Statement to the Press by Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life

Good morning and thank you for coming.

Though I am obviously a Catholic priest, I am not here today to talk about Catholic doctrine.

I'm here instead to talk about the single most destructive act of violence in our land, which is abortion. I'm here to talk about America, and the vision of liberty that inspired her from the beginning, a liberty that is real only when life itself is secure. I'm here to talk about those who hold and seek public office, and the complete contradiction between being a public servant and allowing an entire segment of the public to be destroyed. And I am joined by people of various religious faiths and of no faith, and of various ethnic and political backgrounds, all gathered to echo the same message.

As we approach our national elections, the single most critical issue on which candidates should be evaluated is their stand on abortion, because that stand is about much more than whether a medical procedure should be legal. That stand is about what kind of government we are. There are ultimately only two forms of government: a) That which holds that we have basic rights that government cannot tamper with, starting with the right to life, and b) that which holds that all our rights come from government, and therefore can be modified or denied by government. Our Founders declared in the Declaration of Independence that they were establishing the first kind of government, and that government exists precisely to secure our rights.

The Supreme Court in its Roe vs. Wade decision legalized abortion throughout pregnancy without denying the humanity of the unborn. By doing this, it established a different kind of government in America. It abandoned the principles of the Founders and broke the very foundation of civilization, namely, that the weak are to be protected by the strong, and that no earthly power can authorize violence against innocent human beings. The fabric of Roe vs. Wade is the fabric of which holocausts are made.

What America will decide on November 2 is what type of government it wants to be -- the type that claims authority over innocent human life, or the type that recognizes that there are rights no government can tamper with, and truths no courts can change.

Indeed, the position candidates take on abortion and on Roe vs. Wade indicates what type of government they believe in.

If a candidate said, "I support terrorism," he could never be elected to public office in America. Not only would citizens withhold their vote from such a candidate, but they would not even bother to ask his positions on other issues. Just imagine someone saying, "Sir, I disagree with you on terrorism, but what's your health care plan?" Nobody would ask such a question. This does not mean that health care, or any other issue, is unimportant. Rather, what it means is that there are certain positions so radically incompatible with public service that they obviously exclude the person in question from that role.

As with terrorism, so with abortion. The reason so many miss the equivalence is that the American people have for the most part still not seen the abortion procedure or heard it described. Yet only a few months ago, various types of legal abortion procedures were in fact described under oath by those who perform and witness them. Court trials regarding the ban on partial-birth abortion were conducted in New York, in Lincoln, NE and in San Francisco. The transcripts are available at www.priestsforlife.org among other places.

One of the other procedures described in those transcripts is the Dilatation and Evacuation (D and E) procedure, which is fully legal in America and is one of the most common methods of abortion in the second trimester. There are approximately 159,000 legal second-trimester abortions a year in the United States, and thanks to Roe vs. Wade, individual states cannot even ban this procedure if they wanted to.

Following is an excerpt from the New York trial, on March 31 of this year, questioning Dr. Timothy Johnson about the D and E procedure:

The moral evil of abortion and the moral evil of terrorism are identical. The evil of September 11, 2001, was not simply that buildings fell and lives were lost. An earthquake could have caused the same tragic loss. But what constituted the evil of that day was that some people had no regard for the claims of innocent human life, but rather deliberately destroyed them. What difference does it make if you use forceps or commercial airplanes? What difference does it make if the victim is five inches long or five feet tall?

No person who advocates acts of terrorism is worthy of public office, and no person who advocates the continued legality of abortion is worthy of public office.

To those who seek public office and describe themselves as "pro-choice," my challenge is simple: describe the choice. Tell us whether the abortion procedure you want to keep legal is the same as what these court transcripts describe. And if it is too terrible to describe, why is it not too terrible to permit?

We at Priests for Life have been involved in an intense campaign to register and educate voters over the last several years. Today we announce the final six weeks of that campaign, in which we will spend a million dollars to mobilize those voters to actually go to the polls. This plan uses media and the Churches to recruit local volunteers and foster grassroots activism. The elements of the plan are described in your packet. We commend and thank the many groups represented here for the activity that they are also undertaking to restore protection to the most defenseless human beings.

All of us stand together to affirm that we who oppose abortion do not oppose those who have abortions. Rather we stand ready to bring them support, forgiveness, and healing. We are also ready to provide alternatives to abortion and assistance to those who are pregnant and in need.

And we call upon all voters to advance the culture of life by their vote on November 2. America prides herself on religious liberty. America also takes equal pride in the defense of life, and in the recognition that there can be no liberty without life. May this great nation never lose that pride.

Thank you.