|
Mother Teresa of Calcutta confronted President Clinton on his pro-abortion
stand in early February at the National Prayer Breakfast. Last week she
took her pro-life message to the highest court in the land. Her lawyers
filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court urging it to recognize the
unborn child's inalienable right to life.
She urged the court to hear the case Alexander Loce
vs. The State of New Jersey, which involves the issue of whether or not
the unborn child is a human being entitled to 14th Amendment protection.
Loce was convicted of trespassing for attempting to prevent his fiancee
from having an abortion.
Mother Teresa's petition is a powerful witness in
defense of life. It
includes the following passage:
"America needs no words from me to see how
your decision in Roe vs. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called
right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women
against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most
intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the
father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed
the greatest of gifts—a child—as a competitor, an intrusion and an
inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion
over the dependent lives of their physically dependent sons and
daughters. And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed
many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other
sexual partners.
"Human rights are not a privilege conferred by
government," she said. "They are every human being's
entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not
depend, and must not be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not
even a parent or sovereign. The Constitutional Court of the Federal
Republic of Germany recently ruled: 'The unborn child is entitled to its
right to life independently of its acceptance by its mother; this is an
elementary and inalienable right which emanates from the dignity of the
human being.'
"Americans may feel justly proud that Germany
in 1993 was able to recognize the sanctity of human life. You must weep
that your own government, at present, seems blind to this truth."
This article is taken from the February 24, 1994
issue of The Arlington Catholic Herald.
|
