Novena for the Legal Protection of Human Life: August 17, 2018

Pray

Maya change in the U.S. Supreme Court move our nation closer to the day when every human being is protected in law and welcomed in life.

Our Father..., Hail Mary..., Glory Be...

Fast

Offer a sacrifice for the intention.
(Ideas for fasting.)

Learn

Abortion is not health care.

Abortion advocates speak as if abortion is health care, a procedure that is morally and emotionally equivalent to surgically removing one's tonsils or appendix. It is often conveyed as so morally neutral that only a few religious outliers find it objectionable. Yet in reality, the vast majority, over 85%, of OB/GYNs, coming from many faiths or no faith refuse to be associated with or perform an abortion.¹ In addition, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, 86% of hospitals were not involved in abortion.² Finally, even Roe acknowledges that abortion is unlike other procedures performed by a health professional and that unborn children deserve some protection.³ Abortion is not health care and we do a disservice to women and health care providers to pretend it is.

 

 

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¹ Stulberg, Debra B., et al, "Abortion Provision Among Practicing Obstetrician-Gynecologists," Obstetrics and Gynecology, 118(3): 609-614, September 2011 https://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Fulltext/2011/09000/Abortion_Provision_Among_Practicing.16.aspx

² Henshaw, Stanley K, "Abortion Incidence and Services in the United States, 1995-1996," 30 Perspectives on Sexual & Reproductive Health 263-70 (Nov./Dec. 1998), https://www.guttmacher.org/journals/psrh/1998/11/abortion-incidence-and-services-united-states-1995-1996.

³Roe v Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 155 (1973) (emphasis added): "[T]he right of privacy, however based, is broad enough to cover the abortion decision; that the right, nonetheless, is not absolute and is subject to some limitations; and that at some point the state interests as to protection of health, medical standards, and prenatal life, become dominant." And again (p. 159) (emphasis added): "The pregnant woman cannot be isolated in her privacy. She carries an embryo and, later, a fetus… The situation therefore is inherently different from [other situations where the Court has recognized a constitutional right of privacy, such as] marital intimacy, or bedroom possession of obscene material, or marriage, or procreation, or education…."