One of the persistent disappointments for those committed to the cause of unborn children has been the witness over several decades of Catholics who, as politicians, voted for practices such as the legalisation of abortion.
It happened in Western Australia in 1998 and it happened in Victoria in 2008 and it has happened around the world since the early 1970s, most notably in the US where House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic from California, has voted against banning health coverage that includes abortion, has voted for allowing embryonic stem cell research and has voted against restricting interstate transport for minors to get abortions.
For such individuals, it can accurately be said, ignorance finally proved victorious over truth – and life.
It was heartening, therefore, to hear of the case of Crown Prince Alois of the tiny European Principality of Lichtenstein who, in late May, told Agence France Press he was prepared to abdicate and end the 900-year-old role of his family and the monarchy which has governed Lichtenstein since 1806 in his country rather than sign abortion into law.
What can be said of such an action and of the Crown Prince? It is remarkable that in an era when politicians who govern in much more powerful states and nations have been unilaterally unable to muster the courage to enshrine in law what everyone who looks at this issue knows – that an unborn child is a human person – it takes the ruler of possibly the tiniest sovereign state on the face of the earth (Lichtenstein has an estimated population of 36,000) to teach such figures what true courage is and what it is really like as a politician to translate principles into actions.
What is additionally interesting is that support for the practice of abortion has lost all intellectual credibility everywhere. Its midwives, such as the US physician Bernard Nathanson who was the chief architect of its legalisation in the US in the 1970s, have almost all renounced their former support and become pro-life.
In places such as Western Australia, politicians have been forced to enshrine mutually contradictory laws which make the killing of an unborn child simultaneously an act of public service and civic duty on the one hand, or a crime punishable by imprisonment on the other, depending only on the intentions of the individual doing the killing.
Even more perverse is that the one who deliberately kills an unborn child is regarded as a conscientious member of the medical profession while a person who kills an unborn child through an error of judgement is the one who faces the full force of the law.
It is to such ridiculous measures that ‘progressive’ societies have resorted in order to cover the barbarity of abortion.
Crown Prince Alois’ ultimatum came after an earlier abortion law had been rejected by Lichtenstein’s parliament, 25 votes to seven.
Abortion activists in the socially liberal Lichtenstein (the country recently formalised same-sex civil unions) then launched a referendum in late 2011 which failed.
At the time, Crown Prince Alois addressed parliament and threatened to veto the referendum if it succeeded.
Activists then pushed to revoke the hereditary ruler’s right of veto. Having collected the required number of signatures to force a referendum to restrict the Prince’s right of veto, the referendum is due to be held on July 1.
It is this progression of events which led Crown Prince Alois to take the position that ending his family’s political involvement in his country’s governance is preferable to acting as collaborators in the legalisation of the killing of children.
“The royal family is not willing to undertake its political responsibilities unless the Prince has the necessary tools at his disposal,” he told AFP. “But if the people are no longer open to that, then the royal family will not want to undertake its political responsibilities and … will completely withdraw from political life.”
The Crown Prince is a father of four children and, according to some reports, a devout Catholic. It is entirely possible that the experience of being a parent has helped clarify his convictions regarding the sanctity of all human life which many Catholic politicians and their contemporaries in places such as Western Australia and further afield around the world have often found impossible to embrace.
It can only be said that whatever his religious beliefs, his courage and conviction are exemplary, a model of true political leadership and public service, especially for Catholic politicians, everywhere else.
Many might also reflect that two thousand years ago Jesus Christ may well have had figures such as Crown Prince Alois in mind when he asked what it would profit a man if he gained the whole world and its glory but lost his soul in the process.
Those who have voted for the barbarity of abortion shine in the media today but will ultimately be consigned to the dustbin of history.
It does not seem too much to say that a figure such as Crown Prince Alois, alternatively, should he persist in his heroic resistance to the anti-culture of death now afoot in his country, will one day be welcomed into his true homeland by Christ – and all the children whom the Prince defended.