Life
August 19, 2026
Ten years ago, I would have said a woman’s right to choose was her business, not mine. I wouldn’t have shown up at a pro-choice rally, but I was effectively siding with the pro-choice camp. It didn’t directly affect me, so not having an opinion was easy.
Today, I don’t have the same opinion.
Last week, Massachusetts enacted a new abortion law removing the state’s previous statutory restrictions governing abortions after 24 weeks and leaving the decision to a physician’s professional judgment. Massachusetts has been reported as the 10th state to have no statutory gestational limit on abortion.
As a Catholic living in Massachusetts, I’ve watched the reaction.
I’ve seen Catholics calling for our governor to be excommunicated.
I understand the anger.
But looking at pictures of women celebrating the expansion of abortion doesn’t make me angry at them.
It makes me sad.
And it makes me ask a harder question:
How did we get here?
Because I wasn’t always where I am today on abortion either.
And I didn’t have a change of heart because I attended a pro-life rally.
I didn’t change because someone called for the excommunication of a Catholic who wasn’t living in accordance with the teachings of her faith.
My heart changed because my relationship with Jesus Christ and His Church changed.
As I grew closer to Christ, I started wanting to understand why His Church teaches what she teaches.
And once I started asking those questions, things I had previously accepted from the culture began looking very different.
We Catholics need to speak the truth—but speak it with charity, always respecting the dignity of people who may not believe what we believe.
I learned something about that recently.
It wasn’t long ago that I accepted losing a job because I disagreed with a strategic direction my employer was pursuing that I believed was in opposition to my Catholic faith.
That was hard.
But I knew it was the right choice.
Speaking up can be hard. Following your conscience might cost you something. But sometimes we have to.
When I was praying over that decision, the extraordinarily serious warning Jesus gives us in Matthew 18:6 kept coming to me:
“But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”
That was pretty clear to me.
As a Catholic, I cannot knowingly cooperate with sin.
Today, I am frustrated that no one told me so much of what I am learning. But maybe God let’s us wander in the desert because we have a mission we need to learn from and then share with others.
We can speak the truth, live the truth, and defend the truth, with love because we lived our own mistakes in different ways.
We cannot expect our children to understand the teachings of Christ if we don’t make time to know Christ ourselves.
Do you want your grandchildren to grow up in a world where there is no longer a definition of a man or a woman and where abortion is permitted under the guise of healthcare?
For a long time, I was just like the women in this picture, believing that it’s not my place to make a decision for another woman. But now I know that if I truly love my sisters, and my brothers, then I do not want them to be separated from God by sin.
Women carry a great responsibility because we are given the ability to conceive, carry, and protect life in the womb. A man has an equal responsibility: to sacrifice for the woman and child, to embrace fatherhood, and, within marriage, to cooperate with God in creating the family as God intended.
Let’s also remember that, as Catholics, all are invited to the Catholic Church. At the same time, the Church teaches that those who are conscious of grave sin should not receive Holy Communion until they have been reconciled through the Sacrament of Confession. To do so would be like spitting in the face of Jesus himself as he carried the cross.
The Church cannot simply redefine what she teaches to accommodate what the culture accepts. But that does not mean we close the church doors to people whose lives are not currently in accordance with Catholic teaching.
I’m not going to sign petitions calling for someone’s excommunication. That is a decision for the appropriate authority of the Church, not for me. Christ entrusted authority to His Church, as we see in Matthew 16:18–19.
Our governor has publicly supported policies and positions that conflict with Catholic teaching. We can strongly disagree with her choices and those of others who may agree with her, while still respecting their inherent human dignity.
What we must do is tell those considering abortion that only God can create life. God gives every new life a purpose and we must encourage them to seek alternatives, no matter what civil law allows. No matter how difficult the circumstances may be. And we must do better at teaching our children the purpose of human sexuality according to Catholic teaching and the Theology of the Body given to us by St. John Paul II.
Laws are important; they guide our behavior in the temporal world. But as Christians, we must remember divine law, because our lives are ordered toward eternity.
Catholics and even New Testament Christians need to do better about teaching chastity to our children. Teaching them from a very young age that men and women are equal in dignity but different and designed to cooperate with each other. That their body is a gift only to be shared between a man and a woman in marriage for a lifetime. It’s right there for every single one of us to read with our own eyes.
“Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”
— Matthew 7:13–14, RSV-CE
