November 7, 2024 // National

National Pro-life Leaders Speak at Notre Dame Conference

Ann Carey

Two prominent voices of the pro-life movement were among the notable speakers at an October 31-November 2 conference at the University of Notre Dame that focused on the “Catholic Imagination.”

Richard Doerflinger and Helen Alvaré were called pro-life “heroes” by Notre Dame Law Professor Sherif Girgis, who introduced them at a conference session about the Catholic perspective on hope and human dignity. 

Doerflinger formerly was the associate director of the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), where he was influential in developing and promoting pro-life policies for 36 years. He is presently a fellow at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia and at Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, which sponsored the conference.

Alvaré served the USCCB Pro-Life Secretariat as Communications Director for 10 years. She is currently a professor of law at the Antonin Scalia School of Law at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and continues to speak and write on the topics of life, family, religious freedom, and human dignity. She also is a member of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Laity, the Family, and Life.

Both speakers have been recipients of the Notre Dame   Evangelium  Vitae Medal bestowed annually since 2011 for
outstanding
service to the “Gospel of Life.” Doerflinger was awarded in 2011 and Alvaré in 2012.

Doerflinger noted that the “Catholic Imagination,” the conference theme, is not something that is “made up,” but rather is a realistic and long-range worldview that begins “with creation and ends with eternity.” This Catholic view of the world and of human dignity should shape how we respond to social issues, he said, with the “most contested” social issue of our time being abortion and the dignity of the unborn child.

He explained that after World War II, the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) was based on the Catholic worldview of “the inherent dignity
of humans,” and this dignity
was later cited in the U.N. Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights
(1998) and the U.N. Declaration on Human Cloning (2005).

However, “In recent years, this emphasis of international human rights is in danger of crumbling,” Doerflinger said, “because emphasis and political figures of a more utilitarian bent have insisted that dignity is a meaningless word, or is simply a confusing synonym for radical individual autonomy.”

“The result,” he continued, “is the freedom to choose one’s own lifestyle or even one’s own identity,” and this individualism becomes “the core human right,” enabling a person to choose abortion or euthanasia. Thus, the world is “more impoverished and dangerous” when the Catholic worldview is not present, he noted.

Doerflinger said that stressing the human dignity of the unborn child is the key to changing the cultural view that the human fetus is a burden that is disposable. He gave examples of former abortion providers such as Bernard Nathanson and Abby Johnson, who rejected abortion when they were confronted with the humanity of the unborn child. Conversely, he also noted that some abortion advocates do recognize that abortion is killing a human being, but they claim it is justified as a woman’s so-called “reproductive right.”

Alvaré observed that the current environment has been dominated by messages about abortion that are “incorrect, inhumane, and hopeless.” This promotes a worldview that says it makes no sense to have a baby, she said, and it sends the message that the human body is simply a “thing” of which a woman has complete control.

This worldview calls for unfettered freedom that includes the freedom to kill not just anyone, “but only members of your own family” who are too weak to defend themselves, she said. Such freedom allegedly gives a woman strength and power in a worldview that sees abortion as “girl power.”

This message is contrary to Scripture and Catholic social teaching, Alvaré observed, and the only remedy is to communicate a different worldview. While abortion advocates offer nothing but abortion, the pro-life movement and the Catholic Church have rightly provided comprehensive assistance to mothers and their children and educated the world on the humanity of the unborn. However, more must be done, she said.

“A new worldview” is necessary, she insisted: “Something very new and powerful, nothing short of the Good News” is needed to break through the discussion on this topic.

“The Church has to re-call people to their humanity and to the realistic possibility of hope,” Alvaré explained, for people must be shown that “it is possible to love faithfully, to love sacrificially, to hope for a lifelong relationship with the father of one’s child, to take joy in one’s children, to be able to maintain a proper relationship with material things and with work, so that you have the opportunity to love your family.”

“Only the Gospel of Jesus Christ is up to this,” Alvaré concluded.