Protecting the Dignity of Human Life – Fr. Isaiah Schick

January 21, 2024

I am grateful to have the opportunity to be currently accompanying our diocesan pilgrimage to the annual March for Life in Washington, DC. I used to go every year in high school and college when I was able to do so, and I am grateful to go back once more as a chaplain. It is true that Roe v. Wade was overturned, but that does not mean that the efforts to defend the dignity of each and every human being are finished. In some ways, it means that we have even more local responsibility to work for the proper respect and legal protection for human life from conception until natural death, for aid for struggling pregnant mothers, for the support and education of fathers who do not understand how to fulfill the role of caring for their children and the mothers of their children. The fact that many people still consider abortion to be an option that is anything but unthinkable means that there is much work to do in proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Gospel of Life in Grace, the Gospel of Unconditional Love, the Gospel of the Incarnation of God, with all of its ramifications – including that human life is profoundly sacred and that direct and voluntary abortion is always, in any and every circumstance, a morally evil and impermissible action. We have many efforts that have begun in the local area, including the good work done by the Pregnancy Help Center of Rice Lake and the awareness and support offered by Fr. Dennis Mullen’s Adoption Initiative. And yet, our nation and community remain divided on many issues involving serious violations of human life and dignity: abortion, euthanasia, IVF, assisted suicide, surrogacy, and many others. These are not issues on which any of us can compromise – we do not compromise on whether or not to love each person as we love ourselves. We do not compromise on revering the image of God that exists in each person. No. Instead, we pray, we fast, we work, we march with hearts aflame with the grace, mercy, and love of Christ to all who are living in the “valley of the shadow of death” proclaiming that Jesus can redeem any situation, that he loves even those who have violated human life and wants to save and heal them, that he can deliver our community and state and nation from sin and lead us to the freedom of the sons and daughters of God the Father.