Choose life, South Dakota: homily for the twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Homily for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

If there is one theme consistently present throughout the whole Bible, from the first chapter of Genesis to today’s Gospel, it is that God desires to give us life.  When he reveals the commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai, he tells the people of Israel, “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse.  Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live” (Dt 30:19).  Today the Eucharist too is presented as life-giving: “The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world” (Jn 6:51). 

It is fitting that today’s readings would highlight God’s desire to give us life, because, as I mentioned last week, the bishops of South Dakota have asked us to speak these two Sundays about a particularly urgent social issue: a measure, Amendment G, has been placed on the ballot this November, which would add the right to abortion without significant limits to the South Dakota constitution.  As I pointed out last week, Christianity is not a political program, and Catholics can disagree about most political issues while still remaining faithful to the principles of our faith.  Amendment G, however, is impossible to reconcile with the fundamental principle that it is always wrong to deliberately kill an innocent human being.

This principle is something that both conservatives and liberals should be able to embrace.  Conservatives emphasize the government’s duty to protect and not usurp individual rights, and without the right to life no other rights are possible.  Even a libertarian “live and let live” philosophy only works if you let the other live.  Take away the right to life and you have neither conservative government nor a free people, but the oppression of the weak.  

While it’s not going out on a limb to say that conservatives are the majority in South Dakota, favoring greater governmental intervention in society—as liberals do—does not in principle contradict Catholic teaching.  Last week I quoted a progressive atheist, Nat Hentoff, who explained that acknowledging that human life begins at conception does not depend upon any particular religious belief.  We know that a child in her mother’s womb is not a goldfish or a frog, but a human being in a stage of development every human being passes through.  The unique genetic code of that boy or girl is present in every cell of his or her body and is distinct from the body of the mother.  Half the time, after all, it’s a boy.  The claim that restrictions on abortion are infringements on the mother’s body is rhetorical manipulation.  The baby’s body is what’s at stake in an abortion.  It is not the mother’s skull which is crushed with forceps; it is the baby’s.  The accusation that pro-lifers want to “control women’s bodies” is propaganda pure and simple.  Prohibiting abortion no more tells a woman what she must do with her body than prohibiting slavery tells business owners how to run their company.  

Hentoff, the progressive atheist, cites another left-wing pro-lifer Mary Meehan to explain why he opposed abortion.  Meehan wrote:

The traditional mark of the left has been its protection of the underdog, the weak and the poor.  The unborn child is the most helpless form of humanity, even more in need of protection than the poor tenant farmer or the mental patient.  The basic instinct of the left is to aid those who cannot aid themselves.  

Even though expressed by secular thinkers, this sentiment resonates deeply with Christianity.  There are many false claims out there, so let me clear this up: abortion has always been unambiguously condemned by Christianity.  When Christians first encountered the practice in the Roman Empire, they condemned it.  The earliest instruction on Christian morality outside of Scripture, called the Didache, from around the turn of the first century, says, “You shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is begotten.”  The letter of Barnabas from around the same time states: “Do not kill an unborn child through abortion, nor destroy it after birth.”  

Today some falsely claim that Pope Francis has somehow changed the Church’s teaching on abortion.  Francis has said that abortion is like “hiring a hitman to resolve a problem.”  In 2021, he put it just as bluntly, “Abortion is murder.”  Anyone attempting to use the Holy Father to justify a law like Amendment G is lying.  Claiming to be a follower of Jesus Christ while supporting a law like Amendment G is hypocrisy.

But even though the incompatibility of abortion with Christianity is clear, we can’t lose sight of the fact that the Church is against abortion because she is for life, the life that our Creator and Redeemer so deeply wants to give us.  Therefore, we should reject as false any way of framing prolife principles as being against women.  Aside from the fact that because of sex-selection abortions, somewhat over half of the children aborted are female themselves, abortion is not good for women.  While organizations like “Shout Your Abortion” tell women abortion is something to be proud of, I can tell you from hearing confessions, that abortion does not make women free.  Even decades later—when their babies, if they’d lived, would have had families of their own—these children remain as a haunting accusation.  The sin of abortion, like all others can be forgiven, and God’s mercy can provide healing, but do not be under any illusion: abortion does not make you free.

What I think is most often ignored in all of the rhetoric and slogans is how so many of the women who have abortions are pressured, in overt or subtle ways, into a decision they do not really want.  Sometimes it is boyfriends or bosses—easy abortion is essential for the human trafficking industry—or social pressure.  Several months ago, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal which was criticizing Georgia’s heartbeat law, a ban on abortion after six-weeks.  Tucked away at the very end of that article, however, was an interview with a woman, Neesha, who had originally planned to have an abortion but waited too long.  Her family and friends pushed her to go to another state, but that extra distance was just enough of a roadblock to change her mind.  So she went to an adoption agency instead.  And now there is a family where before there was a childless couple and heartache.  And when she saw the baby in his new father’s arms, she said, “I’m so thankful I did not go with Option A.”

My brothers and sisters, Amendment G is a vote for “Option A,” a vote to remove the roadblocks, to make abortion easier and more common.  But imagine if the millions being spent by pro-abortion groups were dedicated to other options—to helping women like Neesha to do what they really wanted to do, to give life instead of take it.  Voters in many American states, including this one, this year face the same choice God placed before the Israelites: “I set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse.  Choose life, then, that you may live.”

Readings: Prv 9:1-6; Eph 5:15-20; Jn 6:51-58

St. Isaac Jogues Catholic Church

Rapid City, South Dakota

August 18, 2024

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For the first of my pair of homilies on this issue, click Every Child Bears the Face of Christ.