Elizabeth Warren Is Wrong, and the Sisters of Life Show the Way

Y ou are irreplaceable. That’s the first thing you will see when you go to the website of the Sisters of Life. If you know the Sisters of Life, you might associate them with abortion — they take the usual vows religious sisters take to poverty, chastity, and obedience — but their fourth vow is “to protect and enhance the sacredness of every human life.” That means they will help any and every pregnant woman they encounter who needs help. They walk with mothers for life. They are not just pro-birth, as is often a criticism of pro-lifers.

Once in the past year or so, I was trying to find a time to interview Sister Magdalene, who has been running their Visitation Mission for pregnant women in New York City for two decades. She couldn’t speak with me on the first day I asked about because she was going to visit a college with one of the moms and children who are part of the Visitation story.

The moms and children who are born because there was someone to walk with a pregnant woman become family to the Sisters. Their vows make them available for this kind of love and time. They are free to love in a unique way.

I mention the Sisters of Life because now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, we are in desperate need of an encounter with love. Yes, sacrificial love. But even more so: the knowledge of the kind of love that makes clear that your life matters.

Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren wants to shut down so-called crisis pregnancy centers. Pro-life activist and mother Allison Centofante, who emceed the pro-life rally in December outside the Supreme Court for the Mississippi abortion case that ultimately led to the end of Roe, says: Don’t call it a crisis, because she can do this! She’s got this! Women are capable of amazing things. But when it comes to motherhood, our culture downplays her gifts. Abortion says that pregnancy is a burden, that fertility is something to be medicated away. But pregnancy is not an 18-year migraine, and women do not have a disability because they can carry new life in their bodies.

I don’t know what you think of Pope Benedict, but in 2012 he handed me a message to share with all the women of the world, Christian or of other faiths or nonbelievers:

Women of the entire universe, whether Christian or non-believing, you to whom life is entrusted at this grave moment in history, it is for you to save the peace of the world.

That’s not the conventional wisdom about what the Catholic Church says about women! He also said:

At this moment when the human race is undergoing so deep a transformation, women impregnated with the spirit of the Gospel can do so much to aid mankind in not falling.

That word impregnated cannot be missed. That incarnational reality of women is critical for the world. Not every woman gives birth, but every woman has the ability to love in a life-giving way. We need this in the world today. There’s a radical autonomy in the air when what we need is radical hospitality.

Speaking of radical hospitality, one woman whose witness might be able to bridge the false divides between people who are about social justice and those who are against abortion is the late Dorothy Day. She is probably best known as a social activist — a pacifist who was vocal on all the issues of her day in the last century. I’m very aware of her because she was a fellow Catholic New Yorker. She had a key moment of conversion in the church where I spent my undergraduate days at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. She also had an abortion before she converted to Catholicism. And she went to Confession once she became Catholic and asked God for his mercy. Even near the end of her life, she wrote about that abortion. That lost life was still on her mind.

As anyone who has had a brush with mortality or lost a loved one knows, life is painfully precious. It’s clearly a gift. We must protect it. We must cherish it.

In the weeks since the Supreme Court’s decision in the Mississippi abortion case, there has been a lot of focus on distractions. Women who are pregnant and who have cancer can still get health care for their cancer. If your intention isn’t to kill the child, it is not abortion. When there is a ten-year-old girl who is pregnant, there are bigger questions to ask than how quickly can she get an abortion. Ten-year-olds shouldn’t be being raped in the first place. Can we address that? Abortion is such a neuralgic issue. That’s why we have to confront the more foundational issues it involves. What can we do to support families so children will be actually loved and supported and able to flourish?

Abortion isn’t a political issue. It is about so much more. And when we acknowledge that and are willing to work together, we will make progress.

The good news is that the Sisters of Life are praying for that.

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.