(LifeSiteNews) — The world is riveted on the events unfolding in war-torn Ukraine, with the threat of nuclear war between Russia and the West. In the current test of powers, we would do well to call to mind the sobering words of Mother Teresa on “the greatest destroyer of peace.”
On February 5, 1994, at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., during the administration of the pro-abortion Democrat President Bill Clinton, the little nun from Calcutta presumed to lift her voice on behalf of the unborn.
Speaking of the breakdown of the family, and neglect of children in the home, as among the “things that break peace,” she then addressed “the greatest destroyer of peace.”
“But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?”
Here, in the simple logic of Mother Teresa, we can begin to properly assess the current political situation in which we find ourselves. We are at war, and our hands are deep in blood. But it is not where the world is looking. Abortion is “a war against the child.” It is a war carried out by the mother herself, who above all other persons is singularly placed by God as the one to protect, nurture, and love her child.
“If we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill each other?” she asked.
If human life at its most vulnerable stage is counted cheap and trampled upon mercilessly in the name of convenience, sexual liberation, health care, or any other euphemism, by what logic can we turn around to prohibit, condemn, or punish other acts of violence against human life?
Deaths — horrific deaths — are the inevitable casualty of war, the scenes of which are often too traumatic to display on public media. Yet daily, in the very same countries that so roundly condemn the atrocities of war, we openly defend in our courts and legislatures methods of abortion so horrific it turns the stomach to hear, much less see, such procedures carried out.
Abortion is indeed a destroyer of peace. It destroys peace because in place of the tender love that nature itself inspires in a mother for the child of her womb it introduces a callousness that does not stop short of murder by the most brutal and horrific means imaginable. Dismemberment is the candid name for one method of abortion. The practice is as terrifying as the name suggests. The baby is literally dismembered, part by part. No image can adequately do justice to the pain and horror of this reality. And no atrocity of war can begin to compare.
As long as a country kills its unborn, and in horrific ways, it can never have true peace. It will have war without because it already has war within. It has it within the sanctuary of the womb. If, then, we would have peace, we must protect life in the womb.
Jesus Christ, whom we call the Prince of Peace, chose to be born a little child after nine months in the womb of the Blessed Virgin. We who call ourselves Christian would do well to make note of what Our Lord Himself says about little children. “He who accepts a little child in my name, accepts me.” (Mk 9:37) Christ joins the acceptance of His own person to the acceptance of little children. Abortion destroys peace, because it destroys love for little children. And he who does not accept a little child does not accept Christ. If we would have peace, then, we must accept and protect the unborn child.