By M.A. Student Nicole Stone
“Ho ho, hey hey, Roe v Wade has gone away!” The exuberant college students around me cheered over and over as we approached the end of the March for Life, walking up the hill to end at the Supreme Court building. In years past, I’d heard a different version of the cheer: “Hey hey, ho ho, Roe v Wade has got to go,” but it wasn’t until I heard the new version this year that it really started to sink in. Roe v. Wade has actually gone away. This was something I honestly did not think would happen in my lifetime, and now it is reality. Hearing this cheer as I finished the march brought tears to my eyes, and what happened next solidified for me the reason why I marched and why I will always continue marching until abortion is unthinkable in every state and every town across America.
Standing to my left on the side of the road was a small group of men and women, holding pink signs that said either “Conceived from rape… I love my life” or “Mother from rape… I love my child.” They weren’t shouting or saying anything; they just stood together bravely, smiling at the crowd passing by. It’s hard to explain but the combination of both joy and sorrow I saw in their eyes moved me immensely. I later found out they were representatives of a group called Save the 1, who are all people conceived through rape or mothers who were raped and chose not to abort their children. They travel around the world sharing their stories and providing a living witness of the beauty of their lives.
“This is it,” I thought, “This is why I am here today.” A human life, no matter how inconvenient or tragic its beginning, is so beautiful and so worth it. The political talking point about allowing abortion in cases of rape or incest became incarnate for me in that group of smiling people. Can we really go up to one of the people standing there who were conceived through the horrible crime of rape and say to them that it would be better if they were never born? Can we say to the woman who conceived a baby through rape that it would be better to add to the violence already committed against her by killing the child in her womb?
In Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II spoke of how allowing abortion legally in a society is a twisting of authentic human freedom. He said, “To claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others. This is the death of true freedom,” (EV 20). Ironically, isn’t that the same thing a rapist does toward his victim, using his “freedom” to have an absolute power over the other? In that sense, abortion is repeating the same crime, using power and freedom perversely to dominate over an innocent victim.
Donald Trump recently wrote on Truth Social that, “It wasn’t my fault that the Republicans didn’t live up to expectations in the midterms. It was the ‘abortion issue,’ poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on no exceptions, even in the case of rape, incest, or [the] life of the mother, that lost large numbers of voters.”[1] While it is understandable why Trump made this statement, from a pro-life perspective his comment is completely off-base. Either abortion ends the life of an innocent human being, or it doesn’t, regardless of the circumstances of the child’s conception. In fact, one could also argue that the “no exceptions for abortion” candidates did better in the recent elections. They captured the authentic pro-life vote that will not compromise on abortion, believing it to be an intrinsic evil no matter the circumstances.
Studying human rights this year has opened my eyes to the wide range of issues affecting people around the world. From religious persecution, to poverty and lack of medical care, to sexual exploitation, and transnational organizations usurping power, while the issues differ in their range and scope, in the end they all stem from a lack of recognition of the dignity and rights of the individual human person. I saw firsthand at the march how powerful it is to see the living, breathing people behind the issues. This is something I want to take away from the march as I continue my work as a human rights advocate: to never lose sight of the individual people for which we advocate.
[1] Pro-life leaders say Trump will have to earn back their vote after comments about abortion opponents – Washington Times
