Samantha Shrugged
Barry Michaels on Thinking About Abortion with Those Who Won’t
I teach eleventh-grade religion at a respected and flourishing Catholic college-prep high school in the state of New York. My students are bright and talented kids, the children of some of the most successful people in this part of the state. Our discussions on morality are a window into the culture that nurtures them at least as much as most of their families do. We recently tackled abortion.
A few students tried to make abortion a feminist issue, but interestingly, only a very few. Most, including the young women, react to the idea of feminism with disdain and jokes, and some girls asserted that women would be expected to be more pro-life than men because they’re the ones with the maternal instincts. Note to NOW: Your message has missed the youth, at least the ones living in the area that gave birth to the American feminist movement.
A few others defended abortion as a necessary means of birth control or even population control. But the most prominent line of thinking by far was, well, not thinking. When presented with the facts of fetal development or abortion methods or ethical reasoning, student after student preferred either comfortable unawareness or bold-faced denial of plain fact.
That’s a strong assertion to make. Examples are in order.
Student Preferences
The first sign of what was to come appeared on the first day of class discussion, as one student (I’ve changed all names below) tried to dismiss moral objections to abortion.
Steve: It’s not like we’re talking about a living person here.
Me: What do you mean?
Steve: Well, the heart doesn’t even start beating until it’s like five months along.
Me: Five months?
Steve: Sure.
Me: Actually, it’s more like three weeks.
Steve: No way. That’s not true.
Now, every one of these college-bound juniors covered fetal development in ninth-grade biology. Consider another student’s assertion.
Craig: Until it [the unborn baby] comes out, it’s not alive. It’s dead.
Me: Dead?
Craig: Yeah.
Me: And what do you base that statement on?
Craig: Science.
If charity suggested I chalk all this up to (profound) ignorance and misinformation, Samantha left no doubt about what lay beneath them. In the midst of yet another discussion of basic fetology, this honor student spoke up.
Barry Michaels teaches religion in a Catholic school in New York and is the author of Eucharist: The Church?s Treasure and At the School of Mary (Pauline Books).
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more on abortion from the online archives
27.2—March/April 2014
on C. S. Lewis & the New State Paganism by W. E. Knickerbocker
19.1—January/February 2006
on Death & Seven of the Last Words of Socrates by Graeme Hunter
24.1—January/February 2011
How Planned Parenthood's Founder Played the Christians, and Won by Allan C. Carlson
more from the online archives
20.8—October 2007
The Deep & Abiding Biblical Roots of Western Liberal Education by David Lyle Jeffrey
27.3—May/June 2014
Religious Freedom & Why It Matters
Working in the Spirit of John Leland by Robert P. George
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