Notre Dame’s gender studies department will be hosting an “abortion doula” next week.
This is disgusting and goes against Catholic teaching but few in the administration care. Some prize academic freedom over fidelity, others just despise Catholic teaching outright.
The College Fix: The speaker is part of a series called “Reproductive Justice: Scholarship for Solidarity and Social Change.”
This specific event is titled “Trans Care + Abortion Care: Intersections and Questions,” and includes the abortion activist, Ash Williams, a self-proclaimed “Abortion Doula,” as a speaker.
The College Fix reached out to Williams via Sister Song Network, where the activist works. The organization has not responded to multiple emailed requests for comment in the past week. She is “a Black trans abortion doula, public intellectual, and abolitionist community organizer from Fayetteville, NC,” according to an event bio…
The leader of an alumni group that seeks to ensure Notre Dame maintains its Catholic identity criticized the event and series in emailed comments to The Fix.
Sycamore Trust President Bill Dempsey told The Fix that Notre Dame has given “scandal of the first order through its promotion of abortion through two pro-abortion panels, with more on the way.”
“This flouting of the commitment of the university to ‘uphold the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death’ illustrates the fault lines that have opened at Notre Dame in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision turning the abortion issue back to the state legislatures,” Dempsey said.
Dempsey said he believes the gender studies department “took advantage of the university’s academic freedom policy under which departments are free to sponsor discussions of issues in which panelists may oppose Church teaching.”
Notre Dame, of course, did not respond to requests for comment from the College Fix. That’s their go to maneuver. Silence.
As Nadezhda Mandelstam wrote about Soviet oppression, “Silence is the real crime against humanity.”
#FACTS
March 17, 2023 at 10:49 am
in “A Man for All seasons” St. Thomas More defends himself at trial by reminding the court that under the law silence signifies consent.
March 17, 2023 at 5:28 pm
It is beyond me why a “catholic” university would sponsor and welcome anyone who denies Church teaching. This is disgraceful. They should lose their Catholic identity over this.
March 18, 2023 at 1:28 am
This institution should have lost their “catholic” status many decades ago.
They only keep their status because of their $13.3 billion endowment.
March 17, 2023 at 8:29 pm
Notre Dame has a gender studies department? Good grief.
March 19, 2023 at 3:59 pm
When, oh when, will Catholics stop sending their children to this blasphemous school?!!!!
March 19, 2023 at 5:17 pm
Can’t speak for all of them Jennifer S but I suspect the lukewarms overlook the lack of authentic Catholic teaching in order for their children to graduate with a Notre Dame diploma.