Pro-life supporters must continue abortion fight, Keyes says
Right to Life of Indianapolis president Joan Byrum congratulates State Sen. Jeff Drozda of Westfield, Ind., left, and St. Luke parishioner John Hanagan of Indianapolis for their distinguished service to the cause of life during the organization’s 25th annual “Celebrate Life” dinner on Sept. 23 at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis.
By Mary Ann Wyand
Pounding on the podium like it was a pulpit, author and former statesman Alan Keyes preached an impassioned sermon about the moral crisis in America and called on 1,100 pro-life supporters at the Right to Life of Indianapolis fundraiser on Sept. 18 to continue to fight the war on abortion.
During the 25th annual “Celebrate Life” dinner at the Indiana Convention Center, the organization honored St. Luke parishioner John Hanagan of Indianapolis with the Charles E. Stimming Sr. Pro-Life Award for distinguished volunteer service and State Sen. Jeff Drozda, a member of St. Maria Goretti Parish in Westfield, Ind., with the Respect Life Award for outstanding support for the cause of life.
Hanagan volunteers countless hours at the Right to Life of Indianapolis office, serves as a pro-life sidewalk counselor outside abortion centers, supports the St. Vincent de Paul Society’s ministry to the poor and helps care for terminally ill patients at the St. Vincent Hospice.
“It’s a joy working with John,” explained St. Luke parishioner Joan Byrum, the president of Right to Life of Indianapolis. “He’s so committed to the Lord. That’s why each and every one of us is here tonight. We’re here for the honor and glory of God … and I cannot thank you enough.”
Drozda was praised for being “absolutely, untiringly pro-life” in his public policy work in the state legislature.
His wife, Cheryl, said his “involvement in the pro-life movement has given a lot of purpose to our entire family. We always pray about pro-life issues together.”
Keyes served 11 years with the U.S. State Department, working on foreign and domestic policy and on the staff of the National Security Council before he was named President Ronald Reagan’s assistant secretary of state for international organizations. From 1983 to 1985, he served as an ambassador to the United Nations’ economic and social council, where he represented U.S. interests in the U.N. General Assembly. He also served at the U.S. consulate in Bombay, India.
In his keynote address, Keyes warned the audience that “we teeter now, as a people, on the brink of the total collapse of our way of life and freedom.”
He said the war against terror that America is engaged in is “a war against anyone, whatever their religion, whatever their persuasion, whatever their nationality, whatever their background, who would disregard the claims of innocent human life.”
When terrorists attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001, “it wasn’t the first time that we had seen that line of transgression crossed on the soil of the United States,” Keyes said, “because we see it crossed in every abortuary in every state, in every city, in every county where innocent life is targeted and taken in the womb.”
We must stand firm against enemies that try to destroy our liberty, he said, and those who would destroy innocent life.
“But it is hard to stand firm, hard to be confident, hard to be sure, hard to articulate the clear, simple moral logic of what you do when the evil that you fight is but the shadow of the evil that you do,” Keyes said. “And that’s the tough position we’re in today” with legalized abortion.
Abortion attacks innocent life, motherhood, fatherhood, marriage, families and the moral foundation of our society, he said, with terrible long-term consequences that have drastically impaired our country’s future stability.
Keyes lamented our society’s failure to honor marriage, preserve the father’s role and responsibilities in the home, and pass on the family structure to new generations.
Life begins “when God speaks the word through which that child is conceived,” he said, but abortion is the “rejection of that word and the destruction of that union” between a man and woman by making life a woman’s choice.
The Constitution states that “we are clearly obliged at the national level to respect the life of the child in the womb,” Keyes said. “We can no more—under our Constitution—take the life of the child than we can enslave the person sitting next to us.”
The problem with our nation’s current legal system is that “the law is what the judge says it is,” he said, and that contradicts our constitutional right to “secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and on an equal level for our posterity.”
We must respect each person’s
God-given right to life and liberty, Keyes said. “If we wish to remain a free people, a decent people, a strong people, then we must be first a godly people for we receive our rights from the hand of God and … must be a people faithful in our allegiance to his authority and his will. I believe that is the central meaning of the pro-life movement. … We are here to revive, to preserve and to respect the soul and the spirit of our nation and of its liberty.”
Pro-life supporters are on the front lines of a war more important and more decisive than any other war, he said. “It is the struggle for the soul of our people. It is the struggle for the conscience of our people. It is the struggle to preserve … the equality and dignity of each and every human life so we are one nation [and] stand submissive under the will of God.” †
