QUOTATION: Expose Pro-Abortion Contradictions

There is a tremendous disconnect at every level of our society regarding abortion, and as a result, the child in the womb has become the great blind spot of our culture. This disconnect is fueled by denial and fraught with the most blatantly absurd contradictions that the human mind can conjure. To advance justice for the unborn, we have to challenge these contradictions and expose them.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion

QUOTATION: When Will We End Abortion?

We will end abortion when enough of us grow restless, when we connect, both mentally and emotionally, with the human tragedy abortion represents, when we drink deeply of that spiritual imperative and become inebriated with holy impatience.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion

QUOTATION: We Must All Repent of Abortion

We need to see abortion not just as somebody else’s sin but our sin. Even if we have never participated in an abortion, we must ask forgiveness for it. It is easy to blame abortion on those who do it and support it. But we must blame ourselves as well. This is spiritual dynamic that has to undergird all of our other activities to abolish abortion. First and foremost we are called to repent, to take responsibility for the innocent blood that has been shed, and then to intervene to save the helpless.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion

QUOTATION: We're All Responsible for Abortion

Our land is polluted with the innocent blood of tens of millions of aborted children. The fact that we are ourselves have not done the killing does not absolve us responsibility.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion

QUOTATION: Fighting Oppression

We don’t fight oppression by “agreeing to disagree” with the oppressor. It is precisely when the oppressor disagrees that we have to intervene to stop the violence.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion

QUOTATION: Fear is the Biggest Obstacle

The most daunting obstacle that stands between us and a culture of life is the fear in our hearts. This fear leads us to doubt whether we really should risk everything and sacrifice all.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion

QUOTATION: Beginning the Fight Against Abortion

We begin our repentance by renouncing our cowardice, by regretting our silence, by rejecting our fear of risk and loss, our skewed priorities and attachments. Indeed, the fight against abortion does not start in the political arena or in abortion clinics. The obstacles to a culture of life, and the enemies arrayed against it, are not primarily the massive funding of Planned Parenthood or the pervasive bias in the secular media. The biggest obstacles are inside of us. They are the lies we tell ourselves, the fears to which we willingly submit, and the pretense of ignorance about what we really have to do next.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion

QUOTATION: Abolishing Abortion

Many friends ask me, “What is our first spiritual duty regarding the abortion issue?” They think I am going to answer, “prayer.”  But actually, the answer is repentance. The first step in abolishing abortion is to examine our own hearts and to repent of the role we each have played in allowing this holocaust to happen.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion

QUOTATION: Protecting Innocent Life

Just as we cannot justify killing our neighbor with the excuse, “I did not believe he had a soul,” so we cannot justify the killing of the child in the womb with the same rationale. The goal of the pro-life movement is not to impose our beliefs on anyone, but rather to protect the innocent from those who believe they can be killed.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion

QUOTATION: Life, the Most Fundamental Freedom

To be free, a person must first be alive. To deprive a person of life is to deprive that person of liberty. It stands to reason, literally, that the very right to life has to be respected and protected. Life is an even more fundamental right than freedom.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion

QUOTATION: The Blessed Virgin Mary in Her Mother's Womb

Mary was born with all personal greatness. She was enriched with God's gifts. But that is little, for on the day of her birth she was already rich with her own merits. She had already acquired treasures of merits during the nine months of silent and uninterrupted adoration passed in the bosom of her mother. She was, even before her birth, penetrated with the divine light, and she had given herself entirely to God, whom she loved with a love of which we can form no just idea. She was born with the treasures that she had won, with the riches that she had acquired.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard, Month of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament

QUOTATION: God's Existence is the Real Issue

The denial of God—or the blithe bracketing of the question of God—is not a harmless parlor game. Rather, it carries with it the gravest implications. If there is no God, then our lives do indeed belong to us, and we can do with them what we want. If there is no God, our lives have no ultimate meaning or transcendent purpose, and they become simply artifacts of our own designing. Accordingly, when they become too painful or too shallow or just too boring, we ought to have the prerogative to end them. We can argue the legality and even the morality of assisted suicide until the cows come home, but the real issue that has to be engaged is that of God’s existence.

--Bishop Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

QUOTATION: No Rest for Pro-Lifers

The champions of abortion do not rest. Neither can we. The battle to defend the children in the womb—that one segment of humanity whose rights are most cruelly denied—is a battle for humanity itself. And it is worth everything.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion 

QUOTATION: Raising the Abortion Issue

When we try to raise the [abortion] issue and press for resolution, we find obstacles at every turn:

• When we speak about abortion in church, we’re told it’s too political.
• When we speak about it in the political arena, we’re told it’s too religious.
• When we try to raise the issue in the media, we’re told it is too disturbing.
• When we dare speak of it in the world of business, we are told it is too distracting.
• When we try to introduce it in a classroom, we are told it’s too controversial.
• When we take our message to the streets, we are told it is too disruptive.

So if abortion is wrong, where do we go to say so? We go where the opposition does not want us to: into the churches, into politics, into the media, into the business world, into education, and into the streets!

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion 

QUOTATION: Pro-Abortion Censorship

The opposition tries to keep those who are pro-life out of the public square precisely for this reason: they know that if they let us in, they lose.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion, 2015.

QUOTATION: How People Stop Themselves from Being Pro-Life

People know that abortion is happening, but they also realize that if they look at it too closely, they will not be able to live at peace with themselves unless they try to stop it. At the same time, they know that if they try to stop it there will be a price to pay. They may lose friends or face other kinds of opposition. They don’t want to make the sacrifice necessary to confront injustice. What, then, is their solution to this dilemma? Ignore the problem altogether. Denial protects them from the pain of the situation.

--Fr. Frank Pavone

QUOTATION: Conception and Transubstantiation

Biological conception and spiritual consecration, or what Catholics call transubstantiation—are the holiest moments in time because God continually creates miracles at those two moments; and those two places—a woman’s body and a Catholic altar—are the two holiest places in the world because that’s where he does it.

--Peter Kreeft, Letters to an Atheist, 2014

QUOTATION: Conversion to the Pro-Life Cause

You must remember that I was converted to the cause of life only because I was converted to the cause of truth.

-- Dr. Bernard Nathanson.

QUOTATION: Be Not Afraid!

Never tire of firmly speaking out in defense of life from its conception and do not be deterred from the commitment to defend the dignity of every human person with courageous determination. Christ is with you: be not afraid!

--Pope St. John Paul II

QUOTATION: A Child is a Gift

If a child comes into this world in unwanted circumstances, the parents and other members of the family must do everything possible to accept that child as a gift from God and assume the responsibility of accepting him or her with openness and affection.

--Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia, 166