A recent opinion piece suggesting that stigma against abortion is causing harm to women’s health was disturbing at best. It is disheartening to see women discussing pregnancy as if it is a disease and arguing that abortion is the best “treatment” option.
What a difference we might make for all women were we instead to recognize that pregnancy is unlike any other bodily function and thus women deserve far better than to have their pregnancy treated as something detrimental that needs to be eradicated through abortion.
It will come as no surprise that the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City opposes abortion as morally wrong. It is the long-standing position of our faith that the “collection of cells” that is an embryo is only capable of ever being one thing, a human being. Thus, destroying the collection destroys human life.
But beyond that fact, there is also a deeply held belief that pregnancy is something more than just a biological function, rendering abortion just like any other health care decision. Rather, pregnancy, the ability to hold and nurture life within the female body, is like no other function our bodies perform.
Only the female body can do this. Only women can take this particular collection of cells and protect it so that it has the time and space to become what is was created to be, a living, breathing, thinking person. That isn’t a function of our biology we should take so lightly as to say it is no more important than anything else our bodies do naturally. It is morally different. It does involve another human life and we ought to raise up this ability of ours rather than allow it to be denigrated as a meaningless collection of cells, or worse, cells we should eliminate like a cancer.
Instead of pushing for more abortion rights, women should be demanding that our needs be better met so that no one woman ever has to choose between her child’s life and her own. Why should any pregnant woman, or mother, fear losing her job because she is developing a new life within her? Why should we accept substandard wages for women that don’t cover the costs of basic needs, let alone a child? Why should we demand more abortions rather than better, more affordable health care or child care? Why would we encourage a woman who is understandably afraid of what her future might hold to end her pregnancy rather than provide her with what she needs to overcome her fears? Are we really willing to destroy lives rather than demand better care for pregnant women and mothers?
We know from past experience that laws against abortion don’t stop abortions. We also know that when government, business and society better serve the needs of women, fewer abortions are performed. Laws that restrict abortion, then, must be combined with laws that recognize a pregnant woman’s right to those things necessary to live a life of dignity.
Rather than expand access to abortion, perhaps it is time for women to address the root causes and demand more for pregnant women so that none of us has to ever feel she cannot carry the life within her to term and care for her child once it is born.
Jean Hill is government liaison for the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City.