Women deserve better choices

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On Feb. 6, Mary Ann Sorrentino spoke in favor of abortion rights at URI. An article in The Providence Journal the previous day was entitled "Sorrentino a tireless warrior for abortion rights."

In addition to advertising her presentation, it promoted her new book "The A Word: Abortion: Real Women, Tough Choices, Personal Freedom."

Sorrentino was identified as an advocate for women, and a self-described ethnic Italian Catholic. She then denigrated the church's pro-abstinence stance explaining that she knows the world is not the way (she) would like it to be.

For most of us this is true. We live in a world that accepts unjust discrimination, self-indulgent vices, violence and even killing as acceptable solutions to many of life's challenges. Authentic Roman Catholics, however, do not promote and participate in these evils; they fight and eradicate them. This is not only the authentic Catholic response, but also authentic feminist tradition.

Our feminist foremothers believed that educating young women about physiology and morality would help foster a true respect for women, fertility and children. In the 1860s, feminist Dr. Anna Desmore even included embryology in her seminars for women. Dr. Desmore targeted school teachers so that they, in turn, could instruct their students, friends and relatives. Liberation through education.

Women have a right to know about their bodies and the new life they carry within. This truth is so painfully evident it is a grave affront to the intelligence and personhood of women that we have to fight for it in our legislature today. Education, our foremothers believed, would pave the road toward the end of involuntary motherhood.

The "A Word" was nowhere to be found on this road. Virtually all of the early feminists, including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, decried abortion as prenatal child murder even in the earliest stages of pregnancy. This crime, they wrote, was a grave injustice toward women.

Recent polls show that up to 60 percent of college women oppose abortion in most or all circumstances. It is no coincidence that many of them have direct experience with or have women in their circle who have experienced abortion. They have discovered the lie of choice; they have felt its devastation.

This is why the message of Feminists for Life, which is increasingly being heard on college campuses, resonates so strongly with them. What is this message? It is expressed best in Feminists for Life's mission statement as posted on its Web site: "If you believe in the strength of women and the potential of every human life, If you refuse to choose between women and children, If you believe no woman should be forced to choose between pursuing her education and career plans and sacrificing her child, If you reject violence and exploitation, Join us in challenging the status quo. Because women deserve better choices.

Dr. Michelle A Cretella is a Westerly-based pediatrician. She is a member of the Catholic Medical Association and Feminists for Life.

(This column originally appeared in The Providence Visitor)