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Interview: Pro-life organizer knows abortion hurts women
The Interview, a regular feature of The Catholic New World, is
an in-depth conversation with a person whose words, actions or
ideas affect today’s Catholic. It may be affirming of faith or
confrontational. But it will always be stimulating.
This week, Catholic New World staff writer Michelle Martin talks
with Deborah Danielski, the new associate director of the Catholic
Conference of Illinois for pro-life activities. The Catholic Conference
of Illinois is the public policy arm of the church in our state.
Deborah Danielski’s job description calls on her to coordinate
pro-life activities in the state’s six dioceses and to educate
Catholics and the general public about the church’s teachings
on life issues. Those issues include everything from contraception
to euthanasia, but Danielski said her main focus will be on abortion
because abortion is the foundation on which everything else rests.
She came to that conclusion through personal experience: she had
an abortion in 1973, and spent the next 23 years suffering from
shame and guilt before experiencing the healing power of reconciliation
and prayer. Danielski is the former editor of the Plainfield Enterprise.
Catholic New World: How did you go from being a journalist to being basically an
organizer?
DD: It’s actually a very strange story. I have been a free-lance
writer for the last two years and I’ve done a lot of pro-life
issues. I also am a woman who has had an abortion, so when I moved
to Quincy, I called Sister Jane [Boos, SSND] , who is the pro-life
director in the Springfield diocese to see how I could I could
help with Project Rachel (a post-abortion reconciliation program).
That led to her calling me back and asking me if I would testify
on a women’s right-to-know bill for the legislature-- Doug [Delaney,
executive director of CCI] was looking for someone who had an
abortion, and would be willing to testify publicly to that, so
that’s how I met Doug. When this came up, that maybe we could
really use someone who could concentrate on the education and
coordination aspects, I came to mind.
CNW: If you don’t mind, how long ago did you have an abortion?
DD: I don’t mind at all. It was February 1973, one month after Roe
vs. Wade. I think the more women who have had an abortion and
who have recognized what it did to them--the devastating effect
that it had on their lives--the more of them who are healed and
begin to speak out, the more likely it is that this myth will
be dispelled that abortion is good for women.
CNW: How did it hurt you?
DD: Oh, terribly, but you don’t know it at the time. I was married
and had two children when I had mine. Within less than a year
I was divorced, which is almost always the case. I got into alcoholism,
drugs, promiscuity. I had absolutely no self-respect. It was probably
15 years before I began to realize that it was the shame and the
guilt from that abortion that had made such a dramatic change
in my life. I’m only just now beginning to develop the kind of
relationship with my grown children that I missed all those years.
CNW: How did you become conscious of that and how did you begin to
cope?
DD: I started by going to confession.
Actually, I’m a convert to Catholicism. For several years, as
a Protestant, I was always told you don’t have to confess your
sins to anybody but God, so I confessed to God, and I would never
feel any relief. After I began my journey toward Catholicism,
in my very first confession, without even thinking about it, the
first words out of my mouth were, “I killed my own child.” I received
absolution from the priest, but I still didn’t quite feel forgiven.
A few weeks later, I was praying the rosary one night, and just
suddenly had a vision--not an apparition or anything, I just had
my eyes closed and saw a young girl, about 9 years old, with brown
hair, running through a field of flowers. I thought I heard the
Virgin Mary saying to me, “This is Elizabeth Anne. God has forgiven
you, and so has Elizabeth Anne.”
That’s when it began to be OK. That’s when I began to feel forgiven.
At the same time I also felt--I believe that everything that happens
to anybody happens for a reason, and God brings good out of everything.
No matter how bad it was, God can bring good out of it. That’s
when I felt that not only was I reconciled to him, but he wanted
me to do what I could to help others--others who had abortions,
and also those who were considering abortions to look at the alternatives.
I’m a rather unusual case in that I also had a child at 15, who
I put up for adoption. I know how I felt about giving birth to
a child and giving him up for adoption and how I felt after I
had the abortion. With the adoption experience, I could go through
my life knowing that my child was alive and was in a loving home,
and even some day, I might meet him, which did happen, and it
was wonderful.
CNW: What kind of pro-life programs are out there now, and what other
kind of programs would you encourage the dioceses to start?
DD: That’s a good question. We discussed Project Rachel, and there
appears to be at least some efforts in post-abortion reconciliation
in most of the dioceses.
CNW: Do you think that’s because there’s nobody to lead pro-life efforts,
or do you think there’s confusion over what pro-life means?
DD: Both. I think in a lot of areas the church has failed in catechesis,
especially in life issues. One of the big things I think a lot
of people are confused about is that abortion is good for the
woman. If a woman is in a crisis pregnancy, they can sit back
and say, “That’s her choice, and she can do what she wants,” and
they think she is helped by having an abortion. That’s one of
the major thrusts that we want to get out there through Project
Rachel and post-abortion reconciliation: showing abortion isn’t
just a dead baby, it’s an extremely wounded mother.
Something like 90 percent of women who have had abortions say
their emotions are deadened afterwards, many of them become involved
in drugs and alcohol, they find it almost impossible to maintain
loving relationships even with the children they have later, because
of the guilt and the shame they carry from the abortion. Something
in the woman dies when that baby dies, too.
Another myth is that people think, well, the world is overpopulated
anyway, and we really don’t need all these people because we don’t
have the resources. Today, we’re not even replacing our population.
We’ve cut our birth rate to such a point, especially in Europe,
that population is declining. I just read a report that said if
you took all the people in the world today--I think we’re at 6
billion--and put them all in Alberta, Canada, the population density
would be no more dense than it is in New York City, and the rest
of the world would be empty, so obviously, overpopulation is not
the problem that we’re being led by the pro-choice people to believe
that it is. Those are the two big things that I think are stopping
people from understanding.
CNW: What about other life issues?
DD: I will be trying to cover the gamut, but I believe abortion is
the foundation upon which the others have grown. I think that's
the first thing we have to address. If we had been reaching out
and teaching people about life issues all along, abortion might
not be quite as important when you look at the whole picture.
But right now, my feeling is you have to start there and show
that was the foundation stone upon which the others grew--the
euthanasia, the assisted suicide, even domestic violence, in a
certain sense, is a part of the pro-life picture. But abortion--or
actually, contraception--is the foundation on which the other
issues grew.
When abortion was legalized 27 years ago, people would have been
appalled had they seen what is actually happening today, because
we’ve gradually become desensitized.
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