Campus Notes

It’s always scandalous when a Catholic college hosts an extreme pro-abortion activist like Amy Richards to lecture to students and others. But it somehow seems worse when the Catholic college is named after Mary, the Mother of God.

Richards, who has been quoted in the New York Times explaining why she allegedly killed two of her three unborn children when she was pregnant with triplets, was keynote speaker at the “Wo/men’s Conference 2012” at St. Mary’s College of California on Saturday, March 3.

Ironically, the event is described on St. Mary’s website this way:

Why a focus on engaging in change? The Catholic tradition has a long history of social teaching to promote social justice as a “constitutive dimension of the practice of faith” (E1:6.1 Justice in the World, 1991). Our Catholic heritage charges us to “defend the goodness, dignity, and freedom of each person, and to foster sensitivity to social and ethical concerns,” which are principles evident in the mission of Saint Mary’s College of California.

Richards is co-founder of the “Third Wave Foundation,” which had an emergency abortion fund that disbursed over $200,000 to fund abortions before closing it down last year, according to the group’s website. The College’s event website touts this affiliation.

On July 18, 2004, in a New York Times column headlined “When One is Enough,” Richards reportedly told writer Amy Barrett the reasons she aborted two of her children in the womb.

My immediate response was, I cannot have triplets. I was not married; I lived in a five-story walk-up in the East Village; I worked freelance; and I would have to go on bed rest in March. I lecture at colleges, and my biggest months are March and April. I would have to give up my main income for the rest of the year. There was a part of me that was sure I could work around that. But it was a matter of, Do I want to?

I looked at Peter and asked the doctor: ”Is it possible to get rid of one of them? Or two of them?” The obstetrician wasn’t an expert in selective reduction, but she knew that with a shot of potassium chloride you could eliminate one or more.

Having felt physically fine up to this point, I got on the subway afterward, and all of a sudden, I felt ill. I didn’t want to eat anything. What I was going through seemed like a very unnatural experience. On the subway, Peter asked, ”Shouldn’t we consider having triplets?” And I had this adverse reaction: ”This is why they say it’s the woman’s choice, because you think I could just carry triplets. That’s easy for you to say, but I’d have to give up my life.” Not only would I have to be on bed rest at 20 weeks, I wouldn’t be able to fly after 15. I was already at eight weeks. When I found out about the triplets, I felt like: It’s not the back of a pickup at 16, but now I’m going to have to move to Staten Island. I’ll never leave my house because I’ll have to care for these children. I’ll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise. Even in my moments of thinking about having three, I don’t think that deep down I was ever considering it.

While the conference did have some pro-life representation, other speakers and workshops at the event included one led by Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo. Buchanan has a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood, a 100% rating from NARAL, and a 100% rating from Equality California, according to California Catholic Daily.

Another workshop, titled “Reproductive Justice 101 & Healthcare Reform: Historical Reproductive Oppression and its Relevance Today,” discussed the Affordable Health Care Act. It was presented by Jean-Arellia Tolentino and Jenny Ton of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, which advocates abortion rights and free health insurance coverage for birth control.

Carol Rehak, campus ministry director at Holy Names University (another Catholic institution) and an instructor at St. Mary’s, led a workshop titled “Occupy God: A Wo/man’s Guide to Social Change from a Catholic Perspective.” She explained how feminists can draw lessons from the Occupy Movement and correct injustices “through the threefold office of priest (sacrifice), prophet (witness), and leader (service and stewardship).”

Then there was the workshop by a University of San Francisco student and vice president of that university’s Queer Alliance, speaking about “the inclusion of gender variant individuals within feminist spaces.”

And lest one is concerned about the lack of religious perspective, Holy Names College instructor Sara Salazar lectured on “feminist spiritual activism” with Alka Akora, an assistant professor from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Founded in the late 1960s (of course), the Institute seeks to integrate Eastern and Western beliefs and thought leading to “an evolution of consciousness.”

Another workshop was called “Her, Their, Hir: What Wo/men’s Spaces Mean for Gender Variant Individuals,” which was presented by Mckenzie Mullen, vice-president of the Queer Alliance at the Jesuit-run University of San Francisco.

HT California Catholic Daily