Repentance
According to my Catholic calendar, Monday
was a national day of repentance for Roe v. Wade—the Supreme Court decision
establishing a woman’s right to an abortion.
On Sunday, I had spotted high school
students, in town to march for life. I
had been one of them, some 30 years before.
My Catholic high school organized a trip
to the Right to Life March of 1978. I
was a sophomore, coming out as a lesbian, and abortion seemed to me to be a
simple issue. Maybe I felt a bit unborn
myself: my mother told me, at about that
time: “I made you, I’m not done with
you, and you’re NOT GAY.” The right to
be born seemed like an important precursor to the right to be oneself, so I
signed up, got on the bus, and took my place among the other marchers.
I was discomfited by the posters of torn
up fetuses, by the anger in the crowd.
But I owe my turn-about to one of the keynote speakers at the march:
Anita Bryant. I didn’t know she’d be
there, or I might have had a clue before I got myself into the “pro-life”
crowd.
Anita Bryant was perhaps the first to
address gay rights on a national stage, if only to rail against them. She paved the way for Reverend Phelps’
picketing at funerals. It surprises me
now that she got the traction and attention that she did. In the late 1970’s, “gay rights” focused on
survival. Repealing
the sodomy laws, maintaining custody of our own children, keeping our jobs if
we kept quiet—these were the legislative battle lines. We never dreamed of marriage, or
adoption.
I knew a guy in college, who used to
dress in drag and walk up to the bar on Saturday nights. It was a couple of miles, through town. He didn’t have a car, or many friends—but if
he made it alive, to the bar, he could be embraced, he could belong. A couple times, some friends and I gave him a
ride. We weren’t all that pro-gay man,
and we didn’t get the drag thing. But we
didn’t want to see him beat to hell. Again.
Years later, when I worked for a
hotline, gay youth still made up one-third of all completed teenage suicides.
At the high end, gays make up 10% of the population—so gay youth were at least
three times more likely to believe they’d be better off dead.
My pro-life position begins with keeping
everyone alive.
When Anita Bryant was introduced at the
pro-life rally of ‘78, I booed—instinctively and loud. And realized all those pro-lifers were not
entirely pro-me.
In the years since, I realized some
more. While I was off at the pro-life
march, one of my friends was pregnant.
She had a very secret abortion. Secret because she expected—rightly—shame for that decision from
friends, family, everyone around our Catholic high school. It was an abortion because she
expected—rightly—shame, and probably expulsion, for being pregnant in the first
place. Here’s the real shame of
it—neither she nor any of the other countless friends I know who had abortions
felt they really had a choice in that decision. To the extent that I contributed to her
feeling of entrapment, I am ashamed of myself.
There are signs at many Catholic
churches in
I think of Mary, the most famous among
unwed pregnant teens. An angel (talk about authority!) greeted her with: “…favored one, the Lord
is with you.” Her cousin
said: “blessed are you among
women.” It takes a bit of bucking up, it seems, to carry the child of God.
Repentance means “turning around.” Here’s where I think repentance is in
order: I think we need to turn around
from the procedure, and let our gaze, settle on ourselves. In what ways have we helped to create this
situation—through our limited imaginations, our rationed compassions, our all
too easy judgments. In what ways have we
assured the people in this situation—mother, father, embryo—feel blessed, believe
that they’re accompanied by angels? Have
we even offered them our own companionship?
[For more on
Mary, see Luke 1:26-45.]
© 2008 Melissa Capers