Mother Teresa of Calcutta confronted President Clinton on his pro-abortion
stand in early February at the National Prayer Breakfast. Last week she
took her pro-life message to the highest court in the land. Her lawyers
filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court urging it to recognize the
unborn child's inalienable right to life.
She urged the court to hear the case Alexander Loce vs. The State of
New Jersey, which invol es the issue of whether or not the unborn child
is a human being entitled to 14th Amendment protection. Loce was convicted
of trespassing for attempting to prevent his fiance from having an abortion.
Mother Teresa's petition is a powerful witness in defense of life. It
includes the following passage:
"America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe vs.
Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted
mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence
and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has
aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless
society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts--a child--as a competitor,
an intrusion and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered
dominion over the dependent lives of their physically dependent sons and
daughters. And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many
women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual
partners.
"Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government," she said.
"They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The
right to life does not depend, and must not be contingent, on the pleasure
of anyone else, not even a parent or sovereign. The Constitutional Court
of the Federal Republic of Germany recently ruled: 'The unborn child is
entitled to its right to life independently of its acceptance by its mother;
this is an elementary and inalienable right which emanates from the dignity
of the human being.'
"Americans may feel justly proud that Germany in 1993 was able to recognize
the sanctity of human life. You must weep that your own government, at
present, seems blind to this truth."