The Health Care-Abortion Issue: An Open Letter To The Catholic Bishops

Dear Bishops –

In our struggle to get health care for all, you saw an opportunity to make sure that American women can’t afford abortions, a way to be the deciders for all of us.  You look at someone like me who has had an abortion, and you see a sin.  Perhaps you think that those of us who terminate pregnancies haven’t thought these things through from a moral standpoint.  Or maybe we are simply less moral than you are:  thoughtless, selfish, or promiscuous. 

On the other side of the equation, you believe you know the Divine will.  You claim a position of moral authority, confident that the God of love guides your judgment.  I don’t trust that this is true.   Time and again your predecessors made decisions in the name of God that in retrospect are shameful.

A council of Christian Bishops included texts in the Bible sanctioning sexual slavery, scorched earth policies, and human sacrifice.  Catholic Bishops said that God gave kings a divine right to wealth and power. Bishops oversaw the design of exquisite implements to torture infidels and prolong their dying. The Church authorities sanctioned a convert-or- kill approach to Native Americans. They endorsed the Vietnam War.  They looked the other way while thousands of children were molested by priests, confident that protecting the priesthood mattered more to God than the children’s suffering.  They told uneducated Africans that God doesn’t want them using condoms.  Church history should be a lesson in humility to us all.

Even so, you insist that this time you are right.  You are so sure God prizes every embryo that you are willing to trade on a world with more unwanted children, more women bleeding to death, more families in poverty, more extinctions, more starvation, and more desperation all around.  Not only would you make this trade, you would force it on the rest of us by making contraception and abortions illegal or financially impossible.  Please understand if I’m not ready to cede my moral judgment to yours.

While I’m confessing, I might as well say that my judgment differs from yours on a number of other issues:

• I believe that slavery has always been evil, no matter which sacred text endorses it.

• I believe it is immoral to bring more children into this world than we can care for. 

• Whatever God may be, I believe that putting God’s name on human words, books and institutions is idolatry.

• I don’t think that burnt offerings, substitutionary atonement and incense ever fixed anything.

• I don’t believe that sex is dirty or virginity sacred. 

• I suspect that if I can forgive those who sin against me without making someone bleed first, any perfect god can too.

• I think that torturing people is wrong, even if you do it for eternity.

I can speak only for myself, but I want you to know that my abortion was a profoundly moral decision.  I chose abortion because of an infection during first trimester that causes serious fetal anomalies.  My husband and I weighed the decision together.  We didn’t make it lightly.  In your framework, my decision was immoral.  But in my ethical framework, it would have been immoral for me to go through with the pregnancy I aborted.  I am ever grateful for my life-loving daughter, my abortion baby who could not be alive today had I carried that other unhealthy pregnancy to term.  How many other chosen children will not be here if you get to decide for all of us?

There are few decisions that have greater moral impact than deciding whether to have children, when, and how many, and so I understand your attempts to intervene in our personal lives and political processes.  By forcing your priorities on the rest of us you think you are holding us to a higher standard of holiness. I disagree.

 When I was a child, I thought as a child, and I bowed to authority such as yours.  But now I am a woman.   It is my job, in community with those I love, to decide what it means for me to be a good parent, a wise steward, a loving partner, and true to my life calling.  My decisions about child bearing play a role in each of these, and so I claim them as my own.  This is a privilege and responsibility I do not relinquish to you or to anyone. 

Valerie Tarico 

 

Follow Valerie Tarico on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ValerieTarico

Comments

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

I agree. There is no evidence that the catholic church has any privileged access to the truth about these moral dilemmas. In fact, it doesn't even have compelling reasons why such dilemmas should have any adequate solution at all. To me it is clear that damage is done already by pretending that there are answers to these challenges. It involves a state of denial to pretend to have answers about this.

[bluerthanblue15]

Valerie,

Your blog was especially insightful and literally get to the heart of the matter.

Thanks for enlightening the rest of us.

[PWM]

"I suspect that if I can forgive those who sin against me without making someone bleed first, any perfect god can too."

This is why I reject Christianity. I can forgive and don't need to kill a flea, yet we are supposed to believe an omnipotent being is impotent to forgive short of killing his own son. What nonsense.

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

It may not be that simple, because there's a difference between forgiving those who have sinned against you and forgiving sins or misdeeds that have nothing to do with you (but only with others).

Quite generally, there's nothing simple about forgiveness, because it requires to strike a delicate balance when your goal is to provide some sustained reconciliation. It touches the core of the very conception of peoples selves and their sense of freedom. What's simple or easy about that?

The question is: 'what' do you forgive when you don't kill that flea?

Forgiveness interferes with the entire story we are telling ourselves about ourselves. It's the entire make-up and structure of our conscious conduct, and it severely interacts with what we will count among our options in the future. There's a whole worldview in it. It separates what's inevitable from what results from choice.

Just replace the word 'forgiveness' by the more modern 'reconciliation' or 'peacemaking' between enemies or bitter enemies and you will find that there's nothing simple about it - even when you're not involved, and in fact: especially then.

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

There's a difference between 'forgiveness' between two people (or a person and a god - whatever that is) and 'forgiveness' or 'peacemaking' for a whole group or several groups at enmity.

[homanro]

The fact is that the Catholic Church believes God will forgive you- no matter what. God will forgive you for having sex outside marriage, for committing adultery, for having an abortion. The problem is what we do with this forgiveness and whether we ask for it and accept it.

[HeevenSteven]

Cosign!

[Redheadwithopinions]

Beautifully written and profoundly as well. Thank you!

[PresidentRobertBooth]

Celibate male Catholic bishops, who profess to never having sex, or getting married, or dealing personally with a pregnancy, see themselves as the authorities on sex, marriage, and abortion.


If the Catholic establishment hasn't by now, after centuries, seen the absurdity of this, it's unlikely a letter on HP will change that.

[bluerthanblue15]

"Celibate male Catholic bishops, who profess to never having sex, or getting married, or dealing personally with a pregnancy, see themselves as the authorities on sex, marriage, and abortion.

If the Catholic establishment hasn't by now, after centuries, seen the absurdity of this, it's unlikely a letter on HP will change that."

The Catholic church and its bishops won't look beyond that absurdity of their claims because of their entrenched top-down, hierararchical pyramid structure of perceiving itself and the rest of humanity.

Married people are at the bottom of that pyramid and thus the bishops-Catholic church take that view that they can indeed impose themselves into the bedrooms of ---every---- Catholic (and increasingly others) simply because they literally look down at those outside their clerical 'status'.

Thankfully Catholics are increasingly thinking much more closely to that of the general population with respect to birth control and other 'secular' issues and the bishops have yet to let up in their frustration with respect to that.

[mikefina]

The Catholic Church has its set of rules and beliefs. If you don't want to follow them, don't join, or leave the Church.

Rail against them, if you wish. Challenge their theology, too.

I am no longer a member of the Catholic Church. But I applaud their efforts to defend unborn children. It is a moral position that does NOT require one be a believer in God or a member of the Church.

Much more objectionable to me, is their resistance to sex-education and birth control.

[Mriana]

I agree about not joining them (or anyone else) if you do not agree, but they need to stay out of politics AND keep their "rosaries off women's ovaries". They have no right to put their hands in the cookie jar of politics. The First Amendment booted religion out of our government over 200 years ago and I, for one, expect everyone to keep their religious views out of politics. Our forefathers had their reasons for not wanting a theocracy for our government and it needs to stay that way or the we will be having the Church as our government, instead of the government our forefathers meant us to have. Sorry, but this is not a Christian nation and it certainly is not a Catholic nation. I think Protestants, for one, would rebel again if the Pope tried to run our government. At the same time, Catholics would rebel if the Fundamentalists ran our government. IF any Xians ran our government, other religious groups as well as non-religious groups would throw a fit, because it is not in keeping with the First Amendment.

[mikefina]

They have EVERY right to petition their government. The failure to recognize that FACT renders all that follows moot.

[kwinter]

I especially love this line:
"I suspect that if I can forgive those who sin against me without making someone bleed first, any perfect god can too."

If I believed in a god (especially the Christian god), this would certainly give me something to ponder!

[Redheadwithopinions]

Me too!

[islanddreamer]

Great message Valerie! A powerful and personal declaration of reproductive freedom. I totally agree with you. Thank you for your courage to take on the religious establishment!

[ActualParenthood]

If the government can't tell a woman what she can do with her body, should heroin be legal?

[Mriana]

ActualParenthood, I am not sure what your handle means, but Valerie and I are both parents, so therefore we too have actual parenthood status.

We are not talking about drugs here. We are talking about Women's health and reproductive issues. That is a totally different ballpark than legalization of drugs. Therefore, I am not sure what your question means in context of the discussion.

Secondly, it is not the government we are talking about, unless the government really has become a theocracy. Religion and Politics do not mix, be that as it may no one should be involved in women's health and reproductive issues except her and her doctor. I don't see any government or religious institution telling a man what he can or cannot do with his body.

[kwinter]

Good to hear from you, Mriana ... you put that perfectly!

[mydwyf]

The true lie behind the practice of sodomy is that it "doesn't result in pregnancy".
Well, no, not in the physical sense. Obviously.
But what if it does in fact result in conception ? Of, say, plasma entities ?
Just because we cannot perceive them does not mean they do not exist.

So what does the Catholic Church have to say for itself on the topic of all the
plasma entities possibly conceived and abandoned through the actions of its priests ?

Perhaps the demons they so dramatically 'cast out' (a bad idea, btw)
are products of their own behaviors.

[Mriana]

Well said, Valerie! Besides that, no where in the Bible does it condemn abortion. As a matter of fact, it is quite the opposite and even disgustingly grotesque- in which they kill the mother too. However, you are right that there are very moral reasons to have an abortion and in some cases, it is far better to have the mother to live than have two die during childbirth. IMO, it is also far better for children to have a mother than for her to die and they be motherless. I can site many reasons in which an abortion is moral, just as I am sure you can.

No priest, bishop, or pope, no minister for that matter, should dictate what a woman should do with her body and they have no business being in Women's health. Thanks for speaking up and out against the religious institution and their dehumanizing of women. We need more women to speak up and out about these things.

[John Garner]

As a former catholic I have to say, you go Valerie! And tax the churches, all of them!

[Kent James]

You've put a very fine point on it. Nice.

[mcsheam]

Thank goodness you know how to think and act and judge wisely with your own life and with your own body. I find that interference by the private men’s’ club of the USCCB is more insulting to the average person’s intelligence than it is funny. This considering how they want medieval standards, yokes and chains reimposed onto the minds and bodies of women and men – in other words the cruel joke would be to cancel out the nineteenth, twentieth and now twenty-first century of a truly interesting common era of mankind.