Let’s Talk Calmly About Abortion: A Plea to Conservative Catholics and Evangelicals
A country where abortion is “illegal and unthinkable”…where those who assist with abortion face prosecution (even death) and women who induce their own abortions face punishment. El Salvador? No. This alarming prospect emerged — the day after Amy Coney Barrett’s US Supreme Court confirmation — from National Public Radio’s Morning Edition: “A World Without Legal Abortion: How Activists Envision A ‘Post-Roe’ Nation.” https://www.npr.org/2020/10/27/927862869/a-world-without-legal-abortion-how-activists-envision-a-post-roe-nation
Might US citizens live in such a world — such a nation — one day? We’re heading that way, it appears. The Guttmacher Institute (guttmacher.org) notes that from the beginning of 2011 through August 2015, states enacted 287 new legal restrictions on access to abortion care. The Pew Research Center (pewresearch.org), polling other industrialized nations, reports a steady decline in recent years in the belief that the US government respects the personal freedoms of its people.
What of abortion elsewhere? Per the Council on Foreign Relations (cfr.org): “The past fifty years have been characterized by an unmistakable trend toward the liberalization of abortion laws, particularly in the industrialized world. Amid ongoing debate over the procedure, the trend has coincided with a drop in abortion rates worldwide.” So why are we in the US stepping backward on abortion?
Having finished Laurence Tribe’s Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes on the day of Coney Barrett’s confirmation, my mind was filled with visions of our pre-Roe nation — with the pain, indignities and deaths of women subjected to criminal abortion laws. The post-Roe vision provided by NPR raises the red flag of Santayana’s warning: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It should be driving all of us who care about girls, women and families to the history books on abortion. And to calm discussions about how to prevent a reliving of that history.
“In a democracy, voting and persuasion are all we have,” says Tribe. Thus this follow up on my previously published abortion story and plea to those who voted for Trump primarily on the abortion issue. https://medium.com/@jan.engle.lewis/to-my-christian-cousins-who-voted-for-trump-in-hopes-that-roe-v-wade-would-be-overturned-please-9f12d00cb30a
Join me in a brief look at the history of abortion in the US, with thanks to constitutional law scholar Lawrence Tribe and his thoughtful book.
At the time of the adoption of the US Constitution there were no statutes outlawing abortion. Under common law, abortion was permitted until “quickening,” the first felt movement of the fetus — typically at about 18–20 weeks. Early statutes dealt with post-quickening abortion and were primarily about women’s health; the first law — enacted in Connecticut in 1821 — prohibited the inducement of abortion through the use of dangerous poisons. By 1840 only eight states had enacted statutory restrictions on abortion.
What of opposition to abortion based on religious beliefs? During the nineteenth century, there was debate within the Roman Catholic Church on abortion, but the traditional position, “similar to that taken by Aristotle and by some rabbinic scholars in the Jewish tradition — was that a fetus was not a human being until the time of ‘animation’ [infusion with a soul or ensoulment] at forty days after conception.” In Catholic doctrine, early abortion was considered a sin, but not homicide.
The enactment of restrictive abortion laws in the mid-nineteenth century came about not via faith-based efforts but through lobbying by medical professionals. Motivations were complex: a mix of protecting human life (pregnant woman and fetus) and controlling competitive abortion services offered by “medical irregulars.” Social and political concerns came into play too. Higher abortion rates among white, middle-class Protestant women than among newly arrived Catholic immigrants stoked fears of “race suicide.” Further, women’s roles as wives and mothers were thought to be in jeopardy: an 1871 report of the American Medical Association (AMA) described the woman seeking abortion as “Unmindful of the course marked out for her by Providence” and characterized her as selfish and immoral.
As medical practice became more bureaucratic in the following century, women had to come before hospital review boards — typically all men — who would decide whether an abortion was “necessary.” Privileged women could obtain “illegal” abortions from sympathetic physicians; underprivileged women were less fortunate and died in disproportionate numbers from illegal procedures.
In 1967 the AMA — wiser from a century of social change and cumulative experience — issued a statement favoring liberalization of abortion laws. By that time more women were enrolling in college, working outside the home, and realizing that control of reproduction was critical to achieving parity in the labor market. This led to an increase in women’s reliance on all types of fertility control, including abortion.
If you’re still with me and if you take nothing else away from this article, please note this, again from Tribe: “The beliefs of many of those who first supported and led the reexamination of abortion law were shaped less by ideology — feminism or libertarianism, for example — than by a simple awareness, often firsthand, of the real pain that was being inflicted by…criminal abortion laws.”
I ask you to feel that pain — and women, to applaud the activism of your sisters — by reading the moving stories of Pat Maginnis — founder of the Society for Humane Abortion in California, Kate Michelman — president of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) from 1985 to 2004, and Faye Wattleton — president of Planned Parenthood from 1978 to 1992.
One more humble request. In this clash of so-called absolutes — a woman’s right to privacy and choice in her reproductive life vs. the “rights” of the unborn — I’m asking you to give a bit more consideration to the woman. Tribe again: “Those who oppose abortion often use a process of visualization to stir people’s emotions. Yet what they ask us to visualize is an isolated picture of a fetus. Where is the person who develops, nurtures, and sustains the fetus…where is the woman? In this vision, she is insignificant, devalued.”
And sometimes she is manipulated and shamed while being offered what I — as a psychiatric nurse specialist — call pseudo support. Pregnancy “counseling” centers have traumatized unsuspecting pregnant women with films and graphics depicting aborted fetuses. Responses to my own abortion story included suggestions that I should have considered the feelings of women who miscarry or are infertile.
Interestingly, nearly three times as many Catholics (56%) as white evangelical protestants (20%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases (pewforum.org). Perhaps Catholics have reflected more on the issue, given its prominence in church doctrine (see catholicsforchoice.org). Catholic Church historian Garry Wills (a practicing Catholic, like Joe Biden) offers this: “There has always been a lack of certitude about the status of the fetus, even among those with good minds and goodwill. How, then, can a pope or a priest, a judge or a legislator be so certain, where others as well equipped have left room for debate. Those who invoke the murky “rights” of a fetus over the undoubted rights of a prospective mother seem to be backing a cloudy prospect over an assured fact.”
Yet it is that questionable certitude — the certitude that abortion is murder — that drove many to the Trump camp…and that is causing uproar during this election season. Trump has stoked the fires and sadly, among those who purport to follow the way of Christ, hate and judgment abound. Father James Altman of La Crosse, Wisconsin, in a video that hit YouTube in August: “You cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat…Repent of your support of that party and its platform or face the fires of hell!” Robert Jeffress, pastor of a Baptist megachurch in Dallas, Texas, in reference to abortion: “Only Christians who have sold their souls to the devil would vote for Joe Biden.”
The devil seems to be winning; this state of affairs is hellish (at least in cyberspace). C.S. Lewis, in The Screwtape Letters, suggested hell is “a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance…society held together by fear and greed…[characterized by] the passion to dominate one’s fellow.” How ironic that so many have supported Trump in the belief that he will help forge a more “Christian” nation. Few will ever be attracted to our faith when so practiced; many are, in fact, turning away in disgust.
It’s the issue of domination — domination based on certitude about abortion that so troubles me, my conservative friends. Generally we admire those who hold and act upon strong values. But in a civil society, when values conflict, we listen with respect to those who hold differing values and seek compromise on issues pertinent to our common life. We’ve not had a good role model in the White House for the past four years. We can do better!
Values Clarification was in vogue when I began teaching in the mid-70s; it could help with the abortion divide. The first steps in the process are choosing freely, choosing from alternatives and choosing after thoughtful consideration. Young people forming values related to various divisive issues in the US need this kind of guidance now more than ever. Discussions — in church groups, women’s groups — that invite participants to share how they came to current positions on abortion could generate better understanding of and respect for differing points of view…and perhaps a will to find ways forward together.
And if not? Let’s look briefly at possible future scenarios. Abortion certitude shaped the grooming of Amy Coney Barrett. Nurtured by a group of University of Notre Dame professors opposed to the secularization of American society, she was later recruited to the law school’s faculty. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/20/amy-coney-barrett-supreme-court-419219. Will her personal opposition to abortion influence her actions on the US Supreme Court? Likely so, according to research. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/10/amy-coney-barrett-roe-v-wade/616702/.
Whether or not Roe v Wade is overturned, the well-documented appointment of conservative judges to federal appeals courts (under Trump) may lead to even more restrictions on abortion at the state level. And then? More money and more energy will be expended by NARAL Pro-Choice — now active for 50 years: ”representing the 7 in 10 Americans who believe every body should have the freedom to make the best decision for themselves about if, when, and how to start or grow a family.”
NARAL’s efforts enabled me to choose abortion when I became pregnant following rape in 1984; if we are heading for an intensified battle over abortion rights, I will work with NARAL to help ensure others have that freedom. But I would rather expend money/energy on bipartisan efforts to support girls, women and families in ways that will decrease the need for abortion — something I’m hoping we can all agree upon. Braver Angels holds promise for collaborative work; I’ve joined at braverangels.org.
If we Christians, along with those of other faiths or traditions, cannot collaborate on this issue…and on other issues that have so polarized us in the US, I fear we will fall apart. The rise of hyper-religiosity — a kind of faith coagulation in which certain elements of one’s belief system become axiomatic truths and respect for other viewpoints is replaced by intolerance — is leading us to that end. But perhaps then — in that brokenness — love will arise and grow as we care for one another’s wounds.
