Rebecca, welcome to Catholic Answers Live. Hi, thank you for having me. So why are you
pro-choice, Rebecca? I am pro-choice--I'm not ashamed to say my age, I am 40 years
old this year, I was born in 1974 obviously, so post Roe v. Wade--and
I am pro-choice because I was raised that pro-life equals anti-woman, which is
the first thing; and I actually became a nurse and now I'm a psychologist, I got
my doctorate, but it wasn't until I got older, and...as I told your producer, I'm
pro-choice but I want discussion. And I think right now in America there is no
room, especially for a woman of my age, to have a discussion from the other side.
I'm a cradle Catholic, I was raised Catholic, married in the Catholic Church,
my husband is actually from Belfast, Ireland, and very Catholic and very proud
to be so. Rebecca, we'll have to go here to a break really soon, but can I ask you a quick
question? Why is pro-life anti-woman? I don't understand
that. I think that it's made to be--all of the
literature, all of the teachings, even in sex ed in schools, it's--you can't tell
a woman what to do with her body. It's her property. It's her choice. It has
nothing to do with a woman, and it's gonna save me somehow. Rebecca, this is
Patrick, we're just about to run into that hard break that we have to take, we
don't have a choice, but the timing of it. But if you're willing to stick around
a little bit, we can have the have the very open topic you've been
hoping to have, and now the country and the rest of the listeners around the
world will hear it. So thanks so much for your question and for your willingness
to engage. Rebecca in Barrington, Illinois is pro-choice, she's married to a Catholic
man from Belfast, Ireland, and she has been taught that, at least on an impression
level, that to be pro-life is to be anti- woman. Have I summarized your position
accurately, Rebecca? Yes you have, and actually it was something, I believe--
I just wrote down Trent's book that I have to get, I just remembered
instantly and in a moment of why I was pro-choice and when I first got that
impression. And it was my first year of high school, I went to Catholic grammar
school for eight years and then I went to a public high school, where in my
very first sex ed class, all they did when they presented the topic of
abortion was say: "This is by men and older women, and this Catholic Church, who
has the troubles of molestation and they're totally anti-woman, they want to
keep women in bondage." Rebecca, who told you that? It was my first sex ed teacher.
We had "Becoming A Person" in my grammar school, where my dad is actually
a teacher--" So it's a cumulative effect built up over time. Alright, Rebecca, yeah, I want to just address this so far,
because I guess I'm having a hard time seeing how a lot of this really relates
to abortion very much. I mean, tell me this--here's my position: all human beings
have an equal right to live, regardless of how old they are or young they are,
and regardless of whether they live in a crib or in the womb. Now to me, tell me:
what is anti-woman about that position? Now, I would understand, if I said that
only women could not have abortions, but men could have abortions, that would
be anti-woman, I'd agree with you. But I'm not saying that. I'm just saying: all humans
are equally valuable, have an equal right to live; whether they're in the crib or
in the womb, we protect their lives. Tell me, Rebecca, what's anti-woman about
that? I now see your point, having gotten older a little, but I am still--fetal
viability, which was supposedly the way--I'm sorry? How do you define "viability,"
Rebecca? Can the baby, the unborn, preborn--it's that language
too, again, is looked down so much in society that I think people who are very
pro-life don't really look around and see how we're teaching our
young women. Okay, Rebecca, but what's "viable?" "Viable," meaning "Can they
live by themselves outside of the womb?" Okay. And I still believe that that's how life is determined.
Well Rebecca, you're talking to two dads here, I remember him birth of my kids very
vividly--Trent more than me--how long would your son last, after being born, if
left alone? Yeah if--even now, my son's four months
old, if he was left on his own he would probably be dead in 24 to 48 hours. He
can't care for himself. He's not viable in that sense. I mean, there are some
children, they're not viable for decades until they're 30 or 40 years old,
they can't--they're so immature, they can't care for themselves.
I guess, Rebecca, here's my question: why does viability matter? Why is it the case
that we can say: "It's legal to kill a baby when they are totally dependent on
their mom, but it's illegal to kill that baby when other people can take care of
them?" How does that make sense? I'm trying to think of a really
good way to answer that, and all I can do is--so please forgive if I go into
rhetoric that I was taught, was not "Can the baby survive and feed itself," but
things like, "Could this baby breathe on its own?" You're saying,
"Unless this child can live outside of the womb, they're not a person." That's
your position. That, yes, that is what I have believed for the longest time. And here's my question,
though: why is that child not a person when they're living and
growing in the womb? Because technically, even through nursing school, we're taught
that up until about the sixth or seventh month of gestation, that baby
technically will be called a parasite. Not that I believe babies are parasites, but
I have come in time... Why is the baby a parasite? Because it cannot survive or
even just stay in life without getting all of its nutrients, oxygen,
blood supply from another human being. Right, so, Rebecca, here's your position, basically: it's okay to
kill a baby when they're at their maximum level of helplessness.
Right? I see that. And does that sound compassionate?
Not at all. "It's okay to kill a baby because they're at their maximum
level of helplessness. When they're at 90% helplessness, then it's not okay." Then it's wrong.
When it's cute and cuddly it's wrong, but before it's not. And the only difference
here is they've just become a little bit more helpless. For me, what does it
matter? That's right, when they're in the womb, they need their mother to survive.
But we all went through that stage. I just don't see, how does it make sense
that just because someone is very helpless, it means they don't deserve our
assistance? If anything, Rebecca, I think it's reversed; that when someone is very
very helpless--like crimes against children are worse than crimes against
adults. And crimes against the elderly are unforgivable, absolutely.
Because of the helplessness. When a victim is more
helpless, the crime is even worse. So just because the child--to me saying "It's okay
to end the life of a fetus because they're not viable;" well, part of the
definition of a "fetus" is just "you can't live outside of the womb." That's just
picking something--yes, that's what they are, but that doesn't give us a reason to
think they don't deserve assistance like other people. So I think that's where you
and I--I believe all humans should be treated equally, no matter how helpless
they are. I hear someone who's divided, Rebecca. I'm not buying that
you're a fully committed ideologue here. I think you're on the fence and maybe,
frankly, shaking a little bit. I will admit, I am shaking, and when
I was in college I marched for pro-choice, I was one of the other
counter-protesters outside of a clinic, and now, having met someone who has
always been devoted in his faith and in the teachings of our Church, and...
thankfully my parents let me decide and learn things for myself, I remember
asking these questions even in graduate school, and what I think people don't
understand in the pro-life movement is that, you know how you were
just speaking about the Holocaust, if you it said "Oh gosh, I don't want to look at
that, that's horrible," you would be damned
for it. I'm saying that, as a woman, as a young woman, if I had said "Why do we
really determine that that's not a baby--" because the language that you just said,
about a person being its most helpless, a baby being its most helpless, in schools
and colleges even, that that is not a baby, it's not a baby until it's born and
can breathe on its own... Right, hence terms like "parasite." I think that's a way, you know, when
people say that our schools don't... Rebecca, let me jump in here for a second. Let
me jump in. I would agree that in these schools, in some context, when we talk
about abortion we do that. But in other contexts, when we talk about trying to
save the baby's life, and the mom wants the baby and prevent a miscarriage, then
we can recognize it's a baby. But I do thank you very much for calling, and for
thinking through these issues. And I hope that you'll continue to think it through,
and that you'll pick up a copy of my book Persuasive Pro-Life; and in there,
you can see the whole position, and that I think it's rooted in science and
reason, and it's a compassionate and fair position. Am I remembering correctly
that you talk about the concept of viability? That's completely relative. I
mean, if I live on an ice floe on the Baffin Island in the Arctic, and my
wife's pregnant, versus in downtown Los Angeles next to Children's Hospital,
viability is a very bendy, flexible term. Viability changes with technology, so
that's one reason to think that it's not a good measure of whether you're a
person. But for me, there's a more fundamental problem and that's this: yes,
there is a fact, at a point, when a child can survive outside of the womb; but why
does that matter? Who cares? We, as born people, assign value
to living outside the womb, but why does it have value? Because we're all like
that? That's like saying, you know, a bunch of men saying "Having a Y chromosome is
great, because we've all got it." Well, who says? To me, it just doesn't follow in that.
It just becomes a circular argument to say "Viability matters, because that's
when you can survive on your own." Well why does that matter? "Because when you
can survive on your own, that's when you're viable." Right. It's completely
circular. And also, Patrick, I mean lots of animals are viable. Like rats. When
they're born, they're all viable. They can survive outside of the womb. Right. But
they're not people. You'd say, "Well, they're not human." Ah, so that's the
criteria then, really. It's being human and viable. But then why does the human
part matter at all?