What Truths We Hold

The president says: “We must find a way to live together.” All the while, the infant in the womb is answering: “But first I have to live.”

Jul 23, 2009
Bernard J. Coughlin

A short time ago, President Barack Obama was invited to address the 2009 graduating class of Notre Dame and to be honored by the university. President Obama is an effective speaker; and his speech at Notre Dame was eloquently delivered.

But Notre Dame is a Catholic University and the Catholic Church and hierarchy, and Catholics in large numbers, believe that abortion is killing an innocent fetus and a seriously sinful violation of the child’s right to life. President Obama, however, believes just as strongly that the mother has the right to kill the child in her womb. Notre Dame alumni accused their Alma Mater of playing politics. There was tension and considerable hostility and anger around the campus that graduation day, and the hostility is still spreading.

Seeking some road to harmony among the hostile parties, President Obama encouraged both sides—proabortion and antiabortion—to seek and find, notwithstanding their opposing views, a “common ground.” This is not the first time that he has made such an appeal. the rest