Every October, the Catholic Church in the U.S. honors Respect Life Month and affirms the dignity of every human life, including unborn babies. While abortion remains a controversial issue, at its heart is the issue of how society views an unborn baby and by extension the relationship between the baby and his or her mother.
It can be hard to talk about, as emotions run high on both sides of the debate. As chemical abortion pills become increasingly more accessible to women and girls across the U.S., it raises the question: How do we discuss abortion as Catholics in a charitable and truthful way?
Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, a senior ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, said "the manner in which we speak is often more important than the details of what we say."
"In approaching conversations around abortion, it's important to acknowledge the woman's fears," Pacholczyk said. "It feels like a 'crisis' pregnancy as her worries snowball and she asks herself a thousand painful questions: What will my friends think of me if they find out? Will this make it impossible to finish college? I feel so alone, ashamed, and abandoned — why isn't my boyfriend here to support me?"
"Acknowledging the woman's fears by using sympathetic language can help open up a space of dialogue with advocates of abortion, as we seek to remind them of what a better response to an unexpected pregnancy should really look like," Pacholczyk said.
"It should be almost self-evident that it would be better to respond with support and accompaniment in the midst of her turbulent fears, seeking to calm the waters rather than roiling them further by turning to the violence of abortion, which in the final analysis, layers on additional regret and turbulence," Pacholczyk continued.
"Patience and a real willingness to listen to the person we are engaging with needs to prevail over our desire to try to quickly win the argument," he added. "It can be helpful to ask calm and reasoned questions to move the discussion forward in place of making dramatic, vociferous, and inflammatory assertions that may serve only to keep the two parties at loggerheads."
From a pro-life perspective, affirming the unborn child's dignity is also a fundamental part of the conversation.
"We need to be attentive when it comes to abortion 'rights' language, seeking to offer the clarity that there really is no such thing as 'rights' that allow someone to directly target and victimize innocent bystanders," Pacholczyk said. "An unborn child in a crisis pregnancy situation is surely an innocent bystander, as he or she is as much a victim of difficult circumstances as is the mother."
"The authentic 'rights' we should all be able to agree on include the right to receive help in parenting from society as new moms face the daunting and unexpected prospect of caring for and raising a child for the first time," Pacholczyk said.
Camille Pauley, who heads Healing the Culture, a Catholic organization that educates people on how to engage with difficult cultural issues like abortion, spoke to EWTN News about what it means to show charity to another person.
"Charity is to act for the good of the other person, who is made in the image and likeness of God," Pauley said. "Persons who commit the evil of abortion are not 'demonic monsters' or 'soulless savages.' These are words that do damage to society and to ourselves when we use them.'
"Persons who have fallen into the sin of abortion are human beings who are either spiritually lost or have been deeply wounded, abandoned, betrayed, deceived, and sometimes abused or coerced," Pauley said.
"At the same time, we shouldn't confuse charity towards persons with charity toward abortion," Pauley continued. "'Abortion,' in the common usage of the term, is evil, wrong, and sinful. It hurts women and unjustly kills an intrinsically valuable and sacred human being who has an inalienable right to life. To speak these words is an act of charity when they are used for the good of the other person."
She emphasized that the woman and her baby shouldn't be pitted against one another.
"The language we use must affirm that the interests of the woman are the same as the interests of the child," Pauley said. "The pro-abortion movement always wants to separate the mother and her child and pit them against one another. We must never do this. Choosing to protect her child's life is in the best interest of the child and his mother."
Why does the Catholic Church teach that life is sacred?
In St. John Paul II's 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae ("The Gospel of Life"), which continues to inform the pro-life cause today, the late pope connects the teaching on the sacredness of life to how man relates to God.
"Every individual, precisely by reason of the mystery of the Word of God who was made flesh, is entrusted to the maternal care of the Church," JPII wrote. "Therefore every threat to human dignity and life must necessarily be felt in the Church's very heart."
He noted that the decision to have an abortion is "often tragic and painful" for the woman. However, serious reasons still "can never justify the deliberate killing of an innocent human being," he added.
But the responsibility doesn't fall on the woman alone. The responsibility for any abortion extends throughout society, from the mother and father, to legislators, and to systems in place that prop up abortion, according to John Paul II, who went on to say in the encyclical that abortion goes against the right to life, which is foundational to human society, and criticized the language of "abortion rights."
"To claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others," John Paul II wrote. "This is the death of true freedom."
He emphasized that believers have a particular call to defending unborn children, as the incarnation of Jesus Christ, he said, reveals "the incomparable value of every human person."
He continued: "[Life is] a sacred reality entrusted to us, to be preserved with a sense of responsibility and brought to perfection in love and in the gift of ourselves to God and to our brothers and sisters."
This year's theme: 'Mary, Mother of Life'
The U.S. bishops, in their Respect Life Month resources, point to Mary as "our model for upholding the sanctity of all human life" — highlighting this year's theme: "Mary, Mother of Life."
"In becoming the mother of Jesus, Mary becomes the mother of life," the bishops wrote. "Mary's acceptance in this unforeseen moment demonstrates how each of us must welcome the gift of new human life, even when that gift is unexpected or calls us to make sacrifices."
The bishops encouraged Catholics to pray a Respect Life Novena from October 22–30. For more resources about Respect Life month, visit: https://www.respectlife.org/.
