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There was a whole issue about "choice" in NCR last January 17th. Here is just one example of what that issue included. The editors said they were interested in providing readers with alternatives to the standard Catholic teaching against abortion because "Maybe some of the voices in these stories, voices that don’t often get a hearing, convey wisdom that might allow us to get beyond the stalemate of old enmities." Among those "voices that don't often get a hearing," not surprisingly, is Frances Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice.

Thank you very much for finding it!

Here goes my NCR January 17, 2003 sampler of quotes,

Strategies to break abortion stalemate - EDITORIAL,

The bishops should find a way to work productively with pro-choice Catholics in high office. Politicians like Sens. Tom Daschle and Ted Kennedy and Rep. Nancy Pelosi should not face banishment from public events held on Catholic soil because of their public policy views, nor should they fear refusal at the Communion rail. There’s a lot of good work that can be done outside the abortion arena, and quiet respect, not burnt bridges, is both the prudent and productive course of action.

Medical advances enliven stalemated abortion debate by MARGOT PATTERSON,

Christine Gudorf, a professor of religious studies at Florida International University and the author of Body, Sex, and Pleasure: Reconstructing Christian Sexual Ethics, said there is increasing recognition among feminists that the basis for Roe v. Wade was made on the wrong grounds -- of privacy rather than a woman’s welfare.

A pro-choice Catholic, Gudorf came to her support for abortion rights through personal experience. Twenty-eight years ago she went to her doctor to get fitted for a diaphragm and was told she was six months pregnant. She had just adopted a terminally ill child and had been recently diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Although Gudorf eventually decided to go forward with the pregnancy, she said the experience led her to support the pro-choice position.

“It would not have been right for me not to have a choice at that point. Making that choice was an important part of choosing who I was going to be. And that had to be my choice,” Gudorf said.

Back to the future: Post-Roe world would look a lot like today’s by Joe Feuerherd

“The loss of Roe would be a terrible thing,” said Catholics for a Free Choice president Frances Kissling, “but that does not mean that abortion would not continue to be legal in the United States.”

According to Kissling, “It would be extremely difficult for any state, no matter how conservative it might be … to make abortion largely illegal without facing the wrath of the citizens of that state.”