ht to life and the sacredness of life mean that there should be no absolute or unbreakable rules that take precedence over the lives of existing human persons. The pro-life position is really a pro-fetus position, and the pro-choice position is really pro-woman. Those who take the pro-fetus position define the woman in relation to the fetus. They assert the rights of the fetus over the right of the woman to be a moral agent or decision maker with respect to her life, health, and family security. The second doctrinal issue in both the abortion and birth-control controversies is who is to have the power to control procreation--women, in consultation with their partners and their physicians, or the church. The historic natural-law position of the Catholic Church was concerned not about feticide, but about the sin of sexuality if it interfered with procreation, as contraception and abortion do. The Pope and the bishops have been unable to persuade women to accept control by the church over their sexuality; their only hope for asserting that control is to persuade the state through political power to make a church sin into a secular crime. The low view of women that keeps them from being ordained and insists that their proper role is that of mother is not simply Catholic theology but fundamentalist political ideology, which is also anti-woman. The key term in the controversy is not simply "pro-life," but "pro-family," in which "family" is always defined as a patriarchal family. The Supreme Court in its Roe v. Wade decision did not hold that women have a constitutional right to an abortion; it held that they have a constitutional right of privacy that permits them and their physicians to make decisions "including a woman's qualified tight to terminate her pregnancy." The Court also held that during the last three months of pregnancy, the state, "in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life, may, if it chooses, regulate, and eve...
