The death of Jimmy Carter, the approaching inauguration of Donald Trump, and the annual March for Life offer an opportunity to reflect on the pro-life movement’s past and future.
By now, it is clear that overturning of Roe v. Wade was not a terminable goal. The battle goes on, and it always will. The moment we believe a single political leader or party will definitively resolve the abortion issue and ensure that every human life is protected from conception to natural death is the moment we forget that the things of this world are mere “shadows of things to come” (Col. 2:17).
Yet a close consideration of the “things to come” may be precisely what we need to reinvigorate the pro-life movement from within. The movement has dedicated a lot of time and resources to educating the public about the beginning of human life and its marvelous development in the womb. But no less important is a consideration of the human being’s end if we are to fully comprehend the fundamental right to life. In other words, the “for which” of the human person is just as important as the “from which” when it comes to the dignity of human life.
This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of John Paul II’s encyclical letter Evangelism Vitae, which includes a marvelous section discussing the meaning of “eternal life.” In paragraph 37, Saint John Paul notes that Jesus “presents being born of God as a necessary condition if man is to attain the end for which God has created him.” Thus, the word “eternal” is not simply a temporal qualification of “life,” but designates “a full participation in the life of the ‘Eternal One’” (37). “Whoever believes in Jesus and enters into communion with him has eternal life (cf. Jn 3:15; 6:40) because he hears from Jesus the only words which reveal and communicate to his existence the fullness of life” (37, italics mine).
To violate a person’s right to life is to rob him of the blessed opportunity to hear the words of Jesus and thus come to a full understanding of his own life. Jesus, in fact, gives us the very definition of “eternal life”: namely, to know the Father as the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent (cf. Jn 17:3). In short, “to know God and his Son is to accept the mystery of the loving communion of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit into one’s own life, which even now is open to eternal life because it shares in the life of God” (EV, 37).
That means that the dignity of this present life is linked not only with its beginning, “to the fact that it comes from God,” but also to its end, “to its destiny of fellowship with God in knowledge and love of him” (38). “Life,” according to Saint Irenaeus, consists not only in bodily health and wellbeing in the present world, but “in the vision of God” (Adversus Haereses, IV, 20, 7; cf. EV 38). The bottom line is that “eternal life already springs forth” from and “begins to grow” in the present life. Life is the “‘place’ where God manifests himself, where we meet him and enter into communion with him” (38).
Although it is hard to articulate to the general public—apart from evangelization—just how the true end of human life consists in an eternal life to which we are called even now, we nonetheless understand what it means to live this eternal life from within. We fight for the life of every naturally and artificially conceived child precisely because, as baptized members of the Body of Christ, we know what it means to live eternal life now. Exterminating the biological life of a human being is horrendous enough, let alone thwarting him of the divine opportunity to hear the words of Christ and participate in “eternal life” already in this present life.
That is why ameliorating the effects of legalized abortion through band-aid solutions is not enough. The call to eternal life imparts an unqualified dignity to the human person that encompasses the context in which it is conceived (i.e., the family), the way it is conceived (i.e., sexual union), and the reason for which it is conceived (i.e., communion with the Eternal). Acknowledging the call to eternal life in its truest sense means fighting for all the conditions that both make life possible and accord with this eternal dignity.
On the eve of his presidential service, Jimmy Carter, who was personally opposed to abortion at that time, advocated governmental programs that he thought would help limit abortions—including “sex education/instruction” and “access to contraceptives.” But apart from the thicker matrix of eternal life, sex instruction and access to contraception only compound the problem: the former because, at least in public schools, it has been severed from its theological moorings (and therefore should be left to parents), and the latter because it severs the conjugal act from its proper end of generating lives oriented towards “eternal life.”
From the inside, our experience of eternal life compels us to fight not only for the protection of biological life, but for all the conditions conducive to and appropriate for “eternal life” as described by Saint John Paul II.
As for president-elect Trump, it is hard to say just where he stands. In the months leading up to the election, he seemed to indicate that he would vote in favor of Florida’s proposed constitutional amendment to repeal the six-week abortion ban passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, but he then characterized it as “too harsh” and promised to vote against it. He has been equally vague about his views on a national ban on abortion.
Those of us who will gather in Washington, D.C. for the 52nd annual March for Life represent a movement whose overall goal is much grander than the elimination of legalized abortion. Although we come from different religious and ethical backgrounds, the vast majority believes in some form of “eternal life,” by which I mean that we share a conviction that human destiny cannot be circumscribed to the present world.
Most of us believe that human dignity arises from some kind of participation in divine life, and that the tragedy of abortion goes far beyond the destruction of biological lives. As we in the pro-life movement look toward the future, we will greatly benefit from continued discussions on the end or telos of human existence and our noble call to eternal life, for whatever consensus can be found on that issue will only enliven our spirit and embolden us to never give up the fight for the right to life.
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You need to stop using the “all of life prism” to diffract the abortion problem. Stop trying to take the edge off because “bigger things need to be seen”.
Abortion is crime and murder not finding amelioration through “seeing it as a complementary part of a telos whole” or “whole witness”. This is just nonsense.
As a young man I foolishly voted for Jimmy Carter. Now having the luxury of being a bit older and in my seventies I realize how weak of a man he was concerning abortion. His stance aligned with many of democrats today, he was personally against it but would not in any way defend the most vulnerable of our society. It is much harder to see evil when your rhetoric is one way but your actions are another.
Gallagher wrote a piece in CATHOLIC THING today on Jimmy Carter extolling Carter’s idea of placing things like the Gospel, in the larger dimension of life; so crediting Carter with a certain exegesis wisdom said to be more leading edge now than would have been noticed earlier.
I believe Gallagher must take a critical approach in order to identify, dismantle and condemn the Carter claptrap and offensiveness revealed in the essay.
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2025/01/11/jimmy-carter-on-adultery/
About the beginning of each human life plus surely the noted eternal destiny, and the permanent catastrophe each fetal infanticide…
We might consider, also, the particular life to be lived by each conveniently-unnamed person cut short by abortion. Not in the abstract, but all of the personal “hopes and joys, anxieties and fears” (the opening words of Gaudium et Spes), the friends yet to be made, the other lives to be touched and influenced, a world of experiences and triumphs and the losses, the occasional heroism and the ordinary smallness day-to-day, even the future children and their children. All of this snuffed out–the actual living of each complete human life even here and now.
How closely we are bound to one another, and today how very much cheated, those who have no voice or vote, the “silent scream.”
Indeed.
To understand the importance of taking into consideration our “end or telos” we would do well to learn from the angels:
When God allowed the angels to be put to the test by Satan’s prideful rebellion proclaiming that angels could “be like God” instead of being servants of God, the angels who fell also would have done well to consider the “end or telos” of their existence.
The purpose of their existence was to freely place themselves in the service of God. They had to do so freely because they possessed an intellect and a free will. God hadn’t created them as spiritual, programmed robots with no more awareness of the meaning of their existence than that of rocks and stars. He created them as persons like Himself, able to choose to love and serve, and able to refuse to do so.
It was utterly irrational to think that creatures could be like their Creator or that creatures could find fulfillment apart from the plan of their Creator. How could the angels not have understood this? They did, but evil (in this case pride) always becomes irrational. The decision of the angels, both good ones and bad ones, was an eternal one.
Fortunately for us, we can repent of making a god of our own plans without any consideration of God’s plan for us, which is a form of idolatry. God will always accept our sincere repentance (in this life). To die still refusing to repent of that is making the idolatrous (eternal) decision the fallen angels made.
If, by our silence and complacency, we render unto Caesar authority over innocent human life that belongs only to God, that also is idolatry. If we have freely placed ourselves in the service of God we will respond to Caesar’s usurpation of God’s authority like St. Michael did when Satan proclaimed that mere creatures could “be like God.” We should be shouting along with Michael, “Who is like God?” followed by “Who do you people think you are? You don’t, and can’t as mere mortals, have the authority to legalize the murder of innocent humanity.” We are either a part of the resistance to this situation or we aren’t. We have an eternal decision to make.