Catholic and Pro-Choice … Seriously?

Really … you seriously think you can support abortion and still be Catholic?

As someone who tries very hard to love my enemies and to not judge the sins and foolishness of others, I often find it nearly impossible to hide my impatience with people who claim to be Catholic while supporting abortion.

I’m sorry, and may God forgive me, but I really question both the integrity and the intelligence of such a person.

The first thing I want to ask them is whether they own a copy of the Catechism. If they say “yes,” then I want to ask them if they’ve ever read it. Because if they had, they would have seen that the official teaching of our Church does not mince words when it comes to abortion.

Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception — Luckily for us moderns, science has explained when this moment occurs, so there is no longer any debate about this (see my previous post on the scientific explanation of when human life begins: The God Cop Out). — From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person — among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life. – The Catechism of the Catholic Church 2270

And

“Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion [emphasis mine]. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable [emphasis mine]. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law.” – The Catechism of the Catholic Church 2271

There are several more equally emphatic passages about this issue.

But just in case those incredibly bullheaded Catholics out there are somehow unimpressed by the official teaching of the Church, the wise authors of the Catechism included many footnoted references to the church fathers and the Bible. Thus, these wayward Church members would do well to look up the pertinent passages in such texts as the Didache and the writings of Tertullian, not to mention passages from Jeremiah, Job, and the Psalms (and these are just the passages alluded to in the Catechism).

Now, as someone who was pro-choice while considering conversion to the Catholic Church, I know what the common objections are to this clearly articulated teaching of the Church.

#1 is the issue of the mother’s health

#2 is the issue of rape and incest

#3 is the issue of poverty

Before dealing with each issue individually, let me first just provide the Church’s official answer to them, in case you’ve forgotten: Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. There is no clause after this that lists exceptions. This is because there is no exception that makes the taking of an innocent human life anything other than a grave moral evil.

Science and the Church both recognize the humanity of the unborn child.

Using genetics and simple biology, science explains how the unborn human being is not part of the mother’s body. This is obvious to even a science dunce like myself: separate DNA, (often a) separate blood type, (often a) separate gender = TA DA! a separate human being. Duh! (Pardon the somewhat obnoxious tone here, but I’m rapidly losing patience with people who cling to slogans like “My body, my choice,” which flout even a rudimentary understanding of animal biology.)

Using Biblical understanding and, dare I say, common sense, the Church also asserts the unique humanity of the unborn person.

With common sense and impeccable logic, the Catechism lays out its argument against abortion by beginning with a solid premise.

The murder of a human being is gravely contrary to the dignity of the person and the holiness of the Creator (2320).

In other words, if you want to know what God has to say on this matter, perhaps you should consult the list of ten commandments (note that they are not called “suggestions”) he provides for all people in Exodus 20:2-17 (and again in Deuteronomy 5:6-21). #5 is pretty straightforward (and wouldn’t ya know: the section in the Catechism where abortion is specifically discussed is under an article that is titled “The Fifth Commandment”; also, when Christ mentions the commandments in Matthew 19:18, you should note that he begins with the fifth commandment).

Logic:

Q: Is it a human being?

A: Yes.

= Then you can’t kill him or her.

Seems pretty simple to me.

[At this point, for the most thickheaded of the bullheaded Catholic abortion supporters, it may help if I say that obviously the Church makes exceptions for cases of self-defense and war — because I know that this is the first place you will go in your facile attempts to justify your position. But until I hear of a case where a fetus declared war or sought to maliciously attack its mother, I’m going to take the above argument at face value and accept it as a universal truth. You know, kind of the way that God wants us to — hence His inclusion of it in His ten commandments.]

From its premise, the Church reiterates its official teaching:

Because it must be treated from conception as a person, the embryo must be defended in its integrity, cared for, and healed, as far as possible, like any other human being (2274).

-Let’s stop for a moment because I need to reflect on the profound wisdom and generosity of the Catholic Church. The Church is so concerned about the welfare of human beings — of all human beings, no matter how marginalized — that it recognizes the dignity of the human person in even the tiniest embryo, just conceived and smaller than the head of pin. The Church recognizes that a threat to even the tiniest form of humanity is a threat to all of humanity. For this reason, it makes no compromises when it comes to which human beings are afforded the basic right to life. And yet it is for this uncompromising protection of all human life that the Church and its faithful members are criticized and maligned. The absurd irony of it all … is staggering!

Ok, let’s get back to my rant!

Where was I? Right, I was going to address the three most popular exceptions argued by Catholic pro-choicers (they’re common amongst non-Catholic pro-choicers as well, but this post is focusing on those poor lost souls who think they can legitimately be Catholic and pro-choice).

Confessions of an ex — er, “changed” Feminist

As I mentioned above, I was pro-choice when I began the process of converting to Catholicism back in 2006. I was pretty adamant about my belief in a woman’s supposed “right” to “do what she wants with her own body” (yup, I used that line many, many times). In fact, I almost didn’t become Catholic precisely because I didn’t want to change my opinions on this matter. I regarded all pro-lifers as mini-George Bushes: ignorant, bigoted, probably misogynistic, and definitely socially backwards (I should note that I no longer think of Bush as being any of those things, despite the fact that I still don’t really like him — but that’s another post for another day).

I cringed every time “pro-life,” “conception,” “sanctity of life,” or any of those other terms that conferred respect to the unborn human were used at Mass, during our catechism classes, or in conversations with other faithful Catholics.

But my undeniable, and still unfathomable, desire to be part of the Church (I’m guessing this is a post for another time too) compelled me to continue along the path upon which I had been placed. I figured I could be both because, after all, I was an intelligent person who probably knew more than these uneducated pro-life Bible-thumpers ever knew about life and ethics.

Perhaps I would even convert them to taking a more balanced, less extreme view of this subject (have you ever looked at a former version of yourself and felt the incredible need to smack yourself?! Needless to say, I’m having that kind of moment right now).

I saw the Church’s position on abortion as extreme because there were cases when “the procedure” (oh yeah, we pro-choicers love our euphemisms) — unpleasant as it was (and yes, we always like to throw in this little clause) — was necessary to avoid a greater evil.

For example, a fourteen-year-old girl from a horrible, dysfunctional family drops out of high school and gets into drugs: she’s living on the streets and is impregnated by her boyfriend who is just using her and has no real regard for her. He proves this by dumping her right away, leaving her homeless, poor, uneducated, and pregnant.

In my mind, I couldn’t see how God would ever want a baby to brought into such a tragic situation. The baby’s life would be ruined as would the girl’s.

Abortion seemed like the answer.

Now, this is the point when the secularist will shout out an emphatic “That’s right!” — I’ll deal with you in another post.

For now, I’d like to address the Catholic who echoes the secularist’s assertion. First of all — take a look at yourself: you’re agreeing with the secularist! What are you doing? Christ clearly said that we are to be in the world but not of the world (hence, why would you align your beliefs with anything that is “secular”?).

Ok, that’s a rather flippant comment (some secularists have important things to say), but I wanted to make an exaggerated point: God’s ways are not our ways. We do not see things clearly in this world (1 Corinthians 13:12). Where we see only pain, suffering, and heartache, God sees something else.

If you are Catholic, you believe in God. If you believe in God, then you believe He is the creator of all life (Colossians 1:16). If He is the creator of all life, then the life He creates within the womb of the homeless, deserted, fourteen-year old girl has a plan that only He can see.

No life is created in vain: “You knit me in my mother’s womb […] nor was my frame unknown to you when I was made in secret” (Psalm 139:13,15).

God does not make garbage. As such, we are not given the right to dispose of His human creations as though they were garbage, which is precisely (literally) what happens in an abortion.

Is the Church implying that the plight of the young girl is trivial? Am I implying that I don’t care about her? Of course not. Indeed, in keeping to the wisdom of the Church, I am showing far more care over her than anyone who offers her abortion as a solution to her problems is. I am looking beyond her earthly, temporary troubles and thinking about her immortal soul.

Suffering, poverty, pain: read the Bible, study the lives of saints, the Church does not see these things as the greatest evils on earth. Indeed, it is out of these hardships that the greatest triumphs are enacted (ahem, the crucifixion is one MAJOR example of this).

The greatest evils are moral evils. And, as I’ve established above, abortion — the willful taking of an innocent human life — is a grave moral evil. It threatens something far more important than the life of the mother: it threatens her soul.

The threat is not limited to the mother’s soul, but also to the soul of the doctor who performs the abortion, the nurses who assist, the person who drove her there, and the society that sits approvingly or blindly and silently by as this goes on.

This is not something that should be taken lightly. After all, look at what happens to nations in the Bible that engage in infant slaughter (2 Kings 17:17-18) and to unrepentant murderers of human life (Revelation 22:15). These stakes are much higher than a difficult life.

And who says that a child born into such a situation would be doomed?

My conception was not so perfect — it wasn’t nearly as bad as the hypothetical one I just outlined, but it was still pretty rocky.

My “Quality of Life” at Conception:

My father was a high school dropout and a pothead (sorry daddy, if you ever read this).

My mother was a high school dropout, who had been sexually abused by her father for most of her life as well as emotionally and physically abused by her alcoholic mother.

They were not married when my mother got pregnant with me; they had no education and no job, and they had nowhere to live.

And, to make matters worse, if prenatal testing had been as popular in the late 1970s as it is now, they would have learned that I have an incurable genetic disorder about which most doctors don’t understand, so they paint the prognosis in the worst light possible (i.e., they tell the mother that their child will probably not live past two years old; I discuss this in one of my earlier posts, “Ignorance is Not Bliss“). It’s also an expensive disorder to treat.

My life-preserving medication, without insurance, costs over $2000 for a month’s supply. Obviously, it goes without saying, my parents did not have health insurance.

On paper, my life did not look worth living. At the very least, it looked like my mother, a victim already, was going to have an awfully difficult time trying to take care of herself and a sick baby.

Can you imagine what would have happened if my mother — young, naive, victimized, poor, and scared — had gotten her pregnancy results from a Planned Parenthood clinic? Do you think there would be any possible way that I would be sitting here now? (This is not to discredit my mother, who is a strong woman. But at the point in her life when I was conceived, this was not the case.)

I can just imagine the sort of “talking points” that would be used to convince my mother of the logic and practicality of “terminating her pregnancy” and taking care of herself.

By the grace of God, I am able to count myself amongst the other survivors of this abortion epidemic.

And despite the dismal prospects with which I was brought into the world, I think I turned out ok. Even though life was difficult, there was never a point when I looked around and said, “geez! It sucks that I don’t have a college fund or even food in the house or working electricity. I wish my mom had killed me in the womb so that I could have avoided these problems.”

And I had friends who were experiencing far worse things in their homes. And wouldn’t ya know: they never said that either.

We do not know what God has planned for the life growing within the womb. Even if that life does end up being unbearable, and we were somehow magically able to know this ahead of time, God has never given us the license to take innocent human life.

As for the “life of the mother” argument. Let’s put aside the fact that it is medically arguable whether this scenario is ever even warranted (ectopic pregnancies are one of those rare occasions when a procedure — not an abortion — is done to save the mother’s life and allow the embryo to die naturally), and consider the following.

There is nothing in the Bible, the works of the church fathers, or in the Catechism condoning or recommending the murder of innocent human life in order to save your own life. And yet this is precisely what our society and many Catholics are encouraging with that weak clause: “except to save the mother’s life.”

If you’ve found yourself using that clause, perhaps you should ask yourself: Do you really think God condones the murder of an innocent child — the mother’s own innocent child, no less — because of her need for self-preservation?

Do you think God condones sin because a person is afraid to die? because she is afraid to sacrifice herself for her child?

Are we supposed to save our own lives at any cost?

There are literally hundreds of references I could point to from the Bible, the church fathers, and the Catechism to answer the above rhetorical questions.

But to save time, let’s just look at what Jesus said about the preservation of our own lives at any cost:

For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul? Or what exchange shall a man give for his soul? (Matthew 16:26)

Indeed, it seems to have been a major point with him, since he apparently stressed it to his disciples on many occasions:

For whosoever will save his life, shall lose it; for he that shall lose his life for my sake, shall save it. For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, and cast away himself? (Luke 9:24-25)

Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. He that findeth his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for me, shall find it. (Matthew 10:39)

Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. (Luke 17:33)

The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. (John 12:25)

In the end, I think what the passages reiterate is the question that has been at the heart of this post: What is the point of saving your life, when you must sacrifice your soul in the process?

And the other “exceptions”…

As for rape and incest: do I really need to reiterate how this is a human being and that, despite what people seem to think, this human being is innocent of the crimes his or her father committed? Do I really need to express why I think it is socially criminal to think that it is legitimate or acceptable to punish the child with death?

When it comes to this issue, I find it to be deeply ironic that the same people who would vehemently oppose the death penalty for the rapist, accept and even encourage it for the unborn child.

Where there is life, there is hope. Regardless of the manner by which the child was created, the fact remains that he or she is a human being in the eyes of God (and medical science).

Another wonderful thing about God’s plan is that even for those mothers who are unable or unwilling to raise their children, He has provided adoption as the best alternative. There are literally millions of people on wait-lists that are one-ten years long, hoping for the chance to take in one of these so-called “unwanted” children.

Clearly, God has not given us the luxury of saying that there are no other options besides abortion.

The bottomline: God is pro-life. The Church is unquestionably pro-life.

So on what basis does the pro-choice Catholic think he can justify his position?

Or Maybe I’m wrong …

Archbishop Fulton Sheen famously said that you “cannot be Catholic and pro-choice.” In theory, I agree; in practice, I say that you can be whatever you want.

For this reason, I’ve decided that I want to be a swimmer. But I’m not actually going to practice swimming. I’m also not going to learn anything about swimming or work to remedy any of my misconceptions about swimming. I’m just going to call myself a swimmer and continue to run. Because running is easier. Maybe I’ll swim one day, but I won’t believe anything any swimmer or swimming coach says to me about swimming. What do they know, anyway? I’ve been calling myself a swimmer since I was a kid. I know what it means to be swimmer, so I won’t believe anything the experts about swimming have to say. Well, maybe I’ll believe some of it … if I find it acceptable to my preconceived notions and assumptions. I won’t actually challenge, inconvenience, or humble myself to actually become a swimmer.

But I am a swimmer.

Oh, and how dare you imply in any way that I am not a swimmer!

**I kid because I care. I nag because I care. I even slightly insult because I care. This issue is too important and too much is at stake for me to remain politely silent or to handle in a lukewarm manner.

I feel deeply blessed that I was truly unaware that there were Catholics who really thought they could be both Catholic and pro-choice. Had I known this, I wonder if I would have been open to change? It would have been easier to just add the label “Catholic” to my liberal, feminist “morals.” It was much, much harder to challenge myself to study and learn the reasons behind the Church’s position — to voluntarily open my mind and my heart to arguments I had maligned for so long.

It was even harder to admit that my opinion had changed.

And it was nearly impossible to publicly acknowledge my change of heart and mind (especially since I had been such a vocal pro-choice feminist for so many years) and begin to speak out against what I had recently recognized as one of the greatest horrors of our age — indeed, it is arguably the greatest horror of any age.

But, with God, all things are possible. And though the grace was, in the words of Flannery O’Connor, “painful,” I accepted it and allowed it to change me.

This is my challenge to all of you who consider yourselves Catholic and pro-choice.

————–

Further Reading:

-To affirm the humanity of those involved, the following site includes personal testaments from human beings conceived in rape and women who bore children from rape:

http://www.rebeccakiessling.com

-One of the most important Catholics of the last century, Mother Teresa, who witnessed unspeakable horror in India, still labeled abortion as “the greatest destroyer of love and peace.”

http://catholiceducation.org/articles/abortion/ab0039.html

-Pope John Paul II, arguably the most important Catholic of the last century, wrote extensively on this issue, including a crucial encyclical: Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life).

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae_en.html