USCCB Respect Life seminar calls for loving without measure

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Susan Wills, USCCB Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities

The Diocese of Salt Lake City Family Life Office will host the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Respect Life seminar “The Measure of Love is to Love Without Measure,” in both Ogden and Draper Sept. 10-11. The guest presenter will be attorney Susan Wills, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities and assistant director for education and outreach.

“I don’t want this talk to be typical of a Washington person who goes around the country discussing just issues,” said Wills. “I really want to help inspire people to understand that each of us has the responsibility in our own lives in the decisions we make to be a witness for the dignity and value of every human life.”

Many issues are of grave concern today, she said, such as abortion funding, the new health care laws and funding of embryonic stem cell research. There are renewed efforts by pro-euthanasia groups to legalize assisted suicide, obstetricians and gynecologists are continuing to pressure parents to abort unborn children with a poor pre-natal diagnosis, invitro-fertilization is still growing, contraception is seen by the Obama administration as the solution to unplanned pregnancy rather than educating youth about the dignity of life, marriage and human sexuality, and a constant onslaught of pornography is available to young people, she added.

“All of these things are really critical issues we are facing today,” Wills said. “In this year’s Respect Life program, we set forth examples and a frame work of how each of us individually should be looking at other people’s lives and supporting and cherishing them rather than simply abandoning them.”

Wills said in hospices and other medical settings, patients who are not immanently dying are more often being denied assisted nutrition and hydration when they have a cognitive disability from dementia or stroke and they could be kept alive for months or even years longer. But some in the medical profession and some family members see them as a burden and feel they no longer have a quality of life.

“We are finding insidious and all-too-easy ways to rid ourselves of people that some consider burdens, such as the disabled, children who are conceived at an inconvenient time or elderly family members,” Wills said. “With the pressures that everybody is facing with health care and our economy in trouble, it looks like such an easy solution to speed Grandma or Uncle Louie on to their death by denying them food and water, but this is killing rather than an act of love.”

Wills said we are called to go outside of ourselves to embrace the suffering that is involved in caring for another human being; that is our path to salvation.

Susan Wills, USCCB Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, will speak Friday, Sept. 10, at 7 p.m. at Saint James Parish, 495 North Harrison Blvd, Ogden. On Saturday, Sept. 11, she will speak at 10 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. at Saint John the Baptist Parish, 300 East 11800 South, Draper.For information, call Veola Burchette in the Diocesan Family Life Office, 801-328-8641, ext. 324.