The "Reproductive Fight" Isn't About Reproduction
My response to a 2021 NYT essay, in light of a sacrilegious pro-choice protest
Author’s Note: I originally wrote this piece in 2021, the day after the publication of Ms. Manson’s opinion editorial in the pages of the New York Times. I have never published it until tonight—January 20, 2022. Ms. Manson is the President of Catholics for Choice, an organization that staged a protest earlier this evening outside of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. Unsurprisingly, this protest and the organization behind it trotted out the same decades-old talking points, none of which actually engage with the Church’s core teachings on human dignity. We are one day shy of the 49th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. It is time for the barbarism of abortion to end.
—
Ms. Jamie Manson’s recent guest essay in the New York Times (“The Catholic Church’s Reproductive Fight is About Controlling Womens’ Freedom,” May 27, 2021) is riddled with errors of fact and misleading half-truths. Because of these flaws, Ms. Manson has blinded herself (and her audience) to the profundity of Catholic teaching on issues of so-called “reproductive rights.” All of the Catholic Church’s teachings are rooted in the inherent dignity of every human being, each of whom is indelibly stamped with the Image of God. To miss this insight is to overlook the coherence and consistency of the Church’s precepts.
Let us focus first on the errors of fact. First, Ms. Manson’s moving account of her medically necessary hysterectomy implies that such a procedure is forbidden in Catholic moral theology. This is patently false. In 1993, for example, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger authored a document bearing the seal of Pope John Paul II, which stated clearly and unambiguously that “when the uterus becomes so seriously injured . . . so as to render medically indicated even its total removal (hysterectomy) in order to counter an immediate serious threat to the life or health of the mother,” such a procedure is morally licit.
The same document explains that “[this] hysterectomy is licit because it has a directly therapeutic character, even though it may be foreseen that permanent sterility will result. In fact, it is the pathological condition of the uterus which makes its removal medically indicated.” This distinction arises from a longstanding principle of Catholic moral theology known as the Doctrine of Double Effect, in which an act (in this case, a hysterectomy) is permissible if it is aimed at a good effect (the alleviation of a serious pathology) despite a foreseeable but unintended bad consequence (the inability to carry a child).
Second, Ms. Manson also claims that the Catholic Church has “notably little to say about methods to control male sexuality.” This also is untrue. Take, for example, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Healthcare Services. Paragraph 53 forbids procedures--for both women and men--that result in sterilization, if the procedures are not aimed at a “cure or alleviation of a present and serious pathology.” Additionally, in 1977--sixteen* years before the 1993 document on hysterectomies--the Holy See reiterated that vasectomies for the purpose of birth control are morally forbidden (a statement that The New York Times even covered).
Third, Ms. Manson claims without evidence that United States bishops are “[abusing] the sacraments as a tool of intimidation” by suggesting the possibility of withholding communion from pro-choice public leaders. She is referencing a vote, slated for June’s assembly, on whether or not the bishops will allow the USCCB Committee on Doctrine to author a pedagogical document on the Eucharist. To assert that this is simply a “trope of threatening to deny [pro-choice politicians] access to communion,” as Ms. Manson does, is to mislead and to ignore what the bishops themselves have said: Archbishop José Gomez, President of the USCCB, wrote to his brother bishops last week that “the focus of this proposed teaching document is on how best to help people to understand the beauty and mystery of the Eucharist as the center of their Christian lives.” Archbishop Samuel Aquila of Denver published his own statement, pointing out that “the issue of [access to communion] is primarily a question of love, a question of charity toward our neighbor. St. Paul is clear that there is danger to one’s soul if he or she receives the body and blood of our Lord in an unworthy manner.” To reduce this to mere weaponization or political exclusion is to ignore the central truth that the bishops are reiterating: the Eucharist is not a meal of physical sustenance but a sacrament of grace--a supernatural act that effects and perfects the unity it signifies.
Because of these inaccuracies, Ms. Manson is unable to recognize the goodness, beauty, and truth of Catholic teaching. The Church’s prohibition on abortion procedures stems from a larger corpus of thought, but that corpus is not about “controlling women’s freedom,” as Ms. Manson insists. Rather, it is about facilitating each person’s flourishing as a human being.
True, the Catholic Church does not recognize the modern notion of bodily autonomy. But it rejects this notion because none of us are ever really autonomous or independent. Rather, we are interdependent creatures--we all were nourished to life in the womb of a mother, raised by others, and will be cared for at death by family, friends, doctors, and nurses. Along the way, we build friendships, experience heartbreak, commune in nature, and interact with our environments. (Check out my friend Leah Libresco Sargeant’s recent work in Plough, or her Substack Other Feminisms, for more on this idea.) The myth of autonomy is that our decisions can only affect ourselves; the reality is that everything we do affects the integrated whole.
Interdependence is the first thing to understand about Catholic moral teaching. Because of this reality of interdependence, the Catholic Church also forbids divorce, calls us to environmental stewardship, and commands us to practice the corporal works of mercy (e.g. feed the hungry, visit the sick, etc.).
The second thing to understand about Catholic moral teaching is that its entire edifice is built upon the reality that each and every one of us--regardless of creed, sex, self-identification, status, desires, and fears--is made by a God who is Love and who loves us. And God’s love for us is so intense that He has imprinted on each of us the abilities to reason, to will, and to love. This special identity of the human person extends to everyone, from the healthy olympic athlete to the oxygen-dependent octogenarian in a nursing home and the placenta-dependent baby in the womb.
Ms. Manson assumes that the Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion is rooted in a desire to suppress women. But it is nothing of the sort. For millennia, the Church has upheld the unique dignity and responsibilities of women as essential for a flourishing society, and it has continued to do so in recent decades. In December 1965, for example, Paul VI especially addressed women at the close of the Second Vatican Council, saying “it is for you to save the peace of the world.” Contrary to reducing women to their uterine capacities (as Ms. Manson claims), John Paul II in 1988 warned against “an exclusively biophysiological interpretation of women” that would obscure the essential character of femininity or ignore the unique debt that each of us owes to women for our very existence. [2022 update: This “exclusively biophysiological interpretation of women” is on display, I think, in the New York Times’ recent description of women as “menstruators.”]
And the gifts of women are distinct from what men can offer (indeed, one could argue that they are even greater than the gifts of men). To evaluate women’s societal “progress” based solely on how well women can perform the job of men is the essence of patriarchal discrimination, the consequence of which is to hide rather than reveal the dignity of women. The Church’s primary concern has never been to obscure women or to prevent them from reaching their potential, but rather to safeguard the richness of what women have to offer the world.
Ms. Manson describes herself as “haunted” by the Church’s teachings on the theology of the body. That description is apt. One of the great American Catholic women of the last century, Flannery O’Connor, was once asked why she wrote so much about odd, irrational characters. “I think it is safe to say,” wrote Flannery, “that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn't convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive.” For many of us, the Church’s teachings are haunting precisely because they teach us something that we fear is true but that we don’t want to believe. We would do well to heed the haunting.
Zac Crippen is the host of Creedal, a theology and culture podcast. Subscribe to his writing, podcast, or YouTube channel.
*A previous version of this post posited that there were twenty-six years between 1977 and 1993. Thank you to my friend Ishan for pointing out the correction!
—
Thanks for reading. I plan to get back to regular writing in 2022, so if you like what you read (or even if you just found it interesting), please sign up for the Substack email list!