Margie Robben

On March 5, 2010 I sent a letter to Congressman Bart Stupak urging him to vote for health care reform. Today, March 21, 2010 we will hear if he says “yes” or “no” to the bill.

Just this week it was reported that Bart Stupak told reporters that when he drafts right-to-life language, he listens only to Catholic Bishops, and anti-abortion groups. He does not listen to Nuns because they are “not the recognized spokesperson for the Catholic Church”. I am certain he does not listen to me!

In trying to get Bart Stupak to expand his thinking by including us feminine folks, I sent him a true story about my Mother. It wasn’t until Margaret Higgins Sanger opened a family planning and birth control clinic in New York City in 1940, staffed entirely by female doctors and social workers that Mom was helped.

To help get Margaret Sanger’s clinic open the clinic received money anonymously from John D. Rockefeller, Jr’s Bureau of Social Hygiene. The grants to the Sanger Clinic had to be kept secret to avoid public exposure of the Rockefeller name. The Bureau did not want it known that they were helping women in this area.  When Sanger first tried to open a woman’s clinic in 1916 it was raided 9 times by the police and she served prison time. It wasn’t until 1918 that doctors were allowed to prescribe contraception. 

My Mother, Josephine Heckman Burger was a poor 16 year-old girl with a third grade formal education living in New York City who married a handsome, 16 year-old boy also with a third grade formal education.  They had four children and seven abortions between 1929 and 1945. Contraception as an option hadn’t yet filtered down to the poor women in New York City.

My Father was “naughty” at times. As a boy he would stand on a roof threatening to jump off if his mother didn’t give him a quarter. He spent time in the Catholic Protectory in New York City and was a member of the original “forty thieves” of Harlem when Harlem was an all-white community. As a partner with Mom, he wanted what he wanted when he wanted it. Birth control was not an option for Mom, thus the seven abortions.

Margaret Higgins Sanger came to Mom’s rescue. Margaret Sanger, working in the Lower East Side of New York City had seen personally too many poor women performing their own abortions and dying. She also believed that in order for women to have more equality with men they had to be able to decide when a pregnancy would be most convenient for them.

Sanger died in 1966, but not before, after 50 years of working for women, she witnessed a bill coming out of the Griswold v. Connecticut decision legalizing birth control for married couples in the United States.

For many reasons some people in the Catholic Church see no difference between birth control and abortion. They say that both are equally immoral. I find it difficult to understand the comparison. Women are nurturing by nature and the last thing they would wish upon themselves is the necessity to get an abortion. Only women can make that decision.  Bart Stupak can’t make the decision, the Catholic Bishops can’t make that decision, and the anti-abortion believers can’t make that decision. Only a woman can make the decision to continue a pregnancy and deliver a child who they will be responsible for nurturing until adulthood.

Even though Mr. Stupak has been told that the present health reform does not include monies for abortion he is not satisfied and he will not vote to reform health care. Stupak may even reject a Presidential Executive Order saying the health care bill will not provide money for abortion. If Bart Stupak is waiting for the Catholic Bishops and the anti-abortion people to say “yes” to health reform before he says yes he may have to wait a long time. The Catholic Bishops and anti-abortion believers may have other agendas – besides, the Bishops have their own “naughty boy” problems they are dealing with.

Abortion!  I don’t know a woman who has ever had an abortion who didn’t feel badly that she had to have one.  To listen to the issue debated throughout America, you would think that women had no problem aborting.  To read the rhetoric and to see the anti-abortion crowd holding up their hateful signs you would think it was an easy decision to make. Yes or no. Abort or not abort.

It is not an easy decision for a woman to make. For some, the decision means life or death. To others it may be inconvenient. To others it may be a result of rape or incest. To others it may come at a time when a woman is still a child herself. And to a great many women it may be just one more child too many that she can’t handle.

Another part of the complexity is the potential father of the aborted baby. Does he want the abortion?  Will he help the mother nurture the child?  Was “sex” the extent of his commitment? Was the close encountering just another notch in his conquest belt and he did not expect a pregnancy?

Then…….you throw in fragility, physical illness, mental issues, no job, no money, no insurance…..and the decision mushrooms into a decision that no one but the woman can and should make.

It is positively okay for Sarah Palin and Pam Tebow, mother of Heisman trophy winner, Tim Tebow, to rejoice at their decision to bring a child into the world. Sarah says she thought about abortion first but then decided against it. Tebow’s mother was sick with a serious infection and was counseled by her physician to abort. She decided against it. There are many women like them. They thought they could do it despite what people may have said.  Other women decide differently.   They may have too many additional problems working against them.

Women are nurturing by nature. The God of all has given them the responsibility of carrying a child to term, delivering the child, and then nurturing the child until they reach adulthood. Women intuitively know when they can do something and when they can’t. They can make their own decisions. Everyone should leave them alone and stop with the “murder” rhetoric and “killing babies” signs they hold up during their anti-abortion marches.

We must have confidence in women to make their own difficult decisions. You can counsel, advise, or support, but you cannot decide for a pregnant women and tell her she has to go through with a pregnancy.  

To use abortion as a political issue is unconscionable. Holy people help and support. Holy people do not accuse, point fingers, and call women horrible names. Holy people have confidence that others will do what is right and only a woman will know what is right for herself.