Mother Teresa and Abortion

by Gary Bauer

WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Gary Bauer, President of Family Research Council, mourned the loss of Mother Teresa in Washington today. Bauer said: "In this week, already overflowing with sorrow and loss, it is a time for all Christians and for people of goodwill everywhere to come together to honor the saintly life of Mother Teresa. I was honored to serve in the Reagan administration when this wonderful woman graced the White House with her special presence and received the Medal of Freedom. She touched the lives of all those who met her and millions more for whom she was only an image in the media."

Bauer added: "I will always remember her eloquent testimony at the 1994 National Prayer Breakfast. There, she spoke of a man whom she and her sisters had rescued from a drain in the streets of Calcutta. The man was filthy, half eaten by worms, but Mother Teresa brought him home and cleaned him and cared for him. 'Sister,' he said to her, 'I have lived like an animal in the street,' he said, 'but I am going to die as an angel, loved and cared for.'

"Nor can I forget how Mother Teresa spoke truth to power that cold February morning in Washington. We held our breath as she looked directly at the movers and shakers of our nation's capital. She pleaded for the lives of unborn children. She said: 'I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct killing of the innocent child ... '

"I want to thank especially my Catholic friends for the prayers and support they have always given to this remarkable woman and her godly work. She has been a great gift to all mankind."

Bauer concluded: "This is a somber week. In Britain, we see laid to rest a beautiful young woman, a princess who touched millions of hearts with her grace, her warmth and her irresistible smile. With Diana, we feel the tragic sense of loss -- a life with so much promise cut too short. In Jerusalem, terror strikes at families once again. With Mother Teresa's passing, we can rejoice through our tears. She lived always in poverty, but her life was rich. She taught us to be better than ourselves. She won the Nobel Peace Prize but she always pointed to the One, who gives a peace that passes all understanding. And -- like that poor man in Calcutta -- she died like an angel."


Mother Teresa On Abortion in the United States:

America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts -- a child -- as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters.

And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign." (Mother Theresa -- "Notable and Quotable," Wall Street Journal, 2/25/94, p. A14)


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