A fine article in America magazine.
My pro-choice views (and I imagine those of many others) were motivated by loving concern: I just did not want women to have to suffer, to have to devalue themselves by dealing with unwanted pregnancies. Since it was an inherent part of my worldview that everyone except people with “hang-ups” eventually has sex, and that sex is, under normal circumstances, only about the relationship between the two people involved, I was lured into one of the oldest, biggest, most tempting lies in human history: the enemy is not human. Babies had become the enemy because of their tendency to pop up and ruin everything; and just as societies are tempted to dehumanize their fellow human beings on the other side of the line in wartime, so had I, and we as a society, dehumanized what we saw as the enemy of sex.As I was reading up on the Catholic Church’s understanding of sex, marriage and contraception, everything changed. I had always assumed that Catholic teachings against birth control were outdated notions, even a thinly disguised attempt to oppress the faithful. What I found, however, was that these teachings expressed a fundamentally different understanding of sex. And once I discovered this, I never saw the world the same way again.
It sometimes surprises people who have an idea of what the Church teaches to really read what the church teaches. A fine starting point is the Catechism, in which the Church tells you what it believes, and why. It is a finely reasoned document which very few of the Church's critics will ever take the time to read, because it is more convenient to dismiss the Catholic church than it is to debate it.
Ideally I would have taken an objective look at when human life begins and based my views on that alone, but the lie was just too tempting. I did not want to hear too much about heartbeats or souls or brain activity. Terminating pregnancies simply had to be acceptable, because carrying a baby to term and becoming a parent is a huge deal, and society had made it very clear that sex was not a huge deal. As long as I accepted the premise that engaging in sex with a contraceptive mentality was morally acceptable, I could not bring myself to consider that abortion might not be acceptable. It seemed inhumane to make women deal with life-altering consequences for an act that was not supposed to have life-altering consequences.
And that's the heart of the lie. Separating the purpose of sex (to create new life) from its side benefits (pleasure and love) leads inexorably to contraception, and from contraception to abortion. We are responsible for our actions, and what we lose sight of is the fact that sex is an act fraught with deep moral consequences; it is the stuff of life (and death) itself. It does indeed have life-altering consequences. Which is why it ought not to be engaged in lightly. Which is why marriage is the proper place for it.
The prohibition on abortion in the Catholic church has nothing to do with the Church wishing to control people. The church is simply telling you what the real (potential) cost of the act is -- it can generate life. A person confronted with that life then has a choice -- do I nurture this life or do I exterminate it? No one else will tell you what the cost of sex is except the church, which is why it reserves it to those who can raise a newborn.
Hat tip to Carl Olson.