Somebody chewed me out for saying that we prolife Catholics…

Somebody chewed me out for saying that we prolife Catholics… December 10, 2016

…must take responsibility for the social and economic pressures that drive women to abortion. They wrote:

“Pro-lifers aren’t responsible for other people’s choices. It wasn’t pro-lifers who decided to be promiscuous (let’s admit most unintended pregnancies result from premarital sex). Nor was it pro-lifers who decided to have an abortion. With the exception of rape, both those decisions were an act of free will – a ‘choice’ made by the woman.”

Most abortions are obtained by married women with other children and most abortions are obtained by the poor. The easy assumption that abortive women are sluts and that pregnancy is their fitting punishment is how Good Catholic anti-abortion-but-not-prolifers exonerate themselves for approving of social and economic policies that punish families with “too many” children.

The hypocrisy of Good Catholics who simultaneously scold the poor for using birth control and then punish them for having “too many” children and then damn them for having abortions is one of the major reasons so many conservative Catholics like the person writing me above are a scandalous witness to the Faith. It’s plain as day that people who do this Do. Not. Believe. the. Church’s. Teaching about Solidarity and the Common Good. They believe in punishing women for being poor and sexually active.

Here’s the deal, Good Catholic: If you are really serious about the Church’s teaching on contraception and about telling other Catholics to obey the Church, then you *must* get really serious about the fact that *you* have a responsibility to help the large families you are *demanding* other people have. Because lots of people cannot afford large families and therefore need economic help to raise them. If you deny them that help and therefore exert tremendous economic pressure on them to abort, then you are full of crap when you say you take the Church’s teaching seriously.

“The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice. They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger. ” Matthew 23:2-4


Browse Our Archives