The Archbishop of New York continues by asking: “Why do I not get into defining ‘human being,’ defining ‘person,’ defining ‘living,’ and the rest?”
“Because, I respond, I am sound of mind and endowed with a fine set of eyes, into which I do not believe it is well to cast sand. I looked at the photograph, and I have no doubt about what I saw and what are the duties of a civilized society if what I saw is in danger of being killed by someone who wishes to kill it or, if you prefer, someone who ‘chooses’ to kill it.”
After describing a recent video depicting the humanity of babies in their mothers’ wombs, the Archbishop of New York says that “if you can convince yourself that these beings are something other than living and innocent human beings, something, for example, such as ‘mere clusters of tissues,’ you have a problem far more basic than merely not appreciating the wrongness of abortion. And that problem is—forgive me—self-deceit in a most extreme form.”
Cardinal Egan continues: “Adolf Hitler convinced himself and his subjects that Jews and homosexuals were other than human beings. Joseph Stalin did the same as regards Cossacks and Russian aristocrats. And this despite the fact that Hitler and his subjects had seen both Jews and homosexuals with their own eyes, and Stalin and his subjects had seen both Cossacks and Russian aristocrats with theirs.”
“It is high time to stop pretending that we do not know what this nation of ours is allowing—and approving—with the killing each year of more than 1,600,000 innocent human beings within their mothers. We know full well that to kill what is clearly seen to be an innocent human being or what cannot be proved to be other than an innocent human being is as wrong as wrong gets,” he adds.
“Do me a favor,” Cardinal Egan writes, “Look at the photograph again. Look and decide with honesty and decency what the Lord expects of you and me as the horror of ‘legalized’ abortion continues to erode the honor of our nation. Look, and do not absolve yourself if you refuse to act.”