Their Lives Are Not “Nothing.”

Guardian Angel escorts a soul to Heaven

The human race now claims authority to decide who lives and who dies. Some actual human beings are not “human” enough to live. To get rid of them has something “noble” about it, like saving the race from itself. Yet I want to look at the aborted from another angle. We sometimes say of martyrs that they died for a noble cause. We do not recognize that “the aborted” represent a significant part of the human race, that part which is killed by our choice not to have them among us. But who are they? Both the aborted and those who manage to be born have the same ultimate origin. Each human life begins in conception. 

The human soul does not cause itself to exist. The origin of each human life is ultimately in the Godhead. Each is an image of God intended for eternal life. This includes each aborted child no matter at what stage its demise was decreed by another not allowing him to continue to exist in this world. But in that sense, it is too late. It already exists. The total number of human beings who have existed – perhaps some hundred billion thus far on this planet – includes the aborted. 

It also includes those who aborted them directly or indirectly. Those who kill the aborted are generally not called to judgment in the courts of this world. But the world is created in ultimate justice. The aborted exist for eternal life, but also to identify who killed them. The aborted remain members of the human race with all the dead. Without being asked, they are killed. Their lives are not “nothing.”  

Link (here) to the Catholic Thing to read the full article by Georgetown professor Fr. James Schall, S.J.