Fiats

As a mother I think a lot about creating contexts in which it's easier to say YES. Sometimes it's my job to say NO, but I believe -- and my experience so far has borne out the idea -- that if you equip kids to say YES, and build relationships in which they want to say YES, there's little need for frequent reiterations of NO. I believe, too, that elaborate plans focused on punishment are bad for parent-child relationships and the climate of the home. This is the very heart of my Croissants series: my job is to help my kids find the joy in duty.

There are plenty of parenting experts who disagree with me. James Dobson is aaaaalllll about the importance of obedience. Don't get me wrong; I expect to be obeyed. But what I am seeing in my own children is that consistent obedience can arise from mutual love and respect. I don't have to hit my kids; I don't have to instill obedience via fear.

So it's probably not surprising to my pals who read this blog that my vision of pro-life action is based on YES more than NO. And it probably shouldn't be surprising to me that there's lots of support for the NO approach. (Is it a coincidence that Dobson has endorsed Trump?)

Here's what I mean: there are two broad strategies for increasing the numbers of pregnancies that women carry to term. You can make it harder to get abortions, or you can make it easier to bear a child. American pro-lifers have mostly planted their flag in "make it harder" territory, creating a miserable mystifying mésalliance between many committed Catholics and the 2016 version of the GOP.

Why are we focused on creating barriers between women and abortion instead of removing barriers between women and motherhood? 

Do you remember the 2008 election, when that clip of Obama talking about the Freedom of Choice Act was passed around and around and around in Catholic circles? Do you remember how his presidency was supposedly going to signal the apocalypse, in which all Catholic hospitals would be required to perform abortions? Why, my friends, why why WHY are Catholics not acknowledging the pro-life value of the Affordable Care Act? I'm sympathetic, of course, to the Little Sisters of the Poor, but consider this: when insurance companies were required by federal law to cover prenatal care, a significant obstacle to sustaining unplanned and sort-of-planned pregnancies was diminished. I am remembering the frustrations of seeking out maternity coverage in 2001, when Elwood's employer didn't provide health insurance and we wanted another baby. The total premiums for a policy that covered pregnancy-related expenses would have cost us 4 times the eventual bill from the doctor who delivered Joe in our living room. How can it be a good idea to return to those days, when an unexpected pregnancy could mean a woman had to find $40,000 (or declare bankruptcy) to cover a repeat C-section? So why have there been repeated attempts by the "pro-life" party to repeal the ACA?

There are pro-life organizations that focus on meeting pregnant women's immediate needs -- I used to volunteer for Birthright, for instance, dispensing layettes and encouragement to women who wanted to continue their pregnancies. The layette is not the hard part, though. I do not know of any pro-life activist groups that also focus on maternity leave or affordable childcare. But here is a truth Catholics need to reckon with: we are sending postpartum women -- especially poor postpartum women -- back to work still bleeding and unrecovered. We shrug about maternity leave, as if this problem that the rest of the developed world (along with most of the developing world!) has addressed successfully is simply unfixable. Here is another truth Catholics need to reckon with: childcare is enormously expensive, and high-quality childcare costs more than low-quality childcare. The inequities start early, and the American pro-life movement is directing zero energy toward resolving them. Pat Buchanan, in fact, directed considerable energy toward entrenching them.

If a woman is worried about paying her doctor, and worried about affording the time off that she will need to heal after childbirth, and completely baffled about how she could afford to pay for childcare-- is it surprising, in those circumstances, that some women think abortion seems like a more reasonable choice than continuing a pregnancy? This, my friends, could be fertile ground for bipartisan pro-life action. Why is it that we seem to prefer intransigence?

One of my dearest friends from college is an abortion provider. I pray for her, of course; of course I wish she were a careful and compassionate dermatologist instead. But I also listen to her perspective, because in my little group of Catholic friends I am pretty insulated from the reality of abortion. Eight years ago she told me something I'll never forget; she said, "I see a lot of women who just can't afford that third baby." In pro-life circles there is a troubling focus on ideological purity. "So-and-so isn't really pro-life," they say, "because he supports exceptions for the mother's health." Some pro-lifers assert that exceptions for the mother's life aren't necessary, because modern medicine means it never comes down to that. This is wrong on three separate fronts: first, it is factually incorrect; second, it is unconscionably callous; and third, it is unwise strategically because it puts the focus on a tiny number of hard cases. They raise important questions, absolutely; I do not dispute the unique and unrepeatable nature of those babies' lives. But it's a truism that hard cases make bad law.

I think all the time about the mothers who just can't afford that third baby. They are not a tiny number and they do not have to be hard cases. How can we help them to say YES? How can we focus on touching hearts rather than writing laws? Because here's the thing: if the hearts change, the laws will follow. Jesus was always more interested in the state of the heart than the letter of the law.

The pro-life movement has wrecked its credibility with folks outside the movement; they do not see us as allies in a quest to support women in making good decisions -- even when that decision is to sustain a pregnancy. We have focused so much on "Go and sin no more" that we have forgotten the first part, the foundational part, the part that makes sinning no more a possibility: "Neither do I condemn you." We say "culture of life" and they hear "married white people who have seven children and think everybody else should do the same." But creating a culture of life is part of the answer-- a messy painful essential part.

In a culture of life there is space for disability, patience and acceptance and benefit-of-the-doubt-extending. There is acknowledgment of the redemptive work of childbearing in a post-Incarnation world, and acknowledgment that anything redemptive is destined to be hard -- sometimes heartbreakingly hard. (In my personal version of the culture of life there is zero room -- I mean zero room -- for social media shaming of other parents. This gig is tough enough already.) There is unquestioning acceptance of the intrinsic dignity of women, and of their capacity to respond autonomously to grace.

This is why it crushes me when my friends say they're voting for Donald Trump because they're pro-life: because a man who mocks the disabled, who views pregnancy as inconvenient, and who boasts about his violations of women's dignity and autonomy is the very antithesis of pro-life. He is advancing the culture of death, in fact. If this is the best the Republicans can manage, it's past time for Catholics to move on.

I dream of a world without abortion. And there's a place for NO in the public square, just as there is in my own home. But we're not going to end abortion by fiat, by a legislated NO. We can only get there by fiat, by fostering a culture in which women are free to say a fearless and joyful YES.

Comments

[Gina]

Beautifully said.

I think what people also need to understand is that the YES, in reality, is hard. Of course they know that, but it's quite another thing to live it.

I didn't feel embraced by the Catholic Church as a young, single mother (or the outside community for that matter...this is certainly not the Churches issue alone), instead, at points, I felt shamed.

Support would have felt like unconditional love and acceptance. And although adoption is an amazing option, it is not an option I felt called to choose. I wish I didn't get so many calls from "concerned neighbors and parishioners" regarding "how I was going to feed my baby". I wish I didn't have to sit and have someone watch me write a thank you note when someone donated their used travel crib to me. (The woman thought I would have forgotten to write one afterward because I had "so many things going on", so she had thank you note and pen all ready for me). I just wish, at the time, I didn't feel so judged.

To be truly pro life, I believe, is to unconditionally love and accept. The choice, the baby, the financial need, etc...

And when we are talking "all of life", the list gets longer...the choice, the suffering, the sickness, the financial expense, etc...

[Jamie]

Oh, Gina, I am so grateful for your YES, and so sorry about the judgment you experienced. xoxo

[Christine]

This is so excellent, thank you, Jamie. I'm from Ireland, where abortion is still illegal, and those "hard cases" are the ones that make headlines far more often than your friends might expect. When I moved to the US I felt it was a step backwards as far as maternity leave rights were concerned, but at least a step forward for some other women's rights. I'm afraid I'm starting to lose that opinion.

[el-e-e]

SO GOOD.

This line: "The pro-life movement has wrecked its credibility with folks outside the movement; they do not see us as allies in a quest to support women in making good decisions." Absolutely correct.

Thanks for posting this, Jamie.

[Celeste]

Jamie, I just really applaud you for talking about pregnant women who want the baby, but feel that they cannot take care of it properly due to the myriad ways our culture sets up barriers. I've read that 70% of abortions performed are on women who are already mothers.

The typical political rhetoric is that it's the woman's fault she has an unwanted pregnancy, she should have thought of things first, and she doesn't get a pass because this is all too haaaaaaaaard. Babies are not supposed to be a means of punishment.

[Ariella]

Reading this was wonderful as it echoes many of my thoughts about the pro-life movement. Even though I am pro-choice, but I am also very much in favor of reducing the number of abortions by providing better care and support for expectant mothers. Although I do not think it is possible to get to zero abortions for a variety of reasons, I think it is possible to reduce the numbers significantly from where they stand now.

From an outsider's perspective (both religiously and from a policy standpoint), I really hate to see women shamed for having gotten pregnant accidentally and then being forced into a terrible decision. When I see people picketing outside Planned Parenthood with their revolting photos and screaming obscenities at young women, I have to wonder what effect they think they're going to have. If I was unsure about getting an abortion, nothing about that experience would lead me to believe that the community around me would support me if I kept the pregnancy.

You also bring up a really critical point, which is that pro-life groups support a woman keeping the pregnancy, but do nothing (or very little) once the baby is born. If someone is seeking an abortion for financial reasons, then maternity leave, child care, health care, etc., are going to be extraordinarily difficult. So giving someone some formula and some diapers and saying that they "support life" is fairly laughable.

[Miriel]

Thank you for writing this.

[Jeannie]

YES. So beautifully put. I am staunchly pro-choice and in fact volunteered at a local Planned Parenthood carrying messages between women who were there for abortions and the folks in the waiting room who came with them (for obvious reasons, sadly, non-patients were not allowed back in the patient care areas, and you had to pass through a metal detector and a bulletproof door just to get into the waiting room). But I have always felt that there is so much potential common ground between pro-life conservatives and social justice progressives. Let's support not just birth, but the whole lives and well-being of children and mothers.

[mary d]

That was amazing. Thank you for writing it.
Now I need to figure out what to do to help.

[Rachel]

Thank you for writing and posting this: I had never considered the debate from this perspective, had never thought of the effects of health care on abortion rates. I do keep seeing pro-life friends talk about helping out in crisis pregnancies - and had not thought of the connection between the decision to have a child to available health care and child care. a
One thing though: having had a child and raised a toddler in the US, and then having children and raising them in a welfare state (with free health care and maternity leave and an assumption that sick children always come before work) - I will say that the difference is unfathomable. Honestly, if you haven't had and raised kids in a formally supportive society, you can't imagine how much of a difference it makes, to men and women.

[Karen]

BRAVA!

[Jennifer]

Thank you for this.

[gina]

I'm so grateful too....I have this amazing person that I had the privilege to raise. He is, and will always be, my whole entire world.

However, the "pro life" stance is just so much more than "pro life". If you really want to be pro life...you need to find ways to unconditionally accept the life...the whole life...and this includes how different people choose to live it...Not just parts of it that are politically or personally convenient.

[Karen]

I love your comments about Dobson. Unfortunately, I was given a bunch of his books early in my motherhood and did not realize the problems with his philosophy until much too late. If you do things his way, you'll be whacking your 2 year old all day long.

I disagree with your summation on why your friends are voting Trump. I think many of the things he has said are beyond the pale. However, to not vote for him is a vote for Hillary. She is rabidly pro-abortion. She will not even say that an abortion should be "safe, legal and rare" which has been the Democratic Party's mantra on abortion. She wants abortion on demand. Trump will surround himself with a conservative administration. Can you imagine those in Hillary's?

[Deb Coatney]

I really appreciate your approach to this difficult issue. It's so easy for humans to rail about problems, rather than make the effort to offer real, needed help.

Would you mind if I shared this on Facebook? I think I know some people who would also appreciate this post, but I don't want to send you unwanted traffic :).

[L - Mama(e) in Translation]

I really like this, it's precisely because of all these reasons that I am so critical of people's blind support for "pro-life" politicians who don't support policies that help women not to have to make this sad choice.
I cannot believe that so many people will vote for a despicable creature only because of this one issue (as someone just shared above). An issue that has been emphasized over the years to literally "hijack" the vote of Christians. And historically, it was not because of abortion at all, but about racial discrimination as this article explains: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133

I'm truly happy you wrote this.

[Martina]

I haven't commented before, but I read your blog regularly and love both your insights and your amazing writing style. I, too, dream of a world without abortion and I love the way you articulated the need to foster a "culture in which women are free to say a fearless and joyful YES." YES!!!
I couldn't agree more and am dismayed by the choices before us this election. Out of around 330 million people, you would think we could have done a lot better! But we still have to choose, and if we want to be able to continue to be the "gentlest, joyfullest wackadoodles" we can be and invite others into this joy with us, we have to have the religious freedom to do so, and pick the party with the policies that will defend that freedom.

Maybe Obama didn't force Catholic hospitals to perform late-term abortions. Instead, he forced every single employer to provide access to abortafacients through the HHS Contraception Mandate - including colleges and hospitals and even the Little Sisters of the Poor. To me, it is quite telling that the Democrats, the "pro-choice" party, wouldn't respect the Sisters' choice - preferring to drive them out of their culture of life work of caring for the elderly poor. (And its not the first time. How many Catholic agencies are still placing children up for adoption? Zero, because they couldn't in clear conscience give into the government's demands. )The Sisters and others who refused to violate their consciences deserve our gratitude and respect for revealing the extent the Democrats are willing to go to deny our religious liberties. Apparently any choice can be condoned, except the refusal to be complicit in intrinsically evil acts mandated by the government. The dissent of the 1% needed to be made an example of to the tune of $70 million a year in fines. The Supreme Court recently gave a temporary ruling in the Sisters' favor, and in so doing revealed that, of course, the government could have found a way to accommodate the Sisters' religious objections (like they did for Pepsi, Visa, and Chevron - and a family insurance plan offered by the U.S. Military), but they chose not to. Why not? Because they want people to believe that our religious liberties are rights granted to us by the government, rather than inalienably endowed by our Creator.

In the Vice Presidential debate, Tim Kaine said,"That's what we ought to be doing in public life. Living our lives with enthusiasm and excitement...dialoguing with each other about important moral issues of the day...but on fundamental issues of morality, we should let women make their own decisions." Nice words, but is that what the Democrats actually did with the Little Sisters of the Poor? Did they respect their decision on the moral issue of birth control and abortion and let them live their faith with enthusiasm?

I understand and share your disgust with the things Donald Trump has said and done. I also have come to realize that the reprehensible things he has said are opinions either shared by the Democrats, or even codified into law. For example, he made comments about pregnancy being inconvenient for businesses, but the HHS contraception mandate is that sentiment translated into the law of the land. Rather than support maternity leave or other programs encouraging pregnancy and motherhood, the HHS mandate was accepted by insurance companies because the cost of providing contraception is offset by the savings of preventing pregnancies. The HHS itself states:"When medical costs associated with unintended pregnancies are taken into account, including costs of prenatal care, pregnancy complications, and deliveries, the net effect on premiums is close to zero." The Rewire article goes on to say,"counting indirect costs - such as time away from work and productivity losses -- further reduces the total cost to an employer. Clearly, the goal was never to remove barriers to motherhood, since preventing a life will ALWAYS be cheaper than caring for one.

You want there to be a culture of life where there is space for disability, and are rightfully repulsed by Trump's mocking of a disabled person. However, Hillary Clinton champions a woman's right to kill her unborn child because of its disability. Of course the Democrats support abortion for any reason - but it's oft repeated that it is especially justifiable if the baby is suspected of having a disability. In a 2012 publication of Prenatal Diagnosis, a study estimates a 67% termination rate for children diagnosed with Downs Syndrome in utero. There has been an overall reduction in the population of individuals in our society with Downs Syndrome of 25%-40% overall. Rick Santorum once stated,"Free prenatal testing saves money in health care. Why? Because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and therefore less care that has to be done, because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society." I cringe whenever I hear news stories regarding trying to find the genetic cause of autism, and then other stories reporting the (truthfully) astronomically high costs (that are often not covered by insurance) of providing education, care and support for individuals with autism. Based on the history of the decimation perpetrated against individuals with Downs, I fear the writing is on the wall. I fear that one day, the free prenatal testing will turn into mandated testing, and if you choose to continue to bring the disabled baby to term, it will be considered in the same way as an "elective surgery" and not covered. Perhaps that day is not far off, depending on the veracity of recent news about people being turned down by insurance companies for chemotherapy drugs, but covered for assisted suicide drugs.

You recommend that Catholics move on from the Republican party if Trump is the best it can do. But move on to what? The Democratic platform states they will "continue to oppose-- and seek to overturn -- federal and state laws and policies that impede a woman's access to abortion, including by repealing the Hyde Amendment." Based on the HHS mandate and Little Sisters of the Poor, I believe them. They are not hiding their agenda or their priorities. Because of the email leaks, we also know what Hillary and her team think of Catholics.

The Republican platform states, "we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed." In a troubled world entrapped in the culture of death, it is a sliver of hope, and may explain why a pro-life person would overlook a troubling persona in favor of a chance to use our religious liberty to continue to pray for universal metanoia and work to bring about a culture of life that will stop the slaughter of over 1 million innocent lives every year.

The richness of your blog post brings up so many other interesting points, but I have gone on WAY too long already. I'm sorry. I miss you and would love to talk sometime.