Mother Teresa on Abortion

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"I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child—a direct killing of the innocent child—murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?…
"By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching the people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. That is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion."

Comments

  1. Geremia7:10 PM

    Here's the source of these quotes: National Prayer Breakfast speech (Washington, D.C, February 3, 1994)

    Thanks again for reminding me of them.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Silas Barta9:52 AM

    Sounds like a pretty strong ideological commitment against abortion, to the point that there's supposedly some kind of causal chain between aborting a fetus and killing for land.

    There's a kernel of truth to Mother Theresa's point, but it's quite a jump to attributing war to it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. gcallah12:01 PM

    Silas, I have explained what *I* mean when I use "ideology" here. As I am using the term, a usage I did not invent, to have an opinion about something, even a very strong opinion, is not an "ideology."

    ReplyDelete
  4. Silas Barta12:51 PM

    Okay, you can ignore that and reply to the rest then, if you don't mind too terribly:

    Sounds like a pretty strong commitment against abortion, to the point that there's supposedly some kind of causal chain, that most would deem questionable, between aborting a fetus and killing for land.

    There's a kernel of truth to Mother Theresa's point, but it's quite a jump to attributing war to it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. gcallah12:55 PM

    Well, she views abortion as a form of war ("because it is a war against the child"). And therefore, as war itself, it is "the greatest destroyer of peace today."

    I don't think she was saying anything like "The Gulf War was caused by abortion." But I could be wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Geremia2:14 PM

    Bl. Mother Teresa laments the loss of a consistent civil authority. Ultimately, she laments relativism.

    If the Gulf War was primarily about land or obtaining oil, then it was a case of using "any violence to get what they want." Abortion, according to Bl. Mother Teresa, causes this mentality.

    ReplyDelete
  7. gcallah2:22 PM

    Yes, Alan, absolutely. But I don't think that she implies abortion was the immediate cause of any particular war, or that war would disappear without abortion, which *seems* to me to be what Silas thought she was claiming.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Unknown3:28 AM

    Thanks, Gene. I think that Mother Teresa was speaking the truth in a plain way. Looking back at American history - and the developing histories of modern nations - it seems as though a great turning point in the move towards moral relativism and progressive ideology is the 'right' of abortion. I'm still researching this, so I'm not entirely sure about the feasibility that the legalization of abortion acts as a catalyst for social change. But it certainly seems like it.

    One of the reasons why it seems like such an important step towards social and moral breakdown is that it sanctions the murder of an unborn child in the womb of the mother - a place that we intuitively feel as sacrosanct and safe. It is a perversion of nature that a mother should kill her growing child without regret or remorse. Once this perversion is considered sacrosanct - you can't interfere with a woman's 'body', after all - every other human perversion, which is by its nature a perversion of either purpose or design of one's body, becomes fair game, based on the logic of the abortion argument. This is probably why our country is so narcissistic towards individual freedom, but yet so judgmental when it comes to economic liberty. If one can make such an important decision - to terminate the life of another growing human being - what bounds should society impose on anyone's behavior? The answer: none.

    As J. Budziszewski has said, people are very logical - they are just logical more slowly.

    ~Alex

    ReplyDelete

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