by Father Frank Pavone, National Director
Priests for Life
This August, Thomas Nelson/HarperCollins Publishers will release my book called Abolishing Abortion. I have never been more excited about anything I have written over these last four decades of my involvement in the pro-life movement. This is not simply a book about abortion -- it is a manifesto, declaring again what we need to do to end abortion, and asserting once again that there is no moral imperative that has greater priority and urgency than this. The manifesto challenges both the Church and the State to make the changes and sacrifices necessary to accomplish that goal.
And again, the goal is not simply to witness against abortion or to reduce the numbers of abortions.It is to end abortion. We are called -- we today, not some future generation -- to abolish abortion altogether, because not a single abortion can ever be justified. Any law that attempts to justify it is no law at all, but rather an act of violence.
In regard to this, let me present here a passage from my upcoming book:
"…Every abortion is equally wrong from a moral standpoint, and no law can ever justify a single abortion. … The very truth of personhood, the very urgency of recognizing and protecting the personhood of every child from conception forward, starts us and keeps us on the path of protecting life. This principle is not only true, but it is also the only acceptable goal of the pro-life movement. The work of this movement is not done unless and until every life is protected absolutely and without exception. And this principle is not only the goal of the pro-life movement; it is its fuel, its soul, its daily imperative.
"The incremental nature of our activities - the fact that at the present time we might pass a ban on abortions after twenty weeks but not before - is justified only as long as that limitation is not chosen by us but imposed on us by circumstances beyond our control. In other words, if I work to pass a law to protect children at twenty weeks and later, the failure to protect them earlier must be totally beyond the scope of what I can decide. As a goal, I can never decide, choose, will, or agree to make even a single abortion acceptable or legal. But if the legislative support for protecting babies before twenty weeks does not yet exist in a particular legislative body - if, in other words, the votes just aren’t there - then I can support that ban precisely because I’m doing everything I can at the moment.
"The very principle of personhood, in fact, prevents me from sitting back and not protecting the lives I am able to protect right now. It is not by conceding an exception to their personhood that I protect them, but precisely because I embrace their personhood. And that very conviction, that adherence to this unchangeable principle, is what keeps us going beyond our current goal to the next and to the next. All the while we seek to change the circumstances so that the steps are not so incremental. Ultimately, we move to one, irreducible, final goal of total, exception-free protection, and we get there through explicit acknowledgment that the child in the womb is just as much a person as the adult."
You can pre-order your copy of "Abolishing Abortion" now from Amazon here or from Barnes and Noble here.
See what key leaders are already saying about the book:
"I have known no better warrior in the fight to protect every human life than Father Pavone. His new book Abolishing Abortion makes the compelling case that the pro-life cause defends the same principles for which our Founding Fathers fought. As they pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, so must we!"-- Senator Rick Santorum
"Father Pavone insightfully writes that Roe v. Wade didn’t just subvert the principle that no government can authorize the killing of the innocent, it subverted the very government our nation’s Founders created. Abolishing Abortion is about saving lives, but it’s also about saving our republic." -- Governor Mike Huckabee
