Salt Lake City Bishop Oscar Solis urged Catholics to join him in professing the “absolute truth” that an abortion destroys an innocent unborn child during a special pro-life Mass last week to mark the 49th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
Intermountain Catholic reports Solis celebrated the Mass for the Unborn and Ceremony of Light on Jan. 21 at the Cathedral of the Madeleine. Since 1973, nearly 63.5 million unborn babies and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of mothers have died in supposedly “safe,” legal abortions.
In his homily, Solis reminded Catholics that life is a “precious gift” from God, and abortions destroy that gift, according to the report.
“Abortion not only denies a helpless innocent child of the fundamental right to life but is a grievous sin against God and brings misery and suffering to the mother, their family, society and humanity,” the bishop said.
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Fundamental to Catholic belief is the “absolute truth” that “the sanctity of the life of every person is God’s will and design,” he continued.
The bishop encouraged pro-lifers to keep working to defend the lives of all human beings, born and unborn, and to rely on God’s help in this work.
“Life comes from God; it is sacred from the moment of conception until natural death,” he said. “For this reason, we protect and defend every human life, especially the innocent life in the womb of their mother, the poor and the vulnerable, the sick, the elderly, homeless and addicts, those incarcerated and on the death row, the migrants as well as the refugees.”
Later, he continued, “We believe we cannot do it alone, but we must rely on the power of God’s grace for with God everything is possible.”
The bishop also expressed hope that the U.S. Supreme Court may get rid of Roe later this year through the Mississippi case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health.
Last year, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch asked the high court to overturn its infamous abortion ruling and allow states to protect unborn babies from abortion again. Currently, states are prohibited from banning abortions before viability, about 22 weeks of pregnancy.
Many hope the justices will overturn Roe later this year, but Solis said the work to protect life will not end even if they do.
“We must expand our efforts to provide care for mothers and children and reach out to women in crisis, struggling to make a choice for their future and life of the world,” Solis said.
Without Roe, the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion research group, predicts that 26 states will ban abortions, and experts say hundreds of thousands of unborn babies would be spared from abortions every year.
