There has been much discussion and debate over LMU's decision to take advantage of the new option to provide medical coverage for its employees without funding elective abortions. In this article, I intend to show that LMU can and must choose to drop elective coverage for abortions in order to obey its institutional conscience. In addition, I would like to show that this conscience is intrinsic to its identity as Catholic; it is not formed by majority opinion. Furthermore, I intend to offer several reasons why LMU’s decision to drop said coverage does not violate a woman’s right to choose, as previously alleged in this ongoing public discourse.
First, does LMU have a choice about whether to drop this coverage? Not if it is going to follow its institutional conscience. Given the option to drop elective abortion coverage without any other undue burden to its faculty and staff, LMU has a moral obligation to do so. As a Catholic institution, LMU holds to the principle that human life and moral worth begin at conception. If it is true that human personhood begins at the time biological human life begins, then any intentional action to end that life is intentional killing of a human person, and a violation of the fundamental right to life. As a Catholic institution, LMU’s institutional conscience is formed by the essential truth that all human life has dignity and must be protected. Therefore, given the option, LMU cannot choose to fund elective abortions and be faithful to its conscience. To fund coverage for elective abortions is to be implicated in an act to which LMU must conscientiously object.
While a Catholic conscience certainly objects to abortion, is it necessary that LMU’s conscience be tied to that, or does the current LMU community have room to dictate its conscience? LMU ought to be afforded the freedom to follow its conscience with regard to funding elective abortions, and that conscience must be formed by the identity which is central to it throughout time, not a transient population at an isolated point in time. LMU’s conscience is not dictated by the people who form its current community. The conscience of this community is not formed by popular opinion or majority vote. It is formed by a worldwide, universal Church, which has always proclaimed the value and dignity of all human life. In other words, neither the Catholic community nor the LMU community can vote to determine whether human life has moral worth. We know that it does by virtue of God’s revelation, bolstered by a long tradition of reasonable and scientific support. In order to uphold justice for those who cannot speak for themselves, LMU must refuse to offer fiscal support for the early termination of their lives.
If LMU has a moral obligation to follow its conscience, does it not also have an obligation to its women? Ought it not respect the political right to choose abortion by providing medical coverage for this procedure? There are several reasons that dropping coverage does not violate a woman’s right to choice. First, in 99% of elective abortion cases, the initial choice to engage in sexual intercourse was made with full knowledge that the act necessarily incurs the risk of pregnancy. It is not unreasonable to expect that, when deciding to engage in acts that entail certain risks, intelligent persons have the responsibility to consider said risks prior to acting. We even make legislation based on this assumption. For example, the evidence indicates that if you drink or text while driving, you have a much higher risk of injuring someone. Given that risk, our society mandates that you choose not to engage in these actions simultaneously. In the same way, it is not too much to ask that women and men make responsible choices with regard to sexual activity. Any reasonable person must acknowledge that sexual intercourse risks pregnancy. If a woman is truly in a position where having a child would provide undue strain, the most prudent choice is to avoid sex, and thus eliminate the risk of possible pregnancy.
As newlyweds, my husband I make this choice every month. Due to our current financial situation, my husband and I have discerned that having a child would pose serious strain on our resources, and our ability to support our family would be severely diminished. In order to decrease the likelihood of pregnancy, we abstain from sexual intercourse during my fertile days each month. Were we open to contraception, the use of barrier methods (the only options available to me due to my risk of blood clots while using hormonal contraception), would entail a 15-30% risk of pregnancy, depending on the method used. As this is simply too high, my husband and I choose to abstain during periods of fertility each month as we continue to discern our family’s needs.
A second reason that dropping a woman’s coverage does not violate her political right to choose abortion, is that for LMU employees, said coverage has little impact. Refusing to fund a woman’s abortion does not prevent her from choosing to have one. LMU is not preventing employees from obtaining elective abortions, nor is it disciplining them for having them. No one is at risk for penalties or job loss in choosing this procedure. Furthermore, one can imagine that LMU employees are not unable to fund their own elective abortions without medical coverage. The increased cost previously cited by this newspaper was $250 per abortion. If LMU employees make a wage so low that they could not afford a payment of $250, then what we ought to debate is whether the university pays a just wage, which is something Catholics and non-Catholics alike can agree is an issue of justice. When parking costs for faculty and staff were implemented, the cost to employees was about $700 per year. If we can imagine that a woman elected for less than 3 abortions per year, we can say that her increased medical cost is less than that of parking. If it is just for LMU to impose a cost on all of its employees to cover its expenses with regard to parking, how much more it is reasonable for LMU to impose a lesser cost on its employees in the preservation of its conscience? While the cost to individual employees can be calculated in terms of monetary increase times abortions chosen, the cost to LMU in funding these abortions in incalculable. There is no method for measuring the cost of betraying one’s own conscience.
On a final note regarding choice, I’d like to mention that there is often a false dichotomy about choice during pregnancy, one that has been perpetuated during the discussion in this paper. Often when a woman is pregnant, the choices cited are between raising a child and cutting that process short by terminating it in the womb. This leaves out the option that allows life to flourish without requiring a woman to raise a child: adoption. In addition to childrearing and abortion, a woman’s choices include carrying a child to term to be raised by the loving couple of her choice. In our discussion about choice, let’s not limit the options from which we have to choose.
In closing, I hope I have offered you a reasonable justification for LMU’s decision. It is important that all voices be heard in this discussion. As a Catholic woman, I do not “find it laughable that celibate men in long robes continue to make and implement policy on behalf of [my body],” because that is an inaccurate and demeaning view of the issue and what is at stake here. This is not about Church politics, or gender inequality, or women’s rights. This is an issue regarding the fundamental human right to life, and our responsibility as Catholics to follow our consciences by refusing to be implicated in its unjust termination.
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