“Beyond Dobbs: What’s next for pro-life Catholics now that Roe v Wade has been overturned,” was the theme of the Michigan Area’s annual symposium, held on October 4. The Area also observed its customary “First Saturday” with Mass, Rosary, and the opportunity for Confession. See “Michigan Area holds October ‘First Saturday’ at Solanus Casey Center in Detroit.”

The featured speaker, renowned appellate attorney John J. Bursch, emphasized that the Church’s teachings on human life and sexuality are “beautiful and true” and lead to human flourishing – and Catholics need to be ready to assert those teachings in a persuasive way.

In introducing John, Michigan Area Chair Andy Smith, KM, said that John is “a verified superstar” among American lawyers. John has argued 13 cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, including cases defending the Church’s teachings on marriage and sexuality. John and his wife Angela recently joined the Order as Associates in the Michigan Area.

In addition to abortion, John’s presentation encompassed such issues as in vitro fertilization (IVF), euthanasia, contraception, and gender ideology. John also offered a series of Rosary meditations, relating each Rosary mystery to an aspect of Church pro-life teaching.

John opened his presentation by noting that some of the Church’s teachings may be hard to hear, especially for those who have not lived by those teachings. “But know this: Forgiveness is available to us all. None of us is without sin, and none of us is beyond God’s forgiveness,” he told the audience. “Confessions are just down the hall.”

While the Dobbs decision was a pro-life victory, some stinging defeats for the pro-life cause followed, with a number of states, including Michigan, rushing to enshrine abortion as a constitutional right. But 12 states ban abortion from conception except to save the mother’s life, and seven more outlaw abortions after 18 weeks. “Hundreds of thousands of lives have been saved” as a result of these pro-life laws, John noted.

Too, even in states lacking protections for the unborn, with Planned Parenthood no longer receiving federal tax dollars, Planned Parenthood-affiliated abortion clinics are closing, he observed.

But most importantly, pro-life Catholics must work for a culture of life, such that “abortion will become not just illegal, but unthinkable,” John added. And the Church’s teaching on life and sexuality “is like an instruction manual,” he said. “If you don’t follow the manual, eventually, that leads to destruction.”

From the moment of conception, “life is entitled to respect, dignity, and protection,” John said. He traced the Church’s teaching against abortion back to the Didache, continuing through St. Augustine, and affirmed by St. Thomas Aquinas.

Moreover, starting in 1827, secular authorities too came to ban abortion on the basis of scientific discoveries that every fertilized egg was genetically distinct and contained the potential for a human being, he added.

The Church’s “hard teachings” on sexuality include a prohibition on IVF, which some have called a “pro-life” technology, since the goal is to help people have children. But that label is misleading, John said. “A child is a gift, not a right,” he emphasized. By treating children as products to be manufactured outside of the conjugal act, IVF violates the dignity of both children and parents, he observed. The uncertain fate of  the roughly 1 million “snowflake babies” – frozen unwanted embryos produced through IVF – is just one example of abuses arising through IVF, John added.

The Church’s opposition to contraception is another “hard teaching” rejected by some 90 percent of American Catholics, he noted. But divorcing the unitive and procreative aspects of sex has had the catastrophic moral and social effects predicted by St. Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humane Vitae: Marital infidelity and moral decline; loss of respect for women, including pornography; government abuses, such as forced abortions; and the misconception that human beings have unlimited dominion over their bodies.  “What [of those predictions] hasn’t come true?” John asked.

Euthanasia is another violation of human dignity, “morally unacceptable.” John noted that in the last session of the Michigan legislature, a bill was proposed to legalize euthanasia. While  that bill did not pass, an effort to legalize euthanasia via ballot proposal is likely, he said. “The potential for abuse is huge,” he said. Euthanasia “targets people who, in the eyes of society, don’t have value. A culture of death doesn’t see meaning in life.”

To combat the culture of death, John urged the audience to pray and take part in efforts such as the “40 Days for Life” prayer vigil, and the American Association’s annual “Pilgrimage for Life” in Washington, D.C., an activity promoted by the Michigan Area, which sends a delegation each year. He also recommended supporting and volunteering at pregnancy aid centers and other pro-life organizations.

And he asked members to be strong, persuasive advocates for life. “Engage people by asking questions, such as ‘When do you think life begins?’ … If we remain faithful to the Church’s teachings, that fosters good results … this is the way for human flourishing.”

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