By Susan E. Wills, JD, LLM
Every year, the annual Respect Life Month helps to focus pro-life activities at diocesan and parish levels. Conferences, special prayer services (for example, for the healing of all women and men who’ve lost a child to abortion), donation drives for pregnancy care centers, local 5Ks or walks for life, public pro-life witness—these are the kinds of activities millions of Catholics engage in each October.
But this year, activities had a sharper focus and greater intensity, because this year, people of faith are facing an unprecedented violation of rights guaranteed under the First Amendment to the Constitution. Both religious liberty and rights of conscience have come under attack as a result of the contraceptive mandate imposed on virtually all employers by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), acting pursuant to the Affordable Care Act’s Preventive Services mandate.
This October, bishops in the United Sates have addressed the rights of conscience and religious liberty in speeches, columns, homilies and interviews with the media. Catholics have organized pilgrimages, rallies, Masses and Holy Hours to pray and witness for an end to the assault on religious liberty and conscience.
Part of this effort was the “Rosary Novena for Life and Liberty” from October 14 to 22, which contained daily prayers and brief accounts of the lives of the saints whose feast days are celebrated during that period—each a heroic witness in his or her own way to human dignity, to the right to life and to the importance of religious freedom. Some of the activities and resources can be found at www.usccb.org/freedom and www.usccb.org/conscience.
The seriousness of these new threats to religious liberty and conscience rights is evident in the line-up of pamphlets in the educational packet of this year’s Respect Life Program:
- Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, OFM, Archbishop of Philadelphia, contributed “Life Matters: Religious Liberty and the American Soul,” a compelling defense of the fundamental right of religious liberty, as essential to the inherent dignity of every human being. America’s founding fathers understood this well, as reflected in the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and in their later speeches and letters. Archbishop Chaput also cites examples of current threats to religious liberty and conscience occurring through the actions of federal, state and local governments.
- Joxel García, MD, MBA, former HHS Assistant Secretary for Health and past president and dean of the Ponce (P.R.) School of Medicine & Health Sciences, wrote “Life Matters: Conscience Protection in Healthcare.” In this pamphlet, Dr. García (an ob-gyn) presents personal examples and sound arguments showing that the rights of conscience for healthcare personnel must be protected for the good of patients, the healing profession and for society as a whole.
- The HHS contraceptive mandate is a perfect example of the trajectory from “choice” to “coercion.” That development is also inevitable (and empirically seen) wherever doctor-assisted suicide has been legalized. Deciding that some people (beginning with the terminally ill) have a “right” to be helped to kill themselves soon devolves into others making that decision for them—family members who find their continued existence burdensome, state bureaucrats who believe they are not worth the expense of treatments to keep them alive, or doctors who “help” families by euthanizing the loved one to spare them the guilt of that decision. William L. Toffler, MD, a professor at Oregon Health Science University and co-founder/director of Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation, chronicles the tragic results of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act in “Life Matters: Doctor-Assisted Death by Suicide.”
- In “Life Matters: Responding to Unplanned Pregnancy,” Peggy Hartshorn, PhD, president of Heartbeat International since 1993, honors the work of hundreds of thousands of volunteers and staff who’ve served in pregnancy care centers around the country since the 1960s, helping women facing financial and other obstacles due to an unexpected pregnancy to sort through their options and find solutions so that their child can live. She contrasts their example of selfless love with the lack of counseling and limited options offered to women in abortion clinics: surgical or RU-486? Cash or credit card?
- To the chagrin of abortion lobbyists, the pro-life movement just keeps getting younger, more energetic, and just as committed as ever. Clearly, pro-life adults have been successful in forming the consciences of many of these young people and making them aware at an early age of the precious value of human life and our responsibility to defend it. Two of those adults who, very publicly and eloquently, inspired and challenged younger generations of Catholics to devote their lives and energies to the cause of life are Blessed Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. Ashley Brashear, a graduate student at the John Paul II Institute for Studies in Marriage and Family and an intern in the USCCB Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, wrote about their influence on young people in “Life Matters: The Call to Greatness.”
All the materials in the Respect Life Program are posted at www.usccb.org/respectlife, where they can be downloaded or purchased. While October is dedicated in a special way to Respect Life activities, the program is a year-round effort so additional materials will be available for the January observance of the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court abortion decisions and during Lent, when a special emphasis will be on forgiveness and healing after abortion through the Church’s Project Rachel Ministry.
Susan E. Wills is Assistant Director for Education & Outreach, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities.