"How could you be pro-abortion, then?"
and how John Paul II broke the Catholic "Fourth Wall"
I’d like to answer a question once posed in comments by a reader:
“Not just I, but many pro-lifers have a very hard time understanding how someone becomes that intensely pro-abortion. I think we could benefit from the hindsight of someone like yourself.”
My abortion story is how I began my answer; you can read that first.
The rest of the answer is, I never was publicly “pro-choice,” but when I was in that 20-year denial of my regret, I kept my mouth shut if the topic ever came up. I never cared if a politician I voted for was for abortion. I tacitly supported abortion because I thought, “How could I ever come out against it, having had one?” And that is perhaps how so many Catholics For Choice and others who think they’re “religious” manage it. Twenty years ago, there was no unified outcry or effort against abortion from the Catholic Church pulpits and its members, because for those of us Catholics who are post-abortive, it is cognitive dissonance to the max. I’m not sure how much of a pulpit-led effort there has been since.
Secondly, Catholic Church leaders (maybe others) hadn’t made it easy then, for regretting women or men to seek help at Rachel’s Vineyard or similar retreats. In 2004, Allan Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s research arm, said 40% of all women aged 20 and up have had abortions. In my launch column, I walked through how there could be ~1.8 million to 3 million of us feeling the negative aftermaths of our abortions, plus an additional ~32.3 to 44.3 million post-abortive women staying very silent either way.
In this post, I talked of how Norma McCorvey, the Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade, who eventually became Catholic, once said she was terrified of going into a church, afraid that the people there and God Himself would be so angry at her that the people would condemn her openly and God would collapse the church walls and roof on her in punishment. Many women who have aborted their children have this same fear of going back to church. We may want to stand up against abortion secretly, but are afraid of being punished as “hypocrites.”
I once long ago received an e-mail from a self-identified “practicing Catholic, pro-life, pro-family, pro-marriage” reader who lambasted people like me and a post-abortive man (who gave me permission to post his regret story) as being “STILL the most utterly selfish, immature and cowardly people I have ever encountered,” “anti-marriage and anti-family” and added that we’ve “ruined enough people's lives already” and that all we’ve done by going on a Rachel’s Vineyard retreat is find ourselves “a cryfest and a sympathetic, liberal ear.”
I think these two phenomena—being petrified of the “hypocrite” backlash from pro-life and pro-choice folks alike, and the Catholic Church leaders’ and perhaps other churches’ inability, openly from the pulpits, to welcome, embrace, forgive and help heal the possible millions of post-abortive, regretting women and men in their pews—have everything to do with why the respect-life issue had little progress in its first 40+ years.
And yes, I respectfully told my then-Bishop that. (Crickets, were what I got back.)
The great news is, since March 1995, we don’t have to wait for any Bishop or Cardinal to respond, and I believe this has made a huge difference:
I would now like to say a special word to women who have had an abortion. The Church is aware of the many factors which may have influenced your decision, and she does not doubt that in many cases it was a painful and even shattering decision. The wound in your heart may not yet have healed. Certainly what happened was and remains terribly wrong. But do not give in to discouragement and do not lose hope. Try rather to understand what happened and face it honestly. If you have not already done so, give yourselves over with humility and trust to repentance. The Father of mercies is ready to give you his forgiveness and his peace in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. To the same Father and his mercy you can with sure hope entrust your child. With the friendly and expert help and advice of other people, and as a result of your own painful experience, you can be among the most eloquent defenders of everyone’s right to life. Through your commitment to life, whether by accepting the birth of other children or by welcoming and caring for those most in need of someone to be close to them, you will become promoters of a new way of looking at human life.
And The One Who started it all, said basically the same thing, in fewer words:
Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She replied, “No one, sir.” Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, [and] from now on do not sin any more.”