The doctrine of the Catholic Church on abortion could hardly be more clear: Life begins at conception and continues through natural death, and that places most abortions in the canonical category of grave, if potentially forgivable, sin.

A growing number of Catholics hold a different view. They cite church teachings that say one’s conscience should take precedence over doctrine when it comes to making complex moral decisions. That view, they say, opens the door for abortion rights within the faith.

A referendum that Marylanders will decide next month has laid bare this clash within Catholicism, and in an unusual development, both sides are speaking out.

Question 1 on the state electoral ballot, the Reproductive Freedom Amendment, would, if enacted, enshrine the right to abortion in the Maryland Constitution rather than leaving it protected only by state law.

“Every person, as a central component of an individual’s right to liberty and equality, has the fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” the two-paragraph amendment reads, “including but not limited to the ability to make and effectuate decisions to prevent, continue, or end one’s own pregnancy.”

With few exceptions, it goes on to say, “the State may not directly or indirectly, deny, burden, or abridge the right.”

The referendum is part of a profusion of measures that have cropped up in the wake of June 24, 2022, the day the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating federal protections for abortion rights that had been in place for half a century.

Voters in nine other states are considering similar measures this election season, though Maryland’s is the only one that would have the effect of protecting abortion rights through the third trimester of pregnancy.

Both sides agree that if voters approve Question 1, it would become far harder, if not impossible, in Maryland for the officeholders, lawmakers, judges and juries who normally hold sway over state law to alter or repeal abortion rights in the future.

The question for the state’s approximately 1 million Catholics: Is that a step forward or backward?

Archbishop William E. Lori, spiritual leader of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, made his views, and the church’s, clear in a letter he sent to the more than 520,000 members of his flock across central, western and southern Maryland on Sept. 25.

The amendment is “both unnecessary and harmful, given Maryland’s already permissive abortion laws,” he wrote, alluding to Maryland’s status as one of only nine states in which abortion is legal at every stage of pregnancy. “Rather than taking the extreme step of enshrining the legality of abortion in the Maryland Constitution, we should work to create a culture where no woman feels as though she must choose between the life of her child and a bright future.”

That last point reflects a position the church consistently takes — that if the surrounding culture and the church can find ways to offer women who are considering abortion enough support and counseling necessary to make it possible to raise a healthy child, they’ll feel less pressure to choose termination, and society at large will have strengthened its commitment to fostering a “culture of life.”

Rejecting the amendment, he adds, would in no way change current state law.

“When we vote against Question 1, we do so not to limit anyone’s rights but to foster a society of solidarity and respect for life,” he writes.

The church has been urging followers to vote “no” in sermons delivered by clergy, in printed materials distributed in parishes, and in posts and photos on its websites across the state, including in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the Archdiocese of Washington and the Diocese of Wilmington.

The Maryland Catholic Conference, the self-described public policy voice of the Catholic Church in Maryland, also has been making the case — and studies show that Catholics in Maryland and beyond who attend church regularly are likelier than not to take the doctrinal position.

They haven’t persuaded Lauren Bailey. The Silver Spring resident, a lifelong practicing Catholic, is the organizing and movement-building manager for Catholics for Choice, a Washington-based nonprofit that supports “the rights of all individuals to make decisions regarding sexual and reproductive health based on their own consciences,” according to its website.

Bailey was unsurprised to learn that Catholics who support abortion rights and were contacted for this article chose not to go on the record. She says her travels across Maryland suggest that a fear of backlash or even punishment for speaking out against church doctrine leads the vast majority to keep their views to themselves.

“In other states where Catholics for Choice has a presence, a lot of what we do is to mobilize folks to speak out,” she says. “Some have been forced to leave their positions in parish councils.”

Instead, Bailey points to polling that shows that more modern Catholics support abortion rights than don’t. A study by the Pew Research Network, for example, shows that 48% of self-described Catholics in the U.S. believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, in contrast to 47% who say it should usually or always be illegal.

The gap is wider in Maryland, where 60% of Catholics — a figure that extrapolates to 600,000 people — polled said abortion should be legal all or most of the time and 37% said the opposite.

Bailey said Catholicism has always been a source of rich support in her life, yet when it comes to developing a view on matters that concern women’s health, she relies not on laws passed down and applied by a hierarchy of men, none of whom has ever been married, but on portions of the Catholic Catechism, the reference work that summarizes church doctrine, that call for the primacy of an informed, prayerful believer’s individual conscience over sets of rules.

“Conscience is one of the most foundational elements of the Catholic faith, and it should be the final arbiter in decision-making,” she says. “My conscience leads me to believe that every person deserves to have autonomy over their own body without the overreach of any religion or institution. Because of this, I am a pro-choice Catholic because of my faith, not in spite of it.”

The abortion issue, of course, is as complex and layered as the denomination itself. The same Catechism that valorizes conscience still holds that “the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion” since the first century, that “this teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable,” and that “procuring” an abortion means automatic excommunication.

But there are 10 narrow circumstances in which excommunication is not automatic — and Pope Francis in 2016 granted Catholic priests a right once limited to bishops: to absolve those who have had abortions.

That’s far from enough for Ashley Wilson, a Catholic and a senior adviser with Catholics for Choice. Wilson, too, anchors her views in the primacy of conscience. She questions the practice of church officials to try to impose what she sees as narrow and debatable doctrines on the public at large and says her organization tracks what she calls the church’s “overreach” on this and other matters that should be entrusted to individuals’ judgment.

Wilson even points out that other faith traditions have different views on when life begins — and argues that by trying to block Question 1, the church is in effect trying to abridge their constitutional right to religious freedom.

Lori was in Rome for a global conference of bishops in the past week and unavailable for comment on this article, but Jenny Kraska, the executive director of the Maryland Catholic Conference, helped flesh out some of the ideas in his letter and offered reflections on the amendment.

The archbishop described Question 1 as “harmful,” she said because the church fears that making abortion a constitutional right might end up diverting resources from initiatives aimed at building the kind of healthy and supportive environment that can allow women considering abortion to weigh other options.

“[Would] it mean increased funding for abortion, more than we already provide? And if so, where do those other resources come from? Do they come from crisis pregnancy centers, from poverty alleviation efforts that we’ve put into place for single mothers? Women who want to have their children and want to have the option to raise those children need our support and our help as well,” she said.

Like many critics, Kraska says the language in the measure is vague — it doesn’t define “reproductive freedom,” for instance, which some say means the amendment could be brought to bear on matters unrelated to abortion, such as gender-affirming care for minors — but Wilson says that wouldn’t bother her at all.

“What it boils down to it that it’s none of the Catholic Church’s business what I do with my body, as long as I follow what my conscience says to be just and right,” she says.

Perhaps only the vote count will bring a measure of closure.

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