By Judie Brown
The duplicity of the Democratic party never ceases to amaze! Case in point is a recent statement issued by Catholic Democrats regarding principles on the topic of immigration. It said in part:
As Catholic Democrats in Congress, we are guided by a living Catholic tradition that affirms the dignity of every human life, advances the common good, and demands that we protect the most vulnerable in our society through a strong and compassionate safety net. . . .
Pope Francis in 2019 stated that the Church’s “response to the challenges posed by contemporary migration can be summed up in four verbs: welcome, protect, promote and integrate.” As legislators, we are entrusted with a parallel responsibility under the United States Constitution and our immigration laws, which provide pathways for refugees and asylees to seek protection.
While these are noble words, they are also hollow. This is so because the very same lawmakers favor the killing of the preborn. Most astounding among them is Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, who has said that “her Catholic faith inspired her to ‘defend a women’s right to access abortion.’”
Her language should disturb you, but there is something far more cunning going on in this ever-changing political landscape regarding those who migrate to this nation versus those who are procreated here.
In each case, the sanctity of the life of a single individual should be paramount. But in the first case, that person chooses to do whatever she can to become part of United States of America’s citizenry. In the second case, the preborn person is procreated in this nation, is a natural citizen, and yet is rejected as a non-person by the law and by many parents.
This is what happens when abortion becomes a national preoccupation.
We have underscored this point on so many occasions, yet the cries of the innocent preborn remain unheard in the very places where their strongest advocates should be pleading for justice. How has our nation come to this place in time?
The simple answer is human respect.
The media appears to set the agenda regarding which groups of people we should be concerned about and why this is so. In their ever-burgeoning quest to protect abortion, they tell us that women have rights that include the right to reproduce and accept the outcome when they wish to do so. And so reproductive rights becomes a sanction for killing the so-called unwanted preborn baby.
But we never hear those words applied to the immigrants because for these same people the right to live in our nation has no bounds. And so the dichotomy becomes all too clear.
America is a land of immigrants. But what so many fail to admit is that for each and every one of the immigrants who grace our shores with their presence, they were once a preborn child whose life meant something to someone. Otherwise, there would be no inscription on the Statue of Liberty that reads:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Our work is dedicated to that very principle: that for every human being who is conceived in or migrates to America, the golden door is always open. In such a land of the free, there would be no abortion, euthanasia, or other legally protected act that denies the right to life to anyone—born or preborn—regardless of immigration status.