Mother Teresa Takes Pro-Life Message to the Supreme Court

MOTHER TERESA TAKES PRO-LIFE MESSAGE TO SUPREME COURT

Mother Teresa of Calcutta confronted President Clinton on his pro-abortion stand in early February at the National Prayer Breakfast. Last week she took her pro-life message to the highest court in the land. Her lawyers filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court urging it to recognize the unborn child's inalienable right to life.

She urged the court to hear the case Alexander Loce vs. The State of New Jersey, which involves the issue of whether or not the unborn child is a human being entitled to 14th Amendment protection. Loce was convicted of trespassing for attempting to prevent his fiancee from having an abortion.

Mother Teresa's petition is a powerful witness in defense of life.  It includes the following passage:

"America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe vs. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts—a child—as a competitor, an intrusion and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the dependent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters. And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners.

"Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government," she said. "They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or sovereign. The Constitutional Court of the Federal Republic of Germany recently ruled: 'The unborn child is entitled to its right to life independently of its acceptance by its mother; this is an elementary and inalienable right which emanates from the dignity of the human being.'

"Americans may feel justly proud that Germany in 1993 was able to recognize the sanctity of human life. You must weep that your own government, at present, seems blind to this truth."

This article is taken from the February 24, 1994 issue of The Arlington Catholic Herald.