraceptives exceed $24 billion worldwide. We will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid the inconvenience of having children.
THE ABORTION INDUSTRY claims that half of the children conceived in the United States are “unwanted”, and half of these are aborted. That amounts to more than 1.3 million abortions annually in the United States alone. Tragically, the most common reason given for these abortions is that raising the child would interfere with a parent’s education or career.
There is no doubt that raising a child is costly and certainly demands many sacrifices. The scarcity of large families among wealthy and middle-income couples often suggests that many of those who could afford more children value other things more highly than bringing a new life into the world.
Paradoxically, other couples who have difficulty conceiving a child will pay tens of thousands of dollars to a fertility clinic to conceive a child for them through various reproductive technologies, such as in vitro fertilization. Unfortunately many of these parents do not realize that for every IVF conceived child who survives to birth, many others will die in the process. And if one of these is found to have a flaw or defect, the clinic will usually recommend scrapping the faulty child and manufacturing another.
How far we have strayed from God’s plan! God has entrusted to parents the privilege of a unique cooperation with him in the work of creation by conceiving children within the embrace of marital love. Procreation is being replaced by technology. The intimate cooperation of parents with God’s work of creation is being replaced by laboratory technicians.
THE NEXT STEP down this slippery slope involves the thousands of frozen human embryos in fertility clinics. These have been abandoned to a laboratory limbo as the leftover “byproducts” of in vitro fertilization. Since most are no longer wanted or needed by their biological parents, many scientists and politicians argue that they should be destroyed for the sake of stem cell research. Here we have truly entered a “brave new world” of human experimentation by the outright destruction of embryonic human beings for scientific research.
It does not require much effort to imagine what comes next. Today there is increasing political and economic pressure to allow human cloning simply to harvest embryonic stem cells. Of course, this requires destroying the human embryo in the process. This misguided search for cures is not only ethically repulsive but it is an unfortunate smokescreen distracting researchers and investors from more promising and ethically sound avenues of stem cell research involving “adult” stem cells. Breakthroughs in adult stem cell research, unlike embryonic stem cell research, have already produced dozens of therapies and are affecting real cures.
THESE ATTITUDES affect the way we treat persons who have reached the end of their lives as well. For example, persons who have lost conscious awareness, even if they are not dying, may be denied food and water simply because they are no longer capable of normal human functioning. This death by starvation and dehydration of a person in a so-called “persistent vegetative state” ignores the truth expressed by Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI: “A man, even if seriously ill or disabled in the exercise of his highest functions, is and always will be a man, and he will never become a “vegetable” or an ‘animal.’”
As we observe Respect Life Sunday on October 7 I call upon Catholics and all persons of good will to bear witness to the truth concerning the inherent dignity of every human life from conception to natural death. We must steadfastly proclaim the dignity of every person, and thus influence the transformation of our culture into a true culture of life. We have to reject the lie hidden within the contraceptive mentality, which denies God the sovereignty which is only his as the unique giver and Lord of life.
Published The Register
October 5, 2007