 I'm glad to see all of you. And I want to welcome you to the first of three living theology workshops that the Center for Catholic Studies is hosting this semester. My name is Paul Lakeland. I direct the Center. And I am going to introduce our speakers for this afternoon. And then I'm going to get out of the way. But for the sake of those of you who are online, I just want to point out, you may already know this, but I just want to point out that you have the opportunity to raise questions by writing them into the Q&A spot on your screen. And I will get the questions. And I will be able to pass those questions along to our speakers at the end of the session. And you can pose those questions the moment they come into your mind. You do not have to wait till the end of the session. Just type them in, and I will have them. Those in the room live will do question and answers in the ordinary way. So our session today is centered around the question, does the reversal of Roe v. Wade create more problems than it solves for Catholics? And our two speakers, good friends and colleagues of mine both are, to my immediate right, Andrea Canwell, who works in the Center for Social Impact. And beyond her, Caitlin Merritt, who is the Center for Catholic Studies Kinesious Fellow this year, and who teaches in the Religious Studies Department. So they'll talk for a while, then we'll have a general discussion. I suspect take questions and comments and so on. And we'll be wrapping up around 6 o'clock. So without any more ado, with my apologies for walking across in front of the screen, because there's no other way I can get back to where I'm sitting, I'm going to pass it over to Caitlin. Caitlin's going to speak first. Thanks, Paul. Also for anyone in the room, we do have plenty of Catholic Studies promotional material. If you're interested in any future events, please feel free to come up after the talk. We have some posters about our events this semester, our next talk, and very handy bookmarks, which come in handy. A little redundant. OK, so thank you all for coming. A couple of provisos just to get us started. As you may have gleaned from Paul's introduction, neither of us have any medical training, maybe beyond some Red Cross babysitting classes, and neither of us have any legal training. I will be talking about the considerations from a Catholic theology point of view. And Andrea will be talking about how those crystallize in terms of social impact and the structures that we see when we look out into the world. Another important thing to say right off of the bat is that the experiences of Black and Indigenous women and other women of color in terms of the provisions and restrictions on their reproductive rights have been very different from the reproductive regulations on white women throughout American history. And obviously, as two white women, we want to acknowledge that and note that those experiences are quite different. The last thing that I just want to say in terms of introductory remarks is this is a very fraught conversation that can involve some challenging topics. We will be talking about and acknowledging the realities of things like assault, abuse, rape, and incest. So if those are challenging topics for you or you may not know how you're going to react, those are going to come up. And for anyone in the room, if anyone is kind of struggling at the end of our talk, please come and see us. And we can make sure that we direct you to some safe spaces to have those conversations. But I think that's it in terms of introductory remarks. So as Paul mentioned, my name is Caitlin Merida. I'm the Canisius Fellow for the Center of Catholic Studies. And in terms of our question of does the overturning of Roe V. Wade create more problems for Catholics than it solves, the answer, of course, is not so easy. If it was, we wouldn't have to subject you to this hour talk. So coming at it from the perspective of Catholic theology, there's a few things that I want to highlight. And that is kind of the basic norms of Catholic morality, principles of Catholic social teaching, which are the teachings in which Catholics engage in their social spheres. And I also want to talk just kind of briefly about how history might give us some directionality in this conversation, as well as some past documentation and things like that within the Catholic tradition. So first and foremost, the Catholic position is not unclear. Abortions are immoral in terms of Catholic social teaching. And every single Catholic has a duty to protect the life and dignity of every other human person. So the teaching or the moral ruling is crystal clear. Where it starts to get complicated, particularly when politics enter into the conversation, is the way in which that plays out in our lives and in our political and social systems. Historically, this prohibition on abortion has been present for nearly the entire Catholic tradition. While there are no prohibitions on abortion in the Bible itself, there are prohibitions against killing, but there's no prohibitions against abortion in the Bible itself. Prohibitions about abortion come up in a number of documents at the end of the first century. So the idea that this has been a constant and consistent teaching in the Catholic Church is also evidence to part of the considerations that we are making today. I think the other thing to remember as well is that the Catholic tradition and the Catholic institution is a living institution in the same way that the Constitution of the United States is a living document. The Catholic Church is a living institution that is made up of human beings. And as such, while we are looking for clarity and consistency, we're also looking for how these rules and moral provisos are lived out in our everyday life. So that turns us into a consideration of Catholic morality, what are the basic norms or standards of Catholic morality. And there are two that I really want to punctuate for you. The first, and this is often where the language starts to build, is that the dignity of every human person is inviolable. And what that means is that because humans are created in the image and likeness of God, that there is a preciousness or a sacredness of every single human. It doesn't matter if they're Catholic or not, race, parentage, economic class, gender, sexual orientation, that is all covered in this general teaching and very important teaching about the dignity of the person. The other key part of Catholic morality in general, but also for our conversation, is that the person of Jesus stands as a moral norm. And what that means is that we not only have an exemplar for behavior in the person of Jesus, but Jesus as the ultimate human divine relationship is what we are supposed to be aiming for. So with those two guidelines, Catholics can kind of start wading into these moral territories, even though obviously there's like centuries of documentation on many, many moral issues. Now that we've talked about morality, we can kind of pivot a little bit into what this looks like in a Catholic's day-to-day life, particularly because Catholics are not just Catholics, right? They have many other social identities which are included in the countries in which they live in, the societies in which they participate, the political parties in which they involve themselves, and many other realities. So now a couple of remarks on that. The first is, how do we carry this dignity forward? How do I recognize that my dignity is being respected and uplifted and that in my actions, I am also respecting and uplifting and enhancing the dignity of others? We have a number of guidelines for which to frame for us. Many come from St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the doctors of the church. And a few of those are very relevant to our conversation today. So Thomas Aquinas is one of the first people to kind of name the fact that in the Catholic religion, faith and reason or belief in intellect are compatible with one another. And what that means is that it is not anti-Catholic to look at scientific evidence. So in this conversation about conception, about fetal development, about what a human needs to thrive on this planet, looking to biology, looking to other sciences is going to help us figure out that conversation. Another thing that we want to consider is Catholic social teaching, as I said. And Catholic social teaching has seven main principles, but I'm only going to focus on some of them. The first, similarly, I'm going to start sounding like a broken record, is the life and dignity of the person. The measure of any institution and any society can be categorized in terms of whether it enhances or threatens the dignity in life of those in which it's participating. So another way to think about that is our institutions or our social structures creating more vulnerable populations. Are they marginalizing people? Or are they standing in the margins and therefore lifting people up? This comes straight out of the greatest commandment, the divine love command, which comes directly from the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. And it is, again, that idea that you are not just loving your neighbor, you are loving your enemy, you are loving all human people regardless of the standings in which we may sometimes choose to see divisions. Another element of Catholic social teaching that I just want to speak to is the call to family, community, and participation. This is something that comes up a lot in the conversations about the Catholic stance on abortion and it engages in the reality that Catholics are social beings because humans are social beings and as such we are supposed to engage in the communities and societies around us. So this kind of idea of like, oh, I'm Catholic so I don't vote is a little bit at odds with Catholic social teaching, right? It is this kind of expectation that you, as a thinking person, can engage in the world and society around you. A few others like rights and responsibilities, right? The preferential option for the poor, the dignity of work and the rights of workers as well as solidarity are all key features of Catholic social justice and Catholic social teaching and do come up in these conversations. So I just would like to take a few more minutes just to elucidate that. So Thomas Aquinas tells us that the point of law is not to legislate all of morality but to serve the common good. And what serving the common good looks like is, as I said, lifting these vulnerable populations out of the margins. That is connected to this idea of love and it's also connected to this idea that love is not coercive, right? That people are free to engage with and choose their social structures as they see fit and as they are called to do through the teachings of the church. When we get to the question of the legal banning or abolition of abortion, things start to get a little muddy. As I said, the stance of the Catholic Church is crystal clear, but how that translates when we enter into a pluralistic society is something for us to think about. And the way that this makes sense for me is to look at the tradition of the Catholic Church, to look at the teachings of the Catholic Church and to look at the exemplars of the Catholic Church. And what that indicates is that this is not a one issue topic, right? Because what we're dealing with are competing goods. We're dealing with the equal dignity of the mother and the equal dignity of the unborn child. And when we look at a lot of rhetoric on either side of the political divide, what happens is that one of those two people gets villainized and that is completely against what is happening here. Both the mother and the child were created in the image and likeness of God, both share an equal dignity. So what do we do with that? Well, there are a couple of things that we can note. We can look to biology and say, okay, at conception, a brand new organism with a unique genetic, a unique genome has come into existence. But the interesting thing is that, is this philosophical debate of whether that counts as a person, right? This kind of idea of people who think like, oh, unborn child should be viable or that person is a person at the moment of conception is actually even debated in Catholic theology. The idea that it is a life is not. But the question of when that embryo becomes a person or in other words, when that embryo gets a soul has never been definitively declared by the church. Church documents are very careful to not pinpoint that. So looking at biology a little bit more might be helpful in these conversations, but again, that is not at odds with Catholic teaching. I think the other thing too, that in our conversations of morality and Catholic social teaching and conversations about what the point of law is from a Catholic perspective show us is a bigger question of how do we authentically develop a culture of life. And that is not just about abortion. That is about access to healthcare for both the mother and the baby. That is about protections in place like is a mother going to lose her job and therefore she is not gonna be able to care for herself or her baby. We can also think about the doctors involved and whether some of these bands that indicate like policing doctors and their behaviors is that problematic? Access to medicine, access to opportunities of thriving, as I said, are all a part of this bigger conversation. So there have been some authors who have said the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the Dobbs decision has kind of been like the pro-life dog catching the car. Now what do we do? And we realize it's a little bit bigger than we may have originally thought about. And this really becomes crystallized when we start looking at direct social impact and that is where Andrea is gonna take over. Great, thank you, Caitlin. Yes, so I'm gonna talk a little bit more about the, as Caitlin was saying, the social impact and some of the elements that she was mentioning that kind of surround the issue of abortion. I think if I were to have some kind of a thesis of what I would plan to talk about, it would be, for Catholics, I think the overturning of Roe v. Wade with the Dobbs decision can and maybe should feel like an empty victory. Since many Catholics, as Caitlin said, the issue and the morality of abortion for Catholics, for the Catholic Church is pretty crystal clear, but, and so many Catholics celebrated this decision. And that's because I think of the way that the, the way that the ruling was handed down and the way that this happened. Again, I'm not a legal scholar, but the ruling doesn't overturn Roe v. Wade because the justices believe that abortion is immoral and that it shouldn't be the law of the land in the United States. The legal argument here in that decision is that there's no constitutional protection for abortion and therefore the federal government can't require that states allow it. So in the majority opinion, Justice Alito writes, it's time to heed the constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people's elected representatives. The permissibility, and he quotes here from the Casey decision in 1992, another important decision on abortion where Roe v. Wade was actually upheld. He quotes here, the permissibility of abortion and the limitations upon it are to be resolved like the most important questions in our democracy by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting. That is what the constitution and the rule of our law demand. And so I'm gonna try and talk a little bit about why it might be problematic for this issue to return to the states. And a central question would be why do elected representatives really legislate based on the desires views and the life experiences of their constituents? I have doubts that they will for several reasons. The first of which because legislatures and legislators rarely come from the same backgrounds demographically and in terms of life experiences that their constituents do. Like most positions of power in the United States, state legislators demographically skew older, whiter male and of higher income. So in my presentation here I'm gonna use examples and for the sake of simplicity I'm gonna use two states as an example. The state of Connecticut where we are located right now and the state of Mississippi which is where the lawsuit from the Dobbs case originated from. So a few statistics, I only have two slides. I promise I'm not gonna bore you with slides and a lot of statistics. But you can see here in both Connecticut and Mississippi there are problems with representation. You can see the population from the 2020 census and the makeup of the state legislature in the right hand column. So in Connecticut it seems like we have a race problem, a problem of representation of race and ethnicity and a slightly better than Mississippi female problem but only slightly better, right? And in Mississippi there's a lot more racial representation in Mississippi has one of the highest black populations in the United States and a really bad woman problem. So hardly any legislators in Mississippi who are women. To me that's particularly relevant and just a disclaimer. I'm gonna keep referring to women but transgender men and non-binary people also may have the ability to get pregnant and may have the ability to seek an abortion but for the sake of brevity I'm going to keep referring to the people seeking abortions as women because the majority of them are cisgender women. So according to Gallup polling that's been happening since 1975, in the latest data 86% of women in the United States believe that abortion should be legal in all or some circumstances and only 12% just said that should be legal in all circumstances. However, in the same, they're also asked if their pro-life or pro-choice in that same survey. 61% of women say that they're pro-choice while only 47% of men say that they're pro-choice. So can a man empathize with a woman seeking abortion? Probably, right? I'm assuming for most men it's capable of having that empathy. Is it easier for a woman to imagine being in the circumstances or maybe knowing someone who has been likely, right? I think a lot of women also identify as pro-choice even if they question the morality of abortion or even if they are Catholics and are conflicted about the morality of abortion because they see it tied up with other issues of bodily autonomy and reproductive rights for women because that could be in jeopardy if abortion is criminalized in some places. So basically all I'm saying with this is that representation matters in representation. People who can imagine or have experienced your life experience can legislate based on that knowledge. So problem number one with state legislatures. So regardless, if that convinces you, write that the demographics matter in this particular case and they have, if the demographics have any bearing on the ability of people to legislate based on the desires of their constituents, we're still seeing a problem where the polls and public opinion on abortion is not matching up with the severity of laws that are being passed in many states. So in June, 2022, right after the DOB's decision came down by aggregating a bunch of different polls at the national and state level, the Washington Post reported that in 40 states, so 80% of the states in our union, the majority of citizens, maybe it's a slim majority, but the majority of citizens want to see abortion remain legal or at least decriminalized. However, according to research from the Center for Reproductive Rights, 25 states are now likely to ban abortion in the wake of the DOB's decision. Another estimate from the Guttmacher Institute, another organization that maintains data on abortion is 26 states. They're different states, interestingly, but this means that, so if only, if there's only 10 states in the union with a majority of the population that support abortion, and we may have 26 states with very severe abortion restrictions where abortion is illegal, basic math would tell us that in 16 states, or that is one third of our country, there may be laws on the books regarding abortion rights that a majority of their citizens disagree with. So why are they doing this? Why would a state legislature, knowing that this is the public opinion in their state, not want to represent the views of the people in their state? As we've talked about, the issue of abortion is very polarizing, and politicians on both sides of the aisle will propose and vote for hard-line policies to gain political points with their base, the more extreme the better at times to show their commitment to the party line and to certain issues. Both parties have done this, right? In the wake of the Dove's decision, blue states have expanded access to abortion, and red states have had these trigger laws in place, meaning that the second the Supreme Court decision came down, these laws went into effect, that went into effect to ban abortion effectively in those states. So why is this a bigger problem? It points to a lot of issues that have come up in our democratic process over the last several years. People's trust in their elected representatives has eroded to the point of being non-existent. People are desensitized to seeing democratic institutions fail, and they're completely apathetic to it. Gerrymandering has created majorities of representatives in states where they do not win the popular vote, similar to, right, what I was just talking about, popular opinion. The Washington Post also reports that Democrats won more than 50% of the nationwide vote in Wisconsin and Michigan multiple times over the past decade, but they failed to win legislative majorities in the state legislature. Republican candidates on the whole tend to benefit more from gerrymandering than democratic ones. And of course, all of the doubts that have been sown about the validity of the 2020 election, right? So it should be concerning to all Americans that the Supreme Court decision is relying on these very instruments of democracy throughout the country to dictate legislation on this very important moral issue. So one can argue that it's all kind of on dangerous ground, right? So will abortion be another example of how people will allow partisan politics to dictate laws that have real consequences for very vulnerable people. And that's where I wanna go with my second issue I'd like to raise about state legislatures. Logically, if states that have previously allowed abortion have now outlawed it, there will be an increase in births in that state. That logically makes sense, right? 49% of women that seek abortions in the US have incomes below the poverty level and another 26 are just above the poverty level or middle class, right? So three quarters basically of women are of middle class or low income individuals. And according to some older data from the Gutmacher Institute, three quarters of women cited economic reasons as being the primary reasons for seeking their abortions when they were asked. There's not one issue usually for women. All of them report multiple issues but economic issues being the largest majority. So if the decision to have an abortion is primarily an economic one and potentially half the states in our union are about to outlaw abortion, it would make sense for these states to prepare for the financial hardship that this would create for women and families. You'd imagine those states would prioritize support for working families, families with multiple children. The assumption there is that these lawmakers would want the children in their state, regardless of the circumstances of their birth, to have a healthy and supportive environment. However, in states where abortion is now illegal or where legal battles are emerging, supports for working parents tend to be the least expansive and accessible. Federal laws and programs provide much more expansive support for low income families than state policies do. So back to our two examples of Connecticut, Mississippi. I'm not trying to vilify Mississippi. I love Mississippi. I've been there many times. It's full of wonderful, lovely people. But it's just, it's, I chose that as an example, right? To show us the differences that exist across our country. So here, again, slash chart, I promise, examples of federal and state policies around these issues that would be affecting low income families and specifically women that have multiple children, right? So on the federal level, there's the Head Start program. There's nearly double the amount of Head Start programs in Mississippi than there are in Connecticut because of the difference in income disparity. Connecticut is the sixth wealthiest country in, country, yeah, state in the union. Mississippi is consistently 50, 50 out of 50 in terms of median income. In terms of Medicaid, which is state, state-sponsored health insurance, it's almost exclusively funded by the federal government, but the states are expected to kick in some funding. And you can see there, there's a disparity between what Mississippi kicks in versus Connecticut for the individuals in their state. The Affordable Care Act requires that insurers cover maternity and newborn care as an essential health benefit. But recent studies have found that out-of-pocket costs in maternity care are still about $3,000 a person. And 95% of births still require some out-of-pocket costs. So right back to that economic question for women. The federal government found the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and the Women, Infants, and Children Program that provide food assistance to the food stamp program. And the federal government legislated family medical leave, 12 weeks minimum of job protection for people around the country to take leave to be with their newborn kids. And just the difference in the policies of Connecticut and Mississippi. Connecticut, after the Dobbs decision, infused $125 million into early childhood education. There's a state-funded program called Care for Kids that provides direct payments to families that have kids in daycare. 33,000 kids are enrolled in this program in Connecticut. State of Mississippi, the legislature there, rejected a proposal in May 2022, right before this Dobbs decision, that would have provided an extra $7,000 per early childhood classroom. Mississippi has refused to expand access to Medicaid, even though it would be funded by the federal government through the Affordable Care Act. It's one of 12 states in the union that refused to expand Medicaid. And 10 of those, surprisingly, now have laws on the books that ban abortions. I also wonder, Medicaid, in Mississippi, there's only two months of postpartum care for women and only 12 months of care for her child. I'm not sure what you're supposed to do with the rest of the 17 years of that child's life, but that's what they have chosen to fund. In the state of Connecticut, you can get paid for those 12 weeks of mandated leave through state funding. In Mississippi, you have federally protected job protection, but you do not have, you're not paid for that time. So you can imagine if a low income person, how are they going to take 12 weeks off from work? It's physically impossible for them to do that. So when it comes to basic assistance, Mississippi ranks 47th among U.S. states and the amount of money it spends. Again, I really don't mean to vilify Mississippi, but it's an excellent example of how these two sets of laws do not, are not compatible with one another and how they, just to come back and touch on what Caitlin was saying, if Catholics are invested at all in this culture of life, they need to insist in the states where they live that anti-abortion legislation be coupled with provisions to support women and families, low income women and families. So what's at stake if these questions are left in the hands of legislators, state legislators? There will be a disproportionate effect on lower income women, women of color, undocumented women, and in some states in the deep south, a woman will have to travel across four state lines to procure an abortion, which she can still do in a place that offers an abortion. If you live in Mississippi, the nearest place to get an abortion today is Wichita, Kansas, which is almost 1,000 miles away, probably a 15-hour drive, an overnight stay, someone to watch your kids for a couple of days, physically impossible for a low income woman to imagine being able to do that. So I'll stop there. So people who come get first preference, so are there any questions in the room? If there are, here's a question from Julie Mugau. Do you foresee the Catholic Church advocating for any of these increased early childhood education, Medicare, SNAP, any of this, or was it just kind of anti-abortion but leaving the rest to chance? I mean, the global Catholic Church has advocated for this on a number of levels. The United States Catholic Church is a little bit more politically polarized for a number of really interesting reasons, but yeah, I mean, if we just kind of look at, like, what is the Catholic Church saying or what is the Vatican saying? It is about procuring this culture of life and that involves adequate healthcare, that involves standing in solidarity. There are a number of church documents that indicate women who have sought abortions need compassion and solidarity because it is a trauma that they have gone through. So everything that Andrea is saying is not antithetical to Catholic teaching. It is a part of this larger culture of life that is needed on different levels in basically every country in the world. The disconnect, though, for me, and yes, I just agree with everything you just said because anything that you would read from a Catholic celebrating this would also, I mean, many of the folks that have written on this have pointed this out. Like, yes, this is a victory and some in the way that we see how abortions should be legislated, but there is this larger system. My hangup comes around this question of voting with abortion being the one issue of life that you're willing to cast your vote for and not being willing to demand of those candidates that these things also be added to their platform because it doesn't make sense, right, to have one and not the other if you're following the Church's teaching as it's written. Yeah, and just to build off of that, like, I mean, obviously all of the things that Andrea pointed out are happening right now. And I think another thing that's happening that neither of us really talked about is this has enabled a culture of fear to the point where women's lives are in like grave danger and doctors are pulled between the legality of this situation in states where abortion has been ultimately abolished and their oath to protect. So a woman with an ectopic pregnancy, for example, it's an extra uterine pregnancy that it's just a mass in her body as opposed to ever going to become a baby. This kind of question of like, how bad does she have to get is also part of the very dangerous realities of these conversations. No Catholic would say we should get to the point where a woman is going to need life support and extraordinary measures if a routine medical procedure could have prevented that. And aren't there issues that also connected to suspicion of women who are supposed to have had miscarriages? Well, with the criminalization of abortion or of seeking abortions and so on, in some states it's pretty clear that there are deep suspicions of women who have miscarriages because it isn't altogether clear that they didn't simply procure an abortion. Yeah, so I mean, that just creates, again, this kind of like villainization of people. Again, this kind of marginalization of people which Catholic social teaching is seeking to avoid. And it's also not acknowledging trauma that women are going through, right? Like women losing pregnancies is not just physically traumatic, it's also psycho-emotionally traumatic. And as you're saying, Paul, this kind of like demand we hear from some politicians who are like, oh, we need to have a funeral for that miscarried child or are you sure you didn't really have an abortion is the complete opposite of solidarity and compassion, right? It is not standing with these women in a time of need, in a time where they need accompaniment but just further subjugates them and also contributes to their trauma. Yeah, I think it also points to the fact that, I mean, it's interesting that you mentioned in the beginning of your discussion about the timelessness of this issue which also points to a lack of understanding that this is not an issue that will go away because of legislation on the books. Women are going to be desperate enough to want to procure an abortion no matter the means sort of necessary and making that more dangerous for someone who's already in a very desperate position is the opposite of compassion and solidarity. Yeah, or who has undergone the trauma of an assault or abuse or things like that. I think the other thing too, just to speak about the longevity of this is like the origination of the prohibition of abortion was at a time when women were seen as property. So Catholics were really speaking to the equal dignity of men and women in this idea that like a man shouldn't just be able to force his daughter, wife, mistress, et cetera to have an abortion because at that time, right? It was gravely unsafe. And the idea that this woman would be apparel, that her idea of being able to carry a future child to term would be apparel was one of the main motivations for this. It was about this idea that like, oh, women have equal dignity too. So these conversations as well, you kind of recall that in the teachings. You have another question here? Yeah, hold on, let me bring the microphone so that, no, you need the microphone because the people online won't hear you otherwise. Oh, thank you. Do ladies find that the United States Catholic Church at least doesn't respect the First Amendment and the constitutional right to a separation of church and state? Me personally, no, I do not feel that way. I feel like the, I think that the church comments on social issues because it's embedded in the theology and the moral tradition of the church. I think there's debate about the power of those statements on everyday Catholics. That's a whole other living theology, Paul, whether everyday Catholics, abide by the letter what's handed down from the church word for word. We didn't talk about that at all, but it's very relevant to this issue, I think. But no, I personally don't feel that way since I don't know that legislators are often influenced in a serious way by what those, the pronouncements that come down from the church. And even if we look at, thank you, that's an excellent question, and even if we look at the religious breakdown of the Supreme Court justices, there were Catholics on both sides of this issue. There were Catholics who dissented, one Catholic who dissented to this decision, and then there were three Catholics, sorry, five. How many? Feels like 17, but I think it's four. Four, yes, thank you. Four who were on the majority opinion, and then there was another Catholic, Justice Roberts, who had a concurrent opinion. So even if we look at the Supreme Court, they're split, right? But more to your question about when we're looking at the American church hierarchy, I think they're expressing their First Amendment right. They have the freedom to be Catholic and talk about what it's like to be Catholic in a public sphere. I think what Andrea was just saying about, does that kind of line up with the average, everyday Catholic in the United States? Maybe that's a little bit different, but yeah, it's a bigger question. So we should have another session. The church is, the church is job as an institution, is to proclaim the principles of the ethical position of the church. And to some degree, you have to consider that to be a kind, it's not theoretical, but it's sort of objective. Individual members of the church, faced with a moral issue of any kind, doesn't matter what kind of issue it is, they are making a subjective judgment about how this objective teaching is consistent with their values and their situation, which probably goes to explain why the percentage of women having abortions in this country is exactly equal to the percentage of Catholics in this country. So what you can say is that, I mean there's two issues here. One is people who are not directly affected by abortion will have certain opinions about whether it's listed or not. It really, the rubber only really hits the road when it's someone who actually is facing this issue for themselves. But in that circumstance, Catholics choose no differently from the American population in general. Thank you for your question. Do we have another question here? Let me see if I have a question online and I have, I have one more question because it's my job to keep questions going here. So I have one more question and it's a slightly tricky one. And I think it's for either of you, but I think it's probably directed primarily to Caitlin. So you're talking rightly about how all, all human persons have equal dignity. And the church is teaching that from the moment of conception there is human life, but maybe not exactly a human person. And that doesn't imply that there's any wiggle room on the board. No, I understand that, but here's my question. If the dignity is absolutely equal, then how can the principle of double effect apply? So for those of you who don't know what that is, a concrete example, imagine that there is a pregnant woman who is in need of severe medical assistance, perhaps chemotherapy for a condition that she has, which she has to have that therapy in order to survive, but that therapy will almost certainly lead to the termination of her pregnancy. The Catholic church is pretty clear that it is an appropriate action to go ahead with the chemotherapy because you are not seeking to terminate the pregnancy. The termination of the pregnancy is a second, maybe inevitable, but unintended effect. If that's the case, doesn't that imply that there is a certain, that more weight is given to one life rather than another? I think that's a really interesting question, and it's particularly interesting given how you frame it. I think one of the things that sometimes gets confused in this conversation is that one life for at least 28 weeks is dependent on another life. So this kind of idea that a fetus is a fully-fledged person is biologically inaccurate. Right, like a baby isn't viable until week 28 in the gestational period. So a baby can't survive outside of the womb until it gets to about week 28, right? Full term being 40 weeks. So in terms, I think that's just another consideration in so far as before week 28, if you're not protecting the mother, you're in turn not protecting the baby. And when we get into the idea of the principle of double effect, we're still talking about unintended consequences. So because the framing is in terms not of direct action, but of how do we balance two horrible situations with each other, the idea, particularly in your example, is not that the mother is more important, but it stands as the reality that that baby wouldn't survive if the mother died. So this way at least the mother can continue to thrive and we're protecting the vulnerability of the mother. And she may go on to have future children. And again, it is an unintended horrific event as a result. Do we have another question? Do you have a follow, I feel like you have a follow-up question. I don't really, although one thing that I think is hovering around here is that is the difference between, in church categories, between sinfulness and criminal activity, right? One of the, a church is always going to think that, well, it certainly thinks that any terminating any life is an objective evil, although the church perfectly comfortable with, say, killing in self-defense, right? The result, the objective reality is evil, but the subjective circumstances justify it. But the problem here seems to be that having returned everything to the states, some states have decided to criminalize almost everything. And I don't believe that that is something that the church rejoices in. After all, if any woman has an abortion and goes to confession, feels remorse, I mean, if she thinks she's sad about it, she goes to confession, she confesses it, she gets absolution from the priest, she walks out of free person, she doesn't go to jail, but somehow or other this has become enormously complicated and confusing. It's not a question, it's just an idea that's still floating around in my head. Right, and the Catholic religion allows for a distinction of morality and legality. Catholics can hold something to be immoral and still understand that their society has it legal or decriminalized for certain purposes. And I think holding onto that is also a way to kind of wrap our mind around all of the information that Andrea gave us. Okay, so we're coming to the end. So before I thank our two speakers, I just wanna advertise our next event to you here and you online. And our next event is a five PM lecture. This one's down in the School of Business event space that romantically named event space. Next Wednesday at five o'clock October the fifth. And this is a presentation by a young professor from Santa Clara University who used to work, who is a graduate of Fairfield and actually used to work in the Center for Catholic Studies here. So Elise Rabie will be talking about the issues of whose body is the body of Christ. And if that sounds a little bit kind of theoretical, what she's really going to be talking about is the language of embodiment, gender, transgender, and so on in the way in which the church talks about it. The church says the church is the body of Christ. Who gets included? It's a very good question. She's a very good speaker. If you are around next Wednesday at five o'clock in the School of Business Auditorium, you will be very welcome and very well informed. Last thing before I assist for the group here, if you're interested and you didn't see it on your way in, there is over there a copy of a journal that contains some excellent articles on this exact issue. Help yourself to it if you would like it. Okay, so the best part of my conclusion here is just to thank Andrea and to thank Caitlin for opening up some of the really complicated issues that we all have to face now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned. So round of applause for, thank you. Everybody online is applauding furiously, I can tell. And we'll see you all hopefully next Wednesday at five o'clock.