This year, the Church calendar gained a new intercessor for the unborn: Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She is a rare saint in that she was alive when abortion was legalized in the United States and actually wrote a letter to the U.S. Supreme Court about its Roe v. Wade decision. On the 31st anniversary of that Jan. 22, 1973, decision, we can count on her powerful intersession.

From Mother Teresa's February 1994 letter to the U.S. Supreme Court:

“America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts — a child — as a competitor, an intrusion and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the dependent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters. And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners.

“Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or sovereign. The Constitutional Court of the Federal Republic of Germany recently ruled: ‘The unborn child is entitled to its right to life independently of its acceptance by its mother; this is an elementary and inalienable right that emanates from the dignity of the human being.’

“Americans may feel justly proud that Germany in 1993 was able to recognize the sanctity of human life. You must weep that your own government, at present, seems blind to this truth.”

Other quotes from Mother Teresa about abortion:

“Life is a gift that God has given us. That life is present even in the unborn. A human hand should never end a life. I am convinced that the screams of the children whose lives have been terminated before their birth reach God's ears.”

“I am sure that all people know deep down inside that the little child in the mother's womb is a human being from the moment of conception, created in the image of God to love and be loved. Let us pray that nobody will be afraid to protect that little child, to help that little child to be born. Jesus said: ‘If you receive a little child in my name, you receive me.’“

“For me, life is the most beautiful gift of God to mankind; therefore people and nations who destroy life by abortion and euthanasia are the poorest.”

“Please don't kill the child. I want the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted and give him or her to a married couple who will love the child and be loved by the child. At our children's home in Calcutta alone, we have saved more than 3,000 children from abortion. These children have brought so much love and joy to their adoptive parents and have grown up so full of love and joy.”

“By abortion, the mother kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion leads to abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love but to use violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”

“We must not be surprised when we hear of murders, of killings, of wars, of hatred. If a mother can kill her own child, what is left but for us to kill each other.”