Abortion: A false freedom that destroys human dignity

By Marco Roman, PhD

Director of Communications

“Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2270.

A television advertisement currently airing in Idaho presents abortion restrictions as an assault upon personal freedom and human dignity.

The message is emotionally compelling: individuals should be free to make deeply personal decisions about their own lives without interference from others. But there is a fundamental problem with this argument. It speaks about the freedom and dignity of some while ignoring the freedom, dignity and very life of another.

The unborn child is not an abstraction. The unborn child is not simply a political issue, a religious belief or an obstacle standing in the way of someone else’s freedom. The unborn child is a living human being possessing an inherent dignity that does not depend upon whether that child is wanted, recognized, convenient, healthy, economically secure or capable of speaking in his or her own defense.

This is precisely why the Catholic Church begins the discussion of abortion not with politics, but with the dignity of the human person. The Catechism teaches: “Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception” (CCC 2270). It continues: “From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person — among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life” (CCC 2270).

Those words expose the fundamental contradiction in presenting abortion as a matter of human freedom. Freedom cannot be defined in such a way that one person’s exercise of freedom requires another human being to lose his or her life.

The Church strongly defends human freedom because freedom belongs to the dignity of the human person. The Catechism calls freedom “the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act” and teaches that “God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions” (CCC 1730).

But freedom is not absolute autonomy. It is not the power to declare something morally good simply because we desire it or choose it.

Authentic freedom is ordered toward what is true and good. “The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes,” the Catechism teaches. “There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just” (CCC 1733). That distinction is essential to any honest discussion of abortion and human freedom.

A society cannot simultaneously proclaim the equal dignity of every human being and then decide that some human lives may be intentionally ended because protecting them restricts another person’s choices. Once dignity becomes dependent upon whether another person recognizes it, desires it or permits it, dignity is no longer inherent; it has become conditional.

Catholic teaching says exactly the opposite. “The dignity of the human person is rooted in his creation in the image and likeness of God” (CCC 1700). Human dignity is therefore not bestowed by government, courts, popular vote, parents, physicians or circumstances. It comes from God.

Neither is dignity acquired gradually as we become older, stronger, more independent or more capable of exercising our desires. If human dignity belongs to us because of who we are, rather than because of what we can do, then the unborn child possesses that dignity as surely as the newborn child, the teenager, the adult, the elderly person and the person approaching death.

This is why the right to life is foundational.

Pope St, John Paul II stated this with remarkable clarity in Christifideles Laici: “The inviolability of the person which is a reflection of the absolute inviolability of God, finds its primary and fundamental expression in the inviolability of human life.” He then warned that appeals to other human rights become “false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination” (38).

That is the question we cannot avoid: What does freedom mean if a human being is denied the right to live long enough to exercise it? What does personal dignity mean if the smallest and most vulnerable human beings can be excluded from its protection? What meaning do “human rights” ultimately possess if membership in the human family is not itself sufficient to guarantee the most fundamental right of all — the right not to be intentionally killed?

The Church’s opposition to abortion is therefore not a rejection of human freedom or dignity. It is their defense.

Indeed, the Church’s teaching is radically inclusive. It refuses to divide humanity into those whose dignity must be respected and those whose lives may be intentionally ended. Mother and child both possess dignity. Mother and child both deserve compassion. Mother and child both deserve protection.

Difficult circumstances surrounding a pregnancy are real and can involve fear, abandonment, poverty, medical concerns and tremendous suffering. Christians must never minimize those realities. We are called to accompany women and families with concrete love, material assistance, compassion and sacrifice, but compassion for one human being can never require the intentional destruction of another.

The Catechism could hardly be clearer: “Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable” (CCC 2271). The reason is not partisan politics. The reason is the inviolable dignity of innocent human life.

This also reveals why abortion ultimately represents a false freedom.

It proposes freedom through the elimination of another human being and promises autonomy by making the existence of another person subject to someone else’s decision. But authentic freedom never requires us to deny the humanity of our neighbor, and the unborn child is our neighbor, among the smallest and most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters.

The unborn child cannot vote, protest, purchase television advertising, hire an attorney, tell his or her story or plead for protection. The unborn child is completely dependent upon others to recognize a truth he or she cannot yet articulate: I am here. I am alive. My life matters too.

A civilized society should be judged not merely by how vigorously it protects the freedom of the powerful and independent, but by how faithfully it protects those who possess no power at all.

For Catholics, this truth is inseparable from the Gospel. Jesus repeatedly directs our attention toward the vulnerable, the forgotten and those who cannot repay us. Christian freedom is never freedom from responsibility for another. It is freedom for love — freedom to choose the good, defend the innocent, sacrifice for our neighbor and recognize Christ in those whose lives the world may consider burdensome.

Pope St. John Paul II’s warning, therefore, deserves to be heard again.

If the right to life is not protected, appeals to every other human right ultimately become “false and illusory.” There can be no meaningful right to liberty without first possessing the right to live. There can be no exercise of freedom without first being allowed to exist. And there can be no authentic defense of human dignity that excludes the human being developing within the womb.

True freedom does not destroy another person’s freedom. True dignity does not deny another person’s dignity. And authentic human rights cannot begin by denying the most fundamental human right of all: the right to life.

The unborn are not exceptions to human dignity; they are among those who most desperately need us to defend it.