Why We March
Archbishop Aquila of Denver issued a pastoral letter on the 40th year since Roe v. Wade. Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the letter.
I went to college in 1968 with the idea of becoming a doctor like my father. I didn’t practice my faith much in the first three years of college. I spent those years working at a hospital orderly and assisting in the emergency room at a university student health center and in a hospital in California.
When I began my job, I hadn’t thought much about human suffering or about human dignity.
But during my employment something changed. At that time, some states had approved abortion laws that I wasn’t even aware of. Because of those laws, I witnessed the results of two abortions.
The first was in a surgical unit. I walked into an outer room and in the sink, unattended, was the body of a small child who had been aborted. I remember being stunned. I remember thinking that I had to baptize that child.
The second abortion was more shocking. A young woman came into the emergency room screaming. She explained that she had had an abortion already. The abortion doctor had sent her home, telling her that she would pass the remains naturally. She was bleeding as the doctor, her boyfriend, the nurse and I placed her on a table.
I held a basin as the doctor retrieved a tiny arm, a tiny leg and then the rest of the broken body of a tiny child.
The memory haunts me. I will never forget that I stood witness to acts of unspeakable brutality. My conscience awakened to the truth of the dignity of the human being from the moment of conception. I became pro-life and eventually returned to my faith.
I learned what human dignity was when I saw it callously disregarded. I know, without a doubt, that abortion is a violent act of murder and exploitation. And I know that our responsibility is to work and pray without ceasing for its end.
Jezu, ufam Tobie.