Indian Catholics Fight for Life

In India, over 45 thousand babies are killed by abortion on average every day. Many babies who survive abortion are dipped alive into hot water to “finish the job.”

In 2021, India legalized abortion through six months of pregnancy, and it is now considering moving this line farther until 28 weeks.

This has sparked a growing pro-life revival in the Catholic Church in India: Indian people are rising up to oppose such abortion barbarity. Last year, 600 people attended the nation’s second ever March for Life. On Saturday, just one year later, ten bishops and 7,000 men, women, and children Marched for Life in the streets of Thrissur in the southern state of Kerala. One attendee had just driven for 18 days across Kerala collecting signatures to present to the Supreme Court to insist that India refuses such barbarity.

The strategy to bring down abortion in India is to bring up the family. The exhibition displayed before the March highlighted the beauty of marriage between one man and one women, taught women how to chart their cycle and understand the beauty of their fertility, educated people on the harms of surrogacy and in vitro fertilization, and provided resources on how to overcome the chains of masturbation and pornography.

Indian people live under a regime that sterilizes women at terrifying numbers. Half of women in India are sterilized by the time they reach 35, and each of these cases is encouraged–or forced–by the government. This is one reason the pro-life exhibition was adamant against contraception of any type. Contraception feeds the lie that Indian lives aren’t worth living. It also doffs its cap to Margaret Sanger, who used India as the first launching ground of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) in 1952 to control the Indian population.