Abomination: ‘Abortion Doula’ Lectured at Catholic University

ProLifePress.com reported that a student attending The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. was forced to sit for a lecture last month given by an “abortion doula”.

According to the International Doula Institute, “birth doulas provide educational support, emotional support and physical comfort measures during pregnancy and childbirth.” They can also assist new moms postpartum.

Calling somebody who helps to murder a child a “doula” is a sick perversion. Equally horrific is that such an individual was welcomed to teach at a university that bills itself as “faithfully Catholic, conformed in all things to the creed of the Church and the decisions of the Holy See.”  

“On Tuesday, Jan. 23, I had the unpleasant experience of listening to Rachel Carbonneau, a self-described ‘abortion doula,’ share her experience counseling abortion and transgender patients,” Jordan Estabrook wrote on the Students for Life of America blog, adding that her grade depended on her attendance at the lecture.

“I’ve never been the student who sits idle, allowing radical out-of-touch speakers to spread hateful rhetoric. I surreptitiously recorded audio of the lecture. Though I was nervous, I knew it was the right thing to do.” 

According to Estabrook, Carbonneau told the students that Washington Hospital Center, which provides chilled “cuddle cots” for parents of stillborn babies so they can spend up to two days with them, also uses them for elective abortions. Essentially treating baby killers the same as loving parents who have tragically lost their children. She also told the class that she helps “birthing persons” (i.e. transgender males) go through “seahorse births”.

Carbonneau, who said she attended CUA herself, also told the students that “it’s not my business as a doula or a human being to pass judgment on how anybody else chooses to live their life.”

CUA nursing student Felipe Avila told The Daily Signal that he found the lecture troubling. “The fundamental point is to understand human development from conception to natural death, right? And they brought in someone who counsels women to terminate life.”

To its credit, after Estabrook’s blog was published, CUA fired psychology professor Melissa Goldberg, who had invited Carbonneau to lecture her classes. “Now that we have clear evidence that the content of the class did not align with our mission and identity, we have now terminated our contract with the professor who invited the speaker,” CUA president Peter Kilpatrick said in a January 30 statement.

But how many other speakers have been invited to lecture CUA students in defiance of Catholic teaching? If Estabrook had not taken the initiative and recorded and published what was happening, would the outcome be the same?

Thanks to her bravery (and make no mistake, being pro-life on today’s college campuses requires courage) the “abortion doula” won’t be back propagandizing CUA students. But Catholic parents and alumni need to make it clear that they will withdraw their students and financial support if such an abomination ever occurs there again.

Catholic universities have one job: to protect and transmit the Faith. When they hire professors who are not Catholic and do not share that goal, they undermine their own institutions. Unfortunately, many have succumbed to the temptation to hire academics whose beliefs are incompatible with the Magisterium of the Church.

And while real debate should always be encouraged, the recent Ivy League scandals at Harvard, Penn State and MIT over their collective failure to protect Jewish students from threats of violence shows just how dangerous it is to hire pedigreed activist ideologues over academics who are sincerely seeking the truth.