To the Editor:
Recently many people joined in protests against Planned Parenthood and its selling of fetal tissue (body parts) to medical researchers. This gruesome practice surprised and repulsed nearly all. While no evidence of actual illegality has yet surfaced, it shines a spotlight on the inherent ugliness of abortion. For many it called into question Planned Parenthood’s receipt of federal funds to provide Medicaid services, saying that paying an abortion provider for medical care indirectly supports abortion.
The Holy Father stressed the extremely serious nature of the sin of abortion in his statement about absolution during the upcoming Year of Mercy, while grieving over the women who spoke to him of the conditions that drove them to an abortion.
We know that poverty, lack of education, even the effects of climate change that deny people their traditional ways of earning a living, all lead to situations in which a woman may feel compelled to seek an abortion. In his encyclical, Laudato Si, the Holy Father speaks of the relationships that existed as the result of creation: relationships between people and God, between peoples, and between people and the natural world in which all live. A main focus of his encyclical is the conditions we have allowed to damage these relationships. These conditions are what we must attack if we are to reach the healed world the Holy Father envisions, and in which abortion will not exist.
Glenn Leach
St. Ann’s Parish, Long Grove
