It may come as a surprise to learn that I was against abortion when I was a teenager. It becomes less of a mystery when you learn that I went to Catholic grammar and high schools. We had a legendary principal who never, ever wanted to cancel school, because missed school days had to be made up at the end of the school year. He was so hard core that in 1978, when Connecticut was buried under a blizzard for a week, not only did I go to school as the blizzard was beginning, but I went to school on the Friday of that snowy week, even though every other school in the state was closed.

Sometimes he got creative when counting school days, so during Holy Week (the week before Easter) we had to report by grade year on one day where the boys were separated from the girls and we got what passed for a sex talk. They weren’t particularly informative—my mom is a nurse, so she had already filled me in with a dry, clinical explanation. But the purpose of the girls’ meeting wasn’t to explain sex. Instead it was to propagandize us against abortion.

We saw all the same photos that are standard with the anti-choice movement, and there were probably films through the years too. I don’t remember being particularly militant about it and came to find these yearly propaganda sessions really boring. And as I moved away from my sectarian high school I found myself caring less and less about whether other women had abortions. It didn’t seem as if it were any of my business, to be honest.

And restrictions on access to abortion made sense to me, as I initially thought that those restrictions were guided by medical considerations:  the life and health of the mother and fetus, and the ethical constraints that medical professionals upheld. Then the challenges to Roe began, and I began to understand that extremist abortion politics in the US are undergirded by lies and a rejection of science.

Eventually I fell completely away from the Catholic Church and in time was received into the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church is truly my home in so many spiritual, intellectual, and political ways. Here’s the Episcopal Church’s position on the political process and abortion:

The Episcopal Church maintains that access to equitable health care, including reproductive health care and reproductive procedures, is “an integral part of a woman’s struggle to assert her dignity and worth as a human being” (2018-D032). The church holds that “reproductive health procedures should be treated as all other medical procedures, and not singled out or omitted by or because of gender” (2018-D032). The Episcopal Church sustains its “unequivocal opposition to any legislation on the part of the national or state governments which would abridge or deny the right of individuals to reach informed decisions [about the termination of pregnancy] and to act upon them” (2018-D032). As stated in the 1994 Act of Convention, the church also opposes any “executive or judicial action to abridge the right of a woman to reach an informed decision…or that would limit the access of a woman to safe means of acting on her decision” (1994-A054).  

So it’s against this background that I read about Kate Cox, the Texas woman who needs medical intervention in her pregnancy but because that intervention involves an abortion, the state has inserted itself into the process, putting her life and her ability to bear future children at risk.

The entire tragedy has sharpened some very upsetting truths about the current GOP push to control abortion access. The biggest truth is that the entire idea of having exceptions for the life or health of the woman has always been a complete. Here is a woman who is in a health emergency, and a bunch of men with no medical training have denied her the exception that the law promises. This case proves beyond a doubt that the extremist push to control abortion access is really just the execution of the threat to take complete control over women’s lives. It’s the abortion equivalent of Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22”:

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

I honestly don’t understand what the GOP thinks it is going to achieve with these constant attacks on women’s reproductive rights and body autonomy. Does the GOP think that women are just going to give up on this issue? That we’re going to lose heart and capitulate? Because that ain’t happening, dudes.

Here’s a sign that the GOP has gone too far:

The prolife movement has gone from compassion for the child to cruelty to the mother (and child).

Trisomy 18 is not a condition that is compatible with life.https://t.co/L91RmsCrJq

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) December 12, 2023

You know it’s too late when you’ve lost Ann Coulter.