Abortion: Why The Religious Right Is Wrong
by Steven Morris, PhD.
"The dead women we saw had either bled to death or they had died from overwhelming infections. Some had tears along the vaginal tract where they had used coat hangers to get up into the uterus and break things up--like rupture the amniotic sac... Most of the dead women I saw were in their teens or twenties... The deaths stopped overnight in 1973, and I never saw another abortion death in all the eighteen years after that until I retired." --Pennsylvania coroner (1)

Anti-abortionists are patiently chipping away at the right that women now possess to choose whether or not to have an abortion, enshrined in law by the Roe vs. Wade decision of 1973. Arbitrary waiting periods, harassment, unjust financial burdens and the murder of doctors by 'pro-life' assassins, are considered by many right-wing Christians to be the moral approach to forcing their opinions on everyone else. We may yet return to the 'good old days' of back-alley abortions, and their harvest of abandoned women, mutilated or dead.

This places the well-meaning Christian in a difficult dilemma. Despite the immorality of the anti-abortion position, how can the Christian be pro-choice when the Bible and the history of Christianity are anti-abortion? However, it is the dirty little secret of the anti-abortionist leaders that their prejudice against abortion has nothing to do with the Bible or the alleged life of the fetus.

History
Abortion has been practiced since early times. Plato suggested in The Republic that abortion be used in cases of incest or older parents, and Aristotle recommended abortion as a way to limit family size. (2) The position of the Catholic Church varied over the centuries, and it was only in the 18th century that the teachings of the Church shifted significantly toward the position that the human fetus deserves from conception the care due to humans. (3) It was in 1869 that Giovanni Ferretti (Pope Pius IX) issued a decree declaring abortion sinful and banning it entirely. (2) His reason for doing so was bizarre, and had nothing to do with morality; the change in doctrine originated with the acceptance of the Immaculate Conception. (4) This unnecessary doctrine supposed that Mary (not Jesus) was without sin from the moment of her conception. To emphasize her sinlessness, the rest of us must be sinful (and alive) from conception. In any case, the penalty for all abortions was merely excommunication, not civil punishment.

Since then, the Catholic position has become increasingly irrational. In 1968, the encyclical Humanae Vitae by Giovanni Montini (Pope Pius VI) banned contraception. Surveys in the United States indicate that more than 80% of Catholics of child-bearing age do not, in fact, observe the encyclical's teaching. (5) This failure has not deterred Church leaders from trying to make secular government enforce doctrines that the Church itself did not believe for most of its own history.

The anti-abortion laws that Rod vs. Wade overturned were not originally adopted to halt "the murder of unborn children," but to reduce the morality rate of women who obtained abortions from midwives, homeopaths and local healers. Because of the lack of modern scientific knowledge in the 19th century, surgical abortions carried a 30% mortality rate from infection. Anti-abortion laws were not passed by an overwhelming public vote against abortion, but rather through the efforts of a few powerful groups such as the American Medical Association. Before these laws were passed, advertisements for abortionists were carried in religious publications as well as newspapers and magazines. (6) The AMA's concerns are now obsolete; legal abortions have a mortality rate that is thirteen times smaller than for childbirth. (1)

How did parents regulate the size of their families during the Middle Ages, when the churches controlled what people thought and did? Infanticide. Studies of 9th century manorial rolls at St Germain-de-Pres, of 15th century Canterbury Church courts, of 17th century Somerset parish records, and interviews with women in 20th century Bosnian hamlets all show the same choice. Let the child be born and then let it die. In particular, let it die if it is female. (7) this callous attitude is echoed in the Christian Right today, whose 'Parental Rights' amendment to the Constitution would strip children of legal protection. Fundamentalists may weep for the fetus in its three trimesters, but when the 'fourth trimester' begins, the baby is on its own.

The Bible
It would surprise many in the anti-abortion flock to learn that abortion is nowhere mentioned in the Bible. The closest the Bible gets is an accidental miscarriage that might occur when men are fighting with each other (Ex. 21: 22, 23). If the woman dies as a result if the miscarriage, the man at fault must die because he committed a murder; "thou shalt give life for life." If a miscarriage occurs and the woman is unharmed, the man merely pays a fine; no life for life here, as no life was lost.

"Abortion is murder!" cry the anti-abortionists, despite the Bible. "Thou shalt not kill!" But they conveniently ignore another well-known passage; "To every thing there is a season... a time to kill, and a time to heal' (Eccles. 3:1, 3). Even if the fetus were alive, the taking of life is Bible-based.

But what is life, anyway? On this subject, the Bible is hopelessly confused. "The blood is the life" (Deut. 12: 23), "For the life of the flesh is in the blood" (Lev. 17: 11). But fertilized egg cells have no blood, and it is only when the umbilical cord is cut, after childbirth, that the fetus lives as more than a blood-sustained part of its mother. But then the Bible contradicts itself; it is the breath, not the blood that makes the difference between life and death; "I will... cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live" (Ezek. 37: 6), "thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust" (Ps. 104- 29). To live one must first breathe, after childbirth.

According to the Bible, the fetus is not alive and abortion isn't murder. But what Christian cares for what the Bible says?

When abortions were illegal, hundreds of thousands of desperate women endured back-alley abortions every year. We will never know how many died, a horrific human sacrifice on the altar of Christianity. The Religious Right looks back on this bloodbath and says. "Let's do it again!" The truly pro-life position is to stand up and say, "Never!"


REFERENCES:
1) The Worst of Times by P. Miller, pg. 12, 13, 322, 327. (1993, Harper Collins, New York, NY).
2) Masters and Johnson on Sex and Human Loving by V Masters, V. Johnson & R. Kolodny, pg. 113. (1986, The Westminster Press, Philadelphia PA)
3) The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics. Edited by J. Childress and J. Marquarrie, pg. 3. (1986, The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, PA).
4) Abortion: An Eternal Social and Moral Issue. Edited by A. Landes, M. Siegal and C. Foster, pg. 3. (1994, Information Plus, Wylie TX).
5) Catholicism, vol. 2 by R. McBrien, pg. 1016, 1017 (1980, Winston Press, Minneapolis, MN).
6) Abortion. By J. Nelson, pg. 44, 45 (1992, Lucent Books, San Diego, CA).
7) A History of Their Own, vol. 1 by B. Anderson & J. Zinsser, pg. 138, 227, 254 (1988, Harper & Row, New York, NY).