Since this is a religious topic, I s’pose this belongs in GD, but I’d much rather have put it in the Pit, since it’s made be more than a little angry.
NPR reported yesterday that Planned Parenthood in Chicago is partnering with The Cradle, and adoption agency/facilitator, to provide adoption information and support services within abortion clinics in the Chicago area.
According to the report, The Cradle provides, from a morally neutral standpoint, factual information about what is involved in adoption, dispelling myths and providing pregnant women the ability to make an informed choice. In addition, they provide financial assistance with the pregnancy and delivery, help with all the legalities and paperwork involved in setting up the adoption, and even provide grief counseling for the mother after giving up her baby.
Most organizations on either side of the abortion debate have come out in favor of the partnership.
But not the Catholic Church.
No, the Chicago Catholic Archdiocese has come out strongly against the partnership. According to their spokeperson, adoption clinics should not be willing to be associated in any way with abortion clinics, because by doing so they indicate that saving the life of the child is morally equivalent to having an abortion. (I am NOT making this up, or twisting the language around. You can hear the spokesperson herself right here.)
Now, I understand the CC’s concerns, but I find their behavior and logic to be reactionary and unChristian. In fact, I find their willful further politicization of the issue to be morally bankrupt. (I am astonished and disheartened to have to say that. I was raised Catholic, but am increasingly ashamed to be associated with this organization.)
It seems to me that the partnership can do no harm whatsoever to the Church’s stance on abortion or its rationale for it (Unless the Church really thinks that the actions of adoption agencies and not the word of Christ should be the arbiter of morality!)
Meanwhile there is the possibility that by dispelling myths that may make women unconfortable with adoption, as well as easing the path to doing so, the number of abortions may fall.
Odd for an organization based on spreading the word of a man who hung around with prostitutes to be splitting hairs like this. I have a message for the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago: