This story is published in Cosmopolitan.
By Lauren Barbato
I'm Catholic and I had an abortion. These words can be difficult to say — good Catholic girls are not supposed to have abortions.
Growing up, I figured we Catholic girls were the lucky ones. Abortion was a horror story. No one wanted to end up like those silent women I saw at my first March for Life rally, rocking back and forth with their hands clasped and mouths taped shut. These women have become a fixture at anti-abortion rallies, either standing on the outskirts or paraded on a stage by anti-abortion groups as a cautionary tale.
We were taught abortion was sad, but sadder, still, was the line of tearful women wearing "I regret my abortion" T-shirts. It's those silent women I think of now when I read Pope Francis's proclamation for 2016's Jubilee Year of Mercy. In a move praised by many progressives, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, Francis announced Tuesday that priests worldwide will be able to absolve Catholic women who have had abortions.
Considering this ability to absolve abortions is typically reserved for bishops — though priests in the United States, at the discretion of their bishops, have been granted this right in recent years — Francis's announcement is being touted as yet another dramatic departure from harsh Catholic dogma.
Except, in reality, the progressive pope is right in line with his more-conservative predecessors. For the last Jubilee Year, in 2000, Pope John Paul II offered the same forgiveness to women who had abortions. At World Youth Day in 2011, Pope Benedict XVI, who many see as the anti-Francis, let local priests hearing confessions during the event absolve the abortions of young women. And though the media may portray Francis as a gentler patriarch, his language reinforces the stigmatizing stereotype that all women who have abortions are deeply scarred, spiritually damaged, and wallowing in our existential grief.
"The tragedy of abortion is experienced by some with a superficial awareness, as if not realizing the extreme harm that such an act entails," the pontiff wrote. I could tell Francis many things to disprove his belief:
That I weighed the moral consequences. That I thought about whether or not my fetus had a soul. That I prayed to the Blessed Mother. That I still made an appointment with Planned Parenthood. That if only he asked us Catholic girls first, some of us would have told him we don't need forgiveness for our abortions.
Catholic women who've had abortions are used to being talked about, but rarely are we heard. We are the straw-women, the parables, the bad girls. We are talked about on Catholic blogs and in Sunday homilies, our decisions dissected and moralized by strangers. Even Francis used us as his anecdotal prop, mentioning in his letter the anonymous women who have abortions possessing "the scar of this agonizing and painful decision."
Yet how many women truly regret their decisions? "Post-Abortion Stress Syndrome" has been repeatedy proven to be a propaganda creation of the anti-abortion movement and isn't recognized by the American Psychological Society.
In 2008, the APA's Task Force on Mental Health and Abortion released a sweeping report analyzing every study on psychological responses to abortion since 1989. The result? Women who have a legal, first-trimester abortion don't have a higher risk of mental health issues. In fact, the risk is the same as women who faced an unintended pregnancy and decided to deliver, according to the task force's findings.
In 2008, the APA's Task Force on Mental Health and Abortion released a sweeping report analyzing every study on psychological responses to abortion since 1989. The result? Women who have a legal, first-trimester abortion don't have a higher risk of mental health issues. In fact, the risk is the same as women who faced an unintended pregnancy and decided to deliver, according to the task force's findings.
But the most fascinating finding from the APA report may be this reality: Women are more likely to experience negative feelings about their abortion when they face "perceptions of stigma, need for secrecy, and low or anticipated social support for [their] decision."
A study published in the journal PLOS One in July 2015 came to a similar conclusion. After researchers determined that more than 95 percent of women who've had abortions don't regret their decision over a three-year period, they noted that "higher perceived community abortion stigma and lower social support" were responsible for the negative emotions any woman may have had.
It really shouldn't be a surprise that the climate both the anti-abortion movement and the Catholic Church has created can harm the very women they purport to help.
Not only can stigmatizing abortion to the point where it's taboo trigger negative mental health outcomes, but it also makes it impossible for Catholic women to talk honestly about their experiences.
That's what worries me about Francis's recent letter: His language is not so different from the rhetoric of "sidewalk counselors," who stand outside abortion clinics trying to discourage women, and post-abortion therapists, who offer counseling similar to what would find at a crisis pregnancy center. (As Jill Filipovic reported on Cosmopolitan.com last year, many of these self-proclaimed counselors couch their rhetoric in concerned phrases such as abortion is "hurting women.")
After my abortion, I searched for support groups, wanting a place to talk openly about my experience. I was excited to find Project Rachel, a nationwide Catholic group for women who've had abortions, until I read the description: "[Abortion] can form a hole in one's heart, a hole so deep that sometimes it seems nothing can fill the emptiness."
I need support, but I'm OK with my decision, I thought at the time. The more I read Project Rachel's online resources about "Abortion's Aftermath," the idea that I should be ashamed and drenched in guilt threw me into depression — not the abortion itself.
And that's the thing about Francis's forgiveness: It may sound nice, but there are strings attached. In order to truly repent and be let back into the Catholic Church, women must admit that they've committed a grave sin — a murder. Then, they must turn in their pro-choice cards, essentially saying that women shouldn't have the legal right to make choices about their own bodies. After all, why would the church forgive women who will continue to advocate against its own institution?
Francis's compassion is deceptive. He claims he understands "the pressure that has led [women]" to abortion, but he has no interest in addressing why women choose abortion and what happens when their choices are limited.
If Francis cared about women's rights, he would look to Ireland, where women until 2019 were barred from having an abortion in even the harsh cases of rape and fetal abnormality. He would look to Poland, where up to 240,000 women undergo illegal abortion services each year. He would look to El Salvador, where as recently as June, 15 women who had experienced miscarriages and stillbirths remained in prison, accused of defying the nation's abortion ban.
He would understand that these women do not just need forgiveness; they need access to safe, legal abortion. At age 17, I thought those sad, silent women on the fringes of anti-abortion marches were hurt by their own doing. Now, 10 years later, I realize that, maybe, it was the Catholic Church that cut them from their own faith.