Abortions at Advent
There has been a spate of murders in this city early this month, which, ironically, is the birth month of Jesus Christ. Ironically too, these happened during the novena week of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of
Abortion is illegal in this country, but clandestine practice of it could be extensive. A recent survey reveals that 20 million of the 46 million abortions worldwide every year are performed in places where the act is considered illegal. How many of the 20 million occurred in the
To be sure, terminating birth is an un-Christian practice. Since this is a Christian country, it can be said that abortion ought to be a rare phenomenon hereabout. But is it? Judging from the frequency of incidence on abandoned fetuses, this happening could be egregious. It seems that religious sentiments no longer figure much as behavioral guide for some people. And this is true not only insofar as human life is concerned but also insofar as other activities are considered. Look at corruption. If this is not an anti-Christian practice, we don’t know what is.
What’s happening to the Filipino Christian? Has he lost his moral anchorage? Eight out of ten Filipinos are Catholics, a faith founded by Jesus Christ, whose life and passion proclaims the sanctity of human life. How come human life is becoming a cheap commodity in this country? With lawlessness on the rise, street killings a daily fare, with fetuses discarded like garbage -- where is his Christian conscience?
In the light of these happenings one recalls the late Pope Paul II in his “Evangelium Vitae” (The Gospel of Life) which underscores the value of human life. The Holy Father says that “violence has characterized human history from its very beginning,” a situation arising from the “first murder” when Abel was slain by his own brother Cain. From that time on a sense of moral darkness has tainted the nature of man. He has suffered an “eclipse of human life.”
Abortion, euthanasia, human embryo experiments, as well as infanticide, have been the results of such eclipse. Their immediate cause? A perverse idea of freedom. Wrong concept of freedom, says the Pope, leads to “complete relativism”, a state of mind which believes that everything is negotiable, open to bargaining. The universal truth of right and wrong is set aside. What satisfies worldly appetite is right and what frustrates it is wrong.
Pope John Paul says: “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.”
Isn’t such twisted concept of freedom a familiar indictment against us Filipinos? Observing the contemporary scene, one cannot help but lament at the excesses in the exercise of freedom. That outcry against the arrest of media men at the Pen hotel caper is a good example. At the height of the standoff they were warned to get out of the scene, but they refused. Of course, their very presence prevented the authorities from doing their job. So they were hauled off in handcuffs together with the rebels. Press freedom! they howled, forgetting that press freedom, like other freedoms, has limits.
Abortion is an abuse on the God-given right to procreate and found a family. It is a distortion of the significance of the sexual act which is supposed to be an expression of genuine love with its concomitant sacrifices and responsibilities. But many Catholics have closed their eyes to this truth. The result is that in the conflict between faith and freedom the latter oftentimes prevails. This happens because faith has failed to take roots in the heart and because in the world of men the idea of freedom almost always succumbs to the quest for expediency and convenience.
No wonder many Filipinos suffer from what Pope John Paul calls an eclipse of human life.
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