Conversation with a Catholic Mother

‘Jim, I can’t understand you. We sat beside one another at Mass last Sunday, and I didn’t mind in the least that you had long hair and bare feet. I even thanked God that some of us have the courage of our convictions and try to help the people who are in trouble. My son seems to think you’re the prophet who can say and do nothing wrong. Well, I don’t go as far as that, but I always liked your articles in the Tablet. And then I see that awful ‘Letter to a Priest’ in the Sunday Times. What possessed you to write it? I never thought I’d find you sticking up for the abortionists.’

‘I can’t always understand myself, Mary. You’d better tell your son that sometimes the only thing that stops me shooting myself for being a walking disaster area is the conviction that God has an enormous sense of humour. But the abortion issue is a different matter. There are really two issues. The first issue is abortion itself – whether or not abortion is a grave moral evil. The second issue is the legislation that deals with abortion, or fails to deal with it – whether or not the abortion laws should be investigated, left as they are, or got rid of entirely.’

‘I think you’re splitting hairs. Abortion is murder. I should know. I’ve had five children, and I know that if I’d killed one of them inside me it would have been plain murder. Why shouldn’t there be a law with penalties for people who murder foetuses?’

‘A law has to be workable. To be workable it needs the moral consent of most of the people. If you split your husband’s head with an axe, nobody is going to say it wasn’t murder, or at the very least manslaughter. But if you kill a foetus, perhaps three or four out of ten New Zealanders will count it page 485 murder, and most of those will be Catholics. To go round shouting, ‘Abortion is murder!’ isn’t going to convince the other six or seven that you’re right. You can’t prove it. And the law won’t work unless it has the moral support of the majority of the people. That’s why it’s not working now.’

‘But, Jim, abortion is murder.’

‘I’m inclined to agree with you. A seed is the embryo of a tree. If you kill a seed, logically you are killing the tree that it is going to become. But I think we Catholics have a duty to be scrupulously just when we’re on a crusade. I don’t always measure up to the duty myself. But we have to mention that a minority of theologians would argue that a seed, though living, is not a tree, and a human embryo, though living, is not yet a child. I disagree with them, and so do you. But we should mention that this minority opinion exists in the Church. Even if that small minority were in the right, to kill a foetus would still be a very grave sin. It would simply mean that feticide and infanticide were different crimes.’

‘I’m glad you said crime. No, Jim, you’re just talking abstractly. You’re not a woman, that’s the trouble. If you were a woman, you’d know, whether the Church told you so or not, that to kill an unborn child is a crime of murder and a sin that stinks before God and man!’

‘All right, I’m not a woman. But I don’t think I’m incapable of seeing life through the eyes of a woman friend. How many abortions have you seen performed, Mary? And how many unmarried girls or fellow housewives have you persuaded not to have abortions?’

‘There was one girl, a friend of my daughter’s . . .’.

‘I’ve seen about a hundred abortions. Not with my two eyes. But I’ve been in the company of people who were having abortions, either beforehand or at the time or afterwards. I’ve tried to persuade many women not to have abortions. I’ve suggested possible alternatives. I’ve even tried to construct possible alternatives. I can’t even think of a single case where the woman thought it was morally above board to have an abortion. But I can’t think of a single case either where the present abortion laws prevented someone from having an abortion. The practical effect of the laws was that some of them died in a bed full of blood and some of them got septicaemia and some of them became unable to conceive children . . .’.

‘You could have gone to the police.’

‘Yes, I could have. Perhaps it would have been the morally logical thing to do. But I know, without being able to prove it, that to get a girl who’s going to have an abortion arrested is no answer whatever – just as you know, without being able to prove it, that a foetus a month old is a human being.’

‘I think you’re a moral relativist. You just do whatever suits your own book.’

‘No, I’m not a relativist. I’m a pragmatist. The Lord said we had to judge the tree by its fruit. I don’t think you could hate abortion any more than I do. page 486 I honestly believe I’ve made it possible for several women not to have abortions who would otherwise have had them. But it wasn’t done by threatening them with police action. It was done by giving love and food and shelter and a peaceful environment.’

‘You’re a queer kind of Catholic.’

‘Look, Mary, when the Catholics are engaged in an all-out crusade, and one of their number calls a halt, he shouldn’t be surprised if some of them empty a chamber pot on his head. He should count himself lucky if it’s nothing worse. I’m prepared to say publicly that I believe feticide to be a grave sin. The only question I dispute is whether it’s any help at all to have it formally proclaimed as a crime.’

‘When they legalised abortion in Japan the abortion rate shot up enormously.’

‘I know. They have a million abortions a year. We fought a war with the Japanese to make certain they stayed put on their own over-populated islands. If we had accepted twenty thousand Japanese immigrants, we might have helped to reduce their abortion rate.’

‘You’re unrealistic. We’d never accept that number of Asians here.’

‘I know we wouldn’t. And I know the people in our suburbs are not going to fling open their doors to give support and comfort to strange scruffy girls who think they have to have abortions. And I know the Catholic housewives aren’t going to visit the other ones who are so crazy with depression that they think one more kid will put them round the bend for good. It’s far easier to crusade against the possibility of change in the abortion laws.’

‘You’re unfair. You’re not the only person who’s got a social conscience.’

‘You do your job, Mary. I’ll do mine. Unanimity in the Church may not be what the Lord wants anyway. I promise you, this is the last word I’ll say in print about the abortion laws. I don’t want to have my head chopped off. But if you manage to keep the abortion laws just as they are, don’t forget that half-crazy housewife three doors down the road, and that little scruffy girl.’

‘Yes, there was a friend of my daughter’s . . .’.

‘Now I’ll listen. That’s what makes sense to me. Tell me how you handled things, Mary.’

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