The Ripple Effect of Abortion
by Fr. Frank Pavone
Abortion harms our entire culture in ways we have not even begun to imagine. We may at times be tempted to think that we are not individually affected by the fact that others legally abort their children. But abortion does affect us all, personally and directly, whether we are aware of it or not.
The pro-life movement has done much to teach the public about the destructive harm that abortion does to the unborn child. Most people also have been informed about the negative impact abortion has on women’s health, as a result of the multiple physical and emotional complications of the procedure. But taking a brief look at the other circles of destruction brought on by abortion can be an even more sobering experience.
The Survivors
First of all, what does abortion do to the children who survive? Psychologists have now discovered “Abortion Survivor Syndrome,” a cluster of symptoms that mimic those of the soldiers who return from battle, and instead of feeling happy that they survived, feel guilty and anxious. “Could I have done something to keep my army buddy from getting killed? Why was it him and not me?”
Dr. Philip Ney, a Canadian expert and child psychiatrist, explains that children eventually ask, “I was born because mommy wanted me. What if she stops wanting me?”
The impact of being an abortion survivor should not be ignored as we try to understand why children shoot other children in schools. We’ve taught them to do so when we taught them that their lives were disposable. Children will not stop killing children until parents stop killing children.
The prospect that one could have been legally killed by his or her own parents is also a significant obstacle for our young people to hear the Gospel message of the Father’s unconditional love for them.
From Generation to Generation
Abortion leads to more abortion, as well as to various forms of child abuse. One of the biggest factors that will determine whether someone will have an abortion is whether her mother had an abortion. The reasons have to do with the way abortion affects the maternal bond. It weakens and distorts it, and a woman who has an abortion faces obstacles in her relationships with later children she brings to birth. The act of aborting a child, rather than adjusting to the changes that childbirth brings, constitutes a failure to mature and a regression in one’s development toward adult responsibility. This failure to mature is one of the contributing causes of child abuse.
The Helpless Cry
Abortion threatens the survival of the human species itself, because it introduces a distortion into the human response to the infant’s helpless cry. When a crying baby awakens her parents in the middle of the night, initial annoyance quickly gives way to tenderness toward the child in need. The very survival of the species depends on our overall ability to make that transition. Abortion, by definition, is a deliberate refusal to hear and respond to the helpless cry.
Dr. Ney writes, “Human response to the helpless cry of their young will determine if the human species survives. The helpless cry is any sound or signal that alerts a person that some creature is in distress and cannot help him/herself . . . Anyone with any humanity in him or herself must react in one way or another. The helpless cry is an essential crisis . . . It is an accurate gauge of how human we are as individuals and how civilized we are collectively. It will determine whether we become more free, more mature, and more loving, or whether we become insensitive, dehumanized, and hateful.”
Marriage
Abortion destroys marriages and male-female relations generally. The woman who has aborted a child finds it more difficult to trust the man. Her relationship with him led to the unspeakable pain of abortion.
Meanwhile, the man finds in abortion an easy way to escape responsibility for his actions. The fact that the law does not give fathers a say in whether their own unborn children live or die means that fathers are less willing to take responsibility for those children before and after birth, and less willing to bond with them. If they are not attached to the baby, moreover, they are not as supportive of their partner.
Government
When our government allowed abortion, it became a different kind of government than what it was founded to be. There are only two forms of government. The first acknowledges that God gives us our rights, and that government exists to secure those rights. In such a framework, government can’t tamper with the right to life, and can never authorize its destruction.
The second form, however, says that government is the source of those rights, and therefore has full dominion over life and death. The Pope comments on this in Evangelium Vitae: “In this way democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves toward a form of totalitarianism. The State is no longer the ‘common home’ where all can live together on the basis of principles of fundamental equality, but is transformed into a tyrant State, which arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenseless members. . . . When this happens, the process leading to the breakdown of a genuinely human coexistence and the disintegration of the State itself has already begun. . . . This is the death of true freedom” (no. 20).
Abortion has wrought havoc on our political system, practically destroying one of our national parties and hijacking the constitutionally provided method for filling positions on federal courts.
Other effects in law have been described as “the abortion distortion.” In various states, for example, pro-abortion forces have begun to shut down avenues of free speech, such as specialty license plate programs or tow banner advertising, just to prevent the truth of abortion from being told.
The Church
The well-being of the Church is also at stake because of the abortion controversy. The more the “ethic” of abortion is embedded in the laws and practices of society, the more strained are the Church’s relations with government. The Church, after all, must interact with government leaders on a wide range of programs that serve the people and advance the Church’s interests. But as was painfully evident in recent controversies over whether pro-abortion politicians should be allowed to receive Holy Communion or even appear on Church property, the constant presence of legal abortion—and public officials who are willing to keep it legal—will provide a source of continued conflict.
At the same time, positions on abortion are reduced, in public commentary, to “political” positions. Given the fact that many attorneys who advise the Church give unnecessarily restrictive legal advice, the bottom line is that there is a chilling effect on the freedom of the clergy—and others in ministry—to comment on abortion. This strains the credibility of the Church, as people try to figure out why more leadership is not evident from the pulpit on what the bishops themselves have called the most fundamental civil rights issue of our day.
The Medical Community
Legal abortion distorts the purpose and slows the progress of medicine. Doctors are being reduced to their pre-Hippocratic oath days when they were seen as dispensers of both life and death. The inherent link between the medical profession and the care of life is being denied and obscured. Moreover, if defects in a child are handled by aborting the child, motivation to make medical progress in treating such defects is deterred.
At the same time, if embryos can be destroyed, they can also be manipulated, experimented on, sold, or combined with other species. Bioethical oddities of immense proportions are on the horizon.
Security
Ultimately, the economy and security of the nation and the world are threatened by abortion. Destroying 40 million lives in a generation can’t happen without consequences, starting with the aging of the population, with fewer younger workers supporting the system.
Moreover, how can we maintain peace between nations if we cannot maintain peace between a mother and her own child? As Mother Teresa warned, “If we say that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill each other? . . . The fruit of abortion is nuclear war.”
We have only skimmed the surface here and have truly not begun to appreciate the destructive power of abortion. May we, as individuals and as a society, face up to the truth about abortion and its many dimensions before it is too late.
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Article courtesy Priests for Life. Copyright © 2003-2005 Fr. Frank Pavone. All rights reserved.
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