You're right. I know a family of church going Catholics. Their daughter was carrying a baby with a congenital kidney defect. The deformity was such that the family was told the child wouldn't live long after birth. They tried some sort of experimental surgery, when that didn't work, they aborted. They told anyone who would listen that the abortion in this instance was a "grey area". Even their priest told them that, they said. (I know their priest. I know that's BS. They're hanging on to some kind words he said to them, I am sure). I see the mother of the aborted child from time to time. My guess is, she's an alcoholic now. The grandparents seem much the same on the outside.
There is sufficient support to prohibit abortions which are not "grey".
Here on FR we have a lot of pro-lifers who are unwilling to take an incremental approach. For them it's all or nothing, and nothing is what they have gotten.
*...the abortion in this instance was a “grey area”.*
Translation of “grey area”: Black (wrong) with white (right) blended in to excuse the wrong.
Folks, wrong is wrong, no matter how many times you repeat a lie, it is still a lie.
I had a similar experience with a childhood friend of mine. Observant Catholic family, staunch “defenders” of life, to the point of being very evangelistic on the subject - esp. when we were in our teen years.
Years later after she was married she became pregnant. Then they found out the baby was sick, and my friend tried to convince me that killing her 5 mo. old unborn baby was okay. One exact statement was “it’s very hard to have a sick child”, and I must not understand because my children were all healthy...
As if anyone has a guarantee? With my 1st daughter a screening at 16 weeks indicated that I - aged 19 at the time - had the same risk of having a child w/Down Syndrome as a 40-year-old... No guarantees.
I’m grateful my OB was Catholic, and he knew of my beliefs as well. The word termination never came up - even after I was diagnosed with cervical cancer DURING that pregnancy, and showed those risks stated above.
It would seem that so many’s hypocrisy shows no bounds. I was a lapsed Catholic and yet put more faith in God than some who claim - to this day - to be so pious. Those that believe in that so-called “gray area” are deluding themselves.
God gives life and only He should decide when to take it.
There’s more to the story, but I think you all get the gist of it.
PS - I have been cancer-free for 21.5 years, and have four beautiful daughters, and have a grandchild on the way. As far as I know, my friend ended up divorced, and has no other children - her child was alive to me, so I won’t say she never had any - even though she didn’t name her baby and allowed it to be thrown in the trash as waste.. Particularly when the procedure was a partial-birth... perhaps the most horrendous of all types, imo.
I will NEVER understand the decision. I have no problem being compassionate to several other girls I know who had abortions because they were young [HS age], unmarried, and didn’t have the same beliefs or upbringing within a religion - or not much of one. And, one was “forced” to have one by her parents despite her not wanting to abort.
However, with this former friend I can find nothing that indicates hers was not a fully conscious decision, or that she didn’t know the consequences - particularly according to the Church. When I think of her, or see her on fb on occasion the same word always comes to mind — murderer. May God forgive me if I am harming myself, or even her by not being able to forgive her.