A note: My book has received Kirkus and Booklist starred reviews. Please preorder it here or below - because preorders are crucial to a book’s survival, because I’ll send you a personalized Thank You note with some really dope goodies if you send me your receipt and address, and because 100% of any royalties I earn go to abortion funds. Thank you!
Dear Holy Apostles Catholic Church,
I’ve never been to Colorado Springs—is it beautiful? From friends and relatives who have lived or spent time in your city, I know it to be a conservative place, culturally, a city soaked in gun culture and military influence. I know that your city—an “exurb” of Denver—sits within one of the wealthiest counties in the U.S., populated heavily by fiscal and social conservatives. I’m sure many of them identify as Catholic. I’m sure many of them sit in your pews.
When I first saw that your official administrative email account had subscribed to this Abortion Love Letter, I was curious. Are you here because so many Catholics have abortions, and need logistical, spiritual, and emotional support? Because Catholics make up a full quarter of all U.S. abortion patients? Are you here because you’re interested in joining your fellow clergy members in providing support and compassion and accurate information? Maybe you’re here because you or someone you love has had, or will have, abortions—a statistical certainty, and a neutral fact of human life, like miscarriage or birth, like hormonal or barrier-method contraception (which most Catholics use), like pregnancy itself.
Of course, I visited your website. I took a tour of your ministries, and noted your Diocese’s anti-abortion message, as well as your “Respect Life” Apostolate page. I explored your Miscarriage Support page, and read your words:
“It is the courageous families who drank the cup of infant loss, who have inspired the development of this ministry.”
You don’t see me and my family here, in these words and in what you believe to be your inspiration, anonymous church administrator, but we’re there.
You go on to say:
“You are loved, you are not alone in your loss, and God’s mercy is infinite.”
Again: I know you think you didn’t mean me, here. But I know, just as I know this to be true about people who suffer those griefs you name and honor: people who have abortions are loved, are not alone, are cool with God. We are parents, we are pregnant people, we are children, we are families. We are not a separate category, as much as you wish we were.
Our bodies and pregnancies and families and lives overlap and cross and braid through yours, are yours. We experience births and miscarriages and infant losses and infertility, too. And thank you for the reminder.
I know that for you, holding these statements alongside laws like this in your hands makes a certain kind of sense. The death, trauma, and imprisonment of parents, the pain of a baby brought into the world against their mother’s will, into contexts of violence and poverty and oppression, the suffering of these families, I know, doesn’t compare to the suffering you imagine to be caused by abortion—the death of a fertilized egg, an embryo, or a fetus inside a person (or, knowing your views on IVF, in a laboratory).
I know that I am just one mother, on the other side of the country, whom you have identified and followed because of my abortion and my love for other people who need and have abortions. Because of my sins, perhaps.
I guess, new subscriber, I would ask: what is your curiosity? It’s none of my business why you are here, just as it’s none of my business (nor yours) why anyone decides to end or continue their own pregnancy, but your presence on my list of email subscribers—your interest in our community, our love—is.
I’ll spend my life protecting the safety, the joy, the bodies and families and autonomy of pregnant people, people who may someday become pregnant, their children, their lovers, their communities. That means everyone on this email list. That means everyone who’s ever come to Mass at, or sought shelter from the cold within, or begged for money outside the Holy Apostles Catholic Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
That means you.
Love,
Hannah