Abortion/Right-to-Life: NOT a women’s rights issue

Posted on 11 January 2013 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

• For years I have been saying that abortion/right-to-life is the social justice issue of our day, the civil-rights issue, the human rights issue.

Liberals shove the unborn to the back of the bus while nattering about all manner of other “social justice” issues. The create a fog of other admittedly pressing concerns which obfuscates the root cause.
The great lie successfully foisted on us over the last few decades is that abortion and “choice”, etc., are women’s rights issues rather than human rights issues.
The right to be born is the justice issue. If this one isn’t in order, then the other social justice causes will be disordered.
Over at Catholic Vote I saw a good piece by Tom Hoopes, called “We Are the Civil Rights Movement Now”. He starts with “Consider the last full week in January as a week-long statement on civil rights in America.” Then, I think, he buries the lead. But he get back to it at the end:

Today, those of us who believe in the promissory note of the Declaration of Independence are still waiting. We are waiting for the self-proclaimed champions of civil rights to admit that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life.”
Those words don’t exclude anybody — not Native American Indians, not Mexicans, not African-Americans … and not the brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, we see only through ultrasound windows.
The pro-lifers who flood Washington on the Friday will see the inauguration in the right perspective — one step forward and two steps back in a civil rights battle that is far, far from over.
And we are humbled and a little frightened to see that we who refuse to ignore the right to life are the real civil rights movement now.