Frank Pavone: Anniversary of an Important Document Regarding Abortion and the Meaning of Democracy

Guest Post by Pro-life Leader Frank Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life

One of the most striking, bold and sobering paragraphs ever written about the impact of abortion on the common good is the 20th paragraph of St. Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), which is marking its 30th anniversary on March 25.

It is a great antidote for the thinking that says we can be served by “pro-choice” lawmakers because “their other positions are good.” It’s easy to start counting the positions we think a politician has “right” but that’s a very superficial and flawed way of doing moral analysis. It’s like saying to a supporter of terrorism, “I disagree with you on the one issue of terrorism, but what’s your health care plan?”

Paragraph 20 of Evangelium Vitae starts by showing the radical and practical impossibility of living with the implications of “pro-choice.” Human rights are all connected – precisely by our humanity. And the exercise of human rights is completely dependent upon being alive. If the right to life is protected on any other basis than the simple fact that one is human, then it – and the other rights that depend on it – are no longer human rights. As the Pope says, “At that point, everything is negotiable, everything is open to bargaining.”

The Pope then takes aim at the erroneous idea that if abortion has been legalized according to proper democratic procedures, then that’s all that matters. He says, “The appearance of the strictest respect for legality is maintained …. Really, what we have here is only the tragic caricature of legality; the democratic ideal, which is only truly such when it acknowledges and safeguards the dignity of every human person, is betrayed in its very foundations: How is it still possible to speak of the dignity of every human person when the killing of the weakest and most innocent is permitted?”

Along with this, he has some of the strongest words ever written about what happens when the state legalizes abortion:

“In this way democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves towards 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 co-existence and the disintegration of the State itself has already begun. To claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others. This is the death of true freedom.”

Fortunately, as I write this, we have a pro-life president and a pro-life majority House and Senate. The results of the 2024 elections, like the words of St. John Paul II above, are a clear repudiation of what the pro-abortion Democrats think of the meaning of “defending democracy.”

But we can’t be fooled into thinking that the abortion extremism of the Democrat party has been vanquished. Sure, California Gov. Gavin Newsom invited pro-life conservative Charlie Kirk to be a guest on his podcast, but the Democrat governor still sees his state as an abortion destination and maintains a stockpile of deadly abortion pills.

And yes, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer crossed the aisle to vote with Republicans to avert a government shutdown but not too long ago he led the charge to block a vote on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, calling the bill “the very definition of pernicious.” Somehow, in the minds of the Democrats, it is harmful to provide basic life-saving care for a newborn who outlives an abortionist’s attempt on his life.

The Democrats give much lip service to defending democracy, but in reality, the party was behind the state ballot amendments that – in an end run around the fruits of the democratic process there over many years – allowed the killing to resume in Missouri. Most babies had been protected by law in that state, and the new amendment will certainly lead to more deaths by abortion.

By writing about “The disintegration of the State itself…totalitarianism…the death of true freedom,” St. John Paul very clearly stated that democracy cannot flourish in a society where the murder of the unborn is a legally sanctioned, day-to-day occurrence.

Prolife Leader Frank Pavone is the National Director of Priests for Life and President of Prolife Vote.

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