Catholicae Testudines

Note

I realize I'm referring to these women as "The NARAL woman" and "The Nat. Abortion Fed. woman," and so forth, but I didn't catch their names.  Sorry if I seem rude.

Interesting comment

A girl "asked" a "question" which was more of a statement about how awful it was that legislators were "making medical decisions" even though they were not doctors.

The Planned Parenthood woman said something interesting.  She said many of the ones who are the worst [for the pro-abortion cause] are the ones who are doctors.

Contraception

This deserves a post unto itself.

I don't mean to discourage you, but the words of the pro-choice speakers seemed to confirm Pope Paul VI's assertion that contraception and abortion are inextricably linked.  In fact, I would go so far to say that contraception and the contraceptive mentality if abortion is the noxious weed choking out life in your garden, contraception is the hard-to-pull out taproot.  Even if you "pull out" abortion, if the contraceptive mentality and lifestyle remains, it is only a temporary victory.  And this is perhaps discouraging because 1.) The majority of Protestants, even our allies in the pro-life movement, have caved in and approved of contraception.  2.) We often "concede" it as "just a Catholic issue" and let it go.  But to the pro-choice people it is not an unimportant or separate issue.

Assumptions

One reason it can be so hard for them (the pro-abortion people) to understand each other is that we have totally different assumptions.  Even if two people apply logic perfectly to reach their conclusions, if they start from different axioms, they will arrive at different conclusions (except by accident).  Not everyone thinks about this, as when the one woman said "we have some reasonable, rational people in the Virginia State Senate," the implication being that if you don't agree with abortion, you are unreasonable or irrational.  So here are what I gathered were some of their starting assumptions.

1.)  "Abortion is a good thing."  On the one hand this may seem obvious since the three women often described anti-abortion activity as "bad" or "scary" or other similar terms, and pursue it as a good, but on the other hand they are torn because they also see how it tears women apart inside (apparently, because they say things like "we need to reduce the number of abortions" and seem to mean it).  So maybe they might say that it's a "necessary evil."  But remember that we don't believe in "necessary evil."  Something can be either morally evil OR necessary but not both; we never do evil even to achieve what we perceive as a good end.  But either they do not see this or they view abortion as essentially good.  I talk about "they," but it is not like they have a formal body of doctrine, so some may be one way, some the other, and some with mixed feelings.

2.) "Women have a right to have an abortion."  I am not exactly sure how they decided this, but all three of them always phrased it in these terms.  The ex-NARAL woman said "Reproductive rights [i.e. the right to an abortion] are at the core of women's rights."  That's interesting.  Is abortion one of our "inalienable rights" with which we are "endowed by our creator"?  In that case, the alleged right to an abortion is a religious/theological/moral teaching, and by enshrining the right to an abortion in law, the government imposes a religious system on us.  Not that I am upset by civil laws being informed by religion (so long as it is true religion) - but they protest most vocally against anything of the sort.  Is it then a right which was invented by the government and bestowed on us at the government's pleasure?  Then it would not be unjust of the government to rescind it, would it?

3.) "Unborn children may be human in some sense, but they are not 'persons.'"  Apparently they gain this status somewhere along the line, but this is not well-defined.  The Planned Parenthood woman stated that the Unborn Victims of Violence Act "Attempts to assign personhood to the fetus."

4.) "Reducing the number of unintended pregnancies is a good thing."  That's debatable, depending on how you look at it.  They say that [because pregnancy is dangerous (which it is)] more pregnancy means more women dying, which is bad, and therefore a woman shouldn't have to subject herself to that risk if she doesn't want to.  Unfortunately, they view contraception and abortion as good ways of realizing this.

Sadness

I was a little facetious about that "stay-at-home mom" but I feel more sorry for them than angry.  Thinking about how many young (and not-so-young) women in that room had had abortions.  They try to act like it makes them happy and free, but if so, why do their eyes look like that? 

Fr. Bill works with Project Rachel and he tells me that 1.) Pro-abortion people would like you to believe that abortion offers women a perfectly "free choice."  But in most cases women really have abortions because they feel like they have no other choice.  2.) Being a priest, he must often help people at the most tragic, painful parts of their lives, and minister God's love to them when they are most wracked by grief.  And he is adamant that though they may try to hold it in, to pretend otherwise, he does not know anyone - not burn victims, not paralyzed people, not terminal cancer patients - no one who is more devastated by grief than a post-abortive woman.

For reference

The talk was given by three women, all of whom were professional pro-abortion activists.  One, a young woman, was from the National Abortion Federation.  Another was from Planned Parenthood.  The third used to be in NARAL but now was a "stay-at-home mom" (in her own words) who presumably is now taking care of the children she did not abort.  A question session followed.  The whole meeting was rather emotional but comparatively calm considering how it might have been.

Hope

First of all, a word of encouragement to everyone involved in the pro-life movement.  These pro-abortion people are not invincible.  They are honestly worried.  Of course during this meeting they sometimes played it up a bit in order to try to motivate pro-abortion students to action, but as much as the panel (the talk was given by a panel of three women, all professional pro-abortion activists) wanted to portray pro-life people as some kind of fringe group, they could not avoid letting comments slip out like "I'm tired of always being on the defensive about what I do when I'm talking to people in bars on Friday night," and how if Roe is overturned "States will leap into action to ban abortion," citing examples such as the recent Michigan "citizens' initiative" to ban  abortion.  And they are really worried about Roe being overturned if new Supreme Court Justices are appointed: "One more anti-choice Justice could gut Roe, two would overturn it," opined the lady from NARAL.  Not that getting rid of Roe would be the magic bullet - the abortion mentality is deeply entrenched in our culture - but it would be an important piece in a movement.  So we have a very difficult task ahead of us, one that will take a lot of prayer and work, but not a Sisyphean one.

Series of pro-life posts to follow

FAM and the ACLU recently held a meeting to "tell young people the facts" about "reproductive rights," that is, a pro-abortion activism meeting and "discussion."  Many people from our CSC pro-life group, yours truly included, decided to attend.  In fact, we made up about a quarter of the students who attended.  I took extensive notes during the talk so I could share them with you, dear reader, so that you could hear what the other side sounds like when they think we're not listening.  At the moment I don't exactly know how I should redact the notes.  As I have said before, this blog is a totally unedited and very spur-of-the-moment project, so I will just let it play out as it happens.  But I will try to pass on to you what I think you might be interested in hearing.

Great Easter story

Congratulations, Bredon, welcome home!  Here at the CSC we had 13 people enter into the Church, but I can't post their stories because they haven't written them down (yet).  I wish I could show you a picture of them to show you how happy they are.

Daily dose of the bizarre - Episode IV

Ok, the process by which we arrived at this a bit longer and stranger than I care to explain, but somehow Mary had the idea of those girls' pants that have the words on the rear have to say "Tolle, lege."  Cleverer than the shirt that says "stop reading my shirt," perhaps, but with the drawback that it would probably be lost on most people.  [n.b. For the record, this is not an endorsement of pants with writing; in fact they are one of my pet peeves since I find that text involuntarily draws the eye]