Sitting in the historic Board of Education room at the Capitol where Speaker Sam Rayburn once held court and where then-vice president Harry S. Truman learned that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had died, Pelosi displays more emotion about the abortion issue than almost every other topic: “If there’s one issue that is about disrespect, about turning back the clock on women and their opportunities in life and the rest, it’s this issue.”
She pulls no punches when it comes to the Catholic Church, specifically the American bishops who have for decades fought abortion tooth and nail. “They all have decided when life begins,” she says, but observes that the Catholic Church had debated this issue for centuries. “It’s a women’s rights issue in addition to a women’s health issue,” she insists. “We have to prevail.” She also decries the church’s position on in vitro fertilization. “In vitro fertilization, you’d think they would embrace that, right? That, I don’t get,” she says.
This issue, pro-choice advocates have long insisted, is not about “life.” After all, only eight Republicans voted for a House measure to preserve the right to contraception. She stresses that “this is a fight about women in every way, in every way.”
She recalls with a measure of pride her role as leader of the platform committee at the 1992 Democratic convention. Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey, former California governor Jerry Brown and others wanted to insert a pro-life plank. “And people came pushing strollers, scapulars, rosaries,” she says. But there was no second to a motion to discuss the plank, so Pelosi gaveled the boisterous crowd out of order.
Tangling with the U.S. bishops, who are more conservative than the Vatican on some issues, is nothing new for her. Earlier this year they wanted to deny her Communion. She went to the Holy See, was warmly embraced by Pope Francis and received Communion.
In an MSNBC interview at the time, Pelosi declared: “We just have to be prayerful, we have to be respectful. I come from a largely pro-life Italian American Catholic family, so I respect people’s views about that, but I don’t respect us foisting it onto others.” She added, “Now our archbishop has been vehemently against LGBTQ rights. … He led the way in …an initiative on the ballot in California. So this decision [Dobbs] … is very dangerous in the lives of so many of the American people.” She rebuked the U.S. bishops then as “not consistent with the Gospel of Matthew.”
This summer, when the Dobbs decision came down, the pro-choice forces were “so ready,” she asserts. The grass roots mobilized. They refined the message. And they raised money. As a result, she argues, abortion became a critical election issue. “Abortion was on the ballot. Democracy is on the ballot,” she says.
As she exits the speakership, Pelosi remains very much the same woman who in 2015, when discussing her opposition to an antiabortion measure, reasserted her standing as a mother of five. She noted then that when a GOP House member accused her of acting as if she knew more about abortion than the popes, she responded that she certainly did.
In June, when quizzed about her disagreement with the church over abortion, she declared: “Let me just say this, a woman has the right to choose, to live up to her responsibility. It’s up to her, her doctor, her family, her husband, her significant other and her God.” She added, “This politicizing all of this, I think it’s something uniquely American and not right. Other countries — Ireland, Italy, Mexico — have had legislative initiatives to expand a woman’s right to choose — very Catholic countries.”
Pelosi’s speakership and tenure in Congress will be remembered for many things — her stance on human rights and China, passage and defense of the Affordable Care Act, repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and a slew of economic measures under President Biden. But she has also become known as a high-profile Catholic mother willing to tangle with her own church in defense of American women. Don’t expect her to let up anytime soon.
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