Questions From a Pro Choice Catholic

I have seen so many unwanted, unloved, uncared for children in my capacity as a foster parent that I can not reconcile holding women more accountable for an unwanted pregnancy than men. I have seen very little (actually nothing) in the Pro-Life movement that suggests that men be forced to be fathers, that they be forced to undergo paternity tests where they deny paternity, where they be forced in to poverty to support a child they never intended to have, that fathers be responsible for a full 50% of the expenses of raising an unwanted (or wanted for that matter)child even if it makes his own life very uncomfortable. In short, I have seen lots about the "female sin" of abortion and very little about the "male sin" of abandoning a pregnant woman and child because biology has made it easy for him to do so. The act of male abandonment very often forces a woman (or girl) in to wanting an abortion when she may not otherwise have even considered it. I have yet to see this mentioned in any major Pro-Lie/Pro-Choice debate.

I think there are many, many reasons so little is heard about this very important issue. They tend, however, to reflect on the media and on the pro choice movement, rather than on the pro life movement.

First, the media follows the lead of the pro choice movement in painting abortion as a "women's issue," in which women are in the pro choice camp and men in the pro life camp. Therefore, any mainstream media coverage of pro life activities tends to focus on promoting the illusion that the pro life movement consists almost entirely of men intent on oppressing women. Pro life women are largely ignored, with rare exceptions like Shelly Shannon who grab media attention by doing something violent. Since all anybody outside the pro life movement gets to see is what the media presents -- men exhorting women not to abort -- few people outside the pro life movement have a clue what the movement is actually like.

Prolifers have long advocated responsibility for both parties. The early feminists, for example, tended to oppose abortion and to lay the blame for the practice squarely at the feet of men. To fight abortion, these early feminists established safe houses for prostitutes and extended their hands to seduced and abandoned girls.

More recently, there have been pro life efforts to hold men more accountable by requiring abortion facilities to inform women of the fathers' responsibilities to provide child support. Media coverage of these informed consent laws focuses on the provisions requiring abortion facilities to offer women information about fetal development. So the efforts of prolifers to ensure that the men are held accountable don't get any press.

Pro life pregnancy centers likewise encourage women to hold their men accountable for the children they sire. Because media attention focuses so much on the fact that pro life centers provide information on fetuses but don't do abortions, this aspect of their work (like most of what they do) is invisible except to those directly involved.

If you pay attention to pro life commentary on parental involvement laws, you'll see a lot of concern about the fact that current abortion practices allow sexual predators to get off scott-free. Prolifers have long been calling for abortion facilities to report incest and statutory rape, and to hold the abusers -- the men involved -- accountable for their actions. But again, the mainstream media ignores this aspect of teenagers and abortion, so it is invisible to those outside the pro life movement.

In a nutshell, the idea that prolifers don't push for men to be held responsible for the children they sire is an illusion created by the way the mainstream media cover abortion.

Also, I note that you speak about the high morality, if not religiousness, of people in the Pro-Life movement or people with Pro-Life beliefs. How do you reconcile that broad statement with people who lie in counselling centres and tell pregnant teens that abortion now means they won't be able to have babies later (I personally have met 3 mothers all under 16 who were told this at different Pro-Life pregnancy support lines).

I think that there is a communication gap here between what the pro life counselors are saying, and what the teenagers are perceiving. It is true that some abortion complications can render a woman unable to have children in the future. (For example, an injury that results in a hysterectomy will certainly render the woman unable to have children later.) Other abortion complications might not produce sterility directly, but do make it more difficult to conceive and/or carry a subsequent pregnancy to term. (Here I'm thinking of the increased risk of ectopic pregnancy, of Asherman's syndrome, of pelvic inflammatory disease, and of the increased risk of placental mishaps with future pregnancies.) I'm not saying that there might be some pro life centers that present their information so forcefully as to convey infertility as a certainty rather than as a mere possibility. In order to find out what particular centers are saying, you ought to pose as a pregnant woman and investigate. Once you gather your information, present it to the local pro life groups and insist that they hold their centers accountable.

Or how people actually murder in the name of Pro-Life. Are you saying that there are people out there who believe Pro-Life rhetoric so much that they will kill for it, but none who will lie for it? That is a very unrealistic statement. If someone can become so fanatical as to murder, if they can lose sight of the core message enough to actually kill, there are bound to be "milder rebellions" in which people will lie.

Interestingly enough, the folks killing in opposition to abortion have proved startlingly honest. Both Paul Hill and Michael Griffin turned themselves in to the police after the shootings. Since other murders of abortionists and abortion workers have not had clear anti-abortion motivations behind them, we can't say that those who committed those crimes reflect on anti-abortion sentiment. (John Salvi, for example, who went on a shooting spree and killed two women in Massachusetts, seemed to have slipped his gears and committed the murders because he was angry with his father. Go figure.)

That leaves us with the remainder of the folks opposed to abortion, who are not given to violence. (If they were, there wouldn't be a single abortionist on this side of the sod.) If you look at the statistics, prolifers are staggeringly law-abiding people. What law breaking they do (with, I repeat, the exception of the renegade mad-bomber type, who operates entirely outside the pro life movement) takes the form of non-violent civil disobedience. Prolifers are far more often the victims of violence than the perpetrators thereof. This isn't known outside pro life circles because the media doesn't consider it news worthy. A prime example is the brutality inflicted on the delegates from Minnesota at the Democratic National Convention in 1992. In front of news cameras, these eight women were kicked, karate-chopped, punched, and shoved by other delegates, purely because they were displaying pro life and pro-Casey signs. The only media coverage of this outrage was a column by Nat Hentoff in The Village Voice.

So you are not, in fact, looking at a movement given to killing or violence. They tend to take the 10 Commandments pretty seriously, and the atheists and agnostics among them take their commitment to non violence pretty seriously. When you look at the pro life movement as a whole (rather than the few renegades the mainstream media like to show you), you'll not find any evidence that they'd be given to dishonesty.

There are, of course, exceptions. Every rule has exceptions. But after fifteen plus years in the pro life movement -- on the left, the right, the impromptu and the highly organized -- I've seen a propensity to get carried away, to fail to check sources, to exaggerate or get swept into hyperbolae. I've not seen any outbreaks of deliberate deception. The prolifers I know personally tend toward honesty to the point where they balk at espionage because that involves misrepresenting yourself.

How can a Pro-Life lie or crime be dismissed as a "mistake" when the same excuse for "inaccuracy" is not afforded to your opposing counterpart?

I actually assume that most pro choice citizens are misled or mistaken when they perpetuate untruths (such as the lie that illegal abortion was killing 5,000 to 10,000 women a year).

I have met just as many Pro-Life women in my years as a foster parent who have changed their opinion based on the overall amount of child abuse, abandonment and neglect we as FP's witness.

I, too, have seen that in those rare instances when somebody changes sides from pro life to pro choice, it tends to be a capitulation to despair. But consider this: Prior to Roe, Carl Tyler of the Centers for Disease Control Abortion Surveillance Branch testified before Congress on the anticipated benefits of legalizing abortion on demand. Tyler held that although maternal deaths would no doubt skyrocket (they were gliding down below 50 a year at the time) to between 200 and 800 a year, this increase in maternal mortality would, in Tyler's estimate, be worth it because we would "abolish child abuse in a single generation."

Since Roe, child abuse and abandonment have increased, not decreased. Surely if abortion could cure child abuse, it would have accomplished it by now. Over 35 million fetuses have been destroyed in the campaign to eliminate child abuse by aborting the potential victims. What went wrong? Did we kill the wrong 35 million fetuses, or was 35 million not enough? Or were we mistaken entirely when we postulated that legalizing abortion would somehow cure child abuse?

I have yet to be approached by any Pro-Life group for support networking in FP programs.

Since you've been discussing your experience with foster parenting, I will assume that by FP you refer to foster parenting. My experience with pro life people is that many are foster parents themselves, but that they tend to promote permanent homes for children rather than keeping the kids in foster care. This might account for the lack of support you're perceiving. It doesn't stem from indifference to the children, but rather from the idea that we should be aiming for permanence and stability. When you're trying to get people from Los Angeles to New York, you won't be seen transporting too many people to Peoria or Topeka. If the goal is to find the child a permanent home, you'll not spend too much time putting him someplace temporary.

We too give support to women and teens who have unwanted pregnancies but as FP's we do what neither the Pro-Life movement or the Pro-Choice movement seems able. We let go of politics and morality and help mothers deal with abortion, pregnancy, addicted babies, wanting children back, etc...

There certainly is a crying need for your efforts. I applaud you.

BTW in my Bible it is also immoral to pass judgement on the sins of others - that is for God alone. "Judge not lest ye be so judged" and "Love the sinner hate the sin"

If you're to hate the sin, you have to judge it. It's the person we're admonished not to judge. And here's a question for you (and others) to answer in the Forum: Does the fact that you cite "Love the sinner hate the sin," does that mean that you do recognize abortion as a sin?

Thanks for your thoughtful letter. I hope I've answered your concerns.

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