SPEAK FOR WOMEN

The women in the suite of 16 students next door ran into my Resident Advisor room without knocking, some in tears, others shouting for my immediate attention. Their suite-mate was lying on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood after returning from the residence hall next door half an hour before, and complaining of pain. She begged them not to get help. They feared they had waited too long. I rushed to her side and shouted to call for an ambulance. Realizing she was hemorrhaging from the vaginal area I pushed towels up against that area trying to stem the flow of blood as she sobbed and begged, “Don’t tell anyone, please.” I went  with the ambulance and waited in the Emergency Room as the doctors and nurses tried to save her life after a butchered abortion. This was the sixth young woman I had tried to save that quarter. That became a pattern. Back then, 1 in 4 female students were victims of rape, not always stranger-rape.

When I was finally allowed to see her, I gained her permission to call her parents whom I knew would want to be at her side. She, like I, was Catholic. She had been raped by her new boyfriend who thought her “NO” was a mere tease when he forced sexual intercourse upon her after “heavy petting”. Her guilty feelings nearly led to her death as she delayed getting medical help. I understood her feelings after 12 years of Catholic school. But, I understood even more profoundly that feelings of guilt are a small price to pay for survival. She agreed. Her parents arrived. We spoke with them together. They forgave her. This suffering victim should have not needed anyone’s forgiveness.

Abortions were illegal then. Women with money, or monied parents with connections, were able to get abortions in private clinics, or by family doctors paid off, or by traveling outside the country. Abortion laws meant nothing to the rich. Abortion laws meant death or maiming to the middle class and poor. To girls with consciences honed smooth by religious training it often meant shameful death. This infuriated me then. It infuriates me now. No one should replace a woman’s conscious choice, her free will, her personal conscience, her control over her ability to survive. Every man has those rights. Women are likewise entitled to those rights.

During my years working in residence halls I helped many young women injured by illegal abortions. Many of the women went to a fellow student who had experience using a clothes hanger to do the job. That’s right, a clothes hanger. Many of these women developed such severe infections they were scarred for life, unable to bear future children, suffering many miscarriages and worse. The entire situation was barbaric.

My church insists on the sanctity of life. I, too, treasure the sanctity of life, the sanctity of all lives including the lives of young women. Who has the right to interfere with her efforts to maintain the sanctity of her own life ? 

I asked our priest when I first learned about abortions  what should a woman do if her life was in danger from a pregnancy. Did she have to die instead of abort a pregnancy ? Did she have a moral right to abort in order to avoid her own death or severe injury? He told me that that kind of decision belonged to the woman and her husband. 

I did not like the part of that answer that placed the woman’s life in her husband’s hands. I had seen enough abuse by husbands and boyfriends in my neighborhood to not trust such decisions to another person. But, I appreciated Father’s position that the woman had a moral right to choose her own life, particularly if she had other children relying upon her. If the mother dies, the family fails, he said. He honored women and the role they play in society. He explained this question did not have a clear answer so had to be between the woman, her doctor, and her family. 

Today, I wonder if that priest would be reprimanded by his Bishop. I hope not. Yet, the American church’s  current moral positions do not allow for such grey areas. Rallies are held at churches. Crosses representing aborted fetuses grace church lawns. Catholic organizers chant outside clinics and harass women seeking help at Planed Parenthood clinics. It is an ugliness no church should sanction, no man of the cloth should approve. Can you imagine Jesus doing so? I cannot. Do these groups attend church sanctioned harassment of military recruiting stations as young persons enlist to go kill other human beings? Killing enemies during war is not a sin I have been told by religious teachers. there are competing moral rights. Are there no longer competing moral rights when women’s wellbeing is at stake?

I knew that relying on the moral teachings by other human beings might not always make sense at my senior year  girls’ silent retreat at a nearby shrine. At the session on human sexuality, the speaker told us that the newly-developed birth control pill worked by destroying the fertilized egg. I knew this was not correct. Birth control pills simply prevented release of an egg by the ovary. So, there was no egg to be fertilized by sperm during sex. One could have sex and not get pregnant. This sounded like a great idea to me. But, relying on this erroneous information became the basis for the church to opine taking birth control pills is a sin in itself. WHAT? “But it does not do that”, I insisted. There is nothing to destroy! there can be no fetus. The speaker insisted I was incorrect. It left me wondering why such lie would be promoted. 

As I explored this topic with other religious pastors of my soul, few acknowledged I was correct about the biology . Those who did so then argued that sex outside marriage is the real sin. Sexual intercourse itself, unless creating new life within the bounds of marriage, is the sin. I asked how a God who created such lovely communion of bodies and souls, when it had no affect on anyone other than the parties involved (so long as the parties had made no vows to others) could be inherently sinful. I never got a good answer. What do these men of God and their parish communities really believe? Or, do they simply fear sex?

Religious arguments are not the point, however meaningful they are to many persons, including myself. The real issue, the only issue, is woman’s right to choose how to live her life, plan her family, protect her health both physical and emotional, do what is best for her other children, and for future children. 

A fetus is not a person by law. Birth is the point when one is considered a person by law. Once laws are changed to recognize a fetus as a person with full legal protections, this will apply to all laws. Lawsuits will be possible against anyone, any company, any organization etc. whose acts affect the fetus. Roe v. Wade only allowed full freedom to women seeking abortion until the fetus they carried would be capable of survival outside the womb. Once that occurred, there are some restrictions on the right to an abortion. The other lie currently in play is that there are routine late-pregnancy abortions. There are not. Roe would not allow it. It only occurs under dire circumstances. 

Still, the woman’s right to survive was protected by Roe. Overturning Roe would overturn a woman’s right to survive. It will be sanctioning injuring, maiming, even killing of women. Because, abortions will not cease. The rich will still get safe abortions. Most women will be in back alleys being butchered.

We cannot quietly watch this happen. Our grand-daughters cannot be allowed to bleed to death and face criminal charges. Those days ended in my lifetime. I cannot silently allow them to resurrect again. Saving our children begins with saving their mothers.