I was posed this question. I personally find abortion reprehensible, but I want to be able to answer the person in an intelligent way that reflects Church doctrine.
Is someone guilty of a mortal sin because he or she wants abortion to remain legal?
Mortal sin requires grave matter, full knowledge, and deliberate consent. If any of those elements are missing, there is not a mortal sin. At most, we can say that direct support for abortion, which is the deliberate murder of an unborn child, is grave matter.
While it is true that it may not be possible to illegalize every moral evil, it is problematic to claim that the deliberate murder of unborn children should be legal in a just society. As we have found over the course of the last generation, if a child cannot be safe in its mother’s womb, who on earth can be safe anywhere?
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