Pres. Obama honored abortion as thousands of pro-life Americans braved the descending blizzard in Washington, DC at today’s March For Life.
In a statement commemorating the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, Pres. Obama called Americans to “redouble” their support for the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling asserting the right to extinguish the life of a child growing within a mother’s womb:
“Today, we mark the 43rd anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, which affirmed a woman’s freedom to make her own choices about her body and her health. The decision supports the broader principle that the government should not intrude on private decisions made between a woman and her doctor.”
“As we commemorate this day, we also redouble our commitment to protecting these constitutional rights, including protecting a woman’s access to safe, affordable health care and her right to reproductive freedom from efforts to undermine or overturn them. In America, every single one of us deserves the rights, freedoms, and opportunities to fulfill our dreams.”
But, Priests for Life and co-founder of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, told MRCTV.org that Obama is misguided in his celebration of abortion – as well as in his characterization of it as “health care”:
"President Obama is mistaken in suggesting abortion is a constitutional right, and neither is it a law. Roe v Wade was a court decision unleashed on our nation by seven justices with an agenda.
“Also, abortion is not healthcare. It doesn't cure or treat illness. It interrupts a natural process and breaks a bond not meant to be broken, as the women of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign testified to today at the March for Life. Their children are the victims of choice, but all of us are touched by the shockwaves of abortion."
The Catholic Church’s condemnation of abortion predates Roe v. Wade by several centuries. The first significant papal legislation to invoke penal sanctions against abortion was the Constitution "EFFRAENATAM" of Pope Sixtus V (1585-90) of October 29, 1588.
Pope Sixtus V declared abortion the “cruelty and unrestrained debauchery of impious men” deserving of “a most grave punishment”:
“Who will not condemn to a most grave punishment the impiety of him… who has deprived children of life before they could naturally see light or could be protected by maternal body from ferocious cruelty?
“Who will not abhor the cruelty and unrestrained debauchery of impious men who have arrived into such a state of mind that they procure poisons in order to extinguish the conceived fetuses within the viscera, and pour them out, trying to provoke by a nefarious crime a violent and untimely death and killing of their progeny?
“Finally who will not condemn to a most grave punishment the crimes of those who with poisons, potions and evil actions sterilize women or impede that they conceive or give birth by pernicious medicines and drugs?”