I feel a kinship with her.
I left the Catholic church at the age of 13 after a four year intellectual journey that started when I discovered the Inquisition.
I found a reference to it in a juvenile historical novel and went over to the adult section in the library and found a book about the history of the Inquisition. When I went to the desk to check it out the librarian refused to let me check it out.
I was blessed with a mother who was a study in contradictions. She was a harsh prude about anything having to do with sex. But I was not reading about or wanting to read about sex. I was reading history. She called the librarian and told her to let me check out anything I wanted.
As I entered my teens with my faith profoundly shaken we moved to Colombia. I was confronted by deep, epidemic poverty the likes of which I'd never seen in my life. The source of any poverty is extremely complex, but overpopulation in the campesino class was a key factor. There was a nascent program to promote family planning through educations and distribution of free condoms and in Bogota, oral contraceptives.
This was the late 60's and liberalism was making rapid gains everywhere, but especially in Latin America.
To stifle this movement (it was not only in Colombia, but throughout all of Latin America) Pope Paul VI decided to tour Latin America. He actively preached against the family planning movement and told these poor ignorant people that if they tried to take control of their own reproductive lives that they would go to hell.
The movement collapsed overnight. Suddenly, those going into the vast shanty towns ringing every major city in South America could (literally) not give away condoms or birth control pills.
I left the church in disgust and have not ever gone back.
But I didn't have the courage of this young lady. She has organized to spread what she has discovered.
How I admire her.
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