Faith Filled Friday: Mother Teresa on the Poverty of Abortion

We at the Catholic Thought book club at Goodreads are reading Heart of Joy: The Transforming Power of Self-Giving by Mother Teresa, now St. Teresa of Calcutta.  he book is mostly a collection of her speeches and writing, at least so far, and I’m about a third of the way in.  The book doesn’t lend itself to analysis, so I’m just going to occasionally post a quote, and as you would imagine her quotes fit very nicely to my “Faith Filled Friday” meme. 

I think this is a particularly poignant quote because Mother Teresa is known for aiding the “poorest of the poor.” 

A nation that destroys the life of an unborn child, who has been created for living and loving, who has been created in the image of God, is in a tremendous poverty.  For a child to be destroyed because of the selfishness of those who fear they may not be able to feed one more child, fear they may not be able to educate one more child and so decide the child has to die—that’s poverty.

What makes this quote particularly poignant is that she’s speaking in Philadelphia in the United States (August 6, 1976) at a symposium titled “Freedom and Justice.”  In effect she is speaking to the United States and to other first world, western nations—the richest countries in the world.  The poverty is not a poverty of money, but a poverty of values.  And frankly it’s even worse than Mother Teresa imagines.  Underlying her assumption in the quote is that most abortions happen because of money.  But really they don’t.  They happen because people don’t want the child to interfere with their lives and plans.  That is truly a poverty of values.

By the way, always looking for some new members to the Catholic Thought Book Club.