Editorials

With Election Day 2019 in the rearview mirror, all eyes are now intensely focused on the presidential election in 2020. And with every candidate for president in the Democrat Party in lock step with the party’s platform that supports abortion on demand at any time during a pregnancy, the stage has been set for the inevitable clash between politics and faith on this issue.

It was heartening to see the Catholic Medical Association (CMA) and the National Catholic Bio­ethics Center (NCBC), whose Director of Educa­tion, Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, is a regular columnist in The Beacon, respond to a misleading statement from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and Physicians for Reproductive Health that abortion can be medically necessary when some issues occur during pregnancies. Its problematic statement read: “There are situations where pregnancy termination in the form of an abortion is the only medical intervention that can preserve a patient’s health or save their life.” The CMA and NCBC were quick to point out the fallacies in this statement stating that they each recognize the obligation to treat both patients, the mother and the unborn child, when a life-threatening pathological situation arises during pregnancy.

The canonization of St. John Henry Newman Oct. 13 in Rome during Respect Life Month had an amazing tie-in to one of the miracles attributed to him that led to his sainthood. Melissa Villalobos first heard about Cardinal John Henry Newman, on a show about him on EWTN “just by accident” in 2000, while she was getting ready for work. “I was really taken by it and I thought, ‘This man is so amazing,’” she told Catholic News Agency.

The Evangelium Vitae Medal is given by the University of Notre Dame to champions of the pro-life movement. The announcement Oct. 6 during Respect Life Month that the recipient of this cherished award would be Vicki Thorn, founder of Project Rachel and executive director of the National Office of Post-Abortion Reconciliation and Healing, is deserving of applause from the entire pro-life movement.

Just as the month of October dawned and the Church’s celebration of Respect Life Month began disturbing events showing the absolute lack of respect for life surfaced in the news. In Mexico, amid a dem­on­stration urging the legalization of abortion, activists tried to set fire to the Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral. In response to the arson attempt, Catholics gathered before the front doors of the cathedral to protect it until firefighters got there and acted quickly to prevent the fire from spreading, and police acted to prevent further acts of aggression by the abortion rights activists.