Am I Really Pro Life?

When I became Catholic at the age of 18, it was in large part because I had encountered the Lord. He made Himself known to me in my poverty, and was real beyond a doubt. I keep going back to this time of encounter 25 years ago because it is my "Why," my "Who," my "What" of conversion.

I have not really had a similar experience in terms of personal impedance with regards to a genuine 'conversion' to the pro-life cause. I have known women who have had abortions and worked at abortion clinics, regretted it, and became pro-life advocates; those who have seen images as children of aborted babies that seared into their conscience and woke them up to the reality of the war being waged and lives being lost; men who lost their unborn children to the mills and who have a personal investment in what is at stake today; and those who just fight the good fight, day in and day out, because it is the right thing to do and one of the foremost battles of our time--the right to life.

I accepted the pro-life position because it is the Catholic position. Philosophically, theologically, intellectually, I know beyond a doubt that there can be no justification for the taking of innocent life in the womb. When it is said that the abortion genocide is not fundamentally different from the Holocaust, I can assent with my mind. But if that is the case, why am I doing the bare minimum?--voting, praying outside clinics from time to time, donating to pregnancy centers occasionally. It's like a person who reads Thomas Aquinas' Summa and says, "you know, I think there really is a God. This is absolutely true. I must become Catholic now." It is a kind of assent of the mind and the senses. But a conversion of the heart? I'm not sure.

When the Jews realized they had crucified Christ, they were "cut to the heart." They said to Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?" To which Peter tells them, repent and be baptized (Acts 2:38). I have not been 'cut to the heart' over abortion. It has not affected me personally or directly in the way it has many people I know, who have used that motivation and memory to charge their batteries for the work that needs to be done to make it unthinkable in our lifetime. They are, from an outsider's perspective, somewhat "obsessed" with the issue at hand. But I think they are actually seeing without the veil, the actual horror taking place, the actual killings, and can't in conscience sit idly by while I, on the other hand, find myself doing just that--sitting idly by.

The fight against Abortion, the Pro-Life impetus, demands action. It does not live in ivory towers or intellectual circles or roundtable discussions--it takes place in the streets, in the legislature, in the hearts of those they enter into relationship with on the sidewalk outside the clinics. But action can be hard to sustain without a "What" a "Why" or a "Who." When I face my judgment and Christ demands of me an account: "Did you do all you could for the least of these?" Will I be able to face such a judgment when I know the answer is, for all intents and purposes, "no?" I can write on the subject, do the things, cast a ballot--but I have not been 'born again' for the unborn. And I don't know how that happens.

I realize, pragmatically, that our time is limited.  I know we have to 'pick our battles,' so to speak. As a husband and father I am working full time, raising a family, and have other commitments as well. But when I see those volunteers, sidewalk counselors, prayer warriors out in front of the clinics, lobbying, marching, in cold and heat, snow and rain, for the lives at stake, I'm filled with a kind of guilt and shame that I don't in fact do more, and that I haven't been fully converted to the cause that should be at the heart of every Catholic. Maybe in my head, but not in my heart. I have not 'done all I can do" for the unborn, the least of these.