It’s a wonder how someone who started so well, could end up doing so much harm. You likely had never heard of Dr. Baulieu, who died on Friday, May 31st at the grand old age of 98. But you likely have heard of his notorious invention, RU-486, Mifepristone, commonly called the ‘morning-after pill’, responsible for untold millions of abortions at the earliest stages of life. Dr. Baulieu is the anti-Dr. Jérôme Lejeune, renowned for using his medical expertise in the cause of life, not against it.
Ironies abound: As a young man, Etienne-Emile Baulieu was in the French Resistance, fighting the Nazis who were occupying France, presumably in the cause of the life of the French and Jewish people. Yet his later concoction – which he claimed led to freedom for women – has been responsible for the deaths of untold millions. He never repented, but even lamented that,
Even today, access to this method is opposed, banned in some countries, and is currently being challenged in the United States, where it is the most widely used abortion method
Dr. Baulieu also went to his judgement on the feast of the Visitation, wherein we celebrate not only the meeting of the Virgin Mary and Elizabeth, but also their unborn children: Christ, the Son of God, recently conceived by the Holy Ghost, and John the Baptist, six months in his mother’s womb. The latter leapt for joy, knowing, somehow, that he was in the presence of his Saviour. Those babies were as human as you and I.
Back then, and until recent history, a womb was one of the safest places anyone could be. Now, it’s one of the most perilous, thanks, in large part, to such as Etienne-Emile Baulieu.
As Pope Saint John Paul II said in Evangelium Vitae, such crimes against life poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practise them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonour to the Creator.
And as the Letter to the Hebrews warns all of us: It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
May that same God have mercy the soul of the former freedom fighter, and may he somehow, in some way, have sought that mercy.
