A particularly ghastly attempt to justify abortion religiously shows the challenges pro-lifers still face.
A particularly ghastly attempt to justify abortion religiously shows the challenges pro-lifers still face.
A round the same time that thousands of pro-lifers in Ohio gathered for the state’s March for Life last October, a smaller group of people assembled for a quite different purpose in Maryland. The Nation recently provided a dispatch of their activities at an abortion clinic in a small town in the state.
“A handful of religious leaders and people of faith” had come there, not to protest or dissuade any women inside from following through with their intention of killing the unborn life they bore. Rather, they were there to provide “a blessing for the providers and staff, and the communities they serve, to acknowledge the clinic’s work as sacred.” Their effort is egregious and ghastly. Yet it should remind pro-lifers of the challenge we face.
The dubious blessers had come under the auspices of the Religious Community for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), an abortion-promoting organization formed after Roe v. Wade legalized the practice in all 50 states. It is a successor to the pre-Roe Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion, which facilitated then-illegal abortions.
Katey Zeh, described by The Nation as a “pro-choice Baptist minister,” and Asha Dahya, both in RCRC’s leadership, are a sadly familiar type: professing believers who wish to maintain commitment to abortion access. In that respect, they somewhat resemble the Catholics who publicly supported Kamala Harris. Unlike those Catholics, however, Zeh and Dahya do not admit any moral problem with abortion while trying to minimize it in the grand scheme of all issues.
Instead, they support abortion “because of our faith values, not in spite of them,” because they “believe each one of us is imbued with the divinely-given right to navigate the moral complexity of reproductive decision-making and practice our faith as we know it.” But there is no “moral complexity” in their description of “the holy and sacred work of abortion providers,” or in the characterization by another West Virginia abortion advocate they quote of “abortion care” as a “labor of love.” This treatment of abortion raises it to the level of wannabe-sacrament, and therefore sacrilege; not for nothing do they describe RCRC’s visits (complete with sage and incense) as “rituals.”
When shown, their candor about abortion is perverse. But also welcome, albeit in this sense only: The contrast with Christian doctrine becomes all the more obvious. Zeh and Dahya may have other reasons, in addition to abortion, to dissent from the teaching of the Catholic Church. That church is nonetheless clear: “since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion”; “direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law”; and “formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense.” This belief reflects a biological truth: “From the moment of conception, a unique human being is present,” as Catholic University of America professor Joe Capizzi has written.
Yet it will not suffice to contest this misconceived pro-abortion campaign on theological grounds alone, necessary as that may be. The leaders of this campaign have, without intending, helpfully demonstrated the nature of the challenges pro-life advocates still face.
Zeh and Dahya lament the closure of abortion clinics in some states. There is reason to be skeptical of reports that the number of abortions increased last year. But it is an undeniable truth that abortions are still happening, that unborn lives are still being snuffed out in this country, however much abortion proponents want to posture as the real victims. Pro-lifers should recall who the true victims are, and continue to work to shrink their number.
Zeh and Dahya also revel, as abortion advocates often do, in the fact that some Christians do support abortion — in the case of pro-abortion Catholics, in clear defiance of Church teaching. But these precepts are not subject to plebiscite. To the extent the faithful do not embody them, that is a failure of instruction, one that believers must work to correct.
Understanding the final challenge requires accepting that the RCRC effort is, if nothing else, effective public relations. If successful, it could convince ever more people that the grisly practice of abortion in fact represents true compassion. And it could, either by implication or by direct accusation, further the caricature of the pro-life cause by its opponents: that to be pro-life is only to be pro-birth, not pro-baby or pro-woman.
Fortunately, many pro-lifers already understand the danger this perception, however inaccurate it may be, poses. The 2024 Ohio March for Life was the first since the state’s voters approved a referendum that enshrined a sweeping right to abortion into its constitution. Will Kuehnle, associate director of social concerns at the Catholic Conference of Ohio, believes this stereotyping of opposition to abortion played a role in this vote. He told me he thought “the average person in the United States” did not “believe the pro-life movement cared about the new life or what we can do for a woman who’s in need.” Pro-lifers throughout the state believe they must double down on work they are already doing to counter that perception.
Zeh, Dahya, and RCRC show what could happen if pro-lifers fail. For the sake of the unborn for whom we fight, we must not.