Juliette Spasic's Profile

"You shall not kill"

indicates the
extreme limit which can never be exceeded.

The way of death is this: ... they show no compassion for
the poor, they do not suffer with the suffering, they do not acknowledge their
Creator, they kill their children and by abortion cause God's creatures to
perish; they drive away the needy, oppress the suffering, they are advocates of
the rich and unjust judges of the poor; they are filled with every sin.

Only God is the master of life!

Unfortunately it happens
that the need to render the aggressor incapable of causing harm sometimes
involves taking his life.

This is the context in which to
place the problem of the death penalty. On this matter there is a growing
tendency, both in the Church and in civil society, to demand that it be applied
in a very limited way or even that it be abolished completely

"If bloodless means are sufficient
to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the
safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because
they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are
more in conformity to the dignity of the human person".⁴⁸

The deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human
being of his life is always morally evil and can never be licit either as an
end in itself or as a means to a good end.

He or she is weak, defenceless, even
to the point of lacking that minimal form of defence consisting in the poignant
power of a newborn baby's cries and tears

As well as the mother, there are
often other people too who decide upon the death of the child in the womb. In
the first place, the father of the child may be to blame, not only when he di-
rectly pressures the woman to have an abortion,

"from the time that the ovum is fertilized, a life is begun which is
neither that of the father nor the mother; it is rather the life of a new human
being with his own growth.