It should come as no surprise that the official editorial position of Unpleasant Accents is a Catholic one. Our contributors are all pro-life and all Catholic (Yours Truly, as an Anglo-Catholic, filling our heretic quota). The Roman Catholic Church's opposition to abortion is well-known. As the
Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person — among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being of life." Indeed, as early as the last first century, we have evidence of Christian opposition to abortion in the
Didache, one of the earliest extant extrabiblical texts, which lists abortion amongst sins such as theft, murder and adultery.
The Church's witness for life has been both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing in that her advocacy for the protection of all life, from conception until natural death, is unrivalled by any other organisation — religious or secular — in terms of the sheer amount of investment she has placed in hospitals, orphanages and other social services. It is a curse, however, in that in our increasingly irreligious age, it is more difficult for faith-based groups to argue for their values without being dismissed by their opponents as merely regurgitating dogma, rather than contributing a legitimate point of view. This is where the subjects of our post come in.
