Both Sides Now

FMS calls us missioners instead of missionaries. Both terms derive from the same root, meaning those who are sent. The difference is in the purpose of the sending. Traditionally, missionaries are sent out, leaving the familiar behind, to convert others to the faith. I am increasingly convinced that FMS sends us out of our comfort zones so we can be converted.

“So, how’s that going for ya?” I imagine my readers asking. It’s a fair question. My honest answer is going to upset some of the people I love, even though we’re mostly at the same place on the political spectrum. Maybe that’s a risk of conversion.

I have sometimes described myself as an all-purpose activist. While I have both worked and volunteered exclusively for nonprofits, the issues have ranged from science education to the role of laity in the Church, child abuse and neglect, women and peace, literacy, hunger and impoverishment, the environment, migrants, and the incarcerated. 

Peace is my first and most perennial passion. I believe what President Eisenhower said in 1953 when I was nine: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies … a theft from those who hunger and are not fed … .”  A few decades ago, I added the environment to my prime passions, and the plight of migrants has become intensely personal in the last decade. 

I am a Consistent Life Catholic–one grounded in reverence for life who opposes “war, abortion, poverty, racism, the death penalty, and euthanasia,” according to the website of the Consistent Life Network (CLN). I have attended the March for Life with a Pax Christi banner that includes all the life issues and spoken on panels at a national CLN conference. I’m also part of a CLN subcommittee. We’re a group that needs to stake our own ground, because neither political party reflects our values. But here’s a confession. Until I was sent on mission, I didn’t much like anti-abortion activists, especially those who make abortion their leading issue. I’m a lifelong lefty, and the culture has quite successfully planted opposition to abortion in the right-wing hemisphere. 

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to dislike or discount whole categories of people–and how hard it is to dislike any person you’ve actually looked at and listened to, no matter what category they seem to fit? 

Checking out possible ministries in my first month here, I found work with the unhoused, hungry neighbors, and children in Juarez, Mexico, along with various ways to counter the deportation juggernaut. It’s all an expression of reverence for life. Then I noticed a building just a block from home labeled Guiding Star, part of the Southwest Coalition for Life.  Its signage advertises holistic health care for women. Its mission is clearly anti-abortion, which made me a little queasy, but because it was so close I decided to pay a call. I was graciously welcomed and shown around a beautiful, obviously well-funded facility with offices, clinics, classrooms, indoor and outdoor play spaces, and a chapel. Staff members start each day at 8 by praying together, sharing and reflecting on the Mass readings. 

My volunteer orientation went right to the point. I rode with the Executive Director and a few other staff members to nearby Santa Teresa, NM, where an obstetrician almost as old as I am provides early-term, chemical abortions for $690. (That state allows abortion at any stage, with no wait and no parental notification.)  I was surprised to learn that these are the most common kind, and that they can be reversed between the first pill and the second if a woman changes her mind. The E.D. parked her van (equipped with ultrasound and decorated with slogans like Save the Storks) and we sat down quietly to watch the comings and goings. To those who will take it, she gives information about low- and no-cost Guiding Star services, which include health care, a maternity home, preparation for jobs and parenting, and a range of other practical supports both before and after birth. There’s no harassment, no shaming, and no pressure. If women go through with the abortion, they can still catch the baby and bury it reverently instead of flushing it–something I’d never even imagined. 

My work there includes teaching English, being a grandmotherly presence for the moms in the maternity home (believe me, it’s a far cry from The Magdalene Sisters), sorting baby clothes, making phone calls, and occasional child care. It’s a commitment of a bit less than one day a week. 

Still, festive baby showers for little ones who could have been flushed and prayers with the incredibly warm and dedicated staff have softened that left/right line and further opened my heart. Friendships are replacing crude caricatures. I tell my new friends about the other kinds of work I do, and I hope their lines are softening too.  In a time when the algorithms feed me more of what I already believe and theirs do the same for them, these are rare and precious encounters. 

Do I still believe that more humans will die in an increasingly likely nuclear holocaust than a “massacre of the innocents” that leaves the rest of us standing? Of course. Do I believe that women should not be forced either to carry babies or to abort them? I do. Do I hope some of Guiding Star’s funders also direct their generosity to other unmet needs? I do indeed. But last year I was a tourist among people who oppose abortion. Now I am living on both sides of the border, and I hope I can be a bridge. The God who has guided me throughout my life led me to OFS, to El Paso, and to Guiding Star to further my Secular Franciscan vocation. At 80, I am still being continually converted, and I can never be grateful enough.

“When we allow abortion, we are punishing the women—who must abort their children because their men have run away—and we are punishing the children whose lives are terminated . . . I want us to step back a little bit and say: Why is this woman and this child threatened? Why is this woman threatening to terminate this life? What do we need to do as a society? What are we not doing right now as a society?”

– Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, December 7, 2004 press interview

Questions for Reflection: What topic have you learned to see another side of? When have you experienced a continuing conversion?