From the Associate

We all know that the Catholic Church is now, and has been for two thousand years, firmly against abortion.  The taking of an innocent and vulnerable life is the paramount act of injustice, and no society that claims to be just can allow it.
Theoretically this may be clear enough, but I think there can be an imaginative difficulty for many people in really getting hold of this position.  The difficulty arises this way: If one adds up the number of people who have been involved in abortion, including the women who have had them, the men who have either encouraged or pressured them into it, the friends who actively supported them, the agencies and doctors who performed them, the people who promoted legal abortion politically, the count comes to tens of millions of people.  A large segment of the American population is thus tainted with - let's not be afraid of the proper word - murder. 
And this is quite hard to believe.  We know well enough that murder exists, but it's the very few who are involved in such crimes.  Bad people.  Nice people, good citizens, don't do such things.  And surely there are many nice people who have had, or encouraged others to have, an abortion.  Surely it can't really be that bad.
But here is the truth we must face in order to fully understand our situation: we humans are a race of murderers, and since the fall of our first parents and the murder of Abel, we prefer murder as our favorite means of dealing with difficult or inconvenient situations.
Does this sound overly harsh?  If so, let's do a thought experiment.  Let's imagine a world just like ours, with this one difference: that there was a law passed which stated that anyone could, at any time and for whatever reason, annihilate a person they wanted put away, simply by sending in a name and a small fee to a special government office.  The person so named would then be done away with, no questions asked.  We'll put a limit to this power of annihilation: beginning at the age of twelve, it could be exercised a maximum of five times.  So there it would be: five times during a lifetime you have this option. Want someone gone?  No muss, no fuss, just send in the name, and Poof!, vanished.  Disappeared.  And nobody would point any fingers.  Legalized, anonymous murder.
In such a world, I wonder how many people would be left alive after twenty years.  How many difficult marriages would end in the annihilation of one of the spouses?  How many students would put away a disliked teacher, or a teacher a problem student?  How many rivals in love would simply disappear?  Or rivals in business, or in sports?  How many people who "did me wrong," or who offended me, or whose manner bugs me, or who are just plain impossible to deal with in the office or the neighborhood, would vanish?  How many people who are in my way to claim an inheritance?  How many politicians whose views I can't abide?  Or entertainers who drive me crazy?  How many would remain?  Not many. The truth is that the real reason there is not constant murder is that the process is so difficult and messy.

Think of the details.  Does one use a club and smash the skull, or throttle the person, or concoct a deadly poison and slip it in their drink?  Then there is the problem, as Agatha Christie constantly notes, of what to do with the body.  And what if plans should go awry and I get hurt?  What if I should get caught and my life ruined?  And beyond all this, there is something fearful about actually taking the life of a living, breathing person standing in front of me.  But: make murder easy, make it anonymous and legal, and, well, very few of us would not be sorely tempted, at one time or another, to scribble a name down and drop earth's population by one.
We make this clear by the way we murder with our tongues.  Christians have always understood slander and malicious gossip as a kind of murder.  We can't actually kill someone, so we try to destroy their good name, their influence, their ability to live well, by poisoning others against them.  Lots of nice people regularly find themselves engaging in this type of anonymous and easy murder.  Such is our race.  Which is why we so need a Savior.  "I came into the world to save sinners."  Jesus did not need to die for a race of wonderfully good people.  He died for a race of adulterers, thieves, and murderers, people like me and you.  We need to be converted, changed, given a new heart and a new mind, if we are to overcome the effects of our fall from grace.
Abortion makes murder easy.  Or rather, it claims to make murder easy; it is actually an extraordinary, difficult, and painful experience for many who are caught in that horrible lie.  And when murder is seemingly easy, there will be lots of people who will commit it, and lots more who will be sorely tempted to commit it.  This is why murder must never be made easy.  It must never be made legal and anonymous.  We simply cannot handle such a situation.  As Mother Teresa once said: "If a mother can kill her own child, then I can kill you, and you can kill me."
For those who have had abortions, or have counseled or pressured others into having them, there is only one way forward to freedom, the same road that all of us need to take.  It is the road by which we bring our sin to the Divine Physician, who came precisely that he might heal us of such deadly diseases.  For those who have not been implicated in abortion, we need to remember that it is only the grace of God that keeps us from such sins and worse ones.  People who have had abortions are not a strange race of horrible monsters; they are fallen humans like everyone else, in need of grace and forgiveness like everyone else, capable of being transformed into beings of light and beauty and joy at the touch of Christ, like everyone else. 
Let us pray for those who have been implicated in or who are tempted to commit this supposedly easy act of murder.  And let us pray, and do all that we can in the civic order, to see that this scourge of legalized abortion be removed from our country.  It is by far the most serious social justice question of our time, the one more than any other by which this age will be judged before the throne of God.