Father, I'm pregnant

...course of their investigation...

...Thanks to this paper," he wrote, "if it ever happens to me again I know where to find help and other alternatives...

...Nevertheless, our experience leads me to offer some very specific recommendations for all people who want to uphold the sanctity of life, born and unborn...

...When told that the friend was not yet willing to speak with a clergyperson, the respondents said the problem was too difficult for them to handle, and offered no further assistance...

...What I gathered from this project is that the church is very uptight on this topic...

...Their assumption was that, since the church opposes abortion so vehemently, no one in the local parishes would be willing to help people facing this particular crisis...

...With some help from me, the students contacted each of the forty-one to determine the extent and availability of their resources, a process that was itself sometimes frustrating...

...The alternatives proposed to the students ranged widely...

...Louis where altemative programs are extensive, intelligent, widely advertised, and generously funded...

...This essay will report the results of the project and the reflections and recommendations it has inspired...

...Unmarried, sill in college, she believes that abortion is her only choice...

...When it was complete, our list of resources had slimmed down to fourteen potential sources of real help...

...But what other practical choices are there...

...Of the thirty-nine respondents who gave the researchers clues about where to go and whom to see, twenty-four made referrals to various Birthright organizations in our area, demonstrating that at least the name "Birthright" has some ring of familiarity to parish personnel...

...This was definitely "theology in the trenches," as one of my colleagues labeled our project...

...How realistic is it that a woman eighteen years old can raise a chiM on her own...

...5. Do not dismiss anyone from the arena of conversation, for conversation can lead to conversion...

...Since they range in age from eighteen to twenty-seven, it is likely that many of them have lived my scenario or something close to it---either having a friend unmarried and pregnant, or being pregnant themselves, or suspecting it...

...One Episcopal pastor referred the student to the neighboring Lutheran pastor, a woman...

...But through the eyes of these people, who were simple, down-to-earth, caring people, I realize that there are other solutions to problems and you don't necessarily have to take the easy way out...

...Our initial list, in fact, contained forty-one different crisis centers, adoption agencies, hot-line numbers, and the like...

...How can you even feel safe to give your chiM up for adoption when the society we live in is so crazy ? 4. Work on developing parish-based outreach programs to women in crisis--beginning with something as simple as a hotline phone number or a "life lines" comer in the parish bulletin, later developing a network among neighborhood churches so that information and services can be pooled...

...The students were more surprised by the help they received at the Protestant churches than by the difficulties they encountered at Catholic parishes, because they had mistakenly assumed that only the Catholic church is opposed to abortion...

...Another finding, however, was that the organization does not receive significant church funding and must rely almost exclusively on its own fundraising...

...A small advertisement for Birthright appears twice a month in our diocesan newspaper, and students report that a few of their parish churches post information on Birthright as well...

...They face social pressures and cultural lures never imagined a generation ago...

...I thought they seemed uncaring and unhelpful...

...Some of them got confirmation of that assumption, others a positive revelation...

...In several instances, hot-line numbers, widely advertised as serving the public twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, led me from one answering machine to another...

...So I presented them with a scenario and a question and sent them off in search of answers...

...Contrast, for example, the student comment quoted above after my first recommendation ("My parish wasn't any help at all...

...Nevertheless, when I broached the topic in class, it was immediately obvious that the church was the last place to which these young people would turn for help in the event of an unplanned pregnancy...

...2. Don't let denominationalism interfere with protecting human life...

...Why is this the case...

...It may appear that they have abandoned the church, for we certainly don't see many of them at Eucharist week after week, but that is no reason for us to abandon them...

...That may indeed be the case, given the geographic and numerical limitations of our project...

...More than 85 percent of our students hold jobs, many working forty-hour weeks while carrying a full class load...

...of these, most are products of the Catholic school system...

...Each student-participant purportedly has a close friend who has just discovered she is pregnant...

...Although their study focused primarily on local Roman Catholic communities, they also contacted Greek Orthodox, Episcopal, Baptist, and Congregational churches as well as a local Jewish center, Jehovah's Witnesses, Buddhist, and Hindu community leaders...

...It's true that some few other students were D fortunate enough to interview priests who were not only knowledgeable about abortion alternatives but willing to provide financial, spiritual, and emotional support as well...

...He told me to go and pray and find peace within me, and that he would be available any time--day or night," she wrote...

...These young adults lead highly stressed lives...

...This is not a denominational issue but a life issue...

...I hope that compassionate and informed priests are more numerous than this survey suggests...

...One was even referred to a nursing home sponsored by Catholic Charities...

...Life has meaning...

...They also believed that once a woman obtained an abortion she would never be able to return to the church...

...I asked the students to start looking in their local churches for answers, and to chart the JULIA ANN UPTON, R.S.M., is associate professor in the department of theology and religious studies, St...

...It surprised and intrigued the students when I suggested my thesis that precisely because the church strongly condemns abortion, we should expect its ministers and other representatives to support alternatives just as strongly...

...And one does hear of areas such as the archdiocese of St...

...3. Identify and support alternatives to abortion with the same determination directed to other forms of prolife action...

...For a young woman in a desperate situation the church really doesn't make many alternatives available...

...At the political level, begin with demanding at least proportionate funding for birth assistance as is now available for abortion...

...When it occurred to me that we are a great deal less clear about alternatives to abortion--that the messages we send about alternatives should be, but are not, as elaborate and specific as our rhetoric against abortion--I decided to test my hypothesis by involving my undergraduate theology class in a research project...

...Of the eighty-nine clergy contacted, only thirty-nine provided any suggestions for alternatives...

...How would that make me feel ifI were pregnant, unmarried, and desperate...

...it appeared to them that the church had ended the conversation with its condemnation...

...My parish wasn't any help at all...

...with the attitude of another student who received a wholly different response: Personally, I had never felt so opposed to abortion before these discussions...

...It was a stunning encounter--and the only one of such depth recorded by any of the one hundred students...

...I wasn't for abortion, but I really knew I was able to have one, if I felt it was necessary...

...It disturbs me that so many students were turned away by parishes with little or no support...

...While the undergraduates were visiting churches, a graduate assistant searched recent issues of the diocesan newspaper to uncover articles or advertisments focusing on abortion alternatives...

...5 April 1991:219...

...He also suggested that since she was still considering abortion she ought to attend a meeting of "Rachel Weeping," a support group for women who have had abortions, to learn from them what the after-effects of an abortion might be...

...They didn't seem concerned and didn't offer to see my friend...

...Whether one attributes the choice of abortion to selfishness or desperation, those statistics do not speak well for us as a community of believers...

...One of our campus ministers even offered to r accompany my student's "friend" to Birthright...

...On reflection, I realized that their enthusiasm should have been expected...

...The students contacted eighty-nine churches...

...If I were pregnant, I know I could go and not be badgered or reprimanded, but sincerely helped...

...abortion doesn't...

...John's University, Jamaica, New York...

...If she did choose abortion, though, he also told her that he would help her work through the aftereffects...

...To which wisdom I would only add, "If you give a little help, you can bring a human life into the world...

...The checking procedures revealed a number of other instances in which the students had been provided with distinctly unhelpful misinformation...

...What help is available...

...9 ut, I have to add, only if he was lucky enough D to find another sympathetic and informed advis'~ er...

...The Episcopal pastor who referred one of the students to the Lutheran pastor on the next block taught a good lesson because he believed her to be more skilled than he...

...There were many articles on abortion--eleven in one issue alone--but not a single article on alternatives...

...Interestingly, if not surprisingly, women participants in the 218: Commonweal research fared better than the men...

...Here is the scenario...

...After completing her project at an upstate parish, still another student began to wonder how she would be treated if she were the one pregnant, so she went to her parish church and presented (or misrepresented) herself as pregnant and desperate...

...From the remaining fifty, the response was that the woman seeking help should come back in person...

...In three unplanned instances in which the same church was contacted by both a man and a woman student, they received radically different treatment, suggesting the likelihood that the men were automatically stereotyped as culprits...

...Never once did he make me feel dirty or cheap or tell me I should never have had premarital sex...

...Monsignor offered to introduce her to women in the parish who had made three different choices--abortion, adoption, and raising the child alone--to hear their stories...

...If you accept a little help, you can bring a human life into this world...

...I feel sorry for girls who do call in need of help...

...They need to know God's compassion, and they can only know it through I~IS...

...At the end of their session, he reminded her that he, the church, and God would always be there...

...It is, after all, abundantly clear--from sermons, religion classes, official pronouncements, Catholic involvement in court cases, legislative lobbying, and demonstrations at abortion clinicswhere we as a church stand on abortion...

...When the results of the students' research began to arrive, I was immediately impressed with the seriousness they brought to the assignment...

...Of the more than one hundred students in my class, 73 percent are Catholic...

...As it happened, however, one male student who had a happier experience disclosed in his report that on a previous occasion he had actually lived through the project's scenario: Out of loyalty to a pregnant woman friend, he had reluctantly provided most of the money for her fifth-month abortion, and afterwards had come to feel responsible for the death of an unborn child...

...The student, being personally opposed to abortion, wants to help the friend consider alternatives...

...5 April 1991:217 The thirty-nine churches that responded positively to the students' requests represent several different denominations, with the Roman Catholic churches, on the whole, being less helpful than Protestant communities...

...1. Turn down judgment and turn up compassion...

...Two students were referred, I hope by accident, to abortion clinics...

...Remember that the students began this project already convinced that the church would never help them deal with the practical problem of dealing with the dilemmas of an unwanted pregnancy...

...Another student wrote, "I thought it would be really hard and uncomfortable, but I felt strangely safe, almost hugged...

...She met with the pastor, who immediately made her feel comfortable...