A Sexual Revolution (One woman's journey from pro-choice atheist to pro-life Catholic)

Back in my pro-choice days, I read that in certain ancient societies it was common for parents to abandon unwanted newborns, leaving them to die of exposure. I found these stories to be as perplexing as they were horrifying. How could this happen? I could never understand how entire cultures could buy into something so obviously terrible, how something that modern society understands to be an unthinkable evil could be widely accepted among large groups of people.

Because of my deep distress at hearing of such crimes against humanity, I found it irritating when pro-lifers would refer to abortion as “killing babies.” Obviously, nobody was in favor of killing babies, and to imply that those of us who were pro-choice would advocate as much was an insult to the babies throughout history who actually were killed by their “insane” societies. We were not in favor of killing anything. We simply felt that a woman had a right to stop the growth process of a fetus if she faced a crisis pregnancy. It was unfortunate, but that was the sacrifice that had to be made to prevent women from becoming victims of unwanted pregnancies.

At that time I was an atheist and had little exposure to religious social circles. As I began to search for God and open my mind to Christianity, however, I could not help but be exposed to pro-life thought more often, and I was put on the defensive about my views. One night I was discussing the topic with my husband, who was re-examining his own pro-choice stance. He made a passing remark that startled me into reconsidering this issue: “It just occurred to me that being pro-life is being pro-other-people’s-life,” he quipped. “Everyone is pro-their-own-life.”

Growing Discomfort

His remark made me realize that my pro-choice viewpoints had put me in the position of deciding whose lives were worth living, and even who was human. Along with doctors, the government and other abortion advocates, I decided where to draw this crucial line. When I would come across Catholic Web sites or books that asserted “Life begins at conception,” I would scoff, as was my habit, yet I found myself increasingly uncomfortable with my defense. I realized that my criteria for determining when human life begins were distressingly vague. I was putting the burden of proof on the fetuses to demonstrate to me that they were human, and I was a tough judge. I found myself looking the other way when I heard about things like the 3-D ultrasounds that showed fetuses touching their faces, smiling and opening their eyes at ages at which I still considered abortion acceptable. As modern technology revealed more and more evidence that fetuses were humans too, I would simply move the bar for what I considered human.

At some point I started to feel I was more determined to remain pro-choice than to analyze honestly who was and was not human. I started to see this phenomenon in others in the pro-choice community as well. As I researched issues like partial-birth abortion, I frequently became stunned to the point of feeling physically ill upon witnessing the level of evil that normal people can support. I could hardly believe my eyes when I read of reasonable, educated professionals calmly justifying infanticide by calling the victims fetuses instead of babies. It was then that I took a mental step back from the entire pro-choice movement. If this is what it meant to be pro-choice, I was not pro-choice.

I recognized that I too had probably told myself lies in order to maintain my support for abortion. Yet there was some tremendous pressure that kept me from objectively looking at the issue. Something deep within me screamed that not to allow women to have abortions, at least in the first trimester, would be unfair in the direst sense of the word. Even as I became religious, I mentally pushed aside thoughts that all humans might have God-given eternal souls worthy of dignity and respect. It became too tricky to figure out when we receive those souls, the most obvious answer being “at conception,” as opposed to some arbitrary point during gestation. It was not until I re-evaluated the societal views of sex that had permeated the consciousness of my peer group that I was able to release that internal pressure I felt and take an unflinching look at abortion.

Sex and Creating Life

Growing up in secular middle-class America, I understood sex as something disconnected from the idea of creating life. During my entire childhood I did not know anyone who had a baby sibling; and to the extent that neighborhood parents ever talked about pregnancy, it was to say they were glad they were “done.” In high school sex education class, we learned not that sex creates babies, but that unprotected sex creates babies. Even recently, before our marriage was blessed in the Catholic Church, my husband and I took a course about building good marriages. It was a video series by a nondenominational Christian group, and the segment called “Good Sex” did not mention children once. In all the talk about bonding and back rubs and intimacy and staying in shape, the closest the videos came to connecting sex to the creation of life was a brief note that couples should discuss the topic of contraception.

All my life, the message I had heard loud and clear was that sex was for pleasure and bonding, that its potential for creating life was purely tangential, almost to the point of being forgotten. This mind-set became the foundation of my views on abortion. Because I saw sex as being by default closed to the possibility of life, I thought of unplanned pregnancies as akin to being struck by lightning while walking down the street—something totally unpredictable and undeserved that happened to people living normal lives.

My pro-choice views (and I imagine those of many others) were motivated by loving concern: I just did not want women to have to suffer, to have to devalue themselves by dealing with unwanted pregnancies. Since it was an inherent part of my worldview that everyone except people with “hang-ups” eventually has sex, and that sex is, under normal circumstances, only about the relationship between the two people involved, I was lured into one of the oldest, biggest, most tempting lies in human history: the enemy is not human. Babies had become the enemy because of their tendency to pop up and ruin everything; and just as societies are tempted to dehumanize their fellow human beings on the other side of the line in wartime, so had I, and we as a society, dehumanized what we saw as the enemy of sex.

As I was reading up on the Catholic Church’s understanding of sex, marriage and contraception, everything changed. I had always assumed that Catholic teachings against birth control were outdated notions, even a thinly disguised attempt to oppress the faithful. What I found, however, was that these teachings expressed a fundamentally different understanding of sex. And once I discovered this, I never saw the world the same way again.

Burdens or Blessings?

The way I had always seen it, the generally accepted view was that babies were burdens, except for a few times in life when everything might be perfect enough for a couple to see new life as a good thing. The Catholic view, I discovered, is that babies are blessings and that while it is fine to attempt to avoid pregnancy for serious reasons, if we go so far as to adopt a “contraceptive mentality”—feeling entitled to the pleasure of sex while loathing (and perhaps trying to forget all about) its life-giving properties—we not only fail to respect this most sacred of acts, but we begin to see new life as the enemy.

I came to see that our culture’s widespread use and acceptance of contraception meant that the “contraceptive mentality” toward sex was now the default attitude. As a society, we had come to take it for granted that we are entitled to the pleasurable and bonding aspects of sex even when we are opposed to the new life it might produce. The option of abstaining from the act that creates babies if we see children as a burden had been removed from our cultural lexicon. Even if it would be a huge crisis to become pregnant, we had a right to have sex anyway. If this were true—if it were morally acceptable for people to have sex even when they believed that a new baby could ruin their lives—then abortion, as I saw things, had to be O.K.

Ideally I would have taken an objective look at when human life begins and based my views on that alone, but the lie was just too tempting. I did not want to hear too much about heartbeats or souls or brain activity. Terminating pregnancies simply had to be acceptable, because carrying a baby to term and becoming a parent is a huge deal, and society had made it very clear that sex was not a huge deal. As long as I accepted the premise that engaging in sex with a contraceptive mentality was morally acceptable, I could not bring myself to consider that abortion might not be acceptable. It seemed inhumane to make women deal with life-altering consequences for an act that was not supposed to have life-altering consequences.

Given my background, the Catholic idea that we are always to treat the sexual act with awe and respect, so much so that we should simply abstain if we are opposed to its life-giving potential, was a revolutionary message. Being able to consider honestly when life begins, to open my heart and mind to the wonder and dignity of even the tiniest of my fellow human beings, was not fully possible for me until I understood the nature of the act that creates these little lives in the first place.

All of these thoughts had been percolating in my brain for a while, and I found myself increasingly in agreement with pro-life positions. Then one night I became officially, unapologetically pro-life. I was reading yet another account of the Greek societies in which newborn babies were abandoned to die, wondering how normal people could do something like that, and I felt a chill rush through me as I thought: I know how they did it.

I realized in that moment that perfectly good, well-meaning people—people like me—can support gravely evil things because of the power of lies. From my own experience, I knew how the Greeks, the Romans and people in every other society could put themselves into a mental state where they could leave a newborn child to die. The very real pressures of life—“we can’t afford another baby,” “we can’t have any more girls,” “he wouldn’t have had a good life”—left them susceptible to the temptation to dehumanize other human beings. Though the circumstances were different, the same process had happened with me, with the pro-choice movement and with anyone else who has ever been tempted to dehumanize inconvenient people.

I suspect that as those Greek parents handed over their infants for someone to take away, they remarked on how very unlike their other children these little creatures were: they couldn’t talk, the couldn’t sit up, and surely those little yawns and smiles were just involuntary reactions. I bet they referred to these babies with different words than they used to refer to the children they kept. Maybe they called them something like “fetuses.”

Why do some people get so much joy in battling all the time?

Overexposure to television news talk shows? ;-)

Over the years, I have see battles and wars break out in the Religion Forum. Some truly fascinating 'characters' were issued warnings and even given time out before being ejected. It's been faily quiet since the Mod set down some new rules. But there will always be that one person or group that enjoys stirring up the pot just to see how the Catholics will react. The best reaction is to remember the words of Jesus: "Love your enemy. Do good to those who hurt you. Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." Failing that, ignore them. But do not drop out of the forum! Promise me that.

>> If Americans could be reached with logical arguments on abortions, there wouldn’t still be millions being performed each year. Either people are too easily persuaded by the empty arguments of the other side, or they just don’t care.

We’ve come a long way since Roe v. Wade. Radical feminism was big in the 60’s and 70’s ... today, its a relic (as are its proponents, both figuratively and literally). Support for abortion-as-birth-control is relegated to the fringe. Most abortion supporters are simply “rape, incest, life of the mother” supporters — which is a SMALL percentage of abortions.

The ONLY reason abortion-on-demand is still available is because we haven’t quite captured a majority on the Court. Left to democratic devices (i.e. if the state legislatures passed the laws, rather than the Supreme Court), abortion would be illegal throughout most of the country with the exceptions of rape, incest and life of the mother exemptions.

I’d say that’s a victory, and it should inspire confidence in the moral compass of the American public. One more vote on the Court, and the fight goes back to the State Legislators, where it should be — and where we’ll win easily across most of the country.

Well, that sort of shoots down the argument that we will only stop abortion when we change people’s hearts and minds. There are more abortions now than there was when Roe v Wade was first decided. And why don’t we have more Pro-life justices on the court? Because voters didn’t care when they elected Bill Clinton in 92 and again in 96. Perhaps instead of a Breyer and Ginsburg, we could have had 2 more conservative justices. But it “was the economy, stupid” and people voted with their pocketbooks and could have cared less about the killing of preborn babies.

>> Well, that sort of shoots down the argument that we will only stop abortion when we change people’s hearts and minds.

Hearts and minds are simply the first step.

>> There are more abortions now than there was when Roe v Wade was first decided.

There are also far more people in the country than there were in 1973. And, most abortionists are repeat offenders.

>> And why don’t we have more Pro-life justices on the court?

Several reasons. Some caused by voters, many completely out of voter control.

(1) A liberal President (Clinton nominated Ginsberg and Breyer);
(2) a couple of lousy nominations (Souter was a Bush nominee, Kennedy a Reagan nominee);
(3) one relic that just won’t leave (Stevens was nominated by Ford);

and — most importantly ...

(4) the ridiculous non-confirmation of Robert Bork. Bork, a rock-solid conservative, and legal genius, was replaced by Anthony Kennedy.

>> But it “was the economy, stupid” and people voted with their pocketbooks and could have cared less about the killing of preborn babies.

Few people vote based on a single issue. People also elected Ronald Reagan and George Bush consecutively — and watched Robert Bork get beat up and thrown aside, and Kennedy nominated in his place, and then saw Souter nominated by Bush. The people did their job — the nominees were just lousy, or thrown out by a partisan Senate.

Americans can be reached with logic. This story proves it. Here was this woman who was entrenched in the “compassionate” pro-choice viewpoint for years who was reached by logic. It’s just a matter at chipping away at the lies.

If a fetus truly was not a person, not a human being, not a precious child, what is the problem with abortion? If it really was just a growth, there should be no moral dilema. People have been taught this lie, indoctrinated. They teach it in the schools. They teach it in the streets. On television, on the internet, they spread this lie.

It is fighting through indoctrination of lies and deceit that are easy enough to believe if you get caught up in the emotional appeals. A first trimester fetus doesn’t look particularly human, especially in the first few weeks. It isn’t really tangible to most people, who haven’t seen ultrasounds, abortions, or pre-natal surgery. But it’s still a lie.

But just like the woman who wrote that article, they can be reached. It just takes time and patience.

Changing hearts and minds is not going to do it. If that was the case, then there would be no such thing as Partial Birth abortion, which was not around when Roe was first decided. There is no argument at that point that it is a baby that is being killed. When abortion became the law of the land, there was no huge demand for it. In fact, polls at the time showed that a large majority of people didn’t agree with Roe and wanted it overturned. Those poll numbers have steadily dropped over the years. As far as Supreme Court justices, why do we have Gingsburg and Breyer? Because abortion is not a high priority with voters, and they voted for Bill Clinton for 2 terms.

BTW, Kennedy voted with the conservatives on the bench when Webster was decided in 1989. It was Sandra Day O’Connor that screwed that one up. I know she was a Reagan appointee, but we were paying as much attention to court appointments at the time like we do today, or we would have ended up with Harriet Myers. This is where the National Right to Life should have done their job, and should have been monitoring who was being appointed to the bench and seen to it that Reagan nominate someone more conservative, like he did with Scalia and Bork. We got Scalia because the Senate was under Republican control at the time, and we could have had another Scalia or Bork instead of O’Connor as well.

Kennedy also voted with the majority regarding a recent decision, I believe it was last year, ruling against Partial Birth abortion. So far, I think he has voted with the conservative justices on abortion-related issues.

“If a fetus truly was not a person, not a human being, not a precious child, what is the problem with abortion? “

The personhood of the baby is no longer an issue. Partial birth abortion has wiped that away. If proving that the baby was indeed a living human being, then there would be no argument for PBA. The other side has already ceded that argument to us and now argues for the health of the mother.

That’s a very good point. I’m sure there are a lot of people who know it’s wrong and are just in it for the convenience, and a lot of people who feel the mother’s rights trump the baby’s. But still, I’m positive that there are many people just like Mrs. Fulwiler who buy into the lie that the baby is not a person, or even a baby. Those are the people we can and must reach with logic.

Thanks for posting this. I love her website.

Here is an update:

VITALS for Jennifer Fulwiler:

I’m 34 years old, have been married for seven years, and live in Austin, TX with my husband and five children: a six-year-old boy, and four girls ages five, four, two and newborn.

She is certainly pro-life now. ;-D

Great article. Her blog is fascinating.

Am reading a great novel at the moment titled, Fatherless, by Brian J. Gail. A Catholic novel in nature, as it chronicles the lives of several Catholic families in a parish in Philadelphia in the 1980's.

The more fascinating stories deal with a family man who is working with a pharmaceutical company. He has just uncovered sealed files that expose birth control pills that are linked not only with aborting the egg on the uterine wall, but also creating cervical and uterine cancer in women. It opens the world of how society has changed since the emergence of the pill as a form of birth control. How it framed the debate of when life begins. Riveting novel.

A trilogy of three. The others are Motherless and Childless. The last novel tries to predict where we will be by the year 2040.

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