Pope Francis marks “day for life” with abortion language condemned by John Paul II

7 February 2017

Pope Francis has marked the “day for life” in Italy by adopting the abortion lobby’s euphemism “interruption of pregnancy” in place of language that accurately describes the killing of unborn children. In his message the Holy Father does speak some welcome words, encouraging “courageous educational action in favour of human life” and reminding the gathered crowds that “every life is sacred”. Unfortunately rather than refer to abortion he adopts terminology used by the abortion industry. In fact, the form of words used by Pope Francis is specifically condemned by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae:

“Especially in the case of abortion there is a widespread use of ambiguous terminology, such as ‘interruption of pregnancy’, which tends to hide abortion’s true nature and to attenuate its seriousness in public opinion. Perhaps this linguistic phenomenon is itself a symptom of an uneasiness of conscience. But no word has the power to change the reality of things: procured abortion is the deliberate and direct killing, by whatever means it is carried out, of a human being in the initial phase of his or her existence, extending from conception to birth.” (Evangelium Vitae, No. 58)

Phrases such as “interruption of pregnancy” and “termination of pregnancy” are used by the abortion lobby – people who promote, or carry out, the killing of children – to deflect from the reality of abortion. The term “interruption of pregnancy” is particularly offensive as the life of the unborn child is not “interrupted” by abortion, but permanently ended – it can never be resumed. The use of such language by Pope Francis reflects a growing convergence of language, policies and ideas between the Vatican authorities and the international population control movement:

Pope Francis has professed himself “gratified” by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals which call for “universal access to sexual and reproductive health” by 2030. These terms are used by United Nations agencies, international organisations and many national governments to promote universal access to abortion and contraception.

The Vatican has hosted many of the population control movement’s most influential figures, such as Professor Jeffrey Sachs, who has taken part in at least ten Vatican events during the current pontificate. Paul Ehrlich, who has called for forced abortion and mass sterilisation, will be a guest speaker at an event jointly hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Science and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences later this month.

The Pontifical Council for the Family has produced a sex education programme that contains obscene images. Dr Rick Fitzgibbons, a psychiatrist and adjunct professor of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, at the Catholic University of America, has worked with children who have been victims of clerical sex abuse and with priests who have carried out such abuse. After reviewing the PCF’s programme Dr Fitzgibbons said “in my professional opinion, the most dangerous threat to Catholic youth that I have seen over the past 40 years is the Vatican’s new sexual education program, The Meeting Point: Course of Affective Sexual Education for Young People.” He continued, “I was particularly shocked by the images contained in this new sex education program, some of which are clearly pornographic. My immediate professional reaction was that this obscene or pornographic approach abuses youth psychologically and spiritually.”

Conservative estimates indicate that over one billion unborn human lives have been lost since the legalisation of abortion across most of the world in the twentieth century. These killings exceed the number of people killed in all the wars throughout all of recorded human history, where estimates of deaths range from 150 million to 1 billion.

Yet Pope Francis, while he has made some brief references to abortion in homilies or speeches, has done nothing of any substance to address this mass killing. The documents of the two synods on the family, which were all approved by the pope prior to publication, either didn’t mention the issue at all, or only made brief passing reference to abortion – which has, throughout the world, targeted for mass destruction the most vulnerable member of the family, the unborn child, and which has caused untold damage to the surviving members of the families concerned.

The Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, purportedly about helping families in the modern world, but actually serving to undermine Catholic teaching on the nature of the moral law, contains only two passing references to abortion (in paragraphs 42 and 179), neither of which are condemnation of the practice as an evil per se. To give so little space, in a document on the family, to a crime which targets the most vulnerable members of the family in the sanctuary of their mothers’ wombs, reflects a shocking detachment from the fate of unborn children. Pope Francis’s comfortable co-existence with the “culture of death” was clearly displayed when he referred to abortionist Emma Bonino, who has been one of Italy’s leading abortion advocates for decades, as a “forgotten great”. It can also be seen in his September 2013 interview with Antonio Spadaro in which he stated that “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods.”

The problem is that, far from speaking too much about abortion, the Catholic hierarchy has been, with a few honourable exceptions, largely silent over the last fifty years in the face of the greatest mass killing of human beings in history.

Today Voice of the Family would like to respectfully remind the Holy Father, and the wider Church, of the reality of what abortion methods really involve. In the following videos, produced by LiveAction, former abortionist Anthony Levantino explains what really happens during abortion procedures.