The Inviolable Dignity of Every Human Being

The recent decision of the United States Supreme Court (Dobbs v Jackson) should bring a sense of relief and hope to anyone who understands that the dignity of every human person is not self-created, but radically given by the Mystery that is the source and sustenance of all things.

In this epoch characterized by the seemingly unfettered and enormous expansion of human power in every direction, the most vulnerable human beings and human relationships are often cast aside. We remain afflicted by the endemic problems of a society that values having over being; a society that draws us to assess the worth of human persons by their external achievements, economic status, and influence in shaping the dominant mentality, rather than by their inherent personal dignity and their perseverance in the fundamental human vocation to love and to be loved in interpersonal communion.

By overturning the legal implications and partially correcting the reasoning of its prior decisions (Roe v Wade, 1973, and Casey v Planned Parenthood, 1992), the U.S. Supreme Court has taken a step in the direction of opening up greater space in our society for protecting, affirming, and supporting the inviolable human dignity of the person of a pregnant mother and the person of her pre-born child. Moreover, the basic relationship that constitutes an irrevocable bond between mother and child - a bond that begins with the mysterious entrustment of the unique, new human individuality of the child to his or her mother’s womb - has a chance to receive more of the attention and commitment it deserves from others: from families and communities, from the mother’s place of work, and from the larger society.

The Court has not made abortion illegal in the USA. It merely permits individual States in the Union to make their own laws regarding abortion. This certainly challenges citizens of each State and their representatives to work for changes in their laws. It also calls for new and creative forms of collaboration between civil authorities and local communities to support mothers and children (before and after birth), to support families, and to dismantle the social injustices and fragmentation that put seemingly unbearable pressures on many pregnant mothers, and too often leave them feeling isolated and desperate.

What we know for certain is that abortion is never “the solution” to the difficulties faced by pregnant mothers and the children in their wombs. Every abortion kills an innocent human being who possesses an inviolable human dignity, and does violence to a given and irreplaceable interpersonal relationship between mother and child.

The individual living human being must always be regarded as a person, from conception to natural death and at every moment in between, a person who is worthy of love, who makes a claim on our love because he or she is our brother or sister. Persons are not meant to be alone, but to exist in communion with other persons, in a communion of love. We do not have the right to give or take away any person’s human dignity, or to absolve ourselves of the responsibility to love those who have been given to us.

We must love one another because we belong to one another; we are not biological accidents, nor autonomous self-engendering aliens merely coexisting in a common space, nor obstacles to one another’s assertions of a will to power. We are entrusted to one another by the One who is the Source and Fulfillment of us all, and the reason for all our hope.