In Focus
The way forward BY RAYANNE BENNETT Associate Publisher
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t has been two years since the U.S. Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe vs. Wade, bringing about a wide range of developments, some expected, some confounding and all consequential. Some states have passed stricter abortion laws and other states have pushed back at the ballot box and in state legislative bodies to enshrine or even strengthen abortion access. Contradictory statistical shifts have been reported, citing an increase in the number of abortions performed in the last two years ... a deepening of the nation’s support for access to legal abortion ... and an growing demand for the services and support of pregnancy aid centers. Through it all, the Church remains steadfast in its mission to stand with both the expectant mother and her child in the womb. Our leaders recognize the need to advocate for laws that respect all human life, while working to transform hearts. Most importantly the Church wants every pregnant woman who is vulnerable to abortion know that she is not alone. Progress is slow but moving. While some Catholic-based efforts have been in place for decades, others are newly-established responses to the growing need in the wake of the Dobbs Continued on 31
Post-Dobbs Progress Report With abortion numbers rising, leaders assess causes and impact on aid, services BY KATIE YODER OSV News
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eorgette Forney still remembers when, at 16 years old, she sought an abortion. “I kept thinking, ‘I don’t want to embarrass my family,’” the co-founder of Silent No More Awareness Campaign and president of Anglicans for Life said. “I also kept thinking, ‘I can’t have a baby. A baby threatens my future, my plans.’” She wanted to go to college. Get married. And a baby, she thought, threatened that. “Instead of saying, ‘Wow, women are strong and we can do whatever needs to get done’ – which is how I look at it now – I thought, ‘I can’t handle both. I can’t handle school and a baby,’” she described her abortion in 1976. Forney, along with other leaders and experts, spoke with Our Sunday Visitor newspaper after the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive research organization that supports abortion, estimated earlier this year that the number of abortions is the highest it has been in over a decade. The increase came as a surprise: A growing number of state pro-life protections for the unborn limit abortion following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs Continued on 10
July 2024
THE MONITOR MAGAZINE 9