An Open Letter to the Catholic Pro-Life Advocates

For a Catholic Pro-life Advocates,

I am writing to you today not to dissuade your efforts or extinguish your passion for protecting children, because I do believe the core of your work is noble and worthy. I was raised in the Catholic Church and have come to learn and hear your perspective on abortion from many passionate voices whose intention is not to hurt women but to save babies. I admire your faith and conviction to speak for the lives of the voiceless. This is the heart of activism, and the heart of your cause. With this, I urge you to consider refocusing this activism, not change your values, so as to help us create a world where all women and children can be gazed upon with the inherent value granted to us by God, and abortions can become obsolete. 

You believe that having a child should be seen not as a burden but a gift, and I agree. Pregnancy should be viewed as a beautiful thing, a time when a mother can wonder who their little baby will become, imagine a future for their lives together, dream big that they will one day cure cancer, fly to space, become president. They should not have to wonder if they might face financial ruin from medical bills alone before they have a chance to meet their baby at all. But this is the reality. A quarter of adult women in the United States are either uninsured or on Medicaid, and Medicaid status for pregnant women is particularly precarious. These mothers are stripped of the luxury to dream because of the presence of fear. Help give these mothers back their right to dream and return value to pregnancy. Fight for healthcare for all so that mother and child may have the gift to live. 

You believe every baby has the potential to change the world and deserves a right to seize it, and I agree. Every person should have the opportunity to discover their gifts, cultivate them, and share them. God bestowed Free Will upon the human race to define our dignity, and no person should be stripped of this. Poverty should not strip you of this. But this is the reality. Poverty is a tremendous driver for abortions. Every other woman who had an abortion in 2014 in the United States was living in poverty. And the chance of their baby breaking the cycle of poverty to reclaim their own Free Will is the exception not the norm. Help give these mothers back their Free Will. Fight for the bolstering of welfare in the United States so that mother and child may choose to live.

You believe that adoption and foster care should be able to replace abortions, and I agree. A mother who wishes to send their baby on a path without them should be able to have peace of mind that they will find a loving family. A child who is removed from an abusive home should have the peace of mind that they will be cared for. They deserve that peace of mind. But this is not the reality. The adoption system is riddled with racism. Black children are valued much less in both private and public adoption systems and remain without a home far longer than white children. The foster care system is riddled with abuse. A child in foster care has four-fold the risk of being a victim of sexual abuse, and 3 in 5 human trafficking victims in the United States at once lived in a foster home. No mother, no child, no person is safe in this reality. Help expose the horrors hidden in the underbelly of adoption and foster care. Fight to change this reality so that mother and child may live in peace. 

You believe that a baby’s life has value, and I agree. But the system does not. The system sees less value in a baby from a poor mother, a baby from a single mother, a baby from a Black mother. Illegal abortions do not change this reality, and until it is, abortions will still happen. Babies will still die. And their mothers will die, too. See the commonalities in our causes, because the power of collective pressure becomes stronger with every voice. I ask you to shift the urgency of your movement to the fundamental causes of abortion to create a world of hope, choice, and peace, a world where the tragedies of abortion can be extinguished, not policed.

Sincerely, A Catholic Pro-Choice Advocate