“Firing an unwed pregnant Catholic school teacher is not pro-life”

Mary DeTurris Poust adds her voice to the debate about that Montana school teacher, and echoes what many have been saying:

Either we’re pro-life or we’re not pro-life, and firing an unwed pregnant Catholic school teacher is not pro-life no matter how you slice it. I don’t care what her contract said. I don’t buy the notion that children will be scandalized. None of it washes. Let’s face facts. We are all sinners. Some of us, unfortunately, sin in ways that are much more public than others, and so we are called out while everyone else slides by with their private sins rolling merrily along.

Let’s look at one single aspect of this case: Okay, a single woman becomes pregnant, tells her superiors at her Catholic school that she plans to keep her baby, and is subsequently fired by “higher ups” in the Diocese of Helena after officials receive an anonymous letter, according to news reports. What do you think happens the next time a single Catholic school teacher finds herself pregnant with no husband? Yeah, abortion might be the obvious choice if she thinks she might lose her job otherwise. So much for that pro-life thing.

I’ve heard about the “right way” this could have gone down — a kinder, gentler firing of sorts, but the bottom line is that there is no scenario where firing this woman is right. It would have been nice if, instead, the school, the local parish, maybe even the larger diocese  rallied around her and gave her the extra help she might need — babysitting, dinners cooked, some diapers, whatever — to make her life a little easier once her baby is born. And I’m guessing there are individual people from that school or parish who are doing just that anyway because people are kinder and more understanding than the rules allow. Because most of us recognize that there but for the grace of God…

I am dumbfounded that the local Church would fire a pregnant woman no matter what her at-home circumstances.

Read it all.