What Does it Mean to Be Pro-Life?

An invitation + a prayer

What does it mean to be pro-life?

Now, in 2024. When the Great Big Goal of Roe vs. Wade being overturned has been accomplished. When hundreds of thousands of abortions take place every year. When whose life is worth living continues to be a problem we mull over and discuss while we wring our hands and shrug our shoulders. When our political options seem beyond the pale. When some of the most anti-abortion politicians are some of the most abhorrent on other Catholic issues; when some of the politicians most happy to claim the title Catholic have no problem at all flaunting their love of legalized abortion. 

What is this movement, this title? What does it mean to be pro-life?

I’d like to tell you some things about Bolivia.

I’ve never been there, but I had to memorize the capitals of most Spanish-speaking countries in seventh grade Spanish class so I can barely say the name of the country without sing-songing “La Paz, Bolivia!” Bolivia is a nation with 12 million people; the fifth largest country in South America, in fact. It has tropical rainforests and mountains; it has anticucho and empanadas.

It also has strict abortion laws. Abortion is outlawed in Bolivia except in cases of rape, incest, or if the mother’s life is in danger. Thousands of abortions are done in a clandestine manner, leading to emergency hospitalizations and a great deal of danger for both mothers and their children.

I know none of this firsthand. I’ve never been to Bolivia. I only know it because my friend Rebecca, who came on the first Catholic Feminist Pilgrimage to France in 2021, lives in Bolivia.

When Roe vs. Wade was effectively overturned in 2022, many activists on both sides of the political aisle were frightened for women. Even some of the staunchest pro-life women I know either proclaimed loudly on the internet or whispered to me over coffee that they feared the effects of the Supreme Court decision. The what now, the what next, the what do we do of it all haunted them.

And while every single state that has restrictions on abortion does, in fact, allow for abortions when the mother’s life is at risk, and while we do, in fact, need to re-imagine pro-life activism, there is an honest truth that the pro-life fight does not end when abortion becomes illegal.

In many ways, it begins.

In Bolivia, since abortion is generally illegal, it often takes a long time for a woman’s legal abortion (in cases of rape, incest, or health issues) to become approved. That means we aren’t talking about 6-week-old fetuses, who are just as worthy of life as anyone else but do not resemble the general image we have of a baby. We’re talking about fetuses that are about to be born and look very, very much like infants you see in those pink-and-gold newborn photoshoots.

When these abortions are performed past the age of viability—ie., when a baby is forcibly removed from his or her mother’s womb before being born—they were, for many years, killed by hospital staff or simply abandoned.

My friend Rebecca recently encountered a group of Dominican sisters who run an orphanage called  Hogar Tata Juan de Dios – the Father Juan de Dios Home. This home is specifically for these children, so that they are no longer left on death’s doorstep. She told me about it recently; about its big-hearted sisters and the way they surround these survivors with the love and compassion every single human being deserves, but so few post-aborted children in Bolivia are able to have.

These children, who have seen things you and I can’t imagine, who have lives approximately one thousand times harder than yours or my very worst day, don’t even have a functional roof for their playroom. They play in a dormitory, and the rainy season is coming. From November to March, there will be torrential downpours, floods, and all of the water that means life for the climate of Bolivia but will mean leaky disaster for a playroom that brings joy to survivors of abortion.

When Rebecca told me how much a new roof would cause, I almost spat out my coffee.

Y’all, they need ten thousand dollars. That’s it.

That means if every single subscriber to this newsletter gave ONE DOLLAR, Hogar Tata Juan de Dios would have a new roof, and the Dominican sisters could give the children they care for a safe place to play.

I’ve written you previous letters about how I used to be a fundraiser.

When I was in campus ministry, I had to fundraise my salary. I worked as a fundraising trainer my second year.

“Don’t you hate doing this?” I remember another girl squirming as I read over the letter she was sending out to potential mission partners.

“Not even a little bit,” I remember muttering as I tweaked some grammar.

That was a lie. I do hate it, a little bit, because I’m prideful and awkward and was raised in a country where self-sufficiency and the sweat off your brow are the highest goods. But when I sit with the truth of what fundraising is, I see it as a gift. So many people have money. I have money. I have a Stanley Cup, for God’s sake. I just bought fancy French lip oil on Instagram because an influencer hawked it at me one too many times and damn, y’girl loves a no-makeup-makeup-look.

Do I have money for everything I want in this life? No. I buy generic at the grocery store and I drive a very used minivan and our mortgage makes me want to throw up. Most of my kids’ clothes are purchased on ThredUp.

I also have a roof for my kids, so. There’s that.

How will money move from people who have it to people who don’t? Fundraising, that’s how. The ask. The open hand.

Every year, the Catholic Feminist does an Advent fundraiser. In the past, we’ve raised over seventy thousand dollars for causes like period poverty and orphan care in the Philippines.

This year, I asked Rebecca if she’d be interested in helping me throw an Advent fundraiser for Hogar Tata Juan de Dios. The thing is, she gently pointed out, the rain is coming. It does not care about things like Substack schedules or liturgical living. It cares about the life it gives.

That means we need that ten thousand dollars, like—um. Now-ish.

So, surprise! Instead of an Advent fundraiser this year, we’re doing a late summer fundraiser. Letters From a Catholic Feminist is hoping to raise ten thousand dollars for a new roof for Hogar Tata Juan de Dios by September 8, Our Lady’s birthday.

Please consider donating here.

So, I ask again:

What does it mean to be pro-life?

Does it mean holding a sign, or having a bumper sticker? Chanting well?

I think it means suffering through difficult pregnancies, and bringing your postpartum friends steaming trays of lasagna. I think it means advocating for poor women to be lifted from that poverty through a combination of economic, social, and political levers. I think it means, if you’re able, putting your money where your mouth is, whether that be to your local women’s shelter, a politician who represents a holistically pro-life platform, or Hogar Tata Juan de Dios.

You’ll hear more from both Rebecca + I the next couple of weeks. I am so grateful for this community, who sees the dignity of God in the liberal and the conservative and the able and the disabled and the housed and the unhoused and the born and the preborn. You’ll never know how you all have changed me, until we’re in Heaven together.

Let’s keep helping each other get there, Amen?

In Him Through Her,

Claire