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The answer to the August marriage quiz question, "What percentage of women who had abortions in the year 2004 had already had one or more abortions?" is...
B. Forty-seven percent of women who got abortions in 2004 had already had at least one prior abortion. The reasons for this are many and complex. According to Theresa Burke, pioneering researcher in the psychology of the post-abortive women, some get pregnant quickly after their abortions, in order to replace the child they killed. They have an idea that “this time will be different,” and they will have the moral and material resources to take care of their babies.
Source: “Trends in the Characteristics of Women Obtaining Abortions, 1974 to 2004,” Stanley K. Henshaw and Kathryn Kost. Guttmacher Institute, 2008, p. 12, Table 3.
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by Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.
This week’s article, “The Liberation of Lifelong Love: Church Teaching on Marriage” is the opening of my contribution to a new book called “Women, S*x & the Church: A Case for Catholic Teaching." I realize that many of my readers are not Catholic. However, I still enthusiastically encourage you to consider purchasing this book. Many of the chapters contain valuable information from the social sciences that will be helpful to anyone from any faith tradition making the case for traditional s*xual morality.
Catholic and non-Catholic readers alike will better understand Catholic teaching in these important areas. As you can imagine, the secular media doesn’t usually tell the whole story! So this book is of value to anyone who wants to learn for themselves what the Catholic Church teaches about the whole variety of issues normally called “feminist.”
Because of my agreement with the publisher, I am not able to reprint the entire chapter. The extract below gives you a flavor of the ground I cover in my chapter. You can get more information about the book, Women, S*x & the Church: A Case for Catholic Teaching, by clicking the link.
“The Liberation of Lifelong Love: Church Teaching on Marriage”
Marriage is a universal human institution, defined—until recently—as the preferred context for both s*xual activity and child-rearing. Until the last forty years, every society understood that some contexts for s*x and childbearing were preferable to others.
Opposition to this traditional view of marriage has increased in recent times. We are told that society should not “privilege” one form of relationship or family over any others. But “privileging” is, by definition, the exact point of the marital institution: the very existence of the institution proclaims that some relationships are more socially significant, more socially productive, and more socially desirable than others. Since the Catholic Church offers one of the richest and most robust teachings about marriage,
the Church has faced particularly strong criticism for her teachings.
In the current debate between the traditional view that marriage is Something, and the modern view that marriage is Whatever We Say It Is, the Catholic Church holds firmly to the view that marriage is something in particular.
The Church teaches that marriage is the lifelong, s*xually exclusive, sacramental union of one man and one woman, established by the consent of the spouses, characterized by love and a common life, and ordered to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of children.
In some cases, the Church teaches that the separation of spouses may be legitimate, and even civil divorce can be tolerated. But remarriage (without annulment) is always forbidden. According to Catholic teaching, s*xual activity outside of marriage is always wrong. This includes both adultery (s*xual relations between a married person and someone other than the spouse) and fornication (s*xual relations between unmarried persons). Obviously, then, the Church objects to nonmarital cohabitation, and out-of-wedlock childbearing.
These, it is safe to say, constitute the “hard teachings” of the Catholic Church regarding marriage. Apart from her teaching on contraception, abortion, and possibly the all-male priesthood, no other teaching has caused the Church so much bad publicity and ill-feeling.
Over the past forty years, many women have become convinced that marriage is not in their best interest. Some women believe marriage is unnecessary. Others think that it is or has been harmful to them. The views of women like these, orchestrated, I will argue, by socialist and other secular feminists, have been instrumental to weakening the institution of marriage.
But the weakening of this foundational institution has also harmed women in some distinctive ways. Without a robust culture of marriage, women have been left with the burden of caring for children with far less support from men than would have been conceivable in prior ages.
Married women are happier, healthier, more s*xually satisfied, and more financially secure than their unmarried, cohabiting, and divorced counterparts.
Moreover, the alternatives to marriage have been particularly harmful to children, quite apart from the loss of material support from their fathers. Since women on the whole care deeply about the welfare of their children, the negative outcomes to children caused by the decline of marriage must also be counted among the harmful effects on women.
Contine reading, and comment on this article
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