Mother Teresa

Political and social views

Mother Teresa frequently spoke against abortion and artificial contraception in meetings with high level government officials. In her Nobel Prize acceptance speech, she declared, "Abortion is the worst evil, and the greatest enemy of peace... Because if a mother can kill her own child, what will prevent us from killing ourselves or one another? Nothing."

Related Topics:
Abortion - Contraception - Nobel Prize

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In the aftermath of the Bangladesh Liberation War, it was determined that more than 450,000 women in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) had been systematically raped, giving birth to a few thousand war-babies. Even in these circumstances, she asserted her rejection of abortion by publicly renouncing abortion as an option and by calling upon the women left behind to keep their unborn children. She characterized her views later when asked in 1993 about a 14-year-old rape victim in Ireland, "Abortion can never be necessary... because it is pure killing."

Related Topics:
Bangladesh Liberation War - East Pakistan - Bangladesh - Rape - War-babies - 1993 - Ireland

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While this stance is in line with that of the Roman Catholic Church, which asserts natural family planning is the only acceptable form of birth control, even in cases where conception is the result of sexual abuse or rape, her critics assert that Teresa dogmatically refused to acknowledge the related problems of overpopulation, especially in cities like Calcutta.

Related Topics:
Roman Catholic Church - Natural family planning - Birth control - Conception - Sexual abuse - Rape - Overpopulation

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Teresa also campaigned tirelessly against divorce, insisting it should be made illegal; she organized an unsuccessful campaign to keep the Irish ban on divorce in 1996. However, when Diana, Princess of Wales divorced, she spoke approvingly of it in a magazine interview.

Related Topics:
Irish - 1996 - Diana, Princess of Wales

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