In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Emily Dinneny, to discuss the complex moral landscape surrounding abortion, particularly in cases of rape and trauma. Emily engages with Gabriela, a cradle Catholic, who shares her perspective on the responsibilities of pregnancy and the implications of choice. Tune in for a thought-provoking conversation that challenges common views on this sensitive topic.
Transcript:
Caller: I am a cradle Catholic and I do practice. I’m pro choice because I’ve had several friends who were raped. They did get abortions because they did not want to carry a child into the world. That was not something they wanted.
Emily Dinneny: Yeah, no, thank you. Thank you for calling and thank you for being open about that. And I’m really sorry to hear about, you know, all of your friends going, going through something horrible like that. I want to ask you, when it comes to other cases, why would you say that abortion is not okay? Like, if somebody consensually had had intercourse and now they’re pregnant, why in that case is it wrong to get an abortion?
Caller: I think because they made a conscious choice of being intimate with someone that’s going. That can impregnate them. And if they did not take precautions, there are responsibilities. And I do think the males need to be held as accountable by the church as the females. And I don’t see that happening either. I know the caller before me said something to that effect.
Emily Dinneny: Ye, yeah, yeah, no, I agree. So in particular though, like, what is abortion doing? Like, what is it ending? Like, you know, a woman can sense this action that leads to getting pregnant. The average pro choice person is gonna say, you know, it’s just a meaningless clump of cells or it’s not yet a human person yet, so it’s okay to end their life. Like, is that what you think? Or do you think that, no, this is a valuable human being from the moment that it is conceived?
Caller: I do believe that it is a living from the moment of conception. I just think that in the case of rape or incest, something horrific like those two things, or even if the child is going to have a lot of physical problems, birth defects, stuff like that, I just think it’s really unfair to bring the child into the world. I do think that it is something that the woman has to deal with with God. It is, you know, not. I struggle with it because it is a sense of killing a life. Of course, it is a living organism and becomes a child very quickly. It’s just the trauma that I’ve seen women that have been raped and bring the child into the world, oftentimes the child gets put into the system, then the child feels unwanted anyway. There’s a whole slew of things that go with that. If there’s not the mother and father there involved, it’s very difficult. But I do believe it is a living organism from conception. I am very much into that biology.
Emily Dinneny: Okay, great. I’m glad that we can agree with that. And so I kind of want to paint another picture, right, Because I can agree that somebody experiencing something horrific like rape, right, that’s tragic and that’s gonna change your life permanently. But I think the question we need to ask is if the child, if the thing that’s conceived is a human being, then they are God’s child, right? And they have infinite dignity. And so no matter how someone is conceived, if they’re conceived through the brutality of rape, if they’re conceived in an abusive, toxic marriage, if they’re conceived in a one night stand, if they’re conceived between two loving parents, right, that doesn’t affect the child’s worth because their worth doesn’t come from how they were conceived. Their worth comes from who they are, which is God’s child. And so I would say even when it comes to rape, that’s a horrible, horrible thing. I would not wish that on my greatest enemy. But abortion doesn’t solve the fact that that woman was raped. It doesn’t take away her pain. It doesn’t take away any of the negative effects. In fact, we see that abortion causes women to have increased likelihood to developing a mental disorder, to being instituted into a mental facility, to abusing drugs and alcohol, to have depression and anxiety, and to attempt suicide. So abortion in itself is not a solution to a woman being raped. In fact, I would say it likely could bring more trauma to her life. And it also brings trauma to the child that is unjustly killed because they had nothing to do with the crimes of their father. And this is what the church would also teach, right? As a Catholic, we would teach even in cases of rape, that that doesn’t justify abortion because that child is innocent. How does that land with you?
Caller: Oh, I, I do agree with that on many levels. It’s just when you’re looking at somebody who has been raped and beaten and you know what they’ve gone through, oftentimes giving that child up is like taking it to term. And giving it up is just as traumatic as the rape. I just have a lot of compassion for women that have gone through that. For example, my parents grew up in Nazi Germany. And when the Russians came into the eastern part of Germany, which was shlesey in those days, there were just thousands and thousands of rapes. And a lot of the children, the German, Russian children, are descendants from those rapes. And it was just extremely traumatic. And I’ve talked to women that went through that. They were my parents age, of course, and all that, and they didn’t have a choice. I mean, I think they did have some kind of drug at that time that would remove the birth, but I think. I don’t know for sure, but they just.
Emily Dinneny: Do you think those, those children shouldn’t be here?
Caller: Well, actually, I. That’s what I struggle with, because a lot of them are fine, but a lot of them aren’t. It’s more or less the woman that had the hardest time. I mean, they. Most of those women kept the children. I just say give the onus to the woman to make her choice. I don’t know what I would do in that case.
Emily Dinneny: But one of them is a wrong choice. So this is what I would like to be clear on. You’re saying that one of them is a wrong choice. It is wrong to take the life of the child, but you want it to be left up to the woman.
Caller: I don’t want to make the choice for her. That’s why I’d like it to stay open. But I do struggle with it because it is a form of murder, form of killing. Of course. It’s a living being.
Emily Dinneny: Yeah. So I think really where we differ is we both agree that a woman who has been violated through rape, that she deserves compassion, she deserves support in order to make her life better. And so where we disagree is you would say that it is better for her to have the choice to end the life of her child via abortion. And I would say that that’s. That’s just. That’s not going to lead to a good outcome. It’s going to lead to, first of all, her committing an egregious sin against God, which I think you could agree that abortion, you know, is. Is sinful. It’s also going to lead potentially to her more likely to be depressed, to have anxiety, to desire to commit suicide, to abuse drugs and alcohol. And abortion in itself is also not a peaceful, smooth procedure either. It’s very painful for a lot of women, both physically and emotionally. So my thoughts are, I don’t think it’s ever okay to kill an innocent human being, especially one who is a victim in this scenario as well, because they did nothing to instigate what. What their father did to violate this. So I just. I understand that you want to show these women compassion, but I think that the way that we show them compassion is to meet them where they are and to offer them emotional, physical, financial support and to empower them to be the mother to the. To their child that they already are. Because children are blessings and gifts. All children are gifts from God. And so we, we should encourage her to accept this gift from God, even if this, this gift came from a horrible, horrible circumstance. And I agree that when it comes to, you know, we can have all these lofty ideas about what the church teaches is right or wrong, and then when we’re living our day to day lives, it often is a lot messy and complicated. However, I think it’s important to stay grounded in those truths, which is every human life is a gift from God. That God is good, that you know, if he has called you to be a mother, he is going to equip you to be one. And that that sin is not good for somebody. So if you truly desire the good of your friends, you would not desire them to commit an offense against their child and against God, you would desire their good, which is to say yes to God even in a very, very difficult and traumatic situation. And women who’ve been raped are in a very vulnerable position. And the last thing that we should do is to encourage them to make a lifelong decision that is going to put their soul at risk and cause their child to die. So I appreciate your honesty and transparency because I know a lot of relate to your view. But I would say I think we need to stand firm in our belief that all human beings deserve equal rights and are valuable in the eyes of God, even ones that have been conceived in horrible circumstances. So thank you so much for calling and I really appreciate you coming on here.
Cy Kellett: What a wonderful opportunity for conversation. Gabriela, thank you very, very much. Our guest, Emily Dinany. Our topic, why are you pro choice? Only pro choice callers this hour.