By Father James Lentini
Pastor, Immaculate Conception parish, Marydel, Md.,
This year residents in Maryland are being asked to vote on “The Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment.” This amendment would enshrine the “right” to abortion in the state’s constitution. On the ballot, this proposal is identified as “Question One.” But it seems to me that, in truth, in our humanity, the real Question One is — and always is — “Does a human being have the right to snuff out the life of another human being?” The answer to that question doesn’t enshrine some new “right” in a state constitution but rather shows forth our Christianity and enshrines respect for human life in our civil polity.
This ballot measure, like many other ballot measures in similar language around the nation over the past two years, couches the issue of abortion in the benign-sounding language of “reproductive rights.” That is a canard. Let’s be clear: in this country, all women have the right to reproduce — that is, have a child. They have so-called “reproductive rights,” that is, they absolutely have the freedom to have children. What is being sought here is a right to “non-reproduction” once the reproductive process — that is, life — has begun. It pits the right to end a life (killing the baby in the womb) against the right to life (the right of the baby in the womb to live).
In a society that spends endless political capital blathering about protecting the weak and marginalized, there seems to be a cultural insouciance to understanding that a baby in a mother’s womb is the weakest, most marginalized of all. That child in that womb should, at a bare minimum, have protection for his or her life. Is that too much to ask of a civil society?
What irks me most in this entire debate is the misplaced use of and emphasis on the word “choice.” You see, the problem with the idea of a person wanting to enshrine a “right” to abort a child in the Constitution of a state being called “pro-choice” is that that phrase perniciously hides what the choice is. Who doesn’t want choice? Whether I buy a car or an ice cream cone, I’d like a choice — what model, what price, what flavor. But those choices are benign, not malicious. The choice we are talking about here is simply this, “Does the child in the womb get to live, or does it get killed.” Yeah, we are back to the real Question One: “Does a human being have the right to snuff out the life of another human being?”
The idea of enshrining the right to abort a child (let’s not be so coy as to pretend that that is what the “reproductive freedom” language in this amendment portends) should be roundly rejected by the Catholic faithful. Such a freedom has no place in a civil society. And those who think that the ending of a human life is a “choice” that should be allowed, well, they are wrong.
On this question of “choice” — as it relates to this ballot measure and its ramifications, I am reminded of a movie from 1982 called “Sophie’s Choice.” Based on a William Styron novel of the same name, that movie tells the story of a young mother and her two children who are brought to a Nazi death camp. A Nazi officer then gives the mother a choice – he tells her she must make a choice: only one of her children will be able to live; the other will be gassed in the gas chamber. The choice is put to Sophie: pick the one you want to live. Additionally, she is told that if she picks neither, both die.
This was, as the movie’s title informed us, “Sophie’s Choice.” Ponder that horror. That so-called choice is a choice that neither Sophie nor any mother should have to make. It is a choice that is, in fact, not a choice at all.
In that regard, let me tell you about another mother. About 20 years ago, a woman named Amy Richards found herself pregnant with triplets. She wrote a column about it in the New York Times magazine section (July 18, 2004), with the ominous title, “Lives: When One Is Enough.” Amy, who was a woman of reasonable means, decided that triplets would encumber her life too much. So, Amy went to her doctor and, according to the column, asked, “Is it possible to get rid of one of them? Or two of them?” Ultimately, she decided that two of the three children living in her womb be aborted. She chose the one that would live. Her doctor gave this procedure the Orwellian moniker “selective reduction.”
This was Amy’s Choice. It is a choice that no one should ever make. It is a barbaric choice. It is the choice that Sophie was forced to make in that Nazi camp as a point of horror that haunted her. Yet Amy made that choice, wrote about it in the New York Times, and became, at the time, a poster child for abortion rights.
The difference between Sophie’s Choice and Amy’s Choice – Sophie realized the horror of her choice; Amy believed it to be a just, practical, and God-given right. Sophie’s choice was a horrible one; Amy’s choice was worse because she did it out of intention with disregard for the life of the other two children in her womb. To our society, much of which, sadly, shares Amy’s view, I say: Lord, have mercy on us. I also say that it is time we start to push back. Taking an innocent human life must never be elevated to any form of a constitutional right.
This fall, the voters of Maryland, where I serve as a pastor on its Eastern Shore, will be making, dare I say, a choice. One choice would leave the law where it is now (which is not good, as abortion is still readily available under it); the other would elevate the practice of abortion to being a right enshrined in the state’s Constitution. I guess for me, the decision is obvious — this proposed amendment should prima facie be rejected. To have a civil society, our society has to be civil. This proposed amendment would give an unfettered green light to a certain flavor of life-taking, one called abortion, and it makes this type of killing not just legal but a constitutional right in Maryland. That doesn’t sound civil to me.
As you consider Question One on the Maryland ballot this fall, also consider the real Question One: “Does a human being have the right to snuff out the life of another human being?”
Father James Lentini is pastor of Immaculate Conception parish in Marydel, Md., and Church of the Holy Cross in Dover, Del.
