Women Affirming Women

Erika Bachiochi

This morning I went to the Women Affirming Life, Spring Mass and Breakfast Forum.  I was impressed.  I went to help fill out a table of ten, but I enjoyed it so much so, that I'll make a point to attend any other event Women Affirming Life sponsors.

I was blessed in other ways, also.  I met a fellow parishioner, a fellow Lay Dominican, from my very own Chapter, too, a seminarian from St. John's who's also from my parish, and get this--I was surprised to see that I knew the speaker.  When Erika was talking, I had a flash back of her leading a discussion.  Yes!  She taught adult catechism at St. Catherine of Siena parish in Norwood.  It was actually a semester long.  I liked that too, but couldn't complete the course because of schedule problems.

Erika gave a little background on her personal journey then went into apologetics.  Excellent!  She made me think.  She challenged the current world's misconception that the church is anti-women and anti-sex.  Instead of freeing women, it burdened them with unforeseen consequences.   " the ordinary young woman may find no such liberation when she has sex with her date, thinking, as women are prone to do, that sex will bind the two emotionally. Instead, when he doesn't share the depth of her feelings and then hands her $400 for the abortion when she becomes pregnant, it’s not only her heart that’s broken. She alone has to live with the possible short-term and long-term medical consequences of the abortion for the rest of her life. For many women, “reproductive freedom” has meant that women continue to negotiate all that comes with reproduction while men enjoy the freedom of sex without consequences."


Fun, huh?


She challenges women to be women.  Forget competing with men.  They're dirt and women are bone.  (References to Genesis, where men are made from dirt.)  "Today, more women are challenging the pro-abortion feminist idea that their children are a burden to success and equality. Ordinary women want to be honored as women — not to have to sacrifice their children for equality with men. Women are beginning to realize that they’d been sold on the idea that a mother is of far less value than a fully engaged professional person. During an era in which motherhood was revered much more than it is today, President Theodore Roosevelt said: “[The mother] is the most indispensable component part of society.” The work of men, he said, is not “as hard or as responsible as the work of a woman who is bringing up a family of small children.... I think the duty of the woman the more important, the more difficult, and the more honorable of the two.”


Think of how competing in a man's world has made women expendable.  Anybody could do any employee's job.  Nobody's irreplaceable.  


How about a mother?


Ouch.


No one can equal a mother in the care and education she provides to her children.  Is career status more valuable than the lives of children?


There was one more morally reprehensible argument that shook me.  I've heard that the poor needed access to abortion because they couldn't afford to leave the country to get one, like the rich could.  That the poor had too many mouths to feed and needed abortions to curb the reproduction rate of their families.  They needed ready access to government funded abortion.
This would help them out of poverty.


B. as in Bull.  S. as in Sh**!


What an elitist fallacy!  Justice Blackmun, author of the Supreme Court's opinion in Roe v. Wade, said:


...that the cost of elective abortion is far less than the cost of maternity care and delivery, as well as the welfare costs that will burden the state for the new indigents and their support in the long, long years ahead... without taxpayer funding of abortion for the poor, the cancer of porverty will grow.


Abortion didn't lift poor women out of poverty.  The rich were ridding themselves from the problems of the poor.  And that didn't happen, either.  Abortion created more problems.  It has created a culture hostile to women, motherhood, and children.  It has created a population of women with anxiety, depression, and suicidal tendencies.  Mental health claims are currently higher than they ever have been.  How about the link between abortion and breast cancer?  Yeah, a full - term pregnancy acts as a protective mechanism against breast cancer.  


The poor are poorer.


See, This Women Affirming Life Forum was a success.  I learned some new facts and arguments.  I reconnected with some friends.  And..........I had a good breakfast, too.