January 1982 Print

By Phyllis Graham

Herod, in his day, gave out the fateful order and the soldiers, submitting to man rather than God, immediately obeyed with drawn swords. Going into all the homes of Bethlehem and the surrounding area, they tore the little babies from their mothers' arms and, doing exactly what they had been told to do, they slaughtered them. Just like that—in blind obedience. One can easily imagine that some of these soldiers, if not all, knew in their hearts that something was wrong with doing things this way, but they had not been taught the finer points of proper use of authority, so they blindly obeyed.

In today's "safe, legal" abortion clinics and hospitals, preborn babies, littlest of the innocents, suffer the same grizzly fate throughout the world—in this country alone, the count is a staggering one and a half million a year. This time it is not Herod's fault, but the causative philosophy is the same: "I will not serve!" Mothers refuse their God-given charge and doctors will not submit to the Divine Law. And it seems a phenomena of man's adamant rebellions against the Will of God that someone innocent always suffers as a result.

Abortion is an issue like none other, evoking depthless emotion on both sides of the debate. The magnitude of the sin can probably not even be imagined, but certainly there is some hint of it in the fact that ever since the doomful Supreme Court decision in 1973, everything in this country has been steadily plummeting downhill—the economy, morals, manners, the arts and, as some octogenarians have said, with perhaps more wisdom than senility, "Even the weather ain't what it used to be!"

While we traditional Catholics, faithful to the unchangeable teachings of Holy Mother Church, stand solidly united both with our priests and with each other in condemning and opposing abortion, the following thoughts and information are written in the hope that we may redouble our efforts in the fight while heightening our optimism and, hopefully, reach some "novus ordo Catholics"¹ whose pro-life energies stand to be dangerously misdirected by wayward, pessimistic spiritual leaders.

 

Background: An Uphill Fight

Soon after the tragic Supreme Court decision, a goodly number of small right-to-life groups started to organize in various parts of the country. Those with which I initially became familiar—if I may be excused for some sardonicism in this age of pro-abortion priests—were directly inspired and encouraged by faithful Catholic priests who at the time suffered no muddled thinking on the Church's clear-cut condemnation of abortion. These good priests alluded to pro-life activism as God's own work and reminded us that man's diligent efforts on His behalf were always rewarded, at the same time laying it thickly on the conscience that to do nothing constituted sin by omission. (The pro-abortionists, though not accurate when they tried to label abortion a Catholic issue, were nevertheless quite correct when they ascertained that the fiercest opposition should be from Roman Catholics. Their overall strategy necessarily took this into consideration and soon, the shocking rumor that the American Catholic Bishops had agreed to go easy in opposing abortion in return for Federal help to Catholic schools, first met by disbelief, rapidly took on credibility as dedicated right-to-lifers looking for help and encouragement were alienated with impunity by their pastors.) Abandoned by spiritual leaders, we banded together, forming a motley assortment of folks from all walks of life, of both sexes, diverse personality, varying ages and different economic levels. Those capable of motivating others rose to the leadership and the fight was on.

From the very beginning, it was a David and Goliath fight, waged against overwhelming odds, fought non-violently against very violent forces (some of us women received frightening anonymous letters threatening rape?). The financing came from humble operations, things like cake sales, rummage sales, dinner parties and raffles; and these small sums were pitted against Rockefeller thousands and taxpayer millions. The fight was waged every day of the week, and on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, by zealots who felt conscience-bound to check their calendars first to see if the acceptance of some purely social invitation might conflict with one's duty to the cause of the unborn. It had all the earmarks of war: there soon were the wounded and the battle-weary, and all were bearing the estrangement of long-time friends and even relatives who looked upon all the diligence as fanaticism. Many sacrificed personal savings to finance the political campaigns of pro-life candidates. Homes were turned into paper warehouses as tons of literature were gathered, duplicated, distributed. Also, there were attempts by the enemy at infiltration and sabotage, not the least of which may well have been the Call for a Constitutional Convention. The more obvious subversion was the internal attempt to keep right-to-lifers from fighting the Equal Rights Amendment, first recognized by Phyllis Schlafly and now widely acknowledged to have been the abortionists' "big gun." The picketing, lobbying, letter-writing and proselytizing were fueled by much prayer and high hope ... and no one spoke of surrender.

Long around 1975, however, some of the less idealistic leaders—tired as they were, unrewarded as they felt, or influenced as they were by the persuasive whisperings of defeatists—began to make noises about the "bleak prospects" of ever attaining a Human Life Amendment which would prohibit all of the legalized killing. We had to be "realistic," they said, and settle for the kind of amendment which might be "less than what we want but at least reasonably attainable." In other words, some of the babies would be saved while the others would have to be forsaken. "Half a loaf," they argued, "is better than no loaf at all."

 

The March for Life: "No Compromise"

Some agreed. Given the dismal climate surrounding the movement after two hard years of exhausting activity, depleted funds, unjust treatment by the media and, more than anything else, the demoralizing increasing opposition by more and more members of the Catholic clergy, some weakened and lent their support to the wrong leaders. Those leaders had already taken the kinds of steps which have brought even powerful governments to their destruction: dialogue, negotiation, compromise.

It was then that the much-admired and highly dedicated leader, Nellie Gray, a Washington D.C. attorney, emerged as the most forceful spokesman of the greater majority of right-to-life workers, those who would adhere, do-or-die, to purity of purpose. With fist-pounding-the table determination, she declared the immovable position of the MARCH FOR LIFE COMMITTEE, published in its 1976 Journal:

"There is a tendency by some workers generally associated with the right to life movement to weaken and openly advocate 'compromise'! ... THE MARCH FOR LIFE is the forum to tell the abortionists—and any who want to compromise with them—that grass roots right-to-life people staunchly retain their position as defenders of life. A positive and substantive defense of the preborn American and that child's fellow human beings shall be undertaken. To think in terms of less than the task to be done is to declare the defense of preborn children impossible. That defense is not impossible. It shall be done!"

This was what most of us wanted to hear. Miss Gray then coined the battlecry "NO COMPROMISE!" and the steadily growing crowd of marching right-to-lifers echoed it. Later, the position was confirmed with the equally implacable motto, "NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT OF ABORTION!" The most important thing to understand about the right-to-life movement is the clear distinction between those leaders who do not understand the insidious legal ramifications of the various amendments proposed, and those who are quick to recognize a surrender camouflaged as a solution; the former usually are of the type who rely on the limited powers of man and are, therefore, pessimistic, easily discouraged and ready to compromise, the latter of the type who, placing all confidence in God, are determined to carry the fight to ultimate total victory whenever God should decree that day to be. Nellie Gray, then, voicing the highest aspirations of the right-to-life movement and an indomitable optimism based on Divine Providence, found herself surrounded by a huge and enthusiastic following. People returned home from the January marches for life in Washington, D.C. with renewed fervor and by the 1980 elections, by the grace of God, abortion had become a dirty word and an embarrassing political issue.

Prayer/Work/Successes

The political world was stunned as a significant number of smug, entrenched, pro-abortion legislators were toppled from high office by the machinations of a united, doggedly persevering, idealistic and optimistic right-to-life movement. The once-ridiculed, shunned, admittedly clumsy right-to-lifers could no longer be ignored. Our crucial contribution to the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment left the enemy flabbergasted. They could not understand the spectacular successes of a cause so flimsily armed with such limited resources; still less can they understand how a movement which condemns contraception and espouses Chastity could draw, in these modern times, such a disproportionate number of teenagers and young adults. But then, most of them do not believe that an Omnipotent God, even if they acknowledge His existence, would allow His Power to be drawn by simple invocation into man's personal struggles—a thing incomprehensible even, to those of us who do believe in it....

The most arresting observance of the right-to-life cause is the major part which prayer has played in the movement. I have not met, in all these nine years of pro-life activity, any individual or group which has not unabashedly relied on Almighty God for strength and guidance in the. fight. Meetings were opened with prayer, vigils and fasting became an integral part of the "strategy," picketing in front of abortion clinics were essentially public recitations of the Holy Rosary (for, as my husband noted, "What pregnant Catholic woman, on hearing the Hail Mary, could possibly go through with an abortion?" A number of them did not.) Prayer services were held, novenas made, and always the prayers for the unborn and their mothers were mingled with prayers for the perpetrators, the doctors themselves, who knew—who HAD to know—that a human being is formed at conception. We prayed, "May their hardened hearts be softened, O Lord.... Holy Mother Mary, make them see their error...." Our pleas were heard. An outraged Heavenly Father, eager to show man His infinite mercy, provided us with the dramatic conversion of Dr. Bernard Nathanson, an avid, prominent abortionist. He had been one of the chief helmsmen of the early abortion movement, was co-founder of the notorious National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL), and director of the largest abortion clinic in the world. The man had suddenly reflected and written in the New England Journal of Medicine: "I am deeply troubled by my own increasing certainty that I had in fact presided over 60,000 deaths..." His book, Aborting America, ought to be read by the American Catholic Bishops!

 

The Hatch Amendment: A Second Betrayal

The bishops shocked both the religious and. the irreligious world recently with their endorsement of the compromisory Hatch Amendment. Actually, the Hatch Amendment is worse than a compromise—it is a surrender and as much a betrayal of the innocents as was the Supreme Court decision. It is not a solution to the plight of the unborn; it is a solution for the abortionists who recognize better than we do that total victory for the right-to-life movement—the end of legalized abortion throughout the country—is a distinct possibility. The Hatch Amendment would give to the fifty states both the right to prohibit abortion and the license to permit them, a license which is not any man's (or body of men) to give. In other words, the legal stature which abortion does not now possess in the U. S. Constitution (we must remember that abortion right now is not a law, it is merely a split Supreme Court decision), it would get with the Hatch Amendment! The bishops' support of such a measure therefore deals the unborn a tragic blow. It gives those of us who love Holy Mother

Church fresh cause for weeping that the world will misunderstand this dastardly act to have come from Her, when indeed it could not; it is too uncatholic a thing to have done!

How Abortions are Done

No discussion of abortion is complete without some depiction of just what it is we are talking about. What is it that takes place in an abortion? It is remarkable that with all the literature that has been proliferated, many people still do not know.

Several methods are used. In the first three months of pregnancy, the baby is either torn apart by powerful suction machinery, many times the force of a regular household vacuum cleaner, and the remains of the child sucked out into a bottle, or, the tiny baby is cut up by the surgeon's loop-shaped steel knife inserted into the womb, and the pieces of child and placenta are scraped,out into a basin. After the 16th week, a large needle is inserted through the mother's abdomen and into the amniotic sac. A highly concentrated salt solution is then injected and the baby slowly burned and poisoned, struggling sometimes convulsively, until death. Some of these tiny innocents are still alive and writhing when expelled from the womb and die hours later. In the last months, abortion, is performed in the manner of a Caesarian section: the mother's abdomen is surgically opened and the baby lifted out and discarded. One such aborted baby in New York refused to die and was adopted (UPI, 19 December 1970), but in most of these abortions, the babies are born alive and are left to die from lack of care. There are endless stories from overwrought nurses, one of which is how a sign was placed over the baby's bassinet marked "Do not feed" and the tiny infant struggling to stay alive cried itself to death. The mongoloid baby at Johns Hopkins Hospital which was deliberately left unfed in a side room took eleven days to starve to death (J. M. Fustasson, Mongolism—Parental Desires and the Right to Life, pp. 250-1). Another baby disposed of in a paper bag was still alive and crying when a porter went out to the incinerator. The child died hours later (Dr. J. C. Wilke, Handbook on Abortion). Brutal experiments performed without anesthesia on babies aborted alive is another grim facet of the "safe, legal" abortion picture; the twisted philosophy of "Enjoy ... and destroy" foisted upon many of our young people by sex education programs, is another.

I apologize for these ugly descriptions. But if they arouse us to some revulsion, then we may begin to understand the burning zeal of pro-life activists who have refused to live with this barbarism and who are doing everything they can to end it.

 

Optimism—Ultimate Victory

Although the battle has been all uphill, we have gained tremendous ground and the war against abortion can be won. Catholics ought especially to be optimistic about the outcome; our traditional Catholic Faith is still one of Hope! Despair is still matter for Confession! Nothing has changed in the true Roman Catholic Faith, or ever will. Even with our churches devastated and our clergy gone mad with Modernism, we know that God keeps His promises and answers humble prayers. Even though many of us no longer have the Mass and the sacraments, all of us do have Our Lady's Holy Rosary. Having mercifully granted the conversion of an avid abortionist, surely God wills the return of His bishops to the Holy Faith into which they were baptized. Before Vatican II, one could comb every rectory and seminary in the world and never find one Catholic priest who would even come close to excusing either abortion or abortionists. With the return of even some of our wayward shepherds to the flocks they have left in disarray, the abortion fight could be easily won. But while we pray fervently for that, we do not just wait for that. We place our trust in God rather than man and continue to do what has to be done, with the firm conviction that a victory which may be "...impossible with men," is entirely "...possible with God."

March for Life Committee
P. O. Box 2950
Washington, D. C. 20013
(Telephone 202-LIFE-377)

Dr. Nathanson's book, Aborting America is available from :

Life Cycle Books
70 Richmond St. East, Suite 201
Toronto, Ontario M5C 2M8

1. The term "novus ordo Catholic" is used to differentiate those Catholics who have accepted the reforms which came and continue to come as a result of the Second Vatican Council, who allow their children to he indoctrinated in the new catechisms, or who at least participate on Sundays in the new form of worship which has been redefined to be a commemorative meal rather than the Unbloody Sacrifice at Calvary and which is now commonly referred to as "Celebration" or simply "Liturgy" rather than Holy Mass.