The right to life must be defended with “maximum determination”

Like many of you, the COVID-19 lockdown brought major changes for me. Mount St. Mary’s Seminary closed on March 19, and I was forced to finish my semester remotely at the St. Mary’s Cathedral rectory in Fargo. Amidst the many difficulties and limitations, the one exception was being only six blocks from the abortion facility. On Wednesdays, I prayed there for an hour or two. Over the course of the six or so times that I visited there to pray, three things struck me.

The first was the people who were there. These people are heroic. Rain or shine, Catholic or agnostic, they were there. Every Wednesday, all day. Some from hundreds of miles away. Some had been coming for years. They prayed and pleaded with women who were coming to abort their children, telling them that there was help. I marveled how these people could still be hopeful after watching so much death. But they did, week after week. I wanted to be like them.  

The second was the utter irony. Our government and state legislators shut down our entire country in the interest of saving American lives and convinced us that it was our duty to shelter in place and distance ourselves from others for the sake of the common good. And yet here were 20 people still dying every week that didn’t even have a name. Where was the interest of the common good when it came to them? Why did this clinic stay open, where death was certain, while churches and everywhere else had to close because death was vaguely possible? It made absolutely no sense to me.

The third was whether anybody actually cared for the children being killed or for the women whose lives would be inevitably wounded by abortion—even myself. This, perhaps, is the hardest part of the fight against abortion. It seems that the quiet efforts and silence of those who are pro-life are dwarfed by those who champion supposed “women’s health” and “reproductive rights.” It is simple for everyone—myself included—to compartmentalize and sterilize abortion, since it lacks a certain empathetic appeal. One might, for instance, feel more empathy for a rescued cat or dog, or championing the environment, or feeding the poor, than they would for the saving of an unborn child. That’s because we can see and picture the crisis. The fight for life is a generally an unseen struggle but one that is directly at the forefront and pre-eminent.

St. John Paul II tells us that to champion any cause “is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.” So often I hear that being pro-life means treasuring all life—which is true—but when one is dealing with a single means of taking human lives to the tune of 4,000 a day in America alone, the Church’s wisdom of calling it a pre-eminent issue stands true. I have to remind myself of that when I become complacent on the importance of this issue.

I am on pastoral year this year, meaning that instead of being in a seminary, I am living in a parish learning the ins and outs of parish life. It has been great, allowing me to take part in parish and diocesan events which I otherwise couldn’t if back in seminary. One of those events was the Mass and Walk for Life at the Cathedral on Oct. 4, when Bishop Folda presided over a Mass followed by a Eucharistic procession to the abortion clinic in downtown Fargo. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who were part of this Mass and procession, and the power of the Church over the power of darkness. We marched right down Broadway, complete with a police escort, to the tune of 150-200 people. While there is very little we can do in the law of the land, we can pray and stay hopeful that one day, the curse of abortion will end through the power of Christ.

And it will end. This is not the first time the Church has fought infanticide. The Church fought it in the days of her foundation in Rome. She fought the child-sacrifices of the Aztecs. Both times, she won. She’ll win again, and since we are the Church, it will be our victory.