Sister Joan Chittister provides the perfect response to the anti-abortionist, pro-life movement. Chittister’s remarks are not new. They have been out there for a while.
Here’s Sister Chittister’s memorable quote:
"I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is," -- Sister Joan Chittister
Her remark is particularly applicable today as it ever has been in the past.
Today, the United States is under the burden of a Trump presidency and a Republican-led Congress who continue to introduce and pass restrictive legislation against women’s reproductive rights. They work to shut down women’s health clinics, and have a special vendetta against Planned Parenthood.
“President Donald Trump’s budget proposal together with the American Health Care Act, which Trump’s proposal embraces, would deny all federal funding to Planned Parenthood through both discretionary Title X grants and Medicaid.” -- CNSNews
Moreover, “Earlier this year Trump also announced he was withholding $32.5 million in funding earmarked for the U.N. Population Fund, the lead United Nations agency on family planning and maternal health. Trump made that decision on the grounds that the agency helps to support a Chinese government family planning program that forces people to get abortions and sterilizations — a determination that both the agency and many advocates for foreign aid vigorously dispute.
“The impact on women and children worldwide would be severe, contends the abortion rights advocacy group PAI. In an analysis released this week based on research data compiled by the Guttmacher Institute, PAI calculates that the reduction in family planning services that would result from ending U.S. funding would lead to 3.3 million more abortions, 15,000 more maternal deaths, 8 million more unintended pregnancies, and 26 million fewer women and couples receiving services per year.” -- NPR.org
I end this with another quotation from the beautifully dissident Sister:
“It’s so easy to be a one-issue voter. It’s also so superficial to be a one-issue anything. It’s a narrow, delimiting approach to the very essence of life. As in, I go to church every Sunday but I don’t believe in welfare. I’m not going to support slackers. If people worked as hard as I do, they could take care of themselves, too. Or even worse, ‘there’s no such thing as equal.’
“And there may be some truth in that. But it is also true that all humans must be enabled to live as human beings — with dignity and decency — or the rest of us are no longer fully human beings ourselves, whether we realize it or not,
“The fact is that suffering built into the system for many will finally erode the lives of us all. “ -- Sister Joan Chittister
A moral world is one whose societies realize that none of us can manage alone without the help of those who believe that every life is as important as their own.
By Sister Joan Chittister
