There are connections and dynamics that people must awaken to. Several years ago I was asked to speak on the pastoral letter of the U.S. Catholic bishops on economic justice at the national convention of a Jewish organization. Similarly, no thinking American can be indifferent to abortion. The right to life is the fundamental right. When the right to life is not sovereign but can be violated for any reason whatsoever, then all other rights are also in jeopardy.
Abortion is the axe at the root of the tree of human rights.
But immoral and irresponsible experimentation contrary to the rights of the person opened the door to the grim policy of extermination marked by euphemisms about social good and the good of the nation. As the Nuremberg trials revealed, those on trial saw nothing wrong in what they did. And so one of the most frightening things about abortion in the United States is that society has become used to it and sees nothing wrong in, it. Something has happened to the soul of a nation when the destruction of unborn human life becomes a means of insuring privacy. If the soul of a nation is to be great, it must have great moral horizons.