Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS

Rebecca Luckett, an Catholic OB/GYN currently working in Botswana, published a shocking op-ed in USA Today in which she justifies her decision to abort a child and says her pro-life Catholic upbringing taught her not to judge her neighbor “until you walk two moons in his moccasins.”

LifeNews.com is reporting on the article in which Luckett details the sad circumstances she faced last year when she got pregnant with her second child and learned that the child was not viable.

“I went for my 20-week ultrasound, expecting to find out if number two was a boy or a girl. Instead, I looked to the monitor and found a fetus struggling to survive in my womb,” Luckett wrote. “I’m used to being on the other side of that ultrasound probe, so I knew what was next. I would have said the same thing: ‘The baby can’t survive. And you can get very sick’.”

She decided to abort the baby and told her pro-life Catholic family back home in Ohio that she had to “terminate the pregnancy.”

“I grew up in an anti-abortion world, the third of four children in a middle-class, strongly Catholic household. My father had been in the seminary, planning to dedicate his life to the Church; my mother attended church as often as she could while raising four children. I went to Catholic grade school and Catholic high school and to church every Sunday,” Luckett recounted.

She was part of a youth group, attended the Pro-Life March in Washington, went to Notre Dame, and worked with missionaries for two years after graduation.

“I was indoctrinated to the highest degree in Catholic doctrine and dogma and at the end of it, I came away with the deep conviction that my upbringing and my religion were guiding me to live a life centered on social justice.”

She believes her Catholic education prepared her to show empathy the first time she encountered a patient who needed an abortion.

“Empathy was one of the core values I was taught by my parents, who had a First Nation’s People’s proverb hanging in our house: ‘Do not judge your neighbor until you walk two moons in his moccasins.’ My patient opened a door for me, revealed to me the dark and sad space in her life, and I could understand that for her, an abortion was both right and necessary. And for her to be able to make the choice was just.”

When it came time for her own abortion, she was devastated but grateful to have access to safe abortion.

As Micaiah Bilger writes for Life News, most pro-life advocates accept that there are rare, life-threatening circumstances when doctors cannot save both the mother and her unborn child; however, the intention in those cases must always be to save as many lives as possible, not to kill, as is the intention of abortion.

“Perhaps this was the case with Luckett and her unborn baby. However, Luckett used her tragic circumstances to advocate for abortion on demand,” Bilger writes.

Luckett also used the tragic story of a young woman who bled to death after a botched at-home abortion to justify legal abortion.

“As horrifying as the experience must have been, Luckett’s solution is not to provide better support to pregnant and parenting moms but to push for more deaths in the form of legalized abortion on demand,” Bilger writes.

Luckett claims that “if we would recognize women’s right to self-determination, they and their families would become stronger. Women make the best decisions when they can make them for themselves and their families. Could we, not in spite of, but rather because of our moral convictions, focus our energy on uplifting women, making them stronger and breaking the structural violence that keeps them from controlling their own lives?”

First of all, the majority of women who undergo abortions aren’t doing so because they made the “best decision.” In the United States, as many as 64 percent of women report feeling some kind of coercion into having an abortion. A woman under this kind of pressure is hardly able to make “the best decision” for herself and her family.

Second, while it sounds wonderful to say we should allow our moral convictions to focus on “uplifting women” and making them better able to break the structural violence that keeps them from controlling their own lives – how can we do that when, at the same time, we advocate for violence on her unborn child? If we’re going to break structural violence, let’s break it for everyone, not just women.

As Bilger correctly states, “’Choice’ and ‘self-determination’ sound better than what an abortion actually is – the intentional killing of a unique, living unborn baby. . . . Women and their unborn babies both are valuable, unique individual human beings who deserve the same rights, protections and support. Abortion activists would give rights just to the mother, while pro-life advocates work hard to ensure that both individuals are treated with the dignity and worth that they deserve.”

Last, when the Lord told us not to judge our neighbor, He wasn’t talking about allowing people to sin. He was talking about not judging the motivations or intentions behind the sin. Only the Lord can read hearts. As for us, our obligation is to speak out against the grave sin of abortion, which is a direct violation of the Fifth Commandment. We must do so for the good of the sinner and for those who might be scandalized by their sinful behavior. In all cases, however, we must do so with charity and compassion.

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