The Holy Innocents were martyrs because they were killed in place of the Christ Child. Aborted children are not killed for the Faith or for Christ. They're just killed. In addition, the Holy Innocents never had baptism as an option because at that time, the Church had not been born yet and there was no sacrament of baptism under the New Law.
I think the real horror of abortion is ignored when we do not recognize the fact that there is a REAL possibility that these children do go to Hell. If they go to Heaven anyway, then why should we care that these babies are aborted? They get to go to Heaven! The only thing that dies is their bodies. That is not the real crime here.
piusv:
There is a possibility for anyone to go to hell. So that would include aborted children, who have souls, as well as those who were born. So yes, it is possible they could go to hell. Who knows what there souls do or do not do if given a chance to believe or not believe. I think we can’t ever definitively answer that question.
If the Eastern Tradition of the Church can be criticized for anything, it is the failure to define things and allow things to be referred to as Holy Mystery and thus most of the crazy heresies in the early Church were from the East.
If the Latin Church (West) can be criticized for anything, it was the Medieval Latin Church’s attempt to define everything rather than leaving some areas of theology to being Mystery
In my view, (and that is all it is) the fate of aborted and unbaptized infants, both below the age of reason, is one of those areas that can never be Formally defined in way that is consistent with other Doctrines like Trinity and Christological Doctrines on the Person of Christ. Thus, I think attempts by the Latin Church, while motivated in good faith, is not something we can know with certainty this side of heaven. Thus, leave it in the realm of theological opinion and speculation.
We should care for those that are aborted because it creates a further culture that is against life, hence, murder, violence, terrorism, in some metaphysical way, are all related to a culture of death, which as Sacred Scripture and Tradition says, is a result of Sin and is from the evil one.
So for a Catholic to not stand up for the innocent and most vulnerable (unborn children) would be a serious sin of omission, I think you would agree with that. Not doing so only furthers the culture of death as the late Pope John Paul II called it.
But the Holy Innocents were indeed viewed as Martyrs even though they did not consciously know they were not rejecting Christ in the face of Death, such as Saint Polycarp, SS. Perpetua and Felicity, etc, who even if they were not Baptized with the Sacrament, would have been baptized in blood as martyrs.
So I think they can be seen as correlated and related to each other, albeit indirectly.