By Judie Brown
Many years ago when American Life League’s spiritual director Fr. Denis O’Brien, MM, was still living, he wrote an important paper addressing the infallibility of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical letter Humanae Vitae. This is the encyclical that addresses Catholic teaching on the subject of contraception. Many theologians and others argued at the time that the teaching was not infallible when in fact, as many experts made clear, it was and always will be.
But even today the debate rages. So let’s start with the accurate meaning of the word infallibility. While some could write thousands of words about what it is not, the simple fact is that in matters of faith and morals, when the pope—in union with the Catholic Church and the bishops—teaches an immutable truth, that teaching is defined as infallible. And in the case of Humanae Vitae, this definition relies also on nature regardless of one’s religious persuasion or lack thereof.
Though some would prefer to skip over important parts of the encyclical itself, Pope Paul VI made it very clear that the Church recognized not only the laws of nature but man’s ability to understand them and respect them, especially on the subject of procreating children.
No member of the faithful could possibly deny that the Church is competent in her magisterium to interpret the natural moral law. It is in fact indisputable, as Our predecessors have many times declared, that Jesus Christ, when He communicated His divine power to Peter and the other Apostles and sent them to teach all nations His commandments, constituted them as the authentic guardians and interpreters of the whole moral law, not only, that is, of the law of the Gospel but also of the natural law. For the natural law, too, declares the will of God, and its faithful observance is necessary for men’s eternal salvation.
The words of Pope Paul VI have become more relevant now than ever before because the Biden administration’s Food and Drug Administration finalized a rule change that will now allow mail-order abortion or the over-the-counter sale of the drug once the pharmacy is FDA-certified. As of this action, Mifepristone—a drug that can cause early abortion—will be readily available to anyone who has a prescription for its use either in a local drug store or by mail.
The pill’s manufacturer, Danco Laboratories, “which sells branded Mifeprex, said in a statement the change ‘is critically important to expanding access to medication abortion services and will provide healthcare providers’ with another option for prescribing the drug.”
This recent action presents a clear and present danger for women and their preborn children. The Alliance Defending Freedom has taken aggressive action against this latest anti-life Biden administration declaration, saying:
By illegally approving chemical abortion drugs, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration failed to abide by its legal obligations to protect the health, safety, and welfare of girls and women. The FDA never studied the safety of the drugs under the labeled conditions of use, ignored the potential impacts of the hormone-blocking regimen on the developing bodies of adolescent girls, disregarded the substantial evidence that chemical abortion drugs cause more complications than surgical abortions, and eliminated necessary safeguards for pregnant girls and women who undergo this dangerous drug regimen.
In addition, ADF attorneys, on behalf of doctors and healthcare organizations, filed suit against the Food and Drug Administration. But in the meantime the FDA moves forward with its campaign of death and disinformation, ignoring critical scientific facts while kowtowing to societal preferences.
The ADF has accurately stated: “Health-care professionals are supposed to protect patients to the best of their ability. The FDA betrayed this promise when it approved chemical abortion drugs and ignored the risks, and now it must be held accountable.” We agree completely.
The abortion pill regimen kills people, which begs the question: Why are we, the taxpayers of America, subsidizing deadly chemicals that we thought went out of use with the end of World War II?
The babies deserve better. They deserve to live, not be chemically obliterated. Contact your representatives, physicians, and anyone you can to help stop the Biden death march from continuing.