Building a Culture of Life with Suzanne Lafreniere - The Maine Catholic Podcast
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Transcript:
Jake: Hello, everyone. I'm Jake Buttarazzi. I'm the communications manager and podcast producer here at the Diocese of Portland, and I'm honored to be joined today by Suzanne LaFreniere, who is our director of public affairs and the pro-life liaison for the Diocese of Portland. Suzanne, thanks for being here.
Suzanne: Of course!
Jake: So could you describe, in your own words, what you do for the Diocese?
Suzanne: Yeah, I've been with the diocese about 15 years. What I've done has changed over those 15 years, but one of my primary jobs and objectives is to represent Catholics at the State House. So I am a registered lobbyist. I go to the State House and I'm kind of the government liaison in Augusta. Occasionally, I'll go to D.C., but that's a big part of my job, especially when the legislature is in session.
Jake: All right, you've been here for 15 years. How did you get here? Could you tell me a little bit about your journey? Because you went to law school.
Suzanne: I graduated from the University of Maine, like 90 percent of lawyers here.
Jake: Great. So how did you go from law school to lobbyist for the Diocese of Portland?
Suzanne: Sure, it was definitely not expected. I went to law school specifically so that I could do adoption law. I'm the youngest of four adopted girls, and I thought that would be a wonderful way to make a living. But Mainers don't adopt in the numbers that require a lot of lawyers. There is one lawyer who does that as her primary practice, but that couldn’t be me at this point in my life.
So I went to law school, I went immediately into private practice, and then the Great Recession hit. That was a little painful. But I really didn’t love it. I did it, but it wasn’t interesting to me, and it definitely wasn’t a calling.
While I was doing that, my husband Dennis—who is the facilities manager here, the director of property management, his official title—told me that there was a job opening here at the Chancery. And I said, “That sounds interesting.” They were so gracious here. They interviewed me for a position that I had no business interviewing for, it was in lifelong faith formation, but I enjoyed the interview.
And Liz Allen, now my boss but previously the HR director, had said, “You know what, Suzanne? You’re not right for this job. Things do pop up. I’ll keep your résumé.” And then they did. So I came here. I was the secretary, the executive assistant to my predecessor and to the communications director.
Since then, there has not been a replacement for that job. There are very few and far secretaries here at the Chancery, but that’s how I started here.
Jake: You are a one-woman department.
Suzanne: Yes, yes I am. But it’s great because there’s less bureaucratic work. And I think right now, given the state in Maine and the politics in Maine, I don’t think it would be a good use of our resources to have more staff in my office. You never know for the future, though.
Jake: All right, I want to pivot—get a little more specific. Obviously, October is Respect Life Month. You and I have already done some work around that, but could you tell me a little bit more specifically about your work as the pro-life liaison?
Suzanne: Yes. So my work as a pro-life liaison is really to be the Catholic Church’s representative in the pro-life movement. I have a very good working relationship with Maine Right to Life. I’m not on their board, but I’ve always been kind of an ad hoc member of that organization.
I also work directly with the executive director and staff at the Christian Civic League, and I’m kind of a point of contact for our relationship with the pro-life officer there at the Knights of Columbus and for 40 Days for Life. I’m hopefully the go-to lady when people have a question like, “What things are going on? What can I add? Where can I volunteer?” Hopefully they think of me as the person to go to.
Jake: So there’s a lot going on there, there’s a lot of different people and factions that you’re in contact with.
Suzanne: Yes.
Jake: As you know, critics of the pro-life movement complain that we don’t really care about babies after they’re born—or parents after the babies are born. How would you respond to that?
Suzanne: I think that’s just a total misnomer and a way for them to try to paint the truth, the beauty, of being pro-life into a corner. They call it “forced birth.” Our opponents call it forced birth, as if we force women to give birth and then we abandon them. That really couldn’t be further from the truth.
In the state of Maine, we have crisis pregnancy centers that help women and young parents deal with what it’s like to become a parent. Whether it’s a crisis pregnancy or a planned pregnancy or anything in between, it is a massive change in someone’s life.
So we have these crisis pregnancy centers to help—to give supplies, to do parenting classes, to do mentorship for new parents. Also, there are beautiful places in Maine that women can go to if they need a place to live for up to, depending on the place, two years after you have a child.
The newest one is called Life House, and it’s in Hebron. It’s gorgeous. If you just Google “Life House Maine,” it’s in the beautiful mountains, and it really is a launching pad—both on the spiritual level but also on the physical level—to help a woman become a mother, and to become the mother that she would like to be.
So we do a lot of things, but I don’t think we do a wonderful job of advertising it, because our faith calls us to humility. We try to do the work without proclaiming it from the rooftops. But I will applaud the women—and it’s mostly women—who are in the trenches, doing the work every day, helping and supporting women who need it in a critical moment of their life. It’s amazing.
Jake: Yeah, and I'll put links to Life House and the other resource centers in the description of this episode. Maybe on a more immediate, day-to-day level—say there's someone today looking for help—what resources are available to someone who might need them right now?
Suzanne: Yeah, right now, all throughout the state of Maine, the crisis pregnancy centers and the pregnancy support centers can be found at the Maine Right to Life website. There’s a question there that says, “Pregnant? Need help?” and you click on that link. Usually, there’s one within an hour’s drive of anywhere in the state of Maine, which is amazing.
A lot of those places have ultrasounds, so if a woman is unsure if she is pregnant or she’s unsure if she can be a mother or wants to make an adoption plan, all these ultrasounds in the state of Maine have been provided by the Knights of Columbus. The Knights of Columbus have this amazing national program where if a local council raises half the money, then the national Knights of Columbus will match that money. That’s about $25,000, so it’s not cheap.
But we know in the pro-life movement that not only is it science that says a baby is a child in the womb, but also that once a mother sees her child on an ultrasound, she’s overwhelmingly more likely to continue to support her baby and either have the child and keep it or have the child and make an adoption plan. That’s why ultrasounds are such a total gift, and I am so pleased and proud of our Knights of Columbus in the state of Maine, because they’re raising money right now for another one.
After a couple of years—about 10 or 12 years—they become outdated. So they’re constantly on the move, constantly raising money with spaghetti suppers and all kinds of fundraising drives to make sure that ultrasounds are available for the pregnancy support centers. It makes a huge difference.
Jake: Yeah, and there are Knights of Columbus at most of our parishes. So if you want to get involved with the Knights of Columbus, definitely contact your local parish and ask about that. That is a great initiative on their part.
Knights of Columbus is a group of men. Abortion is often seen as a women’s issue, and I myself as a man have been told not to get involved—“Don’t talk about it, it’s women’s rights.” I’m never quite sure how to respond to that. So, is that true?
Suzanne: Unfortunately, I think some men, including good men like yourself, have been silenced in that way. There’s a group called Silent No More of post-abortive men who either didn’t have a choice when their partner decided to abort or made a regrettable choice at the time.
I think the amount of trauma that can come from a man who lost the ability to parent their child or felt under duress to support a woman who said, “It’s not your choice, it’s not your body,” or whatever the misnomer is, is very real. Men really have the opportunity to support women.
Obviously, science makes it clear—you don’t get pregnant by yourself. It’s a man and a woman who conceive a child, and so men have the right and the opportunity to be as pro-life as they can. It amazes me how successful our opponents have been in silencing men, but I’m so glad to see that, especially in our generation and younger, it hasn’t been the case as much. I’m pleased, because men are parents. Men are fathers, and they have the right, the ability, and the duty to be supporting their children.
Jake: Yeah, I completely agree with that, and thank you for that. Being pro-life is one of those issues that we talk about all the time. You mentioned earlier that there are a lot of people doing the work but not necessarily talking about it—not communicating very well. I want to help bridge that gap.
So how can the rest of us, who want to help but don’t know how, on a day-to-day level, help you do your job?
Suzanne: I think there’s a real opportunity here in the state of Maine, because we have started—and are continuing to work toward—a program that’s a national initiative called Walking with Moms in Need.
Walking with Moms in Need was a dream created by the U.S. bishops. The U.S. Bishops had the foresight and the ingenuity to proactively create this program before the Dobbs decision came out. We were optimistically hopeful that Roe v. Wade would be overturned, and they knew that would be a true inflection point in the pro-life movement. We would need to have an ability to communicate with and support women throughout the United States in making these important decisions.
Walking with Moms in Need is a very flexible program that helps walk with moms in need. It's very...
Jake: Exactly what it sounds like!
Suzanne: What the title says. So what we did in in my parish, St. John Paul II Parish in Scarborough, Cape Elizabeth, and South Portland, there’s a resource guide that one of my good friends, Trish Moran—who used to be the lobbyist for Maine Right to Life—helped put together. She made sure that everything in this resource guide is pro-life.
So, if you know of a woman who is dealing with a crisis pregnancy, or a young man whose girlfriend is in a questioning phase, we wanted to make sure that all of those resources would be readily available to them. They’re printed on business cards with a QR code that you can hand out.
Honestly, Jake, the thing that I don’t think a lot of Catholics in Maine know is that Catholic women are just as likely as non-Catholic women to seek an abortion. It’s not “other women.” It’s not women you don’t know. It’s women, unfortunately, that you do know, that are , for some reason, are under the impression that parenting a child will be too difficult, whether financially, emotionally, or otherwise.
So we want to make sure that any weekly Catholic, who comes on Sunday, comes on Saturday, would know where to go, what to offer, and have the ability to help a woman in that spot, on their feet.
Walking with Moms in Need also, if there are enough supporters and volunteers, can do things like watch the other young children while mom goes to see the OB-GYN, help with food support, or after-school care. Every parish is different, and in Maine our Walking with Moms in Need programs are just getting off the floor.
But my dream is really to create that culture of life—that culture of support for young parents—so that my job, and what I often say in Augusta too, is I'm not hoping to make abortion illegal. I’m really hoping to make abortion unthinkable. Because it truly needs to be that young parents know they have the love, the spiritual support, the financial support, and the physical support they need in those first couple of years to build a beautiful family, even if it wasn’t planned. That’s always my goal—my end goal.
Jake: Thank you for that. Yeah, I know Walking With Moms in Need has resources for people who also want to start one of those programs at their own parish. So I'll put a link to that in the description of this episode as well.
Another aspect of being pro-life—well, there are several aspects to being pro-life. As Catholics, it's a lot more than just fighting abortion and supporting young families. The whole life is what we care about, from conception to natural death. Could you talk a little bit more about how we support the other aspects of life?
Suzanne: Yeah, sure. So the end of life is always a difficult time for people and for families. And making moral decisions at the end of your life is a very important thing. We have at the diocese a resource called Three Beliefs. Three Beliefs is a teaching document, but it's also a form that people can use so that, to make sure that the decisions at the end of their life are moral decisions.
It's very simple—you just put your name, you make a couple of small choices. I also do some presentations for end-of-life care. I really think that if you are a good Catholic who receives the sacraments, you gotta make sure that at the end of your life there’s moral decisions as well. It's not something that's pleasant. It's not something that anyone really wants to talk about. It truly is important to have these conversations with your family ahead of time, because there's a lot of stress, there's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of grief that happens at the bedside.
So Three Beliefs is a document that we have available—if you go to portlanddiocese.org/threebeliefs, you can read through it, you can talk about it with your family. The most important part truly is having that conversation with your family to make sure that they know, even if they're not a practicing Catholic, that you want to be following the Church's teachings at the end of your life.
And I think there's a little bit of an opportunity for everyone to learn about the Church's teachings on end of life, because I think most people know that we're against assisted suicide. But what they don't realize is that the Church isn't asking you to artificially prolong your life. They're not asking you to go into bankruptcy in order to prolong your life. The teaching document of Three Beliefs really goes into a very easily digestible explanation of how to make these decisions and how to help someone else in your life make these decisions too.
Jake Yeah. Thank you very much for that. Before we close out, is there anything else that you want to talk about? Anything else that you want to share with the listeners?
Suzanne: Sure. So one thing I do want to share is some really positive news that has been in kind of the till for a long time, which is that the state of Maine is about to have its first Safe Haven Baby Box installed.
What that is, is it's a box that's attached to a firehouse or a police station or a hospital. And what it is, is it's truly like a plastic box that opens—it's temperature controlled—and if you put a baby into the box and then you push it into the wall of a fire station or police station, an alarm goes off. This is a way that parents can safely surrender a child—a child aged up to a month—without stigma, without shame.
And Maine had already had a Safe Haven law, so you could give a child to a police officer, you could hand a child over at a hospital. But Maine, as you know, is one small town, and everyone knows each other. So about four years ago, I had it on my heart that really we needed to do something that was a physical presence that would show people the value of human lives.
I had watched a Netflix documentary on these Safe Haven Baby Boxes in Korea. There’s this amazing older man who had created them, and it was this beautiful documentary about how many babies' lives he had saved that way. And it touched my heart because I'm a Korean adoptee myself, but it was just—there was something so gorgeous and humbling about it. And I thought, that's interesting. So I Googled it.
Well, there's an organization, a national organization called Safe Haven, who creates these boxes, who have helped pass these laws in many different states in the country. And I thought, why not here? It was a very tough road. I had the wonderful support of Representative Patrick Horry, former representative from Windham—he’s also an adoptee himself—and Representative Bruce White, who's a former representative from Waterville. And we got the bill passed and we got the law passed, which was a huge—not surprise, but I would say definitely not a given.
It was not a given that we would pass this law because even though it, for you and me and for most people I think, it would make common sense to have this available—and it’s completely voluntary for an organization or a town to have this. This is not a mandate. And even though a choice has already been made once a child is born, I think it really attacks the idea for Planned Parenthood because it is so visible—a visible indication of the value of a human life.
They were against it. Our opponents, the abortion lobby, was very against me. There was a lot of bureaucratic… even after the bill passed and it was law, there were a lot of bureaucratic hurdles. But praise the Lord, the town of Rumford will be installing one in the next month. And I will be jumping for joy, because it will be the first, I think, of many.
And I am hoping that it is a real opportunity—an educational opportunity—for Maine citizens to see that we care about children. And unfortunately, we read all the time, I’ve read so many tragic stories about young parents who are often on some sort of substance, they leave, they abandon a child in a really terrible place. Even if they don’t have the mental capacity to do the right thing, hopefully this will be an educational opportunity and we will be able to have these in many different locations in the state of Maine so that children can stay safe, and that we can make sure that children are always precious as they are.
There’s this wonderful story about this fire department worker, a firefighter, who was the first person to receive a baby in the baby box—and then he and his wife adopted that child. And it just, it warms my heart, and I'm hoping that we will have lots of opportunities to celebrate saved lives in the future.
Jake: Amen to that. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. And thank God for the community of Rumford for being the first community to start that here in Maine. I had heard of those boxes before, and it really, really warms my heart to hear that that's happening.
Suzanne: Yes. So I will be working on some other municipalities as well, and it is just—once I can touch that, in the wall there at that fire department, I really will have this overwhelming gratitude for the people who've helped make it happen. Because Maine Right to Life helped me, and the town of Rumford helped me, and the former senator there, Senator Keim, Representative Rachel Henderson who's now in Rumford, and the myriad of people who really took the opportunity to make a real change, a visible change in our state. And it's what we need to say—we need some positivity.
Jake: Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for helping to bring that positivity to life here. Suzanne, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been a great conversation. I just want to close out with a Hail Mary, the way Bishop Ruggeri closes out his podcast—in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
Suzanne: Amen.
Jake: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen. Thank you.
Suzanne: Thanks, Jake.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Respect Life Month: https://portlanddiocese.org/respect-life-month
- Life House Maine: https://lifehousemaine.org/
- Maine Pregnancy Support Centers: https://mainerighttolife.org/pregnancy-support/
- Start "Walking With Moms in Need" at your parish: https://www.walkingwithmoms.com/parish-resources
- Three Beliefs (end of life decision guide): https://portlanddiocese.org/threebeliefs
