Do we ever accuse Martin Luther King, Jr. of imposing his religious beliefs upon an unwilling southern majority?

A fellow Catholic and Christian recently wrote in our local paper that “The pro-life movement…has politicized” itself “to the detriment of society by attempting to force its religious beliefs on the rest of America…. The war on abortion will not be won or lost in the political arena. The sooner the pro-life movement comes to terms with this reality, the better and more effective it will be in promoting a culture of life that all Americans can embrace.” At first glance his argument seems plausible, even preferable.

However, as a student of history, one can recall such statements made regarding slavery. “The war on slavery will not be won or lost in the political arena. The sooner the abolitionist’s movement comes to terms with this reality, the better and more effective it will be in promoting a culture of life that all Americans can embrace ….” Need I go on in drawing the analogy to the Civil Rights struggle?

The words of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. come to mind: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Was not Martin Luther King, Jr.’s movement rooted in religion? Do we ever accuse Martin Luther King, Jr. of imposing his religious beliefs upon an unwilling southern majority when he demanded that the black Americans be treated the same as white Americans? And all because of his belief that the dignity of human beings was rooted in the fact that human beings were created in the image of God and by Christ becoming fully human therefore all human beings are brothers and sisters in the Lord?

If the pro-life cause were to suddenly compromise on its principles to placate the pro-choice side, and have peace in our time, then should we have also compromised on slavery? Compromised on Nazism? Or compromised on Civil Rights?

Doesn’t the Declaration of Independence impose a religious belief? “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The Englishman William Wilberforce was opposed for his stance on slavery, yet time has proven he was a political prophet. No one in their right – or left – mind would attempt to justify slavery today, yet pro-slavery forces argued that Wilberforce was forcing his religious conviction on the populace.

Was Mr. Lincoln a Republican who “forced” his religious and political beliefs on an entire nation when he issued his Emancipation Proclamation? He violated the pro-choice southerners and their choice to own slaves.

Did the Allies force their religious beliefs on the Nazis when they liberated the death camps, i.e., “Relocation Centers”, like Auschwitz and then arrested the Germans who ran the camps and tried them at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity?
What of Bishop Desmund Tutu who strove against Apartheid utilizing his Christian religious tradition? And did not the Quakers and other Christians who vigorously opposed slavery do so from a religious argument based in the belief of innate human dignity?

Ought we now – in the name of tolerance – accommodate for other opinions as varied as strident pro-slavery or pro-Nazi sentiments? Ought we have compromised on slavery, civil rights, or even Nazism? Perhaps the allies should have allowed the concentration camps that were in German hands to remain open?

Would we – could we “tolerate” religious beliefs that demanded human sacrifice every New Year’s Eve to ensure that the year would be prosperous? If we tried to prevent this, would their argument not be stated thus: Who are you to impose your morality on us? Why are you imposing your religious beliefs (that life is inviolable) on us? This is an extreme example, but the case has been made that this type of argument leads to relativism.

Medical science has already shown conclusively that human life begins at conception. Yet the real debate now is whether nascent human life constitutes human personhood. Until our laws catch up with the scientific, biological reality that human life – indeed human personhood – begins at conception, the dilemma of abortion will forever remain with us.

No one makes a gut wrenching decision over removing an appendix or a tumor. An unborn child is its own person. If it were not, then none of us would be persons; we would still be parts of our mother's bodies. The right to life does not depend upon someone giving someone the right. It is an inborn, innate given at human conception.

Without any fixed morality for social and political existence, truth becomes a relative term and the dignity of the human person and the right to life and liberty becomes subject to political power or dominant philosophical thought. Again, if there is no truth to the innate dignity of human beings, then the concept of human dignity has collapsed.

Unfortunately, slavery was justified by denying the human personhood of human beings of African descent. The Nazis justified the death camps and anti-Semitism by claiming that the Jewish humans were not fully human.

This proclivity to deny human dignity is made especially clear now in the popular movement to create human beings in laboratories in order to harvest their valuable biological material, i.e., stem cells, in hopes of treating diseases afflicting human persons. The argument goes that they – the unborn, the embryonic humans – are not human persons, but merely potential humans, and as such they have no rights. The unborn are treated as disposable biological material with the argument that they are not fully human because they are not human persons. The objective truth of the humanity of human beings has been displaced with subjective norms. Yet if there is no objective truth regarding the humanity of human beings, then the objective truth of the dignity of each and every human person is lost.

A society that affirms the dignity of the person but then also permits fetal experimentation, abortion, or euthanasia is denying equality before the law. Showing respect for human life may also require the exercise of conscientious objection not only in relation to war, but also to procured fetal experimentation and abortion. Medical research, which has great potential for human progress and service, must also respect the integrity of the human person from the first moment of conception.

Therefore all human experimentation or research that disregards the inviolable dignity of the human being must be avoided. When a law denies an entire category of human beings the status as human persons, the very foundations of law and civilization are weakened. It is impossible to advance the cause of human dignity without recognizing and defending the right to life. All other rights are founded on and flow from this most basic of rights.

Democracy is false when it fails to recognize and affirm every person’s dignity and his or her subsequent rights. Violence toward others and self is not life giving, but death dealing. Nothing but an unconditional respect for human life can be the foundation of a truly renewed culture and civilization.

Of course, abortion is a mere symptom of a deeper moral problem, but many Americans have already turned against the slaughter of abortion. A century from now, the pro-choice opponents of those who hold that preborn human life is human life will be making a new accusation: They will blame the Church for abortion (just like some blame the church for slavery and the Nazi Holocaust). Unfortunately, they will have a point. They will name the prominent Catholics and Christians who supported abortion in our day and hence judge the Church by their actions - or inaction.