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‘For all the shouting, abortion remains a very silent thing’

After 10 years at the frontline of the debate on abortion, Sister Roseann Reddy of the Sisters of the Gospel of Life tells Jennifer Cunningham why she believes society still has a long way to go.

'Increasingly, she is working with women who have previously had abortions and want to unburden themselves. "People say that women who have abortions only feel guilty because of pro-lifers like me making them feel guilty. I've never made anyone feel guilty in 25 years and I don't have the capacity to do that, but I deal with a lot of women whose guilt comes from knowing that they made the decision to end the life of their child. Part of their difficulty is that they are not even allowed to express it. For all the screaming and shouting about abortion, it is still a very silent thing.

"I've never met a woman - or anyone - who likes abortion, yet it seems to be such a common thing. Abortion is only a controversial issue because it is the taking of a human life. Everyone knows it's a human life, whether you call it a foetus, an embryo or a blob of jelly, but our society wants instant solutions."

Supporters of women's choice find the Catholic Church's uncompromising stance that abortion is always wrong difficult, yet each side would argue that it is supportive of women facing a difficult choice. "It all comes back to being women's fault'," says Sister Roseann. "In the 21st century that is quite astonishing, and it is the result of not dealing with the issue head-on."

She claims that none of the 2300 women who have asked for help from her project has not known about contraception. "Even 12-year-olds know about condoms," she says. But she argues that we have failed a generation of young people. "We have girls who are pregnant and cannot remember having sex, girls who do not know the surname of their partner. Women come and tell me they don't know how they got pregnant. Well, I'm a nun and I know how they got pregnant."'

Full story at The Herald.