Fighting for the Truth

What is a pro-life warrior? Mr. Cetrulo cites the example of St. Thomas More, the patron saint of lawyers and statesmen, as the model for leaders in the pro-life movement: “He gave up everything—family, fortune, office, and ultimately his head—because he refused to prostitute principle.” Extolling More’s integrity and moral courage, Mr. Cetrulo himself reveals uncompromising moral principle in his passionate and logical defense of human life. Throughout the book he argues that “the Pro-Life movement will never succeed until it adopts a policy of ‘no exceptions, no compromise, and no apologies.’” He criticizes pro-life organizations like the National Right to Life and Catholic politicians like Governor Frank Keating of Oklahoma that allow for abortions in cases of rape, incest, and danger to the life of the mother. He scores the Republican Party for its lack of conviction in defending the right to life because four of the Supreme Court nominees who espoused Roe v. Wade were Republican nominees, and four of the current members (Stevens, O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter) with pro-abortion records also were appointed by Republican presidents who failed to keep their promises. He exposes President George W. Bush’s tokenism, a president who pays lip service to the pro-life cause but sacrifices moral principle in his political compromises: Bush’s chief counsel, Albert Gonzalez, appointed by Bush to the Texas Supreme Court and regarded as a likely candidate for the Supreme Court, voted against parental notification for minors aborting their children. With luminous clarity, Mr. Cetrulo argues from chapter to chapter that “no situation justifies abortion,” citing surgeon general Koop’s experience: “In my 36 years of pediatric surgery I have never known of one instance where the child had to be aborted to save the mother’s life.” A pro-life warrior seeks the truth, loves the truth, defends the truth, and suffers for the truth in imitation of St. Thomas More who never valued human respect, “the most pervasive sin in the world today,” above God’s absolute truth. The author eloquently demonstrates that the pro-life cause is the heroism and martyrdom demanded of Christians in our neo-pagan culture.

With irrefutable logic, incontrovertible evidence, and the splendor of clarity, Mr. Cetrulo dismantles every false argument, sophistic reason, and lame excuse for the justification of abortion. He lays bare every lie, which informs the legalization of abortion. Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, confessed her lie about being gang raped: “I was exploited by two self-interested attorneys.” A physician witnessing an abortion wrote, “It is the fetus struggling against the needle” as he describes the baby’s instinct to save its life from violent attack—the shocking truth of murder. What if President Lincoln offered the specious reasoning of today’s politicians: “No one compels you to own slaves, but you should not have the right to impose your morality on me by telling me that I may not do so”—a blatant contradiction A woman on her way to an abortuary can destroy her child because it is not a person; if that same woman were struck by a vehicle, she can file a claim to collect damages for the injury or death of the baby. Non sequitur. Abortion is not a fundamental human right but the brutality of unspeakable evil, a world war and a holocaust: the Nazis killed 12,000,000; the Russians under Stalin killed 30,000,000; Mao Tse Tung starved 60,000,000; abortion already has killed 40,000,000 in America alone. Why are there no free abortions? Planned Parenthood has reaped a $454,000,000 profit in the past fifteen years. Abortion is about money, avarice, and exploitation—not about “choice.” The population controllers wildly predicted population explosions causing worldwide famine. The truth is another matter. According to Jacqueline Kasun, “world food production has increased considerably faster than population in recent decades,” and sixty-one countries are not replacing themselves. According to Robert Sassone, the earth could provide for eight to twenty two times its current population at a modern standard of living using only half of the world’s land. There is no such thing as a safe abortion. As Chris Kahlenhorn’s medical research verifies, abortion and oral contraceptives (abortifacients) increase a woman’s chances of breast cancer by fifty percent. Thus Mr. Cetrulo’s book fearlessly attacks all these lies with legal truths, medical facts, historical precedents, and the moral wisdom of the Church.

For anyone who believes that the culture wars have been lost, who believes that Roe v. Wade is now permanently institutionalized, who believes that compromise and concession are pragmatic expedients in defending human life, who feels abortion is just one among many important political issues, or who feels ambivalent about the “unspeakable evil” of abortion to use Pope John Paul’s phrase, this book will rally and inspire the weary soldier or indifferent bystander to do noble battle for the greatest cause of our century.

Mitchell Kalpakgian, Ph.D.
Warner, New Hampshire