5-1-11 Is abortion always wrong?
Do religious/political conservatives really believe God gives them permission to pretend this world is far simpler than it is?
Take the abortion issue, which, thanks to budget wrangles over Planned Parenthood, is back. Let’s for one moment follow The Donald’s lead, set aside a woman’s right to privacy (the central legal issue), and boldly go into the rightness or wrongness of abortion, itself.
Is abortion always morally wrong?
Got me. The older I get, the more such black-and-white morality seems to be mostly about my own comfort; about the world as I’d like it to be; a world that comes with instructions. Not the world I actually live in which is choc-a-block full of pain, suffering, sleaze, greed, fear-mongering and unwanted children.
I saw my first addicted babies years ago while helping a TV station with the Children’s Miracle Network Telethon. They sent me to the New Born Intensive Care Unit at the University of Virginia Hospital, where, swathed from bosom to toe in sequins, I made my pitch for funding beside a row of addicted babies, all tiny as partridges, all shaking, all feathered with the needles necessary to pump them full of whatever was keeping them alive. They’d been birthed by addicts incapable of raising them; women who’d been unable to stop using drugs long enough to give their babies a fighting chance at a decent life should someone else be found who was willing to raise them.
Now this is certainly a sorry way to give life to a child, but my disapproval of their mothers’ choices didn’t make those addicted babies any less real. And I’m sure there would have many other such babies in the NICU had they not been aborted.
Pro-life advocates (among them those conservative politicians who would de-fund Planned Parenthood) like to keep morality simple. They maintain that abortion is always wrong, because, they claim, God says we shall not kill people (except criminals and enemies). But shouldn’t anyone claiming such a clear-cut mandate from God—in this case everyone who holds that abortion is always wrong because God says it is and that’s the end of it— be required to face that issue at play in the real world? Shouldn’t right-to-lifers have the moral right to talk in terms of “God saying” and “God wanting” and “God thinking” about unwanted babies only after they, themselves, have stood beside one that’s been born addicted or brain-damaged in some new born intensive care unit and realistically considered that particular baby’s future? Of course, a black-and-white, conservative religious approach to morality is more comfortable than a NICU approach, but surely our own comfort doesn’t mean we can claim moral righteousness at a safe remove from reality.
Perhaps while they’re out acquainting themselves with this human tragedy, Virginia’s conservative Christian politicians might also visit the children of the state’s under-funded foster care programs. There are some 1300 children waiting for adoption in the state – children whomVirginia’s Board of Social Services has just decided may not be jointly adopted by a loving gay couple.
This decision was made after dueling legal opinions on the legality of allowing gay couples to adopt had been issued by former Attorney General Bill Mims and current AG Ken Cucinnelli. But to my mind Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell voiced the true reason for alarm at legalizing gay couple adoption when he said, “Many of our adoption agencies are faith-based groups that ought to be able to establish what their own policies are.”
Does Virginia’s governor believe religious beliefs trump the exigent needs of children? And that somehow preventing the adoption of children by gay couples is keeping the faith?
Which leads me back to my original question: Is abortion always wrong?
Before you answer yes, go to a NICU and spend some time with an abandoned, addicted baby. Are you willing to take that baby home? And if you’re not, then who are you to say that God, humanity’s engine of love and compassion, demands that all babies have to be born?
Tags: abortion, Christianity, Planned Parenthood
Martha, You are a brave girl!
Nothing gets the fire cranking like an abortion question.
I think I agree with you, but we may have taken different roads to get here.
It is my opinion that we will all do what we decide to do based on what we need at the time. Morality will have nothing to do with it. It is simply what we do.
One woman chooses to get an abortion. Another woman who cannot conceive chooses to manipulate her body and take fertility drugs so that she can bring a child (or eight) into the world. I don’t see God’s will in either case. I certainly could be wrong and the hand of God could be behind both situations. There is no way to know for sure so I choose not to condemn either one.
Both are choices that humans control, own and make, based on human needs.
No ethics, no politics, no religion. Just a decision based on a perceived need.
In my soul I know that no killing is acceptable. But the fact is that we are not souls, we are a species of beings and we will kill when we are in fear. Fear of parenthood, fear of crime, fear of foreign cultures, fear of running out of oil, fear of running out of drugs….In my soul, all killing is wrong, but we will do it when we think we need to. Given the right set of events, no action or decision is ALWAYS wrong.
Regarding the ability of a gay couple to provide a stable loving home….We can see the unholy mess of a world that has been left behind by straight parents .
The question should not be, “Is legalized abortion morally responsible?” Rather, the question should be if abortion is ever a morally acceptable thing for an individual woman to do.
To consider this, I think we need to take the issue of someone having an abortion back to the time the real choice was made. The real choice is not whether to have an abortion once a pregnancy has started. The real choice was engaging in sexual intercourse in the first place
When someone has sex, they know that this act carries the potential to bring life into the world (even though it doesn’t always). Keeping this in mind, it could be said that once we have intentionally committed to the possibility of bringing life into the world that is inherent in a sexual act, any destruction of the process that we voluntarily initiated is immoral. The opportunity to choose not to have a child was at the time of intercourse, not after we have indicated (through sex) to God, Mother Nature, or whatever is out there that we are ready to embrace the chance of bringing sacred life into the world.
Even in the context of the very broad discussion of God that you, Martha, are pursuing, I think that it would be safe to say that God or the Great Whatever-is-out-there gave us the power to create life. What an amazing power that is, if you think about it! We should hold it sacred, as it is probably the greatest power He/It has given us.
Here’s the problem I have with the abortion debate: people who will never actually have to face the problem overwhelmingly carry it on. I can honestly say that I would never choose to have an abortion. But then, I’m a guy. For me, the issue is abstract.
Whether or not abortion is always wrong is an abstract question. We can get caught up in all kinds of philosophizing or moralizing—not to mention politics and religion—without ever having to get involved with the real people struggling with the real issue. Thankfully, Martha, you have brought some very real experiences into the discussion. But this has served only to make finding an answer even murkier.
And, I think, that’s the point.
I find both the so-called strictly pro-life and pro-choice attitudes to be really pro-avoidance positions. Pro-choice sloughs off the problem to just “a woman and her doctor”, conveniently walking away from the larger social issues. Pro-life would, ironically and, need I say, hypocritically, kill the living debate by dictating the definition of terms and instituting Procrustean laws thereby absolving anyone from seriously confronting the problem again. Except, of course, the people actually involved.
I spent a number of years working with teenagers in a church setting. On a few occasions, I was invited into the process when a young woman sought counseling as she considered an abortion. Not just because of my religious background but also because I am the father of four, I certainly had my opinion. But I also had to listen to the young woman.
I learned many thought abortion was outlawed or at least highly immoral. (It’s amazing how propaganda surrounding the debate is heard on a naïve and uninformed level. And let’s face it; this is the level of teenage pregnancies.) When confronted with what they thought was no choice, surprisingly, the first question from many of these young women was, “So how can I get an abortion, really?” But they weren’t necessarily seeking an abortion. They were trying to get some control over their out-of-control lives. The so-called pro-life attitude robbed them of confronting the gravity of their situation. But a facile abortion reduced it to a “medical procedure”. They were trying to take responsibility, find some personal dignity. In these instances, they had perhaps naively (again) come to a church for compassionate help. I was impressed by how they attacked their problem with everything they had, limited as they may have been. They knew it was bigger than they were and reached out.
I wish I could say that all of the young women I knew through this process chose to continue their pregnancies. This was not the case. Most did, putting the babies up for adoption or deciding to keep them. All, however, were treated compassionately and offered every resource available and none took their decision lightly.
Yes, I know this is anecdotal. I know, especially with drug addicts, abuse victims, and so many others, the situations can be very different. Again, this is my point. The issues surrounding abortion are vastly beyond a straight up and down, good or bad answer. Sure, as a society we need laws and rules to guide us. But such laws can’t absolve us from getting involved in the messy human relationships of which the abortion dilemma is only a symptom. Abortion is no more right or wrong than a fever caused by an infection is right or wrong. Except when it is. Abortion is both individual and communal.
There’s no simplistic answer. We can’t end the specter of crack babies by just allowing their addled mothers abortions. Nor is government-forced birth tenable. There will be no more crack babies when the need for addiction is eliminated. There will be no more pregnant teenagers desperately seeking abortions when families and communities are equipped to compassionately guide them. Impossibly utopian? Of course. But none of us are absolved. All of us are implicated. Abortion is first of all a people problem. Politics and religion, the formulation of laws and abstractions will follow what needs to be done. We’ve got our work cut out for us.
The problem with this issue is we are treating it like a religious-political issue and not a rights issue. Having spent years debating this issue we seem to complicate the simple. Everyone has the right to “life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness” it is not up to “pro choice” or “pro-life” advocates determining who has this right or not…..we all do. Whether you were born addicted, missing an arm, leg or, blind, born to a poor family, you have a right to life. Now on the other hand if the mother life is in extreme danger due to a complicated pregnancy….she too has the “right” to life and should have the choice if needed, under the supervision and recommendations of a medical professional not religious or political leader. The problem again is both sides want all or nothing…..this is not the common sense approach to this issue and will never solve the dispute.
You have pointed out the one exception where I also would endorse an abortion, or at least the right to choose one: endangerment of the life of the mother. This is an age-old question: if a pregnancy or delivery becomes dangerous, who do you save, the mother or the child? It is an interesting fact that the answer to this question usually breaks along gender lines. Most men, a very high percentage, will usually respond, if the choice is left up to them, “Save my wife!” Most women, again, a very high percentage, will answer, “Please, save my baby”. I do not know the Catholic Church’s current stance on this, but I do know that for a very long time their policy was that neither the mother nor the child could be done to death for the sake of saving the other. But if my wife, fiance or female partner were in this situation, I would have to say that I also would pick the life of my love over the life of my child. I would be very, very unhappy to have to make such a choice, and even more unhappy after it was done. My spiritual path leads me to believe that I would suffer all sorts of karmic consequences because of such a choice. But a life and death choice is exactly that, and it is different than many other rationales for abortion. A woman who says, I need to do this in order to save my own life, should always have that choice. But a woman who says, I want to kill my unborn child because I want to finish law school first and then make partner at a Wall Street firm, for example, is in no such situation. Convenience is not a life and death issue, no matter how it is portrayed.
There are two separate questions in your essay, “Is Abortion Always Wrong?” The first of course is the title of the essay itself, and the second, is gay adoption wrong. The answers to the one have absolutely nothing to do with any possible answers to the other. Your first question is of course dynamite, political, intellectual, spiritual, and above all, personal dynamite, for anyone who gives the subject the slightest thought. For me, it has always been a matter of definition. If someone believes that a pregnant woman is carrying a human child, a human being, within her body from the moment of conception, then, by definition and no matter what the justification, abortion is premeditated murder of a human person. If on the other hand someone believes that an unborn child is not in fact a human being but merely a collection of unaware cells shaped into a vaguely human form, then, in that person’s eyes, abortion is not murder at all. But whatever your definition of when life starts, it should not be based on convenience, or on what the end result of the pregnancy might be, including the birth of a drug-addicted child. In all honesty, Martha, it seems like you are prepared to set aside the question of what, or who, is being aborted, if the result of allowing birth to take place is a child that is not “normal” compared to any number of criteria. And that leads to the biggest problem I have with what you are saying, namely that you are starting us on a slippery slope that, being human beings, will, in my opinion, lead to euthanasia. If we conclude today that we can abort to prevent drug-addicted children, might we not, tomorrow, conclude that it is justifiable to euthanize those same children once they have been born? And might we not also, at some point, further down the slope, decide that those who are suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease are also leading substandard lives and are therefore better off being put to death, for their own good, and more to the point, our own? Where would all of this end? I have no faith in the idea that simple compassion would prevent such a slide into the societally approved and indeed sanctioned murder of innocents. Compassion is not the mark of human beings in this age we live in, if in fact it ever was. Expediency, which I might even argue is the operational opposite of compassion, rules the modern citizen, and if an act of “compassionate euthanasia” is deemed “good” according to that scale, especially if it saves someone a nickel that might be better spent as part of a tax break for America’s bloated rich class, then that is what, ultimately, will be chosen as our society’s course of action. I prefer compassionate life, myself, both for those children whom you saw and who horrified you so much, justifiably so, and for those who suffer from Alzheimer’s and any number of other conditions which keep their sufferers from leading “normal” lives. I am not making light of your experience, because I know you to be a very good and caring person who has been shocked to her soul by something that would undoubtedly shatter me if I were also to view it. My point is that life is life, and that someone does not forfeit the right to that life even if they suffer from a disabling condition. Giving love and compassion to those who suffer in this way are the only course of action I can defend, both because my feeling heart tells me to do so, and also because my expedient brain tells me, “Someday, this may be you.”
The other question is easier to answer. Study after study recently has shown diminishing support for marriage among the heterosexual population. The only group in fact that seems to support it wholeheartedly is the gay community. I realize that a great part of this impetus is due to the fact that being denied the right to something always stimulates a response to have it at any cost; yet, studies do seem to show a greater stability among gay unions than within heterosexual marriages. Since I believe that a stable marriage is hugely contributive to a stable upbringing, that such stability is in fact the most positive factor in raising a happy, well-adjusted child, I think that allowing gay couples to adopt children can only increase the level of happiness and stability of our society. Children raised by gay couples, if this becomes legalized in our society, will be happier and more mentally and spiritually stable than if they were products of a shattered heterosexual marriage, or, in these unfortunate days, perhaps of several shattered marriages.