Abortion and the U.S. Presidential Election
At the time of this writing, abortion is a key controversial issue in the U.S. presidential election. It is especially controversial for Catholics. Twenty-two percent of U.S. people—and about one in five U.S. voters—are Catholic. The abortion issue is dividing Catholic families, Catholic churches, Catholic men, and Catholic women.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, SEXISM, AND MALE DOMINATION
The Catholic Church as an institution opposes a woman’s right to choose to terminate a pregnancy. At the same time, the Church is not opposed to other people having the moral agency to make life-and-death decisions. It is not opposed to firefighters, police officers, doctors, nurses, soldiers, generals, or presidents making life-and-death decisions. Many groups of people make life-and-death decisions on a daily basis under difficult circumstances.
The Catholic institution is opposed to women making life-and-death decisions if they are pregnant as well as decisions about prescription birth control. This opposition is rooted in sexism and male domination that is not acknowledged as such. Because of this opposition, the institution has aligned itself with the U.S. political party that seeks to weaken laws that would permit women to terminate a pregnancy.
Women have unintended pregnancies because of rape, incest, coercion, pressure by society to be sexually active, pressure to be mothers, birth-control failures, and the barriers to thinking and taking charge that result from sexism. They receive lower wages. They face the prospect of inadequate maternity leave, unequal parenting hours, and so on. Until these factors no longer affect women, abortion must be available as a choice.
Many Catholics and Evangelicals who are part of the pro-life [anti-abortion] movement consider abortion a bottom-line [non-negotiable] issue. They are willing to base their vote on it alone. This seems to be due to sexism and male domination paired with deep grief.
GRIEF
Institutional sexism and male domination intersect with deep grief about taking a life. Grief, including in the aftermath of an abortion experience, may be what has led a pro-life voter to get involved with the pro-life movement.
It is upsetting to pro-life voters when others do not acknowledge that the fetus is a human life. Some are simply fighting for that recognition, and to have their grief be taken seriously. In fact, the fetus is a human life, and terminating a pregnancy is the taking of a life. But again, until all the above-mentioned factors no longer affect women, abortion must be available as a choice.
MY EXPERIENCE
For me, it is hard working on the abortion issue. I often feel terrible. I keep needing to decide and re-decide to work on it—for my re-emergence. Doing this makes me face things as a Catholic female that I have avoided facing until this election.
THE NEED TO LISTEN
I need to be able to listen to pro-life voters who might expand my awareness. One of my cousins told me, “I think you assume that every woman going to an abortion clinic freely chose that abortion. I have stood praying in front of an abortion clinic and watched a man yell at a woman to get into the clinic. It was clear that she did not really want to go in and get an abortion.”
I need to consider this in my thinking—that there are women being coerced by men into having an abortion. Pro-life voters sometimes notice aspects of sexism, even if they aren’t calling it that, in a woman’s decision to have an abortion. I know pro-life voters who dedicate their lives to getting more resources to women in crisis pregnancies so that they have enough support that they can choose to give birth to their child.
I’m looking for organizations that are reaching out to Catholics via phone banking, so that I can talk with and listen to people.
USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for USA political issues
(Present Time 202, January 2021)