Des Moines, Iowa, Feb 5, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- While some Iowa Democrats pushed back against the presidential candidates’ strong support for abortion at Monday’s state caucus, other “moderate” pro-life voters backed pro-abortion candidates anyway.
With recent polling suggesting that there are as many as 21 million pro-life Democrats in the country, their support, and how they prioritize life issues, could play a key role in picking the Democratic candidate for this year’s presidential election. CNA spoke to Democratic caucus goers and precinct captains to find out how pro-lifers lined up for Monday’s Iowa caucus.
Iowa, the first of the states to vote for the Democratic presidential nominee, held its caucuses on Monday evening. Due to systemic failure of electronic tallying software, no official winner was declared and precinct results were not released until Tuesday afternoon. Final results had still not been issued by Wednesday morning, but preliminary returns and in-house predictions from candidates’ campaigns suggested a win for Pete Buttigieg, with Sen. Bernie Sanders in a close second.
Kathy Richardson, a pediatric nurse practitioner in Carroll, Iowa, and a precinct captain for Joe Biden, said the issue was still being brought up to her in last-minute canvassing for Biden on Monday.
The life issue, she told CNA, is extremely important to everyone in the state, Catholics in particular. While some national campaigns have encouraged women to “shout your abortion,” Richardson said she doesn’t know anyone who favors abortion.
“It’s awful,” she said, telling CNA that as a nurse practitioner she believes that life begins at conception.
Nevertheless, Richardson said she believed that the state “shouldn’t be telling women what to do for their body and health,” and that the adult mother should have greater rights than an embryo who is not yet viable.
Recent polling shows that 44% of Democrats nationally support a ban on abortion after the first trimester of pregnancy.
Democratic presidential candidates like Andrew Yang, Buttigieg, and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have explicitly said that, even in late-term abortion scenarios, the decision should be up to the mother and not lawmakers.
Late-term abortions are “horrifying,” Richardson said, but are rare and usually done for the health of the mother. They should be restricted only to cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is at stake, she said—a formula considered a “traditional” Democratic position for moderate voters in west Iowa.
In the current Democratic presidential lineup, every candidate supports taxpayer-funded abortion—which many Democrats used to oppose, including Joe Biden before he reversed his position last summer. And while “safe, legal, and rare” used to define the abortion stances of many politicians, Sanders in a recent debate challenged “the men of this country” to support abortion, and called the practice “healthcare,” while Warren said that “abortion rights are human rights.”
The 2016 DNC platform called abortion “core to women’s, men’s, and young people’s health and wellbeing” and advocated for taxpayer-funded abortion.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the right to life must be recognized by civil society. Pope St. John Paul II wrote in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae that “a law which violates an innocent person’s natural right to life is unjust and, as such, is not valid as a law.”
Two precinct captains for Biden and Buttigieg in Carroll County justified their support for the pro-abortion Democrats by pointing to Republicans, who, Richardson claimed, “don’t care about the child when it’s born,” citing proposals to cut to food stamps and pediatric education.
“What this administration has done to the children at the border,” she asked of Trump policy which separated migrant families. Richardson said the policy “breaks [her] heart” and could cause lasting trauma for children.
Buttigieg’s precinct captain Kyle Ulveling, who is also chair of the Iowa Board of Medicine, estimated that voters in Carroll were “moderate” on the abortion issue and that around 60 of the 81 caucus-goers at the Ward 1 precinct were “pro-life.”
Illustrating the gap between voters and candidates, each of the candidates that received first-ballot votes at the precinct—Yang, Warren, Sanders, Biden, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar— has come out in support of codifying Roe v. Wade into federal law, and enshrining taxpayer-funding for abortion. Three of the candidates support making abortion-inducing drugs available over-the-counter. Warren and Sanders would have abortion and contraception covered under their Medicare-for-All plans.
Some pro-life Democrats, however, are actively pushing for change within the party and won’t support the presidential front-runners.
One week before the caucuses, at a Des Moines townhall, Kristen Day asked Buttigieg point-blank if he wanted the support of her and other pro-life Democrats.
“I am pro-choice,” Buttigieg responded. “And I believe that a woman ought to be able to make that decision [on abortion].” He added that if pro-life Democrats wouldn’t support him for that, he understood.
Day said she received encouragement from nearby audience members for her question, but Buttigieg was also greeted with loud applause for his answer upholding legal abortion.
“We’ve had enough,” Day told CNA afterwards, calling on pro-life Democrats to hold candidates accountable on the issue.
“We are told time and time again that it is not the right time to fight for what we believe in,” Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America, stated in a Facebook post on Tuesday. “We believe that life in the womb is worthy of protection. Our party does not.”
“Too many people whisper, ‘I am a pro-life Democrat too. Keep up the good work.’ But they fear the repercussions of stating this position in public,” Day said, adding that “our party can and should do better, and we will not be silent.”
Lizzy Dowd, a Catholic student at Drake University in Des Moines, was present that evening. She planned to advocate for pro-life language in the party’s platform at her neighborhood precinct on Monday night.
“I am not trying to infiltrate this party with my pro-life views. Rather, I would love to just see a positive change, I’d love to see people’s minds and hearts be opened,” Dowd told CNA on Monday.
She credited her pro-life views to growing up in a household that emphasized “the mentality of the sanctity of life in action.”
“If we as Democrats are going to uphold the dignity of the person at the border, and inmates on death row, and the homeless and those struggling in poverty, then it only makes sense to uphold the life and the dignity of that child in the womb as well,” she said.
“I would love to take that one step further and respect every life.”
Another Democrat did not caucus on Monday night. Jim Plew, who attended Mass on Tuesday morning at St. Mary of Nazareth parish in suburban Des Moines, told CNA he identified as a Democrat did not caucus on Monday because of the candidates’ uniform support of abortion. Plew told CNA he was still undecided in the election.
Another Catholic CNA spoke with, after daily Mass on Monday in St. Anthony’s parish in south Des Moines, said she would be voting for Trump and named the life issue as her first issue. Another Trump supporter in Carroll, Dennis Ritchie, gave as his first reason of support that Trump “is against abortion.”
“Nobody else talks about the children,” Ritchie told CNA.
In the more heavily-Catholic Dubuque, on the eastern edge of the state, one Catholic college student caucused for Sanders and pleaded with other Catholics to do the same.
Carlos Garrido—a Catholic student at Loras college in Dubuque—supported Sanders because he saw his mother forego medical treatment for a condition to spare the family from medical debt. He thinks Sanders’ advocacy for Medicare-for-All is part of Catholic Social Teaching, along with his opposition to “war,” support for affordable education, and other issues.
Sanders’ proposal would have abortions and contraceptives covered in Medicare-for-All, and he said more abortions and contraceptives should made available for women in poor countries in response to a townhall question about population control as a means to slow climate change.
Garrido acknowledged Sanders’ abortion support wouldn’t square with Church teaching but said that the provision of contraceptives in Sanders’ health plan would reduce abortions. The Catholic Church teaches that contraception is immoral.
“I realize that that’s not ethical,” Garrido said of abortion, “but I think it’s important to address the problems of the human beings that are here now that are suffering, and then to focus on the problems of beings that have the potentiality of becoming human beings.”
“Maybe I divert a little bit from the Church on that aspect,” Garrido said, citing his concern with addressing “suffering that is here now” and that “29,000 kids are still dying every day from preventable causes.”
According to the World Health Organization statistics from 2010-2014, around 56 million abortions were conducted per year, or more than 150,000 per day.
The U.S. Catholic bishops, in a letter accompanying their document “Faithful Citizenship,” called abortion a “preeminent” priority among other important issues, a priority underscored recently by Pope Francis.
In eastern Iowa, “the Catholic community here has suffered from immense propaganda that makes them become one-issue voters,” Garrido said, claiming that Sanders “checks off every one of” the boxes of Catholic Social Teaching. “Maybe not the abortion one, but if he’s checking off everything else except for one, I think that’s a lot better than a candidate who only checks off one,” he said.
Dowd, meanwhile, expressed her frustration that pro-life Democrats would support a pro-abortion candidate because of another issue.
“We can’t continue to allow these extremist pro-abortion candidates into office, and keep thinking they’re going to make our culture more pro-life, because you can’t make the culture more pro-life while still allowing these very extreme abortion policies like late-term abortion and partial-birth abortion,” she said.
“We have to have those laws in place in order for life to be truly respected at every stage,” she said.
[…]
Speaker Pelosi and Abp. Cordileone had a disagreement about who should decide this [family size and timing]? Really? That’s what she heard?
Funny. I’ve been impressed by the cardinal’s unfailing articulateness.
I agree that his articulateness has been outstanding, but his actions have been, to date, non-existent. For every Catholic who sees his remarks, ten, twenty, or one hundred will see “Catholic” Pelosi’s remarks. The Catholic Church will not “turn around” until our actions mirror our words.
I would guess that virtually every active Catholic knows someone who thinks they are a good Catholic, but who doesn’t follow Church teachings.
Speaker Pelosi’s remarks are rationalizations; she is a Catholic in name only and not practice. God will judge and I ask her to go back and study the 10 Commandments and the Bible.Dr.Maxine Turek
Nancy Pelosi is not a Catholic. She has other attitudes or free will choices that are in error with the fasith. She uses the mantle of of “Catholic” as dressing for being a good person. I am stopping here because I also am a sinner. I dread have Jesus as my judge but rejoice having Him as my savior. Mrs. Pelosi should consider these words.
Yes, God gave us free will to choose Heaven or Hell. Nancy has chosen the latter.
I note Erik Rosales’ frequent challenging questions in his capacity as EWTN’s Capitol Hill correspondent.
“…vigilantes and bounty hunters…” Silly me, I thought the Aztec Pelosi was referring to the well-paid Abortion Industry and other such head hunters.
God gave us a will to choose His good because His good leads to our eternal happiness. His sixth commandment was, is, and always shall be: “Thou shalt not kill.”
To enact laws, to proclaim a ‘right’ or a ‘freedom’ to kill, to require others to remotely participate all act against the sixth commandment. Killing a human being is a mortal sin. This life gives but a foreshadowed glance at eternity.
Jesus Christ will call Nancy to her reckoning whether she wills it or no. One prays that a spark of the Holy Spirit may inspire her intellect to glimpse the depravity underneath make-up and mask. A heart and soul at odds with God’s commandment count for more than make-up and a dress.
Always heartening reading your posts
Thank you to Gilberta for correcting my math! The FIFth commandment is “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”
Meiron, unless I’ve been misled, I believe it’s #5 you’re referring to.
Thank you, Gilberta. Good catch.👍
I have long suspected that abortion is the (I hate to use the word) “sacrament” of the liberals. I believe child sacrifice is what the devil demands to keep the liberals in power. Every single time the pro-life movement achieves any small amount of success, the liberals fight like those possessed to take that victory away from them. Child sacrifice must be protected at all costs!
Well, when a person hovers on either side of 80, she or he ought to consider that payment will soon be due. They have had their run, and Moloch will soon require payment for giving them a life of power, wealth, and prestige.
In 1998, Ginette Paris, PhD, who is a Jungian, published a book titled The Sacrament of Abortion that is a defense of, even homage to, abortion as a sort of pagan sacrifice.
Yes, a pagan sacrifice. Abortion is sometimes presented to young girls in trouble as a Rite of Initiation into “modernity.”
Of the same mentality as the late 1960s Red Guard Movement in China, which fully initiate a new generation activists into Communism, replicating the initiatory and costly Long March of 1934-35 into central China (of 100,000, less than ten percent survived), which galvanized the leadership role of Chairman Mao Zedong. Or, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge initiation of a Communist order in Cambodia in 1975-79 (two million victims, one fourth of the population). Or any smaller street-gang initiations in our cities.
And now, slow motion throughout the declining West (over 60 million in the United States since 1973). Spearheaded by Aztec Pelosi’s defense of late-term-abortions as “sacred ground” (June 2013). Once initiated with blood on one’s hands, there can be no “turning back”.
Wait, what? There CAN always be Redemption. Someone wrote a book about that, too.
Redemption even for the West as a whole, and for the whole world, and for the whole soul of each of us. “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Mt 28:19).
A question for the successors of the Apostles: “synodality, yes, and what else”?
Thanks for that information, Carl. I am going to check into that.
Might be of interest: Carl Jung was a free mason and suffered as a child from abuse wherein his personality was split into multiples. The evidence cited for this is his posthumously published “Red book”. Red is the colour the Free Masons use to paint their Abuse Rooms under their lodges/temples according to the book by Alexandre Lebreton in French. The takeaway: “Psychology” was a Free Masonic psuedo-science founded to help the Rulers of the Novos Ordo study and learn how to more effectively abuse kids and keep their victims silent. A further piece of the Novos Ordo falls into place…? The book, is called “Franc-maçonnerie et schizophrénie.” ISBN: 9781913890049. It is not a source of feelgood joy in the beauty of creation, but an executive summary and tool for those trying to understand why the Sankt Gallen Mafia seek to destroy God’s Divinely Founded Institution well into their old age with no apparent fear of damnation… One has to conclude they are seriously sick. Why C9 Bergoglio? Nineth Inner circle?? A 5-Star Amazon rateed book has been published on one of Bergoglio’s remaining C6 Cardinals, with a foreword by Archbishop Vigano:
https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Betrayals-against-corruption-Francis/dp/1735267104/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=sacred+betrayals&qid=1632601124&s=books&sr=1-1
Very sad to see an old person, not long for this earth, clinging to their evil ways despite knowing they will have to answer to God very soon. I would be terrified rethink the errors of my life (as I did when I had Covid this year) instead of arrogant and defiant.
sorry but covid went a long time ago. these so called “covid tests” cant even tell the difference between covid and the flu. now it’s all just fear mongering scare tactics by the governemnt. Hitler did it with gas chambers and now the government is doing it with masks. the masks are useless and are causing more suffering and deaths. the government knows this yet does nothing but making history repeat itself from the Spanish flu to the SARS epidemic. they knew then that masks did nothing but make more people suffer and die and unfortunately people are following like blind sheep to a cliff.
🙏
I beelieve it is obvious. The natural inclination would to be worried about your soul at this late a stage. Apparently we do not have a Catholic here we either are dealing with angent of the evil one or she incorrectly beleives in predestination. She is not Catholic. Neither is the group of “Catholics” supporting her position.
Né a. Pelosi, you are NOT a Catholicin case you think otherwise!
Won’t she be surprised when she has her immediate judgement before Jesus! Will she give Him the same response as the Archbishop? Time for the Church to take a DEFINITIVE stand deny Holy Communion to her and all the phony catholic pro-aborts. But that won’t happen since the USCCB is so divided amongst itself.
Excellent comment, Monsignor, excellent comment! What is the USCCB for if not to support and defend the doctrines of the Church? The USCCB is a worthless organization for the defense of Church doctrine. Worthless!
…sorry. IMHO whether the USCCB is divided or not is immaterial. It is bought and paid for by the DNC and has been reduced to performing as the Ministry of Social Justice for the same.
This individual is chaos and lies. Simply demonic. She makes herself a sacrilege.
Why does the Church continue to allow those professing to be Catholic, who clearly defy the moral teachings of the Church, to remain in good standing with the Church? This continues to send a message to the world that we really don’t believe what we teach because we fail to defend it, and that the Church is whatever you want it to be.
Agree with you, Todd, about the Church’s duty to deal properly with quisling Catholics like Pelosi. Unfortunately we have the opposite tact taken by Pope Francis, who says that abortion is murder but at the same time offers effusive praise to politicians who actively promote it, like the President of Ireland.
Pelosi is truly flirting with the area of the afterlife where an ice cream cone won’t keep.
Ma Pelosi will have a Special boat waiting for her at the River Styx. Charon and his 1st Mate Blackmun on the tiller.Will smilingly pipe her aboard for the trip across.
When I read Pelosi’s comments of this sort, I wonder what she will say standing before God on Judgement Day. It’s not Pro-Choice she advocates but Pro-Death. We Pro-Lifers should start calling it what it is! Pro-Choice is having the child and raising it, or having it and giving it up for adoption. But that’s too “inconvenient” for people like Pelosi. How did a very straightforward concept get so convoluted? How did we, as a society come to be where we are on this issue? It seems so clear to me the right thing for a women and man to do in such a situation. The right thing when one is talking “life”. Holy Mother, pray for us.
God wills all of us to choose the good; however, He does not force us to do so. Nancy Pelosi is correct. God has given all of us free will to choose the good or the evil. What she is missing is that the choice for evil has dire consequences in eternity. Abortion is the worst evil this country has ever legalized. In writing that sentence, I started to think about our laws, which all, with one exception, protect life. Liberty and the pursuit of happiness should never come at the expense of the life of another. Pelosi jeopardizes her eternal life in supporting the murders of the unborn.
This pathetic woman needs our prayers.
Ours is not to judge her – that will be soon enough.
Ours is not to judge her – (sic)
Our is to judge her behavior, just as Christ exhorted.
“And why even of yourselves, do you not judge that which is just?” Jesus Christ, Luke 12:57
I repeat – Ours is not to judge her – that will be soon enough. She needs our prayers.
Just now the US House passed its bill to enshrine the right to abortion in law. The Senate must pass the bill; Joe Manchin is said to be a pro-life Catholic….
All this does not bode well for this nation in the sight of God. No longer is it a majority of justices on the Supreme Court. Now the majority party in Congress has perfectly soiled their souls and stained our nation’s ground with the blood of holy innocents.
If it’s ‘none of our business’ in regard to others then the truth of life is merely a subjective construct and not an objective truth even in the Catholic Church. Is it not applicable to everyone and not just Catholics?
To construct, fund, and promote abortion is ‘making it your business’.
There is no ‘constitutional’ right to abortion but only, once again, judicial fiat and Pelosi knows it. To hide behind the vicious euphemism of ‘reproductive healthcare’ and claim ‘reason’ is the height of pride in the service of infernal, willful ignorance.
And the final straw is to pretend her ‘differences’ with Cordileone has to do with ‘family size’ and not the deliberate destruction of a human life.
Will that arrogance serve her standing before God?
Will it, Archbishop Cordileone?
@SpeakerPelosi is now an elderly woman. I hope she realises that power and notoriety will not save her soul. Pray she starts to do the right thing. We are all running out of time.
Yes he gave you free will and you chose to violate it by saying it is OK to kill a human being. Would love to be there when you explain to God when you die and justify your stand. Good Luck
Speaker Pelosi is of that breed that is perhaps best characterized as “autonomous.” The autonomous spirit does not need to consult anyone else or any institution in order to arrive at how the truth of things stands.
For this person the Church, Christ’s Body, is not in any sense an extension of Christ. It is merely an entity, which sometimes seems an obstacle, that nevertheless can be dismissed or ignored out of hand. The autonomous spirit is always free and is always right.
The corollary is that anyone who disagrees with this person is invariably wrong. This includes priests, bishops, archbishops, the Pope, as well as other lay Catholics who try humbly first to know and then to follow, that is, practice, what Holy Mother Church in Her wisdom teaches. That very idea would likely be novel to Speaker Pelosi, and if she even considered it seriously for three seconds would probably find it both silly and objectionable.
Is Speaker Pelosi beyond help or hope? Is hers a case of “invincible ignorance? I cannot say one way or the other. But we all can say, “Pray for us sinners, now and at the our of our death.” In that regard, she is one of us.
Speaker Pelosi is NOT beyond help or hope. She is nearing that point when she will answer for the damage she has done in her life, and she needs our prayers so that she will be granted the grace of contrition BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.
Pelosi’s five children were a blessing, and it is commendable that she views her cooperation in creation as such. Yet, to paraphrase Obama, “She did not build that.” Neither does any woman have a right by natural law and Divine Authority to misuse her body to co create life outside of Holy Matrimony. Shame on Pelosi and those in worldly power to distort what should be a joyous privilege to gift back one’s body and welcome God in procreation.
As for free will–it comes with a cost when abused and squandered for evil. Pelosi’s intellect is warped; her conscience in darkness; and her exercise of will ruled by passion and unbridled temporal power. She has made herself a god.
Glad for the day of fasting and prayer and will be hoping for illumination of souls!
“…It is none of our business how other people choose the size & timing of their families.”
Hmh.
So then, by that logic, why is everyone so upset over the death of Gabby Petito? It’s none of our business if a man wants to limit the size of his family.
Steve K. above – I agree that, unfortunately, for every one who hears Abp. Cordileone, ten, twenty or a hundred will hear Speaker Pelosi. The MSM certainly won’t hear Cordileone except as the spokesman for the supposedly unenlightened, conservative American bishops. Nevertheless, I have hope that Cordileone’s thoughtful, clear and patient teaching will resonate with some of his readers, Catholic or not.
Day of wrath, that dreadful day, shall heaven and earth in ashes lay, as David and the Sybil say.
What horror must invade the mind when the approaching Judge shall find and sift the deeds of all mankind!
The mighty trumpet’s wondrous tone shall rend each tomb’s sepulchral stone and summon all before the Throne.
Now death and nature with surprise behold the trembling sinners rise to meet the Judge’s searching eyes.
Then shall with universal dread the Book of Consciences be read to judge the lives of all the dead.
For now before the Judge severe all hidden things must plain appear; no crime can pass unpunished here.
Oh, what shall I, so guilty, plead? And who for me will intercede when even Saints shall comfort need?
The judgment of those who vote in favor of abortion, most particularly the Catholics, will be horrible beyond anything we can imagine this side of eternity. Pray, pray for them. Blindness beyond comprehension.
Where Nancy Pelosi refers to reproductive healthcare, she is close to getting to the point, although she misses the mark. Georgetown University’s Institute for Reproductive Health, in cooperation with Cycle Technologies, has provided the research and tools for naturally preventing pregnancy. Thus, there is neither need, nor justification, for an abortion. It is, rather, a problem of educating clerics and politicians concerning these effective choices. There is the TwoDay Method of birth control, and the Standard Days Method — CycleBeads approach. These are featured at the Cycle Technology section on Youtube. Rather than debate ethics — which won’t change a politician’s mind — I suggest that Catholics focus on learning about these natural birth control methods, and then teaching as many people as possible regarding how to use them. These are effective, and totally destroy any woman’s justification for carelessly getting pregnant and feeling the need for an abortion. We are not here to condemn. We are here to bring to people the light of the Gospel, and to save endangered souls from a deep state of purgatory.
David,
You are very correct. Many of these cases are a metter of temperance on the part of both men and women. They are a matter of peer pressure, a matter of mistaken imporession of the needs to pleae, of the crime of eithanasia of the imperfect.
The problem here evidently is the messengers. Opponenets of choice loudly proclaimed control of a womans body, right to choose and now the Speaker of the House is proclaiming family size. It sounds like they are gewtting desperaate and are reaching for thin excuses.
Pelosi is a Catholic in name only. But then, so is the Pope. So she has his full support. That is where we are. I know 10 theologians who will tell you this is impossible. But they are wrong. It is delusional to believe otherwise.
Nancy Pelosi and company somehow manage to link the killing of late-term fetuses with “love-making.” I don’t see it that way. So, what is “right” Nancy?
Talk talk talk!! That is all one hears from the archdiocese of San Francisco. When is this man going to grow a spine and excommunicate the Speaker?
Ragging on pathetic Pelosi is an utter waste of time. Accusing our bishops of negligence is not much better. They know if they speak out forcefully and actually ACT for once, they will be slapped down by Pope Francis. She knows it as well. Bad news but true.
There is NO way that this woman can be so ignorant that she actually believes what she is saying on this subject – it has been pointed out to her innumerable times.
Why hasn’t this ghoul been ex-communicated?
An indisputable fact: abortion has been with womankind since antiquity, and probably also since prehistoric times of hominids, Neantherthals, and Cro-Magnons. The Latin Church has never managed, most likely never will be able, to end the female practice of aborting, for it is, above all, an act subject not only to economic factors but also to those of the unique experience, that of any pregnant woman, her wants, needs, culture, and intimate personal understanding, her sense of morality tested, and her cordial state of being in counterpoint with her existential crisis, in brief, her personal life at a momentous decision. If a woman decides to abort, condemning her decision, attempting to prohibit her from aborting, marshalling the law to do so would be on her an imposition, particularly in our post-Christian, secular age, and in a country such as the US where there is no religious consensus, therefore no enforceable law on any matter of religion beyond allowing citizens to practice their faith so long as it does not interfere with the rights of others. One thing for sure, Roman Catholicism, coming down with doctrinal taboos misses the point and probably ends up being more impersonal, more distant, more irrelevant, more alien, indeed, more an intrusive, domineering hateful entity than it already is to many a woman, whatever her confessional persuasion, or lack thereof, pondering abortion or having in one incurred.
All possible compassionate succor and material aid to any woman who considers abortion, or aborts, the Church and State should offer and leave it at that, hands off, respecting the individual’s base freedom to live her life as she discovers or wills it to be, so long as she respects the rights of others. If any pope, prelate, priest, monk, nun, or politician be willing and able to die in the place of any woman who aborts, then maybe said individual -pope, prelate, priest, monk, nun, or politician- may have the right to dictate her life, indeed, to live It. Otherwise, when abortion is at play as a concrete possibility for a woman, it is not the time to marshall Christian ideological rhetoric and butt in, seeking to moderate behaviour, and poach the woman’s soul in distress.
MOIRAO, the point you are missing is, a life, a HUMAN life is being taken by another person for their comfort. If it truly was a “woman’s own body” then no one would be debating the issue.
Speaker Pelosi is the type of Catholic who interprets God’s laws to suit her way of believing, wanting others to follow her. For her, not to take the foolish chance of losing her soul, she should go to confession and speak to the priest who represents Jesus Christ to be assured her sins are not mortal. All Catholics should do the same when in doubt about following God’s commandments.