Talkin’ About the Pope, Not Hope
March 21st, 2009
I am not usually one to take on the Vatican. In fact, I toured its lovely treasure-filled buildings only three months ago and marveled at the wealth and power it denoted. However, the Pope’s recent pronouncements during his travels in Africa that condoms and abortions are morally wrong have filled me with righteous indignation. I too have spent time in Africa. But I wasn’t there to make pronouncements from on high. I was there to make a documentary about the increasing number of married women with AIDS in Kenya. I walked through Kibera slum and watched large families crammed into corrugated metal sheds without plumbing or heat.
Even so, I probably wouldn’t take on the Pope…except for an article in today’s Washington Post. Apparently, the Vatican’s top bioethics official said the two Brazilian doctors who performed an abortion on a nine-year-old rape victim “did not merit excommunication, because they acted to save her life.” HELLO! In my book, that’s called a pro-choice stand. Bravo for Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life. Perhaps he should have a chat with his boss.
Abortion is not a black and white issue for me, despite having worked for the better part of a decade for Planned Parenthood Federation of America and NARAL on reproductive health issues. That’s why the pro-choice position has also seemed to me to be the reasoned one. It allows individuals to make decisions and encourages each of us to define for ourselves what is reasonable and acceptable. There is a trust factor in being pro-choice. For example, if there is the possibility that a nine-year-old may be raped by her stepfather, you want to believe that the pregnancy will be ended as swiftly and humanely as possible.
Good for Archbishop Fisichella for being able to see that issues related to reproductive health have gray areas! And that it is often possible to be both pro-life and pro-choice while having to accept difficult decisions. Is it too much to hope that Pope Benedict XVI might also see the light? If he truly listens to the people of Africa and other continents, and opens his eyes to their hopes for their own lives – I have faith that he may begin to understand the healing power of condoms and the life-affirming necessity for legal, safe abortions.
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March 21st, 2009 at 4:42 pm
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June 17th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
I know this is an older post, so my response will probably not be read, but I wanted to log a comment from the perspective you’re critiquing. As a Catholic who understands and whole-heartedly agrees with all of the Church’s teaching on contraceptives and abortion, I know that the Pope can and should never “change his mind” on these issues.
The fundamental difference between rational pro-choice and pro-life people is a different understanding of when life begins. If you believe human life begins at conception, it’s not simply “saving a life” to abort a young woman’s child, even if there are concerns for her safety; it’s taking a life to save another. At that point, it’s arbitrary, and the overwhelming majority of abortions are chosen in the service of fear (that she will not be able to raise the child, that she is too poor, that others will judge her), eugenics (deciding a child is not worth allowing into the world with any kind of genetic or physical “defect”), and sometimes plain and simple selfishness. Choosing to give birth to the child you’ve conceived is not an easy thing, in any book. It requires suffering and sacrifice, even if you choose to give the child to another family in adoption. But I firmly believe that even before we know they are within us (and they can record heartbeats at 18 days from conception, before most of us realize we’ve missed our period) that child is a human being, with rights and hopes of her own. It’s not about what I, as her mother, want. It’s about what I can give to her, this person who I have in my care.