Rebecca, welcome to Catholic Answers Live. Hi,
thank you for having me. So why are you
pro-choice, Rebecca? I am pro-choice--I'm
not ashamed to say my age, I am 40 years
old this year, I was born in 1974
obviously, so post Roe v. Wade--and
I am pro-choice because I was raised
that pro-life equals anti-woman, which is
the first thing; and I actually became a
nurse and now I'm a psychologist, I got
my doctorate, but it wasn't until I got
older, and...as I told your producer, I'm
pro-choice but I want discussion. And I
think right now in America there is no
room, especially for a woman of my age, to
have a discussion from the other side.
I'm a cradle Catholic, I was raised
Catholic, married in the Catholic Church,
my husband is actually from Belfast,
Ireland, and very Catholic and very proud
to be so. Rebecca, we'll have to go here
to a break really soon, but can I ask you a quick
question? Why is
pro-life anti-woman? I don't understand
that.
I think that it's made to be--all of the
literature, all of the teachings, even
in sex ed in schools, it's--you can't tell
a woman what to do with her body.
It's her property. It's her choice. It has
nothing to do with a woman, and it's
gonna save me somehow. Rebecca, this is
Patrick, we're just about to run into
that hard break that we have to take, we
don't have a choice, but the timing of it.
But if you're willing to stick around
a little bit, we can have
the have the very open topic you've been
hoping to have, and now the country and
the rest of the listeners around the
world will hear it. So thanks so much for
your question and for your willingness
to engage. Rebecca in Barrington, Illinois is
pro-choice, she's married to a Catholic
man from Belfast, Ireland, and she has
been taught that, at least on an impression
level, that to be pro-life is to be anti-
woman. Have I summarized your position
accurately, Rebecca? Yes you have, and
actually it was something, I believe--
I just wrote down Trent's book that I
have to get, I just remembered
instantly and in a moment of why I was
pro-choice and when I first got that
impression. And it was my first year of
high school, I went to Catholic grammar
school for eight years and then I
went to a public high school, where in my
very first sex ed class, all they did
when they presented the topic of
abortion was say: "This is by men and
older women, and this Catholic Church, who
has the troubles of molestation and
they're totally anti-woman, they want to
keep women in bondage." Rebecca, who told
you that? It was my first sex ed teacher.
We had "Becoming A Person" in my
grammar school, where my dad is actually
a teacher--" So it's a cumulative effect built up over time. Alright, Rebecca, yeah, I want to just address this so far,
because I guess I'm having a hard time
seeing how a lot of this really relates
to abortion very much. I mean, tell me
this--here's my position: all human beings
have an equal right to live, regardless
of how old they are or young they are,
and regardless of whether they live in a
crib or in the womb. Now to me, tell me:
what is anti-woman about that position?
Now, I would understand, if I said that
only women could not have abortions,
but men could have abortions, that would
be anti-woman, I'd agree with you. But I'm
not saying that. I'm just saying: all humans
are equally valuable, have an equal right
to live; whether they're in the crib or
in the womb, we protect their lives.
Tell me, Rebecca, what's anti-woman about
that? I now see your point, having gotten
older a little, but I am still--fetal
viability, which was supposedly the way--I'm sorry? 
How do you define "viability,"
Rebecca? Can the baby, the
unborn, preborn--it's that language
too, again, is looked down so much in
society that I think people who are very
pro-life don't really look around and
see how we're teaching our
young women. Okay, Rebecca, but
what's "viable?" "Viable," meaning "Can they
live by themselves outside of the womb?" Okay. And I still believe that that's how life is determined.
Well Rebecca, you're talking to two dads here, I
remember him birth of my kids very
vividly--Trent more than me--how long
would your son last, after being born, if
left alone?
Yeah if--even now, my son's four months
old, if he was left on his own he would
probably be dead in 24 to 48 hours. He
can't care for himself. He's not viable
in that sense. I mean, there are some
children, they're not viable for
decades until they're 30 or 40 years old,
they can't--they're so immature, they
can't care for themselves.
I guess, Rebecca, here's my question: why
does viability matter? Why is it the case
that we can say: "It's legal to kill a
baby when they are totally dependent on
their mom, but it's illegal to kill that
baby when other people can take care of
them?" How does that make
sense? I'm trying to think of a really
good way to answer that, and all I can do
is--so please forgive if I go into
rhetoric that I was taught, was not "Can
the baby survive and feed itself," but
things like, "Could this baby breathe on
its own?" You're saying,
"Unless this child can live outside of
the womb, they're not a person." That's
your position. That, yes, that is what I have believed for the longest time. And here's my question,
though: why is that child
not a person when they're living and
growing in the womb? Because technically,
even through nursing school, we're taught
that up until about the sixth or
seventh month of gestation, that baby
technically will be called a parasite. Not
that I believe babies are parasites, but
I have come in time... 
Why is the baby a parasite? Because it cannot survive or
even just stay in life without
getting all of its nutrients, oxygen,
blood supply from another human being. Right, so, Rebecca, here's your position, basically: it's okay to
kill a baby when they're at
their maximum level of helplessness.
Right? I see that. And does that sound
compassionate?
Not at all. "It's okay to kill a
baby because they're at their maximum
level of helplessness. When they're at
90% helplessness, then it's not okay." Then it's wrong.
When it's cute and cuddly it's wrong, but
before it's not. And the only difference
here is they've just become a little bit
more helpless. For me, what does it
matter? That's right, when they're in the
womb, they need their mother to survive.
But we all went through that stage. I
just don't see, how does it make sense
that just because someone is very
helpless, it means they don't deserve our
assistance? If anything, Rebecca, I think
it's reversed; that when someone is very
very helpless--like crimes against
children are worse than crimes against
adults. And crimes against the 
elderly are unforgivable, absolutely.
Because of the helplessness.
When a victim is more
helpless, the crime is even worse. So just
because the child--to me saying "It's okay
to end the life of a fetus because
they're not viable;" well, part of the
definition of a "fetus" is just "you can't
live outside of the womb." That's just
picking something--yes, that's what they
are, but that doesn't give us a reason to
think they don't deserve assistance like
other people. So I think that's where you
and I--I believe all humans should be
treated equally, no matter how helpless
they are. I hear someone who's
divided, Rebecca. I'm not buying that
you're a fully committed ideologue here. I
think you're on the fence and maybe,
frankly, shaking a little bit.
I will admit, I am shaking, and when
I was in college I marched for
pro-choice, I was one of the other
counter-protesters outside of a clinic,
and now, having met someone who has
always been devoted in his faith
and in the teachings of our Church, and...
thankfully my parents let me decide
and learn things for myself, I remember
asking these questions even in graduate
school, and what I think people don't
understand in the pro-life
movement is that, you know how you were
just speaking about the Holocaust, if you
it said "Oh gosh, I don't want to look at
that, that's horrible,"
you would be damned
for it. I'm saying that, as a woman, as a
young woman, if I had said "Why do we
really determine that that's not a baby--"
because the language that you just said,
about a person being its most helpless, a
baby being its most helpless, in schools
and colleges even, that that is not a
baby, it's not a baby until it's born and
can breathe on its own... Right, hence
terms like "parasite." I think that's a way, you know, when
people say that our schools don't... Rebecca, let
me jump in here for a second. Let
me jump in. I would agree that in these
schools, in some context, when we talk
about abortion we do that. But in other
contexts, when we talk about trying to
save the baby's life, and the mom wants
the baby and prevent a miscarriage, then
we can recognize it's a baby. But I do
thank you very much for calling, and for
thinking through these issues. And I hope
that you'll continue to think it through,
and that you'll pick up a copy of my
book Persuasive Pro-Life; and in there,
you can see the whole position, and
that I think it's rooted in science and
reason, and it's a compassionate and fair
position. Am I remembering correctly
that you talk about the concept of
viability? That's completely relative. I
mean, if I live on an ice floe on
the Baffin Island in the Arctic, and my
wife's pregnant, versus in downtown Los
Angeles next to Children's Hospital,
viability is a very bendy, flexible term.
Viability changes with technology, so
that's one reason to think that it's not
a good measure of whether you're a
person. But for me, there's a more
fundamental problem and that's this: yes,
there is a fact, at a point, when a child
can survive outside of the womb; but why
does that matter?
Who cares? We, as born people, assign value
to living outside the womb, but why does
it have value? Because we're all like
that? That's like saying, you know, a bunch
of men saying "Having a Y chromosome is
great, because we've all got it." Well, who says?
To me, it just doesn't follow in that.
It just becomes a circular argument
to say "Viability matters, because that's
when you can survive on your own." Well
why does that matter? "Because when you
can survive on your own, that's when
you're viable." Right. It's completely
circular. And also, Patrick, I mean lots of
animals are viable. Like rats. When
they're born, they're all viable. They can
survive outside of the womb. Right. But
they're not people. You'd say, "Well,
they're not human." Ah, so that's the
criteria then, really. It's being human
and viable. But then why does the human
part matter at all?
