For the second time in a week, Pope Francis blasted abortion on Saturday, referring to it as a “scourge” and insisting that “a just society recognizes the primacy of the right to life from conception to natural death.”
“The degree of progress of a civilization is measured by its ability to protect life, especially in its most fragile stages,” he said in an address to the Science and Life Association, celebrating its 10th anniversary
In a fascinating juxtaposition of news, on Friday the pro-abort House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi put herself forward in an MSNBC interview as a faithful, “mainstream Catholic” unlike pro-life Marco Rubio, whom she called a “polarizing” figure for opposing same-sex marriage.
On two of the biggest social justice issues of our day—abortion and gay marriage—Pelosi has taken a hardline stand in direct opposition to Church teaching, something resembling a “faithful” Greenpeace member advocating baby seal killing or an orthodox Jew pushing pork.
This past January, Ms. Pelosi said that she knew “more about having babies than the pope,” and that a woman has “the right” to an abortion.
In her acceptance speech for Planned Parenthood’s highest honor—the Margaret Sanger Award—Pelosi went still further, calling pro-lifers (like the pope) “dumb,” “closed-minded” and “oblivious.”
At the time, Pelosi’s comments drew a stern response from her own archbishop, Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, who stated that “no Catholic can dissent in good conscience” from Church teaching on the sanctity of life.
In a recent interview, Pope Francis underscored the paradox of modern secular societies that go to great lengths to protect children from harm, and yet defend a “right” to abortion.
“Curiously,” he said, these countries with very strict laws regarding the protection of minors, who even punish fathers or mothers who spank their children, “have laws allowing them to kill their children before they are born.”
“Those are the contradictions we live with now,” he said.
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter @tdwilliamsrome