Roundtable: Building a Civilization of Love

okay friends welcome uh we are so delighted to welcome you here this evening my name is Carter Snead I am a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame where I also have the privilege of directing the denicola center for ethics and culture which is hosting this event tonight this Roundtable discussion entitled building a civilization of Love uh the de Nicholas Center for ethics and culture uh is a is an interdisciplinary Center in the College of Arts and letters at the University of Notre Dame with the mission of sharing the richness of the Catholic moral and intellectual tradition across a variety of disciplines in conversation with other Traditions certainly other Traditions uh that are not our own um and we we aim to be Notre Dame's voice in the global Public Square as well as assist Notre Dame in its distinctive Catholic mission on campus we have a robust student formation program we have 400 students we call them our Soren fellows across the undergraduate and graduate student and professional student population for whom we provide special mentoring and intellectual and cultural and spiritual formation we obviously engage in a wide array of research and academic programming we assist the university in its own mission to hire excellent faculty who share our passion for the University's distinctive Mission both the entry level as well as the more senior levels and most relevant to our gathering this evening we are at the Nicholas Center the University's principal engine for its institutional commitment to building a culture of life and promoting a culture of life through teaching and research and service and public witness and as that leading voice for pro-life teaching research and public engagement at Notre Dame we're proud to spearhead the women and children first initiative in tonight's conversation is another event in that in that initiative we at the Nicholas Center and we at Notre Dame uh upon uh the the moment the court overturned Roe v Wade in the Dobbs decision creating new opportunities to care for mothers and babies and families uh in a comprehensive way realized that it was incumbent upon us as those who had been advocating for the intrinsic equal Dignity of every human being from conception to Natural death in this new moment to to focus our efforts on helping to build a world in which mothers and babies and families are welcomed and loved and cared for and protected as they deserve and as a university and as a University Center we launched this initiative to undertake interdisciplinary research and teaching and service and public engagement around all the different interlocking questions at the heart of building a culture of Life questions that include the legal policy social and ethical dimensions of issues regarding Health Care and housing and education and employment and poverty related issues racial Justice religious freedom Freedom international human rights and a whole Cascade and array of other disciplines and questions that are that all connect in the in the interlocking web of of of issues that that are necessary to Grapple with in order to build a culture of life in a civilization of love and so we have convened experts we've conducted research we have uh teaching modules and tonight we have a very special group of individuals who we have convened to think together about how we can build this world in which mothers and babies and families are protected and cared for as as they as they deserve and you'll notice that our panel represents different perspectives different disciplines different points of view and that's by Design we want to have a conversation among folks from a variety of backgrounds perspectives points of view and expert areas of expertise so that we can do this the right way and before I introduce our panelist out like to say one final thing through the unbelievable generosity of Mike and Peggy Cowan we are hosting this event here this evening the reception as well as the other Suite of events that Notre Dame is engaging with this weekend on the uh on the march to correspond to the March for Life and the 50-year anniversary of row and to celebrate its reversal and to remind ourselves that this is only the beginning this is only the beginning of our effort to to again build a culture to build legal structures to build social safety nets to to do what we can do to to manifest the radical hospitality and solidarity that's at the core of the right to life movement which is built on the proposition that everyone matters everyone matters everyone is to be welcomed everyone is to be protected everyone is to be loved and cherished regardless of how small or dependent or poor or perceived as birdism burdensome by others etc etc everyone is welcome and uh and this is just the very beginning we are here to accompany and care for mothers and babies and families a cross-life spectrum not simply at the during the pregnancy and birth but throughout life Spectrum to to weave a consistent ethic of life and to promote that in the Public Square and in the ways that uh that we're able to give in our different areas of expertise and and uh in our work so with with uh with that let me introduce uh very briefly now the full bios are in the documents that you have the materials you have in your seats so in the interest of time I'll simply say very brief word of introduction about either of our our very special um uh speakers first we're joined by Dr Monique Shiro wubenhorst she's a former faculty member at Duke University's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology she's a former senior official uh in global Health at usaid and she's currently to our great benefit a fellow a research fellow of the Nicholas Center for ethics and culture uh Leah labresco Sergeant a friend of the Nicholas Center is it author and founder of the substack community other feminisms and a policy expert we have Heather hacker my old friend who is a partner at her Law Firm hacker Stevens and former assistant solicitor general of Texas we're joined by Mary Helen fiorito a former Vice Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Chicago and uh the Cardinal George fellow of the de Nicholas Center and finally and we were going to be joined by our very dear friend Senator Katrina Jackson from Louisiana but very sadly she is taken ill she's not able she was not able to travel or join us remotely she is a Democrat representing Louisiana's 34th district and the sponsor of groundbreaking pro-life legislation and a wonderful role model for for everyone but especially for people in the legislative space and to fill the role of talking about what opportunities and challenges there might be in the legislative sphere we've been joined by our good friend former Congressman Dan Lipinski who sir a Democrat who served eight terms in the house as the representative for Illinois's third congressional district and he also served as co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional pro-life caucus and each of our speakers this evening are going to take a brief moment to share with us what they think are the greatest opportunities and challenges facing all of us as we seek to do our level best to to build a world in which again mothers babies and families are protected cared for as they deserve as we all deserve so we'll begin with Dr Shiro wobbenhorst to offer a medical and public health perspective great thank you okay I won well it's a real honor and a pleasure to be here and part of this distinguished panel of friends and colleagues and I'd especially like to thank Dr Snead for inviting me so as we all know Monday was Dr Martin Luther King's birthday and a civilization of love bears a family resemblance to the Beloved Community hopefully people are familiar with that terminology which was described by Dr King and as doctors Kenneth Smith and Ira Zep know Dr King's was a vision of a completely integrated Society a community of love and Justice wherein Brotherhood would be in actuality in all of social life in his mind such a community would be the ideal corporate expression of the Christian faith behind King's conception of the Beloved Community lay his assumption that human existence is social in nature the solidarity of the Human family is a phrase he frequently used to to express this idea we are he said caught in an inescapable network of mutuality in one of his addresses so as women and children The Women and Children First initiative contemplates actions to be taken we need not hesitate to see what Dr King has said is being congruent with our work to create a civilization of love for mothers babies and families especially and I would emphasize this point since proportionately more African-American unborn children are aborted than any other ethnic group and we consider the impacts that abortion has had on the black family and community so answering this question about what we need to do in the medical and public health spheres I would like to focus on certain specific area areas in particular we do need to rebuild a culture of life in medicine and the Allied Health Professions and in one of the major reasons for this is that these medicine and public health are not simply instrumentalities to be used either in the culture of death for example for abortion or in the culture of Life they're the basis of our policy and legal Frameworks that support a civilization of love and also an important means by which we demonstrate our commitment to mothers Children and Families in Need so what are some of the challenges and opportunities that I've watched I've been in OB GYN for more than 30 years it seems amazing that that's true practiced in a wide variety of mostly underserved communities so one of the major challenges that I see is how do we meet the needs of Mother's Children and Families you know it people will say that we need to for example meet these needs by restricting the number of children that are born especially in ethnic ethnic groups but my my response to that is that what we need to do is to increase access to an utilization of pregnancy related and other care care for children including clinical care in hospitals and there are a variety of different ways that this can be accomplished one is by the expansion of um the availability of freestanding birthing centers Mobile Health Care attorney waiting homes so on and so forth and also by using the amazing resource that we have of Pregnancy Resource Centers this is because maternal and child mortality continue to be pressing issues in the United States in States and counties and we have what are called maternity deserts where there are no effectively no ways for pregnant women to access health care without driving many miles or traversing dangerous neighborhoods so this is an incredibly important piece that we need to keep in mind another is that we need to increase health Workforce by incentivizing practice in underserved areas we want to develop Innovative funding models for maternity and family care so simply carrying out more Medicaid expansions is not going to solve this problem Medicaid from its Inception has struggled to be mainstreamed it's struggled to be accepted by patients and Physicians and so we do need Innovative models of care that are going to be able to help fill that Gap and then another important piece is accessing utilization to mental health and substance abuse treatment especially for pregnant women drug overdose homicide and suicide comprise 18 of all mortality in pregnant women and this is something that needs to be addressed another is that how did the medical research and public health domains contribute to a civilization of love I haven't finished far curling's excellent book from Notre Dame press called the way of medicine I highly recommend it but one of the things that we need to do is re-infuse our Hippocratic ethics into medicine into medical training into resident training and inculcate values in Physicians nurses and Allied health professionals that support human flourishing and we certainly can get into that we need to increase the pipeline of pro-life Physicians and Allied Health indiv people in the Allied Health Professions and we want to also enact legislation and people say well doc you're out of your lane no legislation has a direct impact on how Medical Practice occurs either positively or negatively um I want to finish by uh going back to what I said earlier um and also put in a quick plug for research because as a researcher I do think that we need to promote and fund positive research I will emphasize very quickly that increasingly pro-life authors are being shut out their work is being challenged in over the last several years we've had several papers that have been requested to be retracted although in one case the paper that was rebuttaled to our paper was itself retracted which was beautiful but we do need to be able to answer some fundamental questions about maternal mortality about the early life of the embryo about the harms to women from abortion and these are not esoteric research questions the answers to these questions inform our policy and legal Frameworks so I'd like to close briefly and going back to what Dr King said about tied to being tied together in the Garment of Destiny this statement was a way of affirming reality is made up of structures that form an interrelated whole in other words that human beings are dependent on upon each other and you'll hear Dr Snead and others say this whatever a person is or possesses he or she owes to others who have proceeded him and as king wrote whether or not we realize it each of us lives eternally in the red recognition of one's indebtedness to past Generations should inhibit the sense of self-sufficiency and promote awareness that personal growth does not take place apart from meaningful relationships with other people and I would add not just personal growth but human flourishing that is the Bedrock upon which we are seeking to build a civilization of Love A just in virtuous Society whose Foundation is the love of Christ thank you foreign decision came down some of the sharpest and most urgent questions have been about life of the mother exceptions to abortion laws and I think they come out of what's a broader issue and the greatest challenge for the pro-life movement a profound distrust that there can be any more attention paid to a baby without the mother losing out and without when the stakes are high the mother even losing her life and that's because the pro-life movement is making a big claim that it's possible to perform a delicate Balancing Act in medicine where you're attentive to both patients in front of you attentive to the two individuals who cannot be seen separately from each other and able to care for both the best of your ability even you know taking things a little bit towards the edge of the time allotted to you to give mother and baby as much time together as possible even if ultimately you know the baby is going to die I know that that delicate balance is possible because I've had doctors who have walked that path with me I've lost two children through ectopic pregnancies and in one case I was given two options by my doctor about which doctor I could see once the diagnosis been made a doctor I'd met before a doctor who was much closer by you know a 15-minute taxi cab ride away a doctor who when I'd seen her for an ultrasound and had been crying because of my past miscarriages and being nervous about what the ultrasound would reveal told me don't cry don't cry or I could get on a train to New Jersey and go see a Catholic doctor and I got on the train I wanted to see a doctor who even though he knew he couldn't save my baby was going to talk about my baby with me I was going to ask my baby's name and was going to listen when I said if there's any chance that you recover a body I want to be able to bury it but even though I know that Balancing Act is possible I also know it's very rare I've met doctor after doctor during miscarriages and even during delivery sometimes who seemed outright indifferent to me um I think people come with a great suspicion towards the idea that this balancing act as possible is they've had the experience of a woman being treated as irrelevant or discardable when there's nothing in the other end of the scale I'm just going to ask of the people in this room um would you raise your hand if you or someone in your family has been physically hurt or you know had a difficult time a more difficult time than you needed to an illness because of the indifference or the brusness or the not listening of a doctor and you know for people on the video it's more than half the room I think it's very hard to ask people to take seriously that it's possible to care for women and children together when they know we don't already care for women the idea of adding an and to that is unimaginable so the challenge before us is how do we restore trust in the medical profession and that that trust be earned not just demanded how is it that people who enter a caring profession end up so indifferent callous or even cruel to the patient they can see not even the patient who's hidden part of that is that doctors and nurses are frequently already part of a system that's treating them as discardable there's been a nurse's strike in New York from nurses who aren't striking specifically for better pay or greater benefits they're striking for the sake of their patients they're striking because their hospitals are so short staffed they know they can't care for their patients safely and they don't feel right going in every day as though that's normal and then giving patients care that isn't the care they were trained to provide simply the medical care again leaving aside the bedside manner the kindness but I think there's another countlessness that comes specifically In Obstetrics and Gynecology that comes from having patients whose humanity is contingent from going into a room habitually and asking and how do you feel about this pregnancy as your first question that's the question I got the first time I was pregnant and then being ready to say baby or pregnancy depending on what the patient answers because it's the doctors who are really always exposed to the truth of who is in the womb even when they're performing abortions it's the doctor who sees the body even when the mother goes home and to spend day after day practicing a switch between caring and indifference depending on the opinion of the parent it's hard for a doctor who wants to bring their whole self to work so I think a great deal of our challenge is to say what does it take for doctors and nurses to be able to care for their patients to care for them to be snapped in a way where that's possible to have you know the ways that they're paid the ways that their checklists are set up all around care for the whole person even before you get to the second person to not have another case where Serena Williams is dragging herself off of what could have been her deathbed for a doctor who won't listen to her I think there are a lot of incredible Partnerships the sisters of Life Walk with vulnerable mothers and they'll stand between them and vulnerable between the mothers and doctors when they have to to get them the care they deserve but I think we can't have a culture of Life a culture that can see women and children when we have a culture that doesn't see women and there's a lot of room to fight for doctors and nurses to be able to be the people they entered medical school to be but in difference to the vulnerable whether it's a baby in the womb or a mother who is made vulnerable by her pregnancy has a body count it happens day after day it's happening somewhere in the U.S right now and today in the New York Times if you look it up there's an article about a group that pairs black doulas with that black mothers and a woman named Cody Washington who called her doctor when her feet were really swollen when she was having trouble moving around and the doctor said you know take 10 days at home try and drink a lot of water and don't eat any fried food and she called her Doula after trying to take the doctor's advice when she'd hurt her to stand up and the Doula said you have to go to the hospital I'm not going to leave the hospital I'm going to get you seen and that mother had preeclampsia the doctor faces the same kind of question as anyone faces any of these difficult life of them other questions how far can we support the mother so the baby can keep growing when is the moment where we have to make sure you know that it's safe is for mother and baby to deliver early but the doctor can't be trusted to make those decisions when he doesn't see the woman a mother can't feel comfortable defending her child if she knows she can barely defend herself to create a pro-life culture we need a culture where a medical system deserves the trust that it will care for the vulnerable women and children thank you very much for that Heather so after the Supreme Court decided the Dobbs decision it basically opened the doors for the states to make their own decisions about the legality of abortion and if they were going to allow abortion under what terms that's something that the states haven't truly been able to do since before row and so it's been very interesting to see in the legal world what has happened since then one major change is that the legal fight related to abortion has moved almost exclusively to state courts whereas previously it was principally in the federal courts because the Supreme Court had decided that abortion was a right under the Federal Constitution so now we have all of this litigation shifting towards state courts which is a good thing in that you know each state is making decisions but what we're starting to see is some of the same mistakes that led to Roe and the subsequent Decisions by the Supreme Court and what I mean by that is one of the flaws of the row opinion which the court recognized in Dobbs was the fact that this right to abortion in the Federal Constitution was not grounded in the text history or tradition of the Constitution and that is a similar issue with the state courts because the state Supreme Courts are being asked to find what or to determine whether or not the state constitution protects a right to abortion in that state and the states uh by and large when their state constitutions were written abortion was illegal in most of those States so it's similar to the situation in the the federal context um now a lot of States um who there there are some states who had already decided um even before this that there was a right to abortion protected under the state constitution but some of those decisions actually relied on federal precedent um because the provisions of the State Constitution were similar enough to the Federal Constitution that the state Supreme Courts had held that those Provisions were interpreted similarly to the federal counterpart um but there are other states who have other Provisions in their constitution that their courts have held are interpreted more broadly and so in the first type of State those decisions are obviously ripe for reconsideration if they're relying on federal precedent that has now been overturned there's now a new question as to whether or not the state constitution nevertheless protects that right and other states where the the right has not been determined many of those cases are now being brought in response to States making abortion illegal and what we've seen is that it there have been kind of mixed results there um the Iowa Supreme Court actually even before Dobbs um there was a decision that held that their the right to abortion was protected by the Iowa Constitution and then later once the composition of the Court had changed significantly the Iowa Supreme Court reversed that decision um just a few weeks ago the South Carolina Supreme Court held by a plurality that it enjoined the the heartbeat law there in South Carolina and the judge that wrote the plurality opinion um she is I believe either termed out or aged out she will no longer be a Justice and so um you know whether that factored into her decision you know I'm not sure but um those things bring up a very important point which is that one thing that a lot of people will be paying close attention to now and probably should have paid closer attention to before this because it matters in context other than abortion is how do states select their judges and especially their Supreme Court judges and states have a bunch of different ways of doing that but in some states the way it used to be for example in Iowa they follow something called the Missouri plan which is judges aren't elected they're nominated by essentially the State Bar Association and so you can imagine that usually most bar associations tend to skew towards a certain political view and so what you end up with is a state that is pretty pro-life that has a very uh pro-abortion leaning Supreme Court and so that was the situation in Iowa but they changed that and the governor was much more involved in the selection of justices and so as a result the composition of the court changed and the decision ended up being overruled so um that's that's going to be a big issue to look at is how your state selects its justices and then um just one brief additional question or note to add that sort of plays into what the previous panelists talked about another issue that we're going to see aside from uh whether abortion is legal in certain States and you know under what circumstances is in states where abortion is undoubtedly going to be legal those states have in some cases reacted to making that right even broader and a big legal question I think we're going to see pop up a lot is how do we protect the conscience rights of individuals who are caught up in that decision so doctors nurses pharmacists other medical professionals in states that have very broad rights to abortion there's probably going to be some conflicts there in terms of what the state will require from certain professionals and whether those professionals will be able to protect affect their rights of conscience to not engage in those activities thank you very much Mary I'd like to add my thanks to those of the others on the panel for this invitation to be speaking with you this evening it is a great honor as I heard Dr Cheryl rubenhorst speak about what the Reverend Dr Luther King had to say about our indebtedness to past Generations when Dobbs came down in in June even though we knew kind of what would be coming or at least we assumed so from the the leaked opinion that had come out a little bit earlier it reminded me just as a chicagoan of when the Chicago Cubs won the World Series after 102 years so it was one of those moments where like you always knew it could possibly happen but then like could something really go wrong at the last minute until you know so until I saw I was uh I had actually a covet the day it came down so I was watching scotus blog like every other lawyer you know refreshing the screen every two seconds I know it came across we have dabs and then the and then the five to four number and um so it felt very sort of nostalgic to me um you know because when the when the Cubs won kind of very organically people started going down to Wrigley Field and you know writing the names of their grandfathers and other people that like the the most sort of poignant picture was in the Chicago Tribune of a guy who was um sitting at Queen of Heaven Cemetery with a transistor radio next to his father's grave because he wanted to watch the last game with this dude I know it just it like ripped her heart out but it but it really made me think of this indebtedness that we have to so many people who went before us right this didn't just all happen this year right I mean and I thought about Congressman Henry Hyde who of course Congressman Lipinski also knew um Dr Wilkie all these people who went before us who um you know who had nothing to gain personally or professionally from taking very public opinions and very public stands on abortion yet did it anyway because it was the right thing to do and I was just so grateful for that path that they paved for all of us you know my husband was saying Roe was like a big Jenga game and finally some somebody pulled out the right Block in the middle and they came down like the house of cards that it always was but one of the most prized possessions that I have from the 30 or so years I've worked as both a lawyer and an advocate for the Catholic church for the pro-life movement is a signed copy of Governor Robert Casey's book fighting for life and I I obtained that because when Governor Casey was denied a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention when it was held in Chicago I was asked to help find an alternative venue for him and so as a little thank you he wrote me you know just a little note inside the book and I I went back to read some of his comments at the time he had a beautiful op-ed in the Wall Street Journal what I would have said at the convention but he really worn it was a very prophetic voice that if he would be marginalized over this issue and the Democratic party would assume this completely 100 pro-abortion position that he would not only Not only would he personally be marginalized as the as the Democratic governor owner of the largest Democratic state in the country I mean he was not you know a nobody within the Democratic party but also that the party would also marginalize many people in the middle on important issues and it was again extremely prophetic he said if it starts with me and I you know he had voted with the Democratic party 99 of all all times um who is going to be next along the chopping block when we tell other people they can't speak and to my left here is probably the most recent example of what happens when you're a pro-life Democrat but he also talked about the voice of what he called the little guy we would say now the little person I suppose the little guy being muted and and spoke very persuasively about life-affirming choices for the vulnerable that would be less available because abortion would be the more attractive and cheap option and obviously we've seen this happening right it's no coincidence that Amazon for example is offering four thousand dollars to any of its female employees who wish to have an abortion at the same same time they're being sued for pregnancy discrimination by it's already pregnant employees who don't want to have an abortions right so pregnancy discrimination is a real thing abortion is a very convenient and cheap option as opposed to paying for maternity leave and other care for pregnant women so um another voice of the past I guess so she's still alive I don't want to anybody to think she's died but uh Frederica Matthews Green who is an Orthodox Christian writer who wrote the book real choices about 28 years ago I think where she went to sort of every major city from New York New York to Los Angeles and a whole bunch of cities in between and talks to in each City a really large number of women who had had abortions and said to them what didn't you have that if you'd had it you would have changed your mind and you know what the number one reason was there was nobody who said that I could do it not one person not my mom not the baby's father no one said hey I'll go with you to your doctor's appointments right I will I mean and Dr Shiro I know you know this well it's it is not a lack of practical Services though obviously we need social safety nets etc etc to make choosing life an option but if women don't have a person who is Pope Francis has said will accompany them throughout that pregnancy then they're not going to be able to do it right and so as as Leah so beautifully talked about you know your your first the first people especially your doctor reacting to your to your pregnancy the news of your pregnancy is very deeply influential to a woman I remember when I went in for my I was pregnant with my first child in the first doctor's appointment and she was kind of Brusque with me and even though I was in a Catholic Hospital I found that surprising and she said well how did you get pregnant and I'm like so there's like this horrible and I'm like I don't teach you that medical school like when a man and woman love each other very much I know I'm like no no just we did the regular you know so anyway so I was like totally mortified and and so my relationship I wound up changing doctors because my relationship with her was like kind of conflict um conflicted from the very first appointment which I was not expecting but again that very first interaction you have if you if you so I had a one of my friends from college a dear friend we were we lived next door to each other in the dorm who um who became pregnant when she was 23 or 24 and you should probably would have gone out to marry this guy anyway but when she went to tell her parents and her parents you know they told her they sat them down they said you know we're pregnant and she said her mother got up and went into the kitchen and came out with a bottle of champagne and said to her boyfriend welcome to the family and they opened a bottle of champagne his parents on the other hand completely different reaction and I mean horrible reaction so much so that they were going to elope I mean it the two reactions of now her parents were disappointed they were good they were serious Catholic she you know so okay I don't have to explain all of that to you but those two reactions I have never forgotten that and that's like 28 years ago so those initial reactions is there someone to accompany you what is the first reaction we say when When someone tells us about a new life like oh boy you're in trouble what are you gonna do or hey that's great right I mean the impact that that first reaction and impression can have is is significant so um as I I don't want to just do a whole trip down memory lane but one of the other people I've been thinking about a lot lately has been Pope Benedict because of his recent passing and so he had you know he was genius and a brilliant Theologian but um just sort of speaking of someone who worked for the church for many years and so looks through a lot of my pro-life views although it's not a religious issue but I look through it through a religious lens often but um he has a beautiful book that he wrote about Advent and where he talks about Saint Nicholas and he points out that Saint Nicholas who of course became Santa Claus right was one of the first Saints to become venerated without being a martyr but because he was known for helping others especially children and families and how as we as a Christian Community if we're going to continue to light candles of humanity giving hope and joy to people in a dark world we can only do so if we draw from the light of God incarnate right so that's really an image I've been meditating on and thinking of we have to be that presence we have to be that light to the world especially to women who may think that abortion is the only option or they're presented with abortion as the only option as we as we've seen some communities particularly Community communities of color so I'll just close by by telling a brief story about what John Paul II called radical solidarity with women remember in crossing the threshold of Hope when he's told he's obsessed with the abortion issue and he said no infirmly rejecting pro-choice what is necessary is radical solidarity with the woman it is not right to leave her alone so the Pregnancy Center and maternity home where I served on the board of directors for many years in Chicago called aid for women we had a a client a woman who came to us who we found living at the Days Inn motel near O'Hare Airport and she was at the Days Inn motel near O'Hare Airport because she had flown from China she was pregnant with her third child she had not registered her second child who was a girl with the government yet and now she was pregnant with her third so knowing no one she flew to Chicago looked up kind of Googled in her broken English Pregnancy Help and came to live with us it ate for women she had her baby she lived at our our home we have a home for women while they're pregnant and then a transitional home where women can live with their children up until they're five years old and so she lived with us with Congressman lipinski's help here to until we could get her um uh Asylum and and bring her children over here but that's what like solidarity and accompaniment looks like right it is long-term was it easy no there were days you know she did not see her husband or her other two children for four years but you know happy ending to the story they're all here now they live in Texas they had another baby um so they have four children now but yeah it's it's great but you know these are the kinds of things I think that in a post-grow world we've always been called to them before row during row after row right none of that's changed but we need to be more public and intentional about it so the people who really need these services and need this solidarity and need this friendship and accompaniment nowhere to find us be with them and finally Congressman Lipinski well I don't want to take up too much time so I won't go into stories about the 90 a great story about the 92 convention that Murray was talking about Governor Casey uh was denied the ability to speak I brought a stop abortion now sign in there but I won't tell you this though right now um we're a really good position on the floor with Illinois uh I won't talk about the Cubs winning the World Series I'm a South Side Southwest side from Chicago but I am a Cubs fan I won't go into those stories uh but I'm I was um I'm obviously pin shading I'm not Katrina Jackson and so uh if I knew I was going to be doing this I probably would have got my hair cut I would have dressed nicer I thought he was going to be a participant in the general March and everything this uh this year but I want to talk I'm going to lean on a uh a piece that I wrote for America magazine uh published December 5th that talks about what I think we should do what federal legislation the pro-life movement should get behind it at this point uh before though I say that it's an honor to be up here with these four women and it is the most important thing that we can do is to as everyone said is to accompany women help women in any way that that we can support these organizations that help women and if we're going to have a public policy that supports life then we need to change hearts and minds and it's more important now than it ever was I was not I hate to say it in some ways when Roe was you know overturned I was not nearly excited as I was when the Cubs won the World Series because I thought oh I know this is going to get a lot harder now and I I realize as I was writing this article I realized that I probably have more experience trying to be a pro-life member of Congress in facing what comes at you because I was a pro-life Democrat pro-life Republicans didn't face that they they didn't have that they weren't getting constantly attacked like I was so I I don't think people knew like I knew what was going to happen and we saw a lot of that in this in this last election and unfortunately uh I I think that the pro-life movement did not the other side was ready and I don't think we were ready and I'm afraid I don't know if we're still if we're writing 2024 is going to be another fight because Democrats most Democrats think that it helped a lot in this election they're going to come at it again at on the state level uh so we have to be more prepared there but what I what I propose in this article is at the federal level we should support a 15 abandoned an abortion at 15 weeks with with the exceptions and this is not where my personal position is but I think this is what we can accomplish now Richard dorflinger has he he was making the case to me it should be 20 weeks because there's not much of a difference in a number of babies we say between 15 20 weeks and 20 weeks there's better arguments but I think to set a to get back saying putting the message out there that there is something abortion is not something good because the other side's made a lot of inroads and saying it used to be a much more widely accepted abortion is not a good thing but the other side figured out that we we we're not going to give that anymore uh safe legal and rare that's go where is God so I think that will help to again and let's get on a on a winning side with the winning argument in in I think a 20-week band or 15-week band with exceptions for rape incest the life of the mother not not the health the big huge loophole that is let that anything happen um but the other thing that wrote in this America article and I thought this was going to be unfortunately if you look at the article if you look at the headline it's uh pro-life former Democratic Congressman says 15-week abortion ban I thought what they'd really promote was the second part of the article that says we need to step up in so it's as a movement as a pro-life movement do more promote government policies that help pregnant women and families with kids especially with with young kids and as a Democrat it comes much more naturally to me uh unfortunately the pro-life movement has in many ways become married to the libertarian uh to Libertarians because of because Democrats have all mostly gone the other way and so Republicans are the ones who are pro-life and a lot of Republicans are don't want more government involvement look when the uh when the Affordable Care Act passed there was uh one good provision put in there about helping support for uh pregnant teens college students a woman who had been abused so that was funded for for 10 years that funding ran out it just ran out this past year because no one picked up the ball because if you're a Democrat you don't want to be seen as helping to continue the funding for this because then those pro-choice groups who think well well maybe you're not really pro-choice enough uh and Republicans to a large extent don't want to see government get involved in doing these things I that that needs to change and I think some of that changing Marco Rubio senator Marco Rubio had a bill uh last Congress I assume he's going to do it again that has paid parental leave expansion of child tax credit additional funding and reforms for the nutrition program the WIC nutrition program women infant and children and support for pregnancy centers uh representative Jeff Fortenberry had the care for her act which would provide 3 600 tax credit to pregnant women and in a census for States to join a new federal state entity called the pregnancy support collaborative uh there's a lot of different ways in it doesn't have to be a new government program it could be tax credits whatever it is I think this is something important because first of all it's the right thing to do but also because we need to show and I think this is the worst thing after in this past election cycle is well first of all I was a pro-life Democrat for 16 years lost primary because of that every Republican who ran in that for that seat now in that District said I'm pro-life but this isn't a federal issue uh I was at this debate I almost fell over after I I heard that it and somehow this idea though thinking well if I say that then I can avoid this issue well if they couldn't avoid the issue so there needs to be some some courage to step up and and Embrace this and say that I'm pro-life because I believe that science shows us this is a child and we need to care for the child and the mother and we need to say why we are pro-life or else the other side is just going to paint all of us as especially men as well you just hate women this is just anti-woman and that's what happens when you leave a vacuum that's right and so that that really needs to change but I would like to see and I'd be very interested to hear because I know I was at uh NRI uh Catherine Gene Lopez had a luncheon today and there's some wonderful uh there are women there who are doing wonderful things for pregnant women and their their children but I heard a few of them say they don't accept any government funding because then there's a strings attached so that becomes an issue and that's something that needs to be figured out what we do with that but there I really think it's it's important that uh probably supports more help from the government however it's going to be done and that's going to be tough for a lot of people I I understand but I think that's I think that's important I'd like to see that happen and I'd like to hear more uh from the panel here of what the what can be done what would be helpful so thank you thank you so much Dan so now we're going to move to uh we started a little bit late but I'm going to take moderators probably move to what we're going to describe as a kind of lightning round I I'm going to ask one question of each panelist and they're going to answer in a very succinct maybe in a minute something like that and then we can what's that good luck yeah well I'm not going to ask him any questions um just kidding so and then we can adjourn to our reception where we can continue our conversation and those in the audience who'd like to speak to our panelists will they'll be available to you to talk to them and you can ask questions and engage in conversation so I want to conclude on a note of optimism um and and hope and so I'm going to ask each panelist in their respective areas of expertise what is an example of success that gives you optimism for the future Monique in the context of grappling with access to care maternal mortality in communities of color and poor communities is there something out there that you've seen or that is in the offing that you think works that we can be excited about as we leave here this evening oh sure I've seen a cup I've seen a couple of things when I was running an inner city OBGYN Clinic during the height of the crack epidemic in the 90s and we had something called social justice for women which was a house that basically it was Hardcore the judge basically said to a woman who was you know involved often in felonious drug activity you'd either lose your baby and go to jail or you can go stay in this house for 18 months and it was incredibly successful the house was run by former addicts they didn't take anything from anybody and a lot some women said I don't want to do this they jumped out the window ran away went to jail lost their baby but a lot of them got clean stayed there got jobs left the the drug lifestyle that was very powerful for me to see that it was a low-cost intervention it was heavily engaged with the criminal justice system with law enforcement the other thing that's incredibly encouraging to me is to see how crisis pregnancy centers are flourishing I engage with them fairly frequently and the number of the way in which they do what Mayors are walking with women and helping women to understand okay you can make it you can do this is incredibly encouraging and I think that's one of the the secret weapons of the pro not so secret weapons of the pro-life movement is is seeing that and I'll conclude um also very quickly sorry Carter um I just got back from a few weeks ago from spending a month in East Africa working at a clinic and it was very striking you know we weighing constantly the issues about life of the mother in places like that the the decisions are very Stark the decisions are very Stark where a woman is basically exsanguinating and you say to her I'm gonna have to do hysterectomy now just delivered her baby do you want me to do that or do you not want me to do that and the baby is you know 30 weeks 31 weeks may or may not live especially there and she's like do whatever you have to do do to save my baby whatever happens that's what God wants for me so those in a different milieu those situations I won't say they're clear-cut but the edges are a lot sharper and in a way that helps you to come back to see okay we we can work through these issues it's just a question of sitting down with some rationality and and thinking about and talking about them so yeah Leah could you give us an example thank you Dr show Lee could you give us an example of accompaniment and advocacy that you've observed in the context that has helped to dispel or address the crisis of mistrust in the health care context that you described to us okay I wish I had one where I can get fully dispels um but I think you know a lot of the Turning towards doulas towards midwives are women saying I want someone who's not there just to catch the baby and they're to kind of address pregnancy only as a problem but as someone who is there to accompany me um and the two groups I want to give a shout out to because I don't think they've fully remediated anything but you know they're the ones who are bringing the right attitude to very hard situations aren't the sisters of Life your who are accompanying women throughout pregnancy but when they walk in the room the doctor behaves differently they're with poor black women and they'll see the doctor change his attitude towards a woman who's vulnerable who's in labor who's doing some of the hardest work of her life and it's been treated with disrespect and they don't do that in front of a habited sister we can't put a habited sister in every delivery room but the doctor should feel like there's one there and the second group is the Minnesota prison Doula project who are working with the very most vulnerable women women who are being treated like trash you know women who are being treated because of you know their past history as though they're completely discardable women who have been asked to give birth while handcuffed and they're there to advocate for them every step of the way that's beautiful Heather what have you seen as a optimistic example of lawyers making the case in state courts for the proposition that there's nothing in this Constitution that authorizes the justices to balance the competing interests in the narrative that is I think an inhuman narrative pitching the interests of unborn babies and Mothers Against one another in a zero-sum conflict among strangers there's nothing what's the best argument to persuade those justices that there's no Authority in that Constitution to even give them guidance on how to balance that that situation and very much less to authorize one to use lethal Force against the other you know up to a certain point that seems right to them as the South Carolina Supreme Court did that say well you know six weeks is too much is too early but maybe later what do you think I mean I think that that's why the Dobbs decision was so significant is that it sort of recognized that and I think that aside from it being about the abortion issue one reason that the Dobbs decision was so significant is that it's very rare in our society for people who have a lot of power to give that power away and that's what the court did in that decision and so I think that that creates a good example for State Court judges to look at so that they can see that um you know that that's really the better way and that's really the more proper role of a judge and those harder weighing questions are really at their heart legislative questions and that goes to the legislature but one further note on encouragement that I'd like to add just in response to some of the other panelists I think we I hope that we see more of this but I think we've already started to see states that are passing pro-life legislation and they are it just pertaining to the abortion issue but they're also pairing that with helps for the for the women and so a lot of people don't know this but the Texas heartbeat act that was at the at issue and the whole in the Holman's Health versus Jackson case which was sort of the I think the first indication that the court would overrule row um the Texas legislature paired that with a hundred million dollars in funding to the state of alternatives to abortion program and so I think that that's a good way to show that it's not just about prohibiting something but it's about creating a broader culture within that state of support for women and one hard question that should be asked is why did the center for Medicare and Medicaid services deny Texas's request to extend Medicaid coverage to women who give birth up to a year from six weeks why why did they do that Mary how about a uh how about a how about a it's going to be disgruntled no no Mary I want just a positive example in your experience of the church or it's Affiliated organizations providing accompaniment and advocacy for women and children in need beyond what you've already right I mean and and because now we live in this culture where in so many instances um pregnant women are kind of pitted against their unborn children as if they're enemies right when the mother's natural inclination is to want to protect her child we had a wonderful young woman who came to us she was 17 years old a black woman who was from the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago which is probably Chicago's most completely segregated neighborhood it is 100 African-American or black um very few people of color um you know kind of come in or come out of the neighborhood so it's it's really segregated and she came to us the child's father had multiple children by other different women um you know she she thought abortion was her only choice we explained to her that we had a home where she could live while she was pregnant which was in kind of Chicago's northwest suburbs but one of her concerns was that she said to us I've I really have talked to about 10 white people in my entire life that's how kind of segregated and she was very concerned because this is a very mixed race neighborhood that she wouldn't be able to kind of live and function there but we assured her everything would be fine we have you know many people of color who volunteer for us so she moved there and then uh after a child was born she moved to our transitional facility and then after we were able to help her work through her GED we discovered that there is a college scholarship for Black Parenting women named for sister Thea Bowman who was a Catholic black sister and it's in really Northern Minnesota so we were like if you think there's a lot of white people in Des Plaines Illinois we're sending you to Northern Minnesota but she went there now she has a Nursing degree she has her own apartment she's completely self-sufficient and she's a beautiful seven-year-old boy now was that easy no like that took a long time that takes some effort that takes a real investment in another human being's life but is it worth it like is that better than giving her the 300 bucks and sending her down the block to Planned Parenthood no so that so again a lot of these choices and I love to be able to tell these stories because they're all true and but it it takes somebody willing to walk with that woman and say you are worth it and your child is worth it too finally Congressman Lipinski give us an example of a bipartisan bipartisan success story benefited moms and babies and families and you can go back all the way into the 18th century uh you know you know I I was gonna really I was ready to give you a big compliment when you came up with a something for me that I could be optimistic yes about yeah the politics and unfortunately you could just tell us anything that makes you happy foreign it's unfortunate because the first thing that comes to mind is something that then wound up being undone um but um I have another question you give him a give them a hint I'm giving you a hint in the Omnibus we just got the pump act which expanded protections at work for pregnant for nursing mothers to actually be able to express milk for their babies and we got a significant expansion of pregnancy coverage under Ada type protections that when women's doctors say she can't do this heavy lifting she can't do this work employers have to make reasonable accommodations it snuck for in the Omnibus it didn't get a lot of publicity because the more bipartisan stuff gets attention the more quickly it stops being bipartisan yeah but they snuck it through and I'm really happy about it there there you go carter perfect fantastic thank you so so friends we're going to we're going to adjourn to our reception but let me just say one last thing I want to thank you on behalf of the University of Notre Dame and the Nicholas Center for ethics and culture the bless at the Blessed mothers University we aim to again try to and this is something if we're going to change hearts and Minds we have to exchange the hand extend the hand of love and friendship to those who disagree very deeply with us on this question to our pro-choice friends and neighbors uh and to and to really manifest again what this movement is about which is about unconditional love it's about everybody counting it's about radical Hospitality radical solidarity as Mary reminds us and um and and you don't change hearts and Minds with arguments you change hearts and Minds by loving people so uh thank you all very much and uh we can continue our conversation thank you

Channel: de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture

Views: 338

Keywords: pro-life, abortion, feminism, feminist, reproductive justice, reproduction, baby, babies, health care, healthcare, policy

Id: aCdfjK4pYCU

Length: 60min 40sec (3640 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 23 2023