Here's a link to the rest of this crappy article:
http://www.cleveland.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/living/1098351029110132.xml
Please ping other Catholics and pro-lifers. I would like to bring someone prominent to Cleveland to respond to this hit piece. Before the election. You can also freepmail if you have any contacts with some like Bill Donohue of the Catholic League.
I'm glad to hear that there are a lot of parishioners like this. We have people going to Church wearing Kerry pins here in MA.
"It's not just what the priest says," one woman told me. "It's all the propaganda that comes with it. It's the leaflets at the back of the church, the parishioners who don't like your bumper sticker and tell you you're not a real Catholic if you support a woman's right to choose."
Well, hey, if a woman has a right to choose, then in the interest of equality, a man should have a right to choose--to have intercourse with a desirable woman. And the woman should have nothing to say about it, just like the man has nothing to say about the woman's right to choose.
It's only fair.
"I was so angry. I am smart enough to make my own decisions, and this is not why I go to church."
Lady, if you think it's okay to murder the preborn, then you're *not* smart enough to make your own decisions.
"What upsets them the most is the church's assumption that a woman can't make this private decision by herself"
And just when did a decision to murder a helpless member of society become a "private" decision? Protecting the helpless is socciety's principal function.
"The church argues that the life of the fetus trumps all else - including the life of the mother and victims of rape and incest - and that any argument about choice dehumanizes the fetus."
Either you're arguing that it's okay to murder a helpless human, or you're arguing that the preborn are not human. Can't have it both ways, Broomhilda.
"Declaring that women are not stakeholders in decisions about their own bodies, however, dehumanizes them"
Road apples. They're not killing their own bodies, they're killing the babies in their wombs.
"especially when the person who declares you immoral is a man who will never have to face pregnancy or its consequences."
So, a person who will never commit a murder or be murdered has no standing to call murder immoral? Great logic, there, infobabe.
"I know I can't have this baby"
Translation: Having this baby would be just too inconvenient for me.
"I will not go to heaven."
If you're really worried about that, don't kill your baby.
"I feel so horribly sad for them," Harrington said. "They feel they can't receive any comfort or solace at their churches."
Translation: They don't think anybody at their churches would tell them it was perfectly okay to kill their babies.
"To this day, she tells no one."
Well, she better get her butt to the confessional and tell someone.
"I certainly could not tell my priest, because he would say I should have carried the baby to term and let nature run its course."
If she's so sure she did the right thing, why is she afraid to discuss it with someone who might disagree?
"The anti-abortion sermons at her church are turning her off, and possibly away. Recently, she resigned from a leadership post there."
Ohhh, "turning her off." What a bummer. Hey, don't bogart that joint. And don't get uptight about it, you're a groovy chick. I mean, if it feels good, do it, right?
"The priest is up there condemning women like me, and he has no idea what we go through when we make that choice."
Doesn't he? Is he entirely without empathy? Seems to me he has enough empathy for the preborn to beg for their lives.
"It's insulting, and it hurts."
The truth often does, babe. You murdered your baby. The only place you're going to find forgiveness is in the confessional, and the only way you're going to find peace is by throwing your broken and repentant heart at Jesus' feet.
"I have to believe in the church, in my religion"
All right. Start by believing in God's commandment forbidding murder.
"and if I can't, then I'll have to leave."
Yeah, Satan would like to see you turn away from the only source of forgiveness.