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  • Title: Reflections of a Catholic theologian on visiting an abortion clinic.
    Author: Maguire DC.
    Journal: Conscience; 1996; 17(3):29-34. PubMed ID: 12178871.
    Abstract:
    A male Irish Catholic moral theologian paid several visits to an abortion clinic to attempt to reflect a woman's understanding of the abortion decision in his writing and thinking. At the clinic he saw the measures taken to protect clients and staff from attacks by anti-abortion protestors. The clinic director described the clinic's activities and patients and noted that none were rich and that the doctors performing the abortions could all make more money doing something else. Patient counseling stressed reproductive responsibility, and the clinic staff did more to prevent abortion than the protestors outside. During his second visit, he met a woman waiting for an abortion who was 5-6 weeks pregnant and who sustained her mental health by taking lithium which could cause abnormalities in embryos. This made the visitor determine that saving life involves more than cardiopulmonary continuity. He observed interviews with patients and learned that abortion is often caused by economic distress, which was exacerbated among the poor by the anti-abortion President, Reagan's, economic policies. When he met with the picketers outside, he was repulsed by the fact that they equated abortion with the Nazi Holocaust. On his third visit, he viewed the products of abortion and concurred with the Church's Council of Trent that the embryonic clump of cells was not a person. His visits left him eager to keep abortion legal and to reduce the need for abortion in women's lives. He also wished that American Catholic bishops would stop making sanctimonious utterances about abortion and would embrace the more moderate traditional teachings of the church about abortion rather than squandering their moral authority on an issue which allied them with right-wing forces which have a destructive social agenda.
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