Children Are Not Obstacles
Recently, someone learned that my husband and I have six children and told us, “Please just stop. There are too many children in this world.”
We’ve heard similar comments from others, including relatives. This mentality has seeped deep into our culture. We are told children are obstacles—expensive and inconvenient. They interfere with our careers, with our freedom, and with the lives we’ve planned. There are just simply too many of them.
Abortion becomes much easier to justify when we think this way. The question is no longer, “Who is this child?” Instead, it becomes, “What will this child prevent me from doing?”
Human Dignity Does Not Depend on Development
Following the legalization of abortion until birth in Massachusetts, I found myself in a heated debate with a woman. She argued that a newborn’s continuing brain development means a newborn is not yet meaningfully human in the way an older child or adult is. She pointed to a baby’s inability to engage in complex thought and even compared newborns to animals that merely “look” human. This is where the horrifying logic of denying human dignity based on developmental ability can lead.
Human beings develop throughout their entire lives. A newborn doesn’t become human only when he learns to speak or solve problems, and a person with disabilities doesn’t become less human simply because of limited cognitive abilities. A person doesn’t cease to be human if dementia takes away his abilities. We don’t earn our human dignity through intelligence, independence, or productivity.
A baby is already a human being, made in God’s image and likeness. This is why what happened in Massachusetts is so troubling. On August 10th, Governor Maura Healey signed legislation that allows abortion all the way up until birth. I watched a video of the signing and was disgusted to see women surrounding Governor Healey smiling and applauding.
I am disgusted as a woman, as a mother, as a Catholic, as a resident of Massachusetts, and, frankly, as a decent, God-fearing human being. At its most basic level, this is about whether we can intentionally kill another human being. I believe the obvious answer is no.
When We Make Ourselves Gods
For decades, women have been told that children interfere with education, careers, financial independence, or the life they planned. Pregnancy is presented as a problem to manage, and the child as an inconvenience. Then we call the ability to eliminate that child “empowerment.”
Does our freedom depend upon the ability to destroy another human being? Do women need to be “liberated” from motherhood?
We behave like gods. Our desires, plans, comfort, and autonomy are viewed as sacred. Sacrifice and self-denial are treated as oppressive. Yet Christianity has never claimed that the purpose of life is to arrange the world around our own selfish desires. Instead, Christ calls us to love and sacrifice radically and to give of ourselves for others.
God gave us the Ten Commandments to teach us how to love Him and our neighbor rightly. “You shall not kill” does not come with exceptions for when another person’s existence interferes with our plans. “You shall not covet” challenges a culture that tells us that we deserve the life we want, exactly when we want it, and without inconvenience or sacrifice.
When our own freedom becomes more important than another person’s life and our own comfort becomes the highest good, then we are placing ourselves at the center of the moral universe. That is a very dangerous place for any human being to stand.
Motherhood Is Not the Problem
Motherhood is not a problem. It is a gift.
Having a large family has not always been easy. We are cramped in our current home. My husband is our main provider, and he doesn’t work the easiest job or the best shift. We have bills to pay. Our house is loud sometimes. Three of my children have heart conditions like me, and life can be unpredictable and, at times, frightening.
Yet, despite everything the world tries to tell us, my husband and I have discovered quite simply that we actually like our kids. We even homeschool them, so we’re around them most of the time. While there is certainly chaos in a home with children ranging from 16 years to 10 months, we like being together. What a peculiar notion!
My children have not ruined my freedom. They have expanded my capacity to love. They have certainly required sacrifice, but sacrifice is not the same as loss. My life looks different than I once imagined, but I have received gifts I could never have planned for myself.
Women deserve better than being told their children are obstacles and that motherhood is oppressive. Instead of telling a frightened pregnant woman, “You can’t possibly do this,” we should be telling her, “You are not alone. We will help you. You and your family are not burdens.”
Mercy Means Helping, Not Eliminating
Actress Anne Hathaway once said on The View that “abortion can be another word for mercy.” She seems confused about what mercy actually means. Mercy does not mean deciding that a vulnerable human being is better off dead. Mercy means drawing near to the suffering and helping to carry a burden. It means refusing to abandon the vulnerable.
Fear, desperation, coercion, and lack of support can profoundly affect the choices people make. If a mother is frightened or having a difficult pregnancy, we should help her. If a child has a disability, we should help. If a woman became pregnant through violence, we should surround her with extraordinary compassion and help her and her child. We don’t have to kill her child in order to love her. The answer to violence against women cannot be violence against their children.
We cannot leave the fathers out of the equation either. Fathers are called to love, protect, sacrifice, provide, and remain.
When sex is separated from responsibility, pregnancy becomes an inconvenience. When pregnancy becomes an inconvenience, the child becomes a problem, and when the child becomes a problem, abortion is presented as the solution.
Building a Culture Worthy of Children
I am a Catholic and a woman, a wife, a mother of six, and a survivor of clerical abuse. As someone who advocates for survivors, I know firsthand what happens when human beings are treated as objects. I have seen what happens when sexuality becomes detached from love, dignity, and responsibility. That is precisely why I cannot accept the idea that the answer to a broken sexual culture is to dispose of other vulnerable human beings.
Just because a child is small, dependent, disabled, unexpected, or feels inconvenient does not make him any less human or worthy of the basic right to life. A child’s dignity doesn’t come from being wanted, independent, or productive. There is no meaningful reason whatsoever to intentionally kill an innocent child.
If you are discouraged by what is happening in Massachusetts and elsewhere, don’t stop praying and keep speaking up for life. Keep supporting mothers and encouraging fathers to step up. Keep building strong, holy marriages and families. Keep defending the vulnerable.
The answer to a culture that claims there are too many children is not to encourage fewer children. It is to become a culture worthy of the children we are blessed with, however many that is.
I refuse to believe there are too many children. There will never be too many human beings worthy of love.
Photo by Kyle Nieber on Unsplash
