On First Things, Fr. Bernard J. Coughlin, S.J. writes:
. . .
It is not faith that tells us that abortion kills an innocent life. It is science. And the more we know about it the more the phrase “a woman’s right to choose” is recognized as simply a euphemism for “a woman’s right to kill the child in her womb.”When the founders wrote the Declaration of Independence they knew full well that they were founding their work on the law of the Creator. Madison, Jefferson, Adams, Washington, and scholars of that entire era, were grounded in natural law theory. They knew and accepted the rule of law. They knew that with rights came responsibilities and obligations; that when they appealed to God they were addressing the divine lawmaker; when they asked him to confirm and protect their work they were accepting responsibility to cooperate with his providence and were committing future generations to the same responsibility and trust.
That is why John Adams and Abraham Lincoln opposed slavery. It violated the ground on which the union was built—that “all men are created equal.”
And that is why the legal killing of infants in their mother’s womb is so abhorrent to so many of the present generation of Americans. Every infant is God’s child, and his gift to us as a sister and brother. And just as President Obama has so praiseworthily pledged himself to guarantee every child the right to an education, so should he first, and with far greater righteousness, pledge himself to guarantee every child, as far as humanly possible, the right to life.
The president says: “We must find a way to live together.” All the while, the infant in the womb is answering: “But first I have to live.”
Fr. Bernard J. Coughlin, S.J., the former president and current chancellor of Gonzaga University in Spokane.