Several weeks ago, a candidate for the United States Senate for the State of Missouri delivered himself of some sort of backhanded approval of “legitimate” rape. It is important for us to realize that one of the things that politicians do, which is most detestable, is pollute our language. They do it sometimes by indirection, sometimes by excess, sometimes by exaggeration, and sometimes by outright lying.

Consider that legitimate means lawful, right, acceptable, within the bounds of human moral conduct. If you see it in that way it is obviously a ridiculous expression. There is not, never was, and cannot be anything such as legitimate rape. Anyone running for public office in the United States should have been well aware of this before the words were uttered.

All human beings know that forced sexual activity is always against our nature and that when our nature is debased by such activity, it says much unfavorable about us and that we should keep in mind. When we speak of such activity, whether we are politicians or not, we should always keep it in the correct context and not further debase ourselves by minimizing, with our language, how deplorable and unacceptable rape is to all people.

One of the things horrifying the American public this past summer has been the number of crimes of gun violence where many innocent people have been wounded or killed in senseless acts of violence by people who are usually deranged.

In our horror at these acts we wonder, “Where do perpetrators get the ideas that this sort of activity is in some sense ennobling?” They get it because they live in a country where the most innocent of our fellow citizens are put to death willy-nilly, sometimes by doctors and nurses who are sworn to preserve life, not to destroy it. Our society approves this destruction through legal abortion.

The Church inveighs against abortion and people say to the church, “Can’t they talk about anything else?” That is a legitimate complaint by anyone who considers abortion anything less than homicide approved by society. The Church can and does teach and speak on other issues. But the issue of life in all its stages and forms must be paramount to all the rest. For if we acquiesce in that priority, we cannot then make a plea for anyone, any life less as a symptom, than the life of a preborn child.

How can we be horrified by violent language or acts of physical violence if we stand idle and stay silent about the destruction of our society at its moment of conception? The only surprise then is that we are at all surprised.

It surprises no one that abortion is a difficult thing to talk about. For one thing, it is outright and brutal exercise of power by the strong over the weakest, and we do not admire that in our society as a general rule. Everywhere else in our society the underdog gets at least a modicum of sympathy, but not the unborn child who is thrown away like a banana peel or item of refuse. For another thing, abortion is practiced sometimes by doctors and nurses who, sworn to extend life, debase their professions by killing innocent life.

Finally, as the “elite” and the “cocktail party crowd” take abortion more or less for granted, Christians, even those that are Catholic, find that it is more convenient to keep silent about it even though they do not approve it, rather than to speak against it.

We forget that the unborn child is among those regarded by Jesus as “the least” among his brethren.