Interesting article on NCR: Pro-lifers went wrong in pitting child against mother, says John Paul’s favorite politician. In it, John Allen writes:
Perhaps the most prominent pro-life politician in Europe has said that he won’t support efforts to make abortion illegal, because “God entrusts a child to its mother in such a special way, that to defend the child against the mother is just, but impossible.”
“We have to support the mother, making her more free,” said Italian politician Rocco Buttiglione. “The more free she is, the more difficult it will be for her to renounce the child.”
Who is Rocco Buttiglione? Well, John Allen tells us:
A member of the Communion and Liberation movement and a close friend of the late Pope John Paul II, Buttiglione has long been seen as a leading voice for Catholic teaching in European politics. In 2004, Buttiglione was rejected as a minister in the European Commission because he refused to recant his traditional Catholic beliefs on homosexuality, abortion and the family.
This goes with what has been said on Vox Nova many times before: when you move outside of the United States, the pro-life movement looks significantly different from what you find within. What is the cause of the difference? Is Buttiglione a true pro-lifer (he has, after all, stuck up for his moral position, even if it caused him some political loss)? And what do you make of his comment that it appears many within the pro-life movement itself has given in to the vision of the pro-choice movement, where motherhood itself is misunderstood? Very interesting. Very, very interesting.
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