I just think that a group of celibate men ought to take time to listen to women who have been in crisis pregnancies and what it was that led them to consider abortion. And not just the stories that fit their narrative that abortion is the most important issue.

The @USCCB has lost total touch with people on the ground who struggle. I have had 3 crisis pregnancies. The first when I was 16. I didn’t abort that baby, but guess what? He is dead anyway. He died by suicide at 22 and left behind two kids.

Generational poverty and generational trauma due to racist disparities were a significant piece of what caused his suicide. Along with the lack of healthcare, quality mental health care and lack of access to equitable resources for both me as his mother and him as a father.

But it’s easy for me to see what the @USCCB would avoid talking about these issues. Because bug donors to all kinds of things in the Church are rich and white. That makes tackling the issues of racism and white supremacy and their connection to poverty a little difficult.

The easy road is hyper focusing on abortion and not all the issues that lead women, especially women of color, to abortion. I have been pregnant 5 times and each time I had a gaggle of white women telling me how my babies would be better off without me parenting them.

If the Catholic Church truly wants a culture of life then it needs to confront and exorcise the demon of racism. And our Bishops need to quit worrying about offending big donors. Spend more time teaching the faith and caring for the sheep than y’all do fundraising.

If women had access to equitable resources to carry, birth and raise their children in a culture that paid them a living wage, then it would not matter if abortion was legal.