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Monday, May 14, 2018

Reflections on “Abortion: The Silent Holocaust”: Does Anyone See What I See?

For Fr. Powell, Roe was “Black Monday,” a catastrophe that figuratively knocked Powell to his knees. 


By Dave Andrusko
National Right to Life


National Right to Life is commemorating 50 years of service to unborn babies, babies born with disabilities, and the medical frail elderly increasing the target of the “right to die” movement. In the 45 days until the annual National Right to Life convention begins in Kansas City, I’m going to post some stories from the past that speak as loudly today as they did when I first composed them. 


We’re going to begin with a review I wrote 30 years ago of “Abortion: The Silent Holocaust,” a pro-life classic if ever there was one. The book is still very, very much worth reading.

We are now one-third into 1998 — the silver anniversary of the wicked Roe v. Wade decision. It’s nice to report that our readers are grateful and appreciative of the pivotal documents we’ve been reprinting that led up to the legal earthquake as well as of those early pro-life classics, such as Dr. Jean Garton’s “Who Broke the Baby?” which we’ve revisited. But no survey would be complete without “Abortion: The Silent Holocaust.”

Fr. John Powell’s little masterpiece has lost none of its power to move readers to tears and to action. Written from the heart, the book takes us through the valleys that Fr. Powell walked before he — and we — emerges on the other side wiser and stronger.

Powell was a bestselling author of a number of books when he took a sabbatical from Loyola University to devote the entire 1976-77 academic year to the pro-life cause. A passionate, charismatic speaker, Fr. Powell is credited with energizing many priests to be more actively pro-life. In the ensuing years he lectured at countless pro-life conventions, including National Right to Life’s.

This book is his most extended and personal exposition of why he was compelled to join the fight. It makes for riveting reading.

What would it profit the reader to sit down with a book first published in 1981? Think of it this way.

Many of those who today champion the unborn were not even born in 1973. It’s like coming in during the second act. Often it can be next to impossible for them to appreciate what a shock, what a body blow the unleashing of the killing machine was to pro-lifers.

But to read Fr. Powell’s provocative book is almost like being there the day the judicial sword was lowered on the necks of helpless unborn babies. His personal sojourn offers the contemporary reader a window into how Roe’s vicious assault on human life could simultaneously deeply dishearten and magnificently motivate those sensitive to what Powell called the “fragile mystery of life.”

For instance, describing the culmination of his own journey, he writes in Chapter One that, 

“With all my mind and heart and strength I am pro-life: Wherever there is a flower of life I want it to bloom, to reveal its beauty for all the world to see.”
But this wonderfully affirmative declaration came at the end of a long, difficult stretch that began for Powell in the 1960s. The book reads almost like a diary that Fr. Powell shares with us to deepen our own commitment just as the events described in it matured and sustained his.



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