Perhaps they are concerned about the horrifically high rates of domestic violence in this country. Maybe they see the immense pressures a patriarchal culture places on women to have sex on a male timeline and its negative effects on women. Maybe what supporters of abortion in the United States recognize is how deeply patriarchal attitudes about sex are ingrained in our culture, how little control women have over when and how they have sex-even with partners they love. So what are the 57 percent of Americans who believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases seeing that pro-life Catholics are not? Most Americans believe there should be some legal limits on abortion but that it should be available for women legally. I am suggesting that pro-life Catholics think as much about mores and social structures as they do about legislation. What is radically apparent to me from discussions with close family members to the Babel of the Catholic Twittersphere is that too many Catholics do not understand or even seek to understand why abortion access in some form is so broadly supported in the United States. In order to achieve full justice on the issue of abortion, the moral discussion has to explore the personal and theological relationships that laws incarnate and reflect but cannot dictate. And, furthermore, I am suggesting that it is not the most fruitful or pertinent one in the current culture war around abortion in the United States. Acknowledging another’s personhood is never a bad idea recognizing God’s image in another is never a statement of ideology but rather of radical, revolutionary unity.Īcknowledging another’s personhood is never a bad idea recognizing God’s image in another is never a statement of ideology but rather of radical, revolutionary unity.īut the discussion of the earliest formations of human life in utero is not the discussion I want to engage in here. Ultimately, I would err on the side of assuming personhood until proven otherwise. Catholic theologians differ in interpreting the available science of their time. The question of when human personhood begins is, let us admit, a mystery known only to God, since a soul is not a category of science but of faith. Just to be clear: I believe that a fetus in the womb is a person. It is a belief system that was ingrained deep into my psyche, and I only began to question its political strategies and ultimate goals once I graduated from college and moved to New York City. I remember praying the rosary outside of a local Planned Parenthood with our homeschool co-op and then attending the March for Life with busloads of Notre Dame students in college. I spent most of my childhood in a world shaped by the political theology of the evangelical and Catholic pro-life movement in the United States. 8, my Twitter feed filled with pro-life Catholics celebrating the ban for outlawing the killing of infants. When the Supreme Court refused last week to overturn the Texas “heartbeat” abortion ban, known as S.B. Read another view on Texas’ abortion law here. Editor’s note: This article is part of The Conversation with America Media, offering diverse perspectives on important and contested issues in the life of the church.
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