Abortion and Catholicism

We are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life, the “culture of death” and the “culture of life.” We find ourselves not only “faced with” but necessarily “in the midst of” this conflict: we are all involved and we all share in it, with the inescapable responsibility of choosing…

Abortion—the taking of a baby’s life before he has a chance to be born—is one of the most horrific things a human being can do to another. In just the first ten months of 2023 alone, there were 878,000 abortions in the US. But because that number does not include data from every state—as some…

The very rare cases when a pregnancy poses a genuine and immediate threat to the mother’s life are a source of great confusion, especially among Catholics. It is absolutely true that the Catholic Church bans direct abortion in all cases. However, the mother’s life may be saved by surgery that does not directly attack the…

Most women understandably feel some degree of guilt about having an abortion. After all, abortion is a grossly unnatural act, and people who believe in God (as most aborting women do to varying degrees) have difficulty justifying the deliberate killing of a child that they know was willed into existence by Him. All of us…

What Is Excommunication? Excommunication is a sanction that deprives a Catholic of all participation in the common blessings of the society of the Church.1 It is the most serious penalty the Church can inflict and is used only in the most severe cases. The excommunicated person remains a Catholic because his baptism cannot be nullified,…

The conversion of hearts and minds is an essential part and fundamental goal of the pro-life ministry. It’s understandable to feel overwhelmed and helpless at times before the evil in the world. However, we have a powerful tool at our disposal to bring about the end of abortion. Just as there are countless saints who…

Some baptized Catholics who support abortion use a distorted understanding of Church teaching on the “primacy” of conscience to support their views. They also frequently misrepresent theological principles regarding Catholic sexual ethics. One of the most common abuses involves probabilism, which simply means that if a definitive judgment has not yet been rendered by the…

Almost everyone knows that the Catholic Church opposes abortion.  However, few are aware of the long and rich history of the Church’s reverence and respect for human life, and fewer still can explain exactly why the Church cannot change her teachings on abortion. This article will address a number of common questions regarding the teachings…

When the battle over abortion began in earnest nearly half a century ago, pro-abortion strategists correctly identified their number one enemy as the Roman Catholic Church.  They were fully aware that, if a large number of priests began to speak forcefully and knowledgably against abortion, the Church would quickly become a mighty force for the…