By Stephen P. White, The Catholic Thing - As Bishop McElroy points out elsewhere in his remarks, abortion is an intrinsic evil, but this is not what makes abortion such a grave threat to our common life. Other moral evils, such as lying, are also intrinsically evil. Would anyone suggest that a politician’s affinity for fibbing ought to weigh as heavily on the consciences of voters as his support for legal abortion? Not likely. The point here is not that lying is no big deal – it is – but that what sets abortion apart is the gravity of the evil and the scale of the slaughter: more than 60 million killed since Roe v. Wade.