The Doctor Pressured My Mother to Abort Me, Cardinal Burke Reveals

The doctor pressured his mother to abort him, Cardinal Raymond Burke reveals in a new book.

“You already have five children,” the doctor told his mother, who was very sick while pregnant with the future Cardinal Burke, “it is important for you to be in good health so as to take care of them.”

Fortunately, his parents flatly refused.

“My parents told him that they believed in God,” Cardinal Burke relates, “and that Christ would give them the necessary help. My mother gave birth to me, and everything went well.”

Cardinal Burke’s revelation comes in a book-length interview with French journalist Guillaume d’Alançon titled Hope for the World: To Unite All Things in Christ.

He explained that learning of this story when he was older further galvanized him to support the pro-life movement: “I was therefore quite touched by this question of defending human life, because I could very well have been killed.”

It’s noteworthy to point out that Cardinal Burke wasn’t born in the 1970s, but in 1948, nearly 25 years before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled most abortion restrictions unconstitutional in Roe v. Wade. Though Roe v. Wade made abortion far more available, abortion was allowed to varying degrees depending on the state prior to that.

It’s not clear what the abortion rate was at that time, since the CDC only started tracking abortion statistics in 1970. But since Roe v. Wade, there have been more than 50 million abortions.

Cardinal Burke currently serves as the patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.