Harvard Law School Told Democrats Shackled to Pro-Abortion Lobby
Out of Step with Public Moving in Pro-Life Direction

By Geraldine Hawkins
May 12, 2003

America is deeply divided culturally, and this split is reflected in the agendas of the two major political parties.

"We have a religio-cultural polarization between the two parties. This is not healthy, but it will continue as long as the Democratic Party is shackled to a truly fanatical pro-abortion lobby that will not give an inch. Once you realize the ominous consequences of that doctrine, you can either dig yourself further in, or repent."

So said Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, one of the most influential figures in conservative intellectual circles when he spoke before the Harvard Law School Society for Law, Life, and Religion earlier this month.

"Our duty is not to estimate what is achievable. Politics is the duty to explore what may be possible toward establishing something like a 'culture of life.' We are the people who want to revive politics as moral deliberation, and to fight the judicial usurpation of politics."

"Abortion-on-demand is the grandest thing from the point of view of the sexual predator," Neuhaus said, "but human beings are not wired to see the mother-child relationship desecrated and treated cavalierly."

Neuhaus said that the momentum has now turned in the pro-life direction.

"People are hard-wired for good. We have to go against our nature to do evil.

"We've been recruited for a cause," Neuhaus said. "The mere fact that there is a pro-life movement in this country is cause for immense thanksgiving.

"The Boston Globe, a very pro-abortion paper to say the least, wrote recently, 'And so we must face the unhappy fact that 75% of Americans do not believe abortions should be legal for the reasons given for 95% of abortions that are performed.'

"On January 23, 1973, Roe v. Wade surprised everybody. With one brutal stroke it wiped out all laws in 50 states protecting the unborn. The New York Times editorialized that the Supreme Court had settled the question. Thirty years later, there is no more unsettled question.

"At that time, all the opinion-makers and the mainline, increasingly sidelined, Protestant churches believed that liberalized abortion laws were a good thing. Only one institution of public consequence said no, this is not just, this is not reflective of who we are, and that was the Catholic Church. There would not be a pro-life movement were it not for the witness of the Catholic Church.

"The Gospel of Life is the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ! God did not have to give the gift of life. All of life is gift, and the proper response is gratitude."

Neuhaus quoted G.K. Chesterton, who spoke of "The mystical minimum of standing in wonder at what IS."

A Life Not Worthy of Life?

Neuhaus said that during his time as a Lutheran pastor in a poor neighborhood in Brooklyn, there was an article in The Atlantic Monthly by Ashley Montague called, "A Life Worth Living," in which the author listed 12 criteria for a worthwhile life. Neuhaus said that by this criteria, the reader was supposed to divide the world into who did and who did not have a life worth living.

"As I looked around at the mostly poor and black people in my neighborhood, I realized that he was saying that not ONE of these people had a life worth living. Now, I had experienced the astonishing dignity and generosity of these people. It was then I knew that a great evil, a great wickedness was afoot."

Neuhaus said that shortly thereafter, Planned Parenthood issued a report boasting about how much money they had saved the city of New York "because of the number of poor people who were not born." Neuhaus said that "the then-Episcopal Bishop of New York [the late Rt. Rev. Paul Moore] was quoted praising Planned Parenthood for its service to the city -- for this racist, classist, wicked agenda."

Neuhaus said that it reminded him of Nazi Germany, where some people were put in a category labeled "leben zum vertes leben," or "life that is not worthy of life."

"No!" said Neuhaus when describing this to the students. "EVERY human life is a gift from God destined for eternity." He cited "Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life)," an encyclical written by Pope John Paul II.

"It is the great human rights cause of our time," he said. "Euthanasia, doctor-assisted suicide - that all comes out of the idea of 'life that is not worthy of life.' Wherever that is said, we have to stand guard.

"You are going to enhance the understanding of what kind of people we are [as a nation]," Neuhaus told the students. He cited Aristotle's idea of a good society as free persons deliberating the question of how we ought to order our life together.

"Every political question is a moral question," Neuhaus said. "We want to restore the question, 'How OUGHT we to order our life together?' Who belongs to the 'we'?

"What kind of principle, what kind of logic has been inserted if we do not include the very weak, very dependent, very sick, very small? Is [that logic] not 'life that is not worthy of life'?

Settle For Nothing Less Than Moral Grandeur

"Politics is primarily a function of culture. At the heart of culture is morality. At the heart of morality is religion."

Neuhaus said that he once asked a man who had known the current pope for many years what he could point to as the source of the Pope's greatness. The poniff's friend replied that all his life Karol Wotyla has, in one way or another, told people to "settle for nothing less than moral grandeur."

"When you are gripped by a truth, then you must persist," he said. "As St. Paul says to Timothy, preach the Gospel in season and out of season."

Neuhaus said that pro-life activists "have no vested interest in the outcome of this, other than the fact that they could not live with themselves" if they were not involved.

Neuhaus referred to the book The Altruistic Personality by Samuel and Pearl Olliner, which profiles the 20,000 'righteous gentiles' honored at Yad Vashem, the memorial to the Holocaust.

"These people had nothing to gain and everything to lose," said Neuhaus. "The Olliners wanted to know what had motivated them to hide and rescue Jews. Overhelmingly, they
were Christians who believed that everything depended on their loving their neighbor.

"It's the same with pro-lifers. They never give up. There they are, in season and out of season, because they believe, as President Bush has said, that every child, born and unborn, should be 'protected in law and welcomed in life.'

"That is the stated goal of the pro-life movement. Most people agree with it.

"We want to convert to an understanding of the wonder of life, and we must do it within the bond of civility aimed at persuasion."

Neuhaus closed by quoting T.S. Eliot: "For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business."

Rev. Richard John Neuhaus began his career as a Lutheran minister involved in liberal causes. He worked closely with Martin Luther King, Jr. during the early years of the civil rights movement, and still likes to quote Dr. King, who said: "Whom you would change, you must first love, and they must know that you love them." As he moved rightward, Neuhaus served as religion editor for The National Review, and eventually converted to Catholicism and became a Roman Catholic priest, in which capacity he serves the Church of the Immaculate Conception in New York City. He is the founding editor of First Things.