Deacon Kyle Eller: What Bill Maher and the popes reveal about abortion

Mere Catholicism 

I can’t say I’ve watched much Bill Maher over the years, except for clips of his show I see on the Internet, which is often enough. But the atheist comedian and TV personality, broadly a person of the political left, has made a career out of political incorrectness, of saying the unexpected and provocative and uncomfortable.  

Shocking people and going against type seems to be his thing. 

In recent years, that has meant pushing back against things like censorship and “cancel culture” in favor of free expression and raising concerns over some of the extremes of what is colloquially called “wokeness” as being out of touch with voters. 

Judging by social media, that has won him a certain grudging admiration from people who are concerned about censorship and “wokeness,” akin to such figures as J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk, Bari Weiss, and Uri Berliner. 

One of the more recent of the many viral clips from his show “Real Time” got the particular attention of the pro-life movement, however, because of a shocking admission it included. 

It began with him highlighting what he perceives as the hypocrisies of various compromises made on the issue of abortion in various political circumstances — seeking to leave it as a state issue or to pass laws prohibiting abortion after a certain point in pregnancy. 

“I can respect the absolutist position, I really can. I scold the left when they say, ‘Oh, you know what, they just hate women.’ People who … aren’t pro-choice, they don’t hate women, [critics] just made that up. They think it’s murder. And,” he said pausing, “it kind of is. I’m just OK with that. I am. I mean, there’s 8 billion people in the world. I’m sorry, we won’t miss you. That’s my position on it.” 

As many pro-life people noted, Maher was “saying the quiet part out loud.” He acknowledged as much himself, turning it on his guests who were sitting uncomfortably looking at him and telling them, essentially, that if they are pro-choice that’s basically their own position, as well.  

He’s right about that. Anyone with a semblance of scientific literacy knows that human life begins at conception. Abortion, therefore, is a direct intervention that intentionally ends a human life, with a kind of perverse “medical” violence. These are facts.  

To favor a legal right to do this inherently means, as Maher said, to just “be OK” with that. But most people aren’t willing to admit this, perhaps even to themselves. They bury it under a flurry of obfuscation and rationalization and falsehood. That’s why what Maher said out loud is the “quiet part.” 

Why aren’t people willing to admit it? Because it’s a shocking truth, a brutal truth. The law of God, including the law against killing innocent people, is written in the human heart, in the conscience, even in those who profess not to believe in him. To follow one’s disbelief in God and one’s disregard or even contempt for human dignity to the point that one will openly confess to be OK with certain kinds of murder is a form of honesty — but it’s a deeply disturbing form of honesty.  

Consider it in the light of the document Dignitas Infinita, on human dignity, from the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, approved this month by Pope Francis. It quotes a passage from St. John Paul II in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae: 

“The acceptance of abortion in the popular mind, in behavior, and even in law itself is a telling sign of an extremely dangerous crisis of the moral sense, which is becoming more and more incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, even when the fundamental right to life is at stake,” it says. “Given such a grave situation, we need now more than ever to have the courage to look the truth in the eye and to call things by their proper name, without yielding to convenient compromises or to the temptation of self-deception.” 

The compromises, the hypocrisies, the incoherences we see all around us regarding abortion and related issues are just less brutal, less honest forms of this same crisis Maher exhibits. Although it is discouraging, it cannot be a surprise to anyone who has observed our politics to discover that many politicians who have proclaimed pro-life principles when they believed it was to their advantage reveal a rapid reversal when it appears to become a political liability. 

Or consider the politics of in-vitro fertilization. I’ve watched with some sadness and at times shock as professed pro-life figures rush to declare their support for IVF, which, even if a world could be imagined in which it did not mean the destruction of many embryonic human beings, inherently must always involve the commodification of those human beings. But I’ve watched with even greater astonishment how the practice of IVF, which could not exist as a technology but for the fact that human life begins at conception, is upheld by people who are also aggressive defenders of legal abortion, which is premised on lying about that truth. 

In such a climate, whether it’s the honest brutalism of Bill Maher or the willful self-deception and rationalizations of so many others, it takes courage to stand for the principle of human dignity, on abortion and many other matters.  

But that is the call, and the truth will set us free. 

Deacon Kyle Eller is editor of The Northern Cross. Reach him at [email protected].