The Poorest of the Poor...

I was reading the liveblog from Jen on the America Magazine website discussing her conversion from being pro-choice to being pro-life, and having just read about Mother Teresa one of the comments struck me...it was from someone who (God bless them) had worked alongside the poor and seen much suffering. The argument was along the lines of, until the world is rid of the poor, being pro-choice is an unfortunate necessity because it just isn't fair to force children to be born into poverty and neglect, and I'm not going to be self-righteous and feel good about "being good" and take away someone's choice when they're faced with such suffering. Jen (as always) graciously responded and acknowledged that although she hadn't worked with the poor the way this person had, she did have some personal experiences that were relevant and went on to share them and discuss the issue.

As I read this, having just finished reading all about Mother Teresa in Come Be My Light, I couldn't help think about her. I mean, this is THE contemporary most of us think of when we think of helping the poor and sick and suffering, right? Even the mainstream media acknowledges her good works.

And what did Mother Teresa, a woman who devoted her life to caring for the sick and dying and poverty stricken, who joined them in poverty herself and spent her time among them, who likely knows better than the commentator on the liveblog or Jen or me or any of us what it is to be poor and suffering, what did she have to say on the issue?

"I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing, direct murder by the mother herself. And we read in the Scripture, for God says very clearly: 'Even if a mother could forget her child, I will not forget you. I have carved you in the palm of my hand.' ...That unborn child has been carved in the hand of God..."

"Many people are very, very concerned with children in India, with the children of Africa where quite a number die, maybe of malnutrition, of hunger and so on, but millions are dying deliberately by the will of the mother. And this is what is the greatest destroyer of peace today...Let us ensure this year that we make every single child born, and unborn, wanted....Have we really made the children wanted?..."

and

"I find the unborn child to be the poorest of the poor today - the most unloved - the most unwanted, the throw away of the society."