Earlier this week, the Catholic University of America terminated the contract of a psychology professor who invited a self-proclaimed “abortion doula” to speak for a class. University president Peter Kilpatrick announced the decision on Tuesday, Jan. 30 — just one week after the abortion doula’s lecture.
‘Abortion Doula’ Visits
Rachel Carbonneau, the speaker who identified herself as an “abortion doula” in an audio recording provided to the Daily Signal, spoke at the invitation of psychology professor Melissa Goldberg on Tuesday, Jan. 23. Carbonneau is the founder and CEO of Family Ways, an “LGBTQ-aligned doula company.” While traditional doulas assist in bringing life into the world by offering guidance and support to pregnant women, abortion doulas help mothers kill their children.
Goldberg’s course, titled “Psychology 379: Lifespan Development,” is a required class for nursing majors, though it is taught outside of the Conway School of Nursing. A Catholic University nursing student who had previously taken the class with a different professor said that she was confused about the decision to include a lecture by an abortion doula.
“If I’m going to be completely honest, I don’t even know why this speaker was necessary for that class,” the student told The American Spectator. “The class is about the psychology of growing up and how your brain and mental processes evolve as you get older. Based on the class I took, I couldn’t even tell you why the speaker was relevant.” (RELATED: Harvard’s Reputation Is Dealt Another Major Blow: A Research Misconduct Scandal Ensnares Its Top Scientists)
Carbonneau spoke to students about “coaching women through abortions” and fawned about her experience with so-called transgender men giving birth. “We work with trans clients.… I have some men who have given birth; it’s amazing,” she told students. “It’s lovely, especially when it’s a water birth; it’s fantastic.”
She encouraged students to “normalize” the “stigma” of “pregnant men,” by “using the gender-neutral language, talking about pregnant men as pregnant people, pregnant women, pregnant men, pregnant humans.”
As Kilpatrick explained in an email to the campus obtained by The American Spectator, “The speaker advocated for abortion, for language that distorts the distinctions between the sexes, and for the normalizing of transgender births.”
University Takes Swift Action
The university administration learned of the abortion doula’s visit the day after her lecture and began investigating the incident. On Thursday and Friday of that same week, the university received two media inquiries requesting comment on the lecture. Kilpatrick explained:
While we were unable to confirm what exactly was said in the class, we did determine that the speaker’s views on life issues and on the anthropology of the human person were not consistent with our mission and identity as a faithful Catholic university, and that she should not be allowed to address the class again.
After obtaining “clear evidence” that the overall content of the psychology class did not align with the university’s mission, Catholic University took the next logical step. On Jan. 30, one week after the abortion doula’s lecture, the university terminated the contract of the professor who had invited the abortion doula.
“In our rigorous pursuit of truth and justice, we engage at times with arguments or ideologies contrary to reason or to the Gospel,” Kilpatrick wrote. “But we do so fully confident in the clarity given by the combined lights of reason and faith, and we never advocate for sin or give moral equivalence to error.”
Students, Faculty React to Firing
Whitney Paulson, a senior at Catholic University, told The American Spectator that she was not surprised by the president’s decision. Kilpatrick became president in 2022, when Paulson was a sophomore, and she has learned that “Catholic identity is very, very important to him and impacts a lot of his choices.”
Paulson is heartened by Kilpatrick’s commitment to this Catholic mission. “We go to the Catholic University of America. It’s literally in our name,” she said. “Like it or not, that is who we are.”
Catholic University is the “national university of the Catholic Church in the United States” and is sponsored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
“Whether or not you agree or disagree with a speaker’s politics or position on, in this case, abortion and ‘transgender births,’ you have to recognize where you go to school,” Paulson continued. “It’s the job of the university as a branch of the Holy See to properly represent our Catholic faith.”
A Catholic University professor told The American Spectator that faithful professors at other Catholic colleges and universities have expressed their support for Kilpatrick’s decision.
“Everyone has been impressed that Kilpatrick did this,” he said. “The Catholic faithful almost brace themselves for disappointment in leadership.”
The professor framed Kilpatrick’s swift action against the background of “a failure of leadership in a whole generation of Catholic leaders,” citing several examples of problematic statements by professors at other Catholic colleges and universities.
Just last year, for example, seven academic departments at the University of Notre Dame hosted an event in which transgender abortion doulas promoted abortion as a positive good. The local bishop swiftly condemned the event, but the university administration took no action.
“We should applaud [Kilpatrick’s decision], but one of the reasons we applaud this is that it’s all too rare,” the Catholic University professor said. “He did the right thing.”
Mary Frances Myler is a writer from Northern Michigan now living in Washington, D.C. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2022.
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