The Value of Human Life
Each year the Church celebrates October as Respect Life Month and the 1st Sunday of October as Respect Life Sunday. The Church calls on Catholics to cherish, defend and protect life from its beginning to its end and at every point in between. This truth should be obvious, but our world’s Culture of Death cleverly deceives and convinces people, especially the young, that human lives, particularly preborn babies, are not important and can be destroyed. I came across a video from the PragerU organization showing young people, millennials, in Los Angeles being asked to sign a petition to protect eagle eggs from destruction (something that is already illegal under federal law).
The reactions were all positive from “of course don’t kill eagles” to “I hope you save the eagles.” Then when asked to sign a 2 nd petition to “stop the killing of humans too, like babies,” at first, they respond “oh my God” and “I hate the killing of babies.” But once they realize this refers to abortion, they immediately changed saying “Wait, no…I’m pro-abortion” and “Oh no, I disagree.” When asked, “Why do you support not killing unborn eagles, but support killing unborn children?” One person didn’t dispute that abortion kills children, but she said, “a human should probably have more rights than an eagle.” Another said, “Babies are gross. You’re not a woman. You have no idea what it does to your body.” Another adds, “Maybe I would want a baby, not more than 1 [because with climate change] we’re all gonna die soon.”
This attitude just doesn’t affect the young. A few years ago, Washington lawmakers voted against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act (H.R. 962) which mandates that babies who survive an abortion must be provided care and not left to die, just as care must be provided to any baby born prematurely. Several days later, those same lawmakers were calling for legislation to ban killing kittens for scientific research. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) argued that America “must stop killing kittens,” when 3 weeks earlier, he agreed that preborn infants who survived abortion should die. It makes us wonder how people can choose cats over children when it comes to life.
In 1994, at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., St. Mother Theresa courageously said, “the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. If we accept that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?”
As well as being Respect Life Month, October is also the month of the Rosary, dedicated to our Blessed Mother under her title “Our Lady of the Rosary” whose feast is celebrated on October 7. During this month let’s pray for greater respect and protection for preborn children especially by praying the Rosary every day.