The juxtaposition of recent news stories about Mother Teresa, the Catholic saint, and Dr. Robert D. Spencer, an abortionist from Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, could not be more revealing about the pro-abortion movement and its media allies.  The U.K. Daily Mail led the way with a story based on a new Sky News documentary about the "darker side" of Mother Teresa, a strong and vocal opponent of abortion, claiming that she promoted pain and suffering; thought being poor is good; and helped shield a pedophile priest, which "left him free to abuse hundreds of boys for another decade."

Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Inquirer portrays a Pennsylvania abortion doctor as the "angel of Ashland," who is credited with having committed between 40,000 and 100,000 abortions before the Supreme Court legalized abortion throughout the country in Roe v. Wade.  As the story's subtitle explains, "[t]he Schuylkill County doctor performed safe, clean and cheap abortions before the Supreme Court made them legal."  Dr. Spencer is depicted as a hero "beloved by locals" who helped women "in trouble," and the writer laments that while there is a massive statue in Ashland dedicated to motherhood, there is no statue devoted to the "angel of Ashland" who killed tens of thousands of unborn babies.  Dr. Spencer, the writer brags, was "a man of science" and an "atheist," and he was "arrested several times, including once after a woman died while under anesthesia," but he was never convicted.

Mother Teresa was one of the world's most outspoken opponents of abortion.  She called abortion "the greatest destroyer of love and peace" and a "war against the child."  The Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, she said, "deformed a great nation."  "The so-called right to abortion," Mother Teresa continued, "has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. ... It has portrayed the greatest of gifts — a child — as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience." A child's life, she said, "does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign."

In her ministry, Mother Teresa and her fellow sisters pleaded with mothers: "please don't kill the child.  I want the child.  Please give me the child.  I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted, and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child, and be loved by the child."

Dr. Spencer died in 1969, after committing abortions that inflicted pain and suffering on thousands of unborn babies for decades.  The Philadelphia Inquirer and the pro-abortion movement lionize him as a man of compassion.  Meanwhile, Mother Teresa is smeared as a promoter of pain and suffering for caring for the poor and viewing and treating every life — even the most vulnerable — as precious and a gift from God.

It is no coincidence that the Inquirer chose to praise the legacy of Dr. Spencer in the wake of the leak of Justice Alito's draft opinion in the Mississippi case that would overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.  It is also probably no coincidence that the pro-abortion movement and its media allies are attacking Mother Teresa at this time.  Indeed, it is open season on Catholics.  The five Supreme Court Justices who make up the majority for overturning Roe and Casey have been called "extremist Catholics," and pro-abortion protesters are holding demonstrations at their private residences.

We have returned in this country to open, unabashed anti-Catholicism, and the leading "Catholic" Democrat politicians (President Biden, Speaker Pelosi, and others) are refusing to condemn it, and in some instances openly supporting it. 

Perhaps the Philadelphia Inquirer and other pro-abortion media will do a revisionist profile of convicted abortionist Kermit Gosnell, too.  After all, he was in the same "business" as Dr. Spencer.  Who knows?  Maybe Philadelphia's politicians will erect a statue of Gosnell and herald him as the "angel of Philadelphia."

Mother Teresa portrait by Saptarshinghosh, CC BY-SA 3.0 license.