OK, US Catholics, we have our work cut out for us. We have spent decades walking down an increasingly untenable political path, driven by strident voices calling abortion the Most Evil of All Evils and saying Effective Pro-Life Political Action Equals Laws Against Abortion. But--
It is my highest priority to live a life of joyful obedience to Jesus Christ in communion with the Roman Catholic Church. I believe every word of the Catechism. And I do not believe those strident voices within the Church are right. In fact, I believe them to be responsible for deepening divisions and driving people away from the faith. Let’s do better.
An increasingly polarized political landscape has left too many Catholics thinking that it is A-OK to sneer at the libs, or to wear a PELOSI SUCKS T-shirt, or to call anything left of center “socialism.” Can we just stop with that? It's unlikely that on Judgment Day Jesus is going to be like, "wrong, socialism is when the workers control the means of production," but I tell you what: he is the guy who said it was the same as murder to call one's brother a fool. I don’t think he will look kindly on use of the word “libtard.” (Obviously, I likewise condemn schoolyard insults aimed at Trump and his fellows.)
This political landscape has also left too many Catholics thinking that all left-leaning political positions are self-evidently wrong. Medicare for all? Laughable. Ending fracking? Wishful thinking from ignorant dreamers who fail to see it’s not economically feasible. Subsidized high-quality childcare? OhohoHOOOO, it is a PLOY to allow the government to indoctrinate your children!
What if we didn’t do that?
My opinions are unchanged since I posted about abortion four years ago: just as in parenting, if you want people to make different choices, you smooth the path toward those choices. If your two-year-old is lying in the floor screaming for Halloween candy, then one option is to repeat “you get what you get and you don’t get upset.” But probably the better choice is to say, “Huh, it’s 10:00 and he didn’t eat breakfast. Scrambled eggs and toast, coming right up.” If your teens are fighting all the time, then sure, you can ground them and yell “NO RUDENESS AND DISRESPECT” at them (using your most polite and respectful bellow). Or you can figure out what the obstacles are between the situation you’ve got and the situation you want, and tackle the obstacles.
Let’s talk about obstacles. Women are not having abortions for funsies. Women are having abortions because they can’t afford a(nother) baby, and because they are in unstable relationships, and because their life circumstances do not seem to be compatible with motherhood. They are having late-term abortions in part because their unborn babies have disabilities or life-limiting conditions. In that incomplete list of reasons for abortion there is so much scope for bipartisan political action. So let’s commit to some bipartisan political action already.
In the UK, which is hardly a hotbed of pro-life activism, every pregnant resident of the country has access to skilled prenatal care, to her choice of birth setting, and to in-home follow-up care for herself and her baby in the weeks after delivery. Her out-of-pocket cost? Zero. If we in this country were genuinely committed to protecting the lives and well-being of unborn babies and their mothers, we could do something similar. With a coalition of Democrats and Catholic Republicans, we could make it political suicide for a legislator to oppose Medicaid expansion for pregnant/postpartum women and children under age 5. If ostensibly pro-life legislators vote repeatedly to repeal the piece of legislation that requires insurers to cover prenatal care, then we should hold them responsible for dereliction of their pro-life duty. Healthcare is a huge messy expensive issue, but the eye-wateringly expensive part is end-of-life care. In the richest country of the world, the cost of routine perinatal/well-child care is 100% a solvable problem. We just need the political will to solve it.
Similarly, the rest of the developed world has figured out better solutions to maternity leave and childcare. In fact, the entire developing world* has also figured out better solutions to maternity leave. If the pro-life community in the US acknowledges these barriers to motherhood and commits to working together on solutions, we can make a difference for the terrified newly pregnant women out there thinking, “I never thought I’d have an abortion, but I just cannot see how to make this work financially.” But we need systemic change, which will require sustained political action. And yes, it will be expensive. Remind me, though -- how many KAZILLION dollars have we sunk into deeply divisive and ultimately unsuccessful personhood ballot initiatives? All those strings of appeals in court cases that have only re-entrenched Roe v. Wade as settled law – how much did they cost, and how much good did they do?
*(excluding Suriname, New Guinea, and a few tiny countries in the South Pacific)
As a nation we can afford maternity leave that allows women to stay home and recover after they have babies. We can afford childcare that allows them to go back to work when they need to, and know that their babies are safe and well cared for. If we want to, that is. If you are reading this and thinking grumbly thoughts like “Not business-friendly! Not fiscally responsible!” then I invite you -– gently, respectfully -– to consider how much of a priority it should be for the pro-life movement to be business-friendly rather than mother/baby-friendly. I ask you how much of the gospel is about protecting business interests at the expense of the vulnerable, and how well those priorities square with the idea of a preferential option for the poor. I note too that the Canadian economy, despite having a GDP only 8% of ours, has not collapsed under the weight of one-year paid maternity leaves.
Whoops, I just passed a thousand words. But you guys, we also need to talk about the pro-life impact of two other causes usually linked to the left. First off: we can reduce the number of babies with severe congenital anomalies, and thus the number of women seeking second-trimester abortions, if we reduce women's exposure to environmental toxins. Fracking kills unborn babies; ergo, in my view, pro-lifers should oppose fracking. Don't tell me we can't get by without an activity that nobody had even heard of 10 years ago. Don't tell the mothers with empty arms that cheap energy matters more than their babies' lives.
Second: we can use political means to make it easier to parent children with disabilities. We can insist on adequate funding for early intervention, for early childhood special education, for school systems that can then focus on access to services rather than gatekeeping to balance a too-skimpy special-ed budget. And let's not forget respite care. It's great to smile at the person at church who's caring for a child with an apparent disability. But the kinds of ongoing support that make a difference in caregiver well-being and eventual outcomes for people with disabilities -- those require political will, and public funding.
I guess if the one true pro-life political strategy were passing more restrictive laws against abortion, then seating judges sympathetic to those laws might be the one true indicator of a pro-life president [she says skeptically]. But I believe there are many, many ways to work politically toward the pro-life goals of protecting gestating babies and equipping their families and communities to welcome them. So let's get it together, and stop turning up our noses at our natural allies. Nobody in heaven is going to be awarding any brownie points for the zingiest social media post about whether Joe Biden should receive communion. But I do believe they will ask us what we did for the least of these.
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