KANSAS CITY, Kansas (LifeSiteNews) — Legal abortion represents the return of the barbaric practice of human child sacrifice to America’s “hedonistic” culture, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of the Diocese of Kansas City, Kansas, declared in an op-ed Friday.
Writing in The Leaven, the archdiocese’s official newspaper, Naumann begins by recounting the Genesis story of God’s angel stopping Abraham from killing his child, a seminal lesson in moving ancient civilization away from the human sacrifices so prevalent in pagan fertility cults, “mak[ing] clear that the one, true God does not desire human sacrifice, but abhors it.”
“In God’s eyes, the embryo in the womb has the same dignity as the elite athlete; the elderly person with dementia is no less valuable than the Rhodes Scholar; the child with Down syndrome has no less worth than a child prodigy,” he writes. “Each and every human life is sacred, not because of what we can do or produce, but because we are a child of God.”
Despite the common assumption that modern, enlightened societies have long since evolved beyond such barbarism, however, “child sacrifice” has returned in the form of abortion, this time driven not by idolization of fertility but tied to secular materialism’s hostility to fertility.
“Our hedonistic culture relentlessly pursues many forms of pleasure, especially sexual ecstasy, while denying the meaning of sexual intimacy – the complete physical giving to another that can only be honest when it corresponds to a complete giving of one’s life to the other in the marriage covenant,” he continues. “God designed this most beautiful and sacred form of human love as also the means for a man and woman to be co-creators with God of new human life.”
This trend has spawned a litany of social ills, according to Naumann, including the trivialization of love and intimacy through hookup culture, diminished sense of responsibility to the children one may create, a devaluing of motherhood, expansion of fatherlessness and its associated ills such as crime, and the destruction of innocent children through abortion.
Naumann cites the recent example of Kansas voters rejecting the “Value Them Both” amendment last year, which would not have prohibited any abortions, but rather clarified that the Kansas Constitution “does not require government funding of abortion and does not create or secure a right to abortion,” thereby correcting a 2019 ruling by the Kansas Supreme Court forbidding voters and legislature from deciding the issue.
As a result, he shares, the “most recent abortion statistics from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment” show that “Kansas now is a Midwest abortion destination state. Overall, abortions in Kansas increased by 57%. Abortions performed on minor girls increased by 49%. Chemical abortions, which are dangerous for the physical, mental and spiritual health of women and lethal for the unborn child, increased by 38%. Abortions on out-of-state residents more than doubled, increasing by a whopping 117%.”
Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade last year, fifteen states currently ban all or most abortions, along with many other previously-unenforceable pro-life laws. Available data so far indicates that these laws could effectively wipe out an estimated 200,000 abortions a year.
In response, abortion allies pursue a variety of tactics to preserve abortion “access,” such as easy access to abortion pills, legal protection and financial support of interstate abortion travel, attempting to enshrine “rights” to the practice in state constitutions rather than the U.S. Constitution, constructing new abortion facilities near borders shared by pro-life and pro-abortion states, and making liberal states sanctuaries for those who want to evade or violate the laws of more pro-life neighbors.
President Joe Biden has called on Congress to codify a “right” to abortion in federal law, which would not only restore but expand the Roe status quo by making it illegal for states to pass virtually any pro-life laws. The 2024 elections will determine whether Democrats retain the White House and keep or gain enough seats in Congress to make that happen.