On International Women’s Day (March 8, 2022), President Biden stated that abortion is needed so that women can “live up to their full God-given potential.”  His statement is discriminatory in that he blithely ignores the fact that the unborn also have God-given potential.  It is self-contradictory inasmuch as Biden says “yes” and “no” to potential.  It is also blasphemous because, while acknowledging the reality of God, he approves killing the unborn human beings that He has created.  We can also say that it is unrealistic since no woman can live up to her “full” potential.  Life is too short, and making one choice necessarily excludes another.  No one can be everything for which he has a potential.

Nonetheless, the fallacy that I find most intriguing is on the level of logic.  In this regard, the president has created a masterpiece of illogic.  Carrying out Biden’s “logic,” the women who stand to achieve the fullness of their potential should have been aborted so that their mothers could have achieved their full potential.  But even those mothers should also have been aborted so that their mothers could have achieved their full potential.  And on it goes, backwards through history, eliminating all mothers since they all were unborn children at one time whose full potential did not count.  In this way, there would be no one around to give birth to anyone.  The human race would thereby be extinguished.  No woman could possibly fulfill her potential since women no longer existed.  If it could be carried out retroactively, Biden’s hope would self-implode.

Ignoring the God-given potential of the unborn is a curious bit of ignorance.  Sonya Curry has written a book entitled, Fierce Love:  A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Purpose (2022).  She tells us about sitting in the parking lot of Planned Parenthood contemplating whether or not she should abort her child.  She did not go through with the intended abortion because, as she writes, “the Holy Spirit intervened.”  “God had a plan for that child. There could be no Stephen.  If I would have gone through that [the abortion] there would have been no Wardell Stephen Curry II.”

And who is Wardell Stephen Curry?  Did he have any potential to fulfill?  He is an NBA superstar and regarded as the greatest three-point shooter of all time.  He has played on four championships with the Golden State Warriors and was the MVP in the 2022 final series.  But that is not all.  Curry is also a man who acts out his faith, and is involved in numerous charitable causes, including paying off college debts, and creating a foundation with his wife, Ayesha, that aims to end childhood hunger and provide educational opportunities and safe places for kids to play. “I pound my chest and point to the sky, it symbolises that I have a heart for God, something that my mom and I came up with in college.  I do it every time I step on the court as a reminder of who I’m playing for. People should know who I represent and why I am who I am, and that’s because of my Lord and savior.”

He and his wife have three children. Stephen has contributed handsomely to making his mother’s potential exponential.

For those who equate fulfilling one’s potential in terms of dollars and cents, Curry earns $558, 304.46 per game and his current four-year contract pays his $215 million.  Sonya’s second child, Seth, is also a talented basketball player and is now performing with the Brooklyn Nets.

It is interesting to note the unexpected coincidences of Planned Parenthood and life.  Abby Johnson, who fled from her job at Planned Parenthood, became a successful author, speaker, and prolife activist.  The title of her latest book bears a remarkable similarity to that of Sonya Curry’s memoir.  She calls her memoir, Fierce Mercy: God’s Compassion in Bold and Practical Ways (2022).  She defines “fierce” not as fanatical, but as “being marked by unrestrained zeal, intense, furiously active, and highly determined.”  For St. Thomas Aquinas, zeal is the result of “intense love.”

“Fierce Love” as well as “Fierce Mercy” (or their equivalents) are key factors that are omitted from President Biden’s strategy.  They are potentials that we all have, though not everyone’s taps into them.  Hence, the importance of encouraging their use.  Abortion precludes the possibility of the unborn child fulfilling his potential.  Biden is not in favor of everyone fulfilling his potential.  He is in favor of it never blossoming in the unborn who are aborted.  He should be promoting a courageous love of life, not ending it prematurely.

On International Women’s Day, he would have been better advised to encourage women throughout the world to be courageous, to love, to respect life, to honor the dignity of motherhood, and to assist their children in the development of their potential which would be concomitant with the development of their own multifaceted potential as mothers.   

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Photo by Saint John’s Seminary on Unsplash