Pro-Life is Pro-Science and Pro-Religion: Right to Life’s Third Annual Lives Worthy of Respect Panel
The pro-life movement is often attacked for being “anti-woman.” I have noticed such attacks much more frequently since beginning at Georgetown, where comments like “my body, my choice” are common and even encouraged. This year’s Lives Worthy of Respect Panel (“To be Pro-Life is to be Pro-Science”) on October 18 reminded me of just how pro-woman the pro-life movement can and should be.
Each of our three panelists were highly accomplished women working in the medical field. First, Dr. Marguerite Duane is a board-certified family physician who has spent much of her career spreading awareness of fertility appreciation and natural family planning. She co-founded the Fertility Appreciation Collaborative to Teach the Science (FACTS) to advance this mission. At Friday’s event, Dr. Duane spoke extensively on the importance of appreciating the physiology of the female body. In today’s society, she argued, oral contraception is practically forced onto girls in their teens. It’s treated as a “one-size fits all” cure for so many issues: heavy menstruation, painful cramps, acne. And it helps to prevent pregnancy! This approach teaches women that the natural function of their reproductive system is “bad,” argues Dr. Duane. Artificial means are promoted to suppress and control this system. Duane’s work seeks to better educate women about their bodies and natural family planning, fostering true appreciation and respect for women.
Dr. Maureen L. Condic is an associate professor of neurobiology at the University of Utah and was recently appointed to the National Science Advisory Board. Condic has done extensive research on the role of stem cells in development and regeneration as well as co-authored Human Embryos, Human Beings (2018) and penned her own Untangling Twinning (2020). Sister Grace Miriam Usala entered the Religious Sisters of Mercy in 2007 and graduated from Georgetown University with her medical degree ten years later, simultaneously pursuing both her calling to be a sister and a physician. She will complete her internal medicine residency in June 2020. Like Dr. Duane, both of these women have experienced serious opposition in the medical field for their pro-life beliefs. At Friday’s panel, Dr. Condic spoke of a colleague who dismissed her research on embryological development simply because of Condic’s Catholicism and pro-life convictions. However, She persisted in presenting this colleague with pro-life arguments grounded in well-researched science, eventually receiving word that her research had been successful in persuading him.
I was amazed at the example set by these strong and independent women and am proud to be part of a movement with so many more like them. Still, we are far from perfect. It is easy to speak out against abortion, as life-threatening and polarizing an issue as it is, and forget to respect the life that has already been brought into this world. No, the pro-life movement is not anti-woman. Yes, we as students on campus and members of a national movement can do a much better job caring for women throughout life.
Mary Hope Rawlins, NHS ’22
