Catholic Cardinal Condemns Abortion: Killing Babies is “The Most Heinous Crime Against Life”

International   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Apr 11, 2022   |   12:50PM   |   Washington, DC

German Catholic Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller condemned abortion in a recent interview, saying killing unborn babies is “the most heinous crime against life.”

Catholic World Report published an interview with Müller, translated from German, in which he criticized the growing global push to redefine abortion as “health care” and a “human right.”

Specifically, the cardinal spoke about the European Parliament’s decision last summer to adopt a radical pro-abortion document called the Matic Report, which, among other things, declares abortion to be a “human right” and describes conscience protections for pro-life medical workers as a “denial of medical care.”

Müller, the former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican, slammed the document, saying, “… the humanity of the child in the womb is evident and its denial is the justification of the most heinous crime against life. To declare a child in the womb to be a thing is just as perverse as making people slaves and then declaring them to be things in order to justify this horrendous crime against humanity.”

Follow LifeNews on the Parler social media network for the latest pro-life news!

He said science clearly demonstrates that a baby in the womb is a unique, living human being from the moment of conception, “possess[ing] a distinctive DNA as the physical basis of his personal identity.”

An unborn baby is a valuable person whose life was “eternity willed, loved and destined by God for salvific communion with Him without end,” Müller continued.

Asked about pregnancy being treated as a disease and abortion a cure, he said nothing could be further from the truth.

“Procreation of a child, pregnancy, birth, care of the infant, its being nourished with the mother’s milk, the mother’s kisses and tears,” the cardinal continued. “The care for the healthy growth of the child are anything but a malfunction …”

“Abortion is a gender-specific violence against a woman as a mother and her daughter or son,” Müller said.

He encouraged society to look to Christ’s example about how to treat children and recognize that their lives are part of God’s plan for the world.

“Jesus, the Son of God, had children come to Him to bless them and to commend them to us in their simplicity and incorruptness as the model of our sonship with God, (Mt 18, 1-4),” Müller said. “He is thus the archetype of God’s kindness towards children.

“He gives us food for thought when he says: ‘When a woman is in travail she has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a child is born into the world.’ (John 16:21),” he said.

He criticized abortion supporters for trying to portray abortion as a human right, saying the act of killing an unborn baby is inhumane.

“One cannot arbitrarily positively declare to be right what is ethically wrong,” Müller said.

In 2021, about 42.6 million unborn babies were aborted across the world.