Choice

Where Should We Stand?

Conservative Christians make no bones about it: abortion is murder.

Period. The end. They do a head-feint toward sympathy for those suffering from guilt over their choice, but the conservative doctrine is mostly about scare tactics and reprobation, often extending into freshly-minted incomprehensible sin like arson and, yes, even murder of doctors who perform abortion. Religious fervor over this issue can often manifest itself as hate, which forces even more women underground even within their own church communities. These women suffer in silence, putting on the brave face for the communal lashing out against abortionists while hemorrhaging psychologically over their own secrets. None of this, none of it, is the function of a loving God.

“New radical [and] blatantly unconstitutional anti- abortion laws have generated a lot of headlines from the great states of Arkansas, North Dakota, [and] Kansas. In Kansas, the Republican legislature just passed an anti-abortion “personhood” bill late on Friday. It declares that life begins at fertilization. Yes, all three states are advancing abortion bans with legislation like this, but Kansas goes an extra step. Kansas law mandates that doctors have to describe to their patients an unproven, scientifically dubious made-up link between abortion and breast cancer. There is no link between abortion and breast cancer, but the state of Kansas wrote this script and will now mandate that doctors read this lie to their patients. The bill now goes to Sam Brownback, the state's Republican governor. According to a spokesperson, he is almost certain to sign it even though he hasn't read it yet. Governor Brownback said he will sign any anti-abortion bill and so far he has kept to his word.

“Republican Tom Corbett is the governor of Pennsylvania. But if his name rings a bell in terms of national news attention, it may be because last year about this time Governor Tom Corbett was asked what he thought of a proposed Republican bill that would force Pennsylvania women seeking an abortion to undergo a medically unnecessary vaginal ultrasound with the ultrasound screen intentionally turned toward them. About that, Governor Corbett offered this advice: ‘[I] wouldn't change it as long as it's not obtrusive.’ ‘Making them watch, does that go too far in your mind?’ ‘I don't know how you make anybody watch because you just have to close your eyes. But as long as it's on the exterior, not interior.’

“Just close your eyes. Governor Tom Corbett did not go on to do a whole lot of campaigning with Republican presidential ticket last year, even with Pennsylvania being an important swing state. He wasn't exactly driven out of the party but he is one of the least popular governors in the entire country, and he is up for re-election next year. How do you run against that? How do you run against, ‘Don't worry, you can just shut your eyes?’ What would a campaign against Tom Corbett look like?” —Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show, April 8, 2013

Like most sex-related sin, much of what the church does concerning abortion is a misguided attempt to help God out, to fill in the blanks where scripture is silent and to exact vengeance in God’s name on unspeakable behavior. We pick up our flaming sword and we march here and march there and flash giant placards of mangled fetuses and point and condemn. Pro-life protesters, many if not most of whom claim to be Christians, seem vengeful, hateful and full of wrath. They bully, they threaten, they use scare tactics, displaying unimaginably horrific photos where young children can see them. The church, as Pastor Gregory Boyd points out, should look like Christ. As heinous and wrong as abortion is, I find no evidence that Jesus Christ would have conducted Himself the way these people do. Moreover, the extremist irrationality demonstrated by these people tends to polarize rather than convict. It really doesn't convince anyone to move past their position, but rather offends and puts off and gets everyone dug in to whatever side of the issue they are on. Hate does not inspire dialogue, and most Pro-Life activism is designed to be loud and revolting.

Beyond that, the Christian right, most specially, exploits and politicizes the issue of abortion in order to further their agenda, which seems to be to enforce Christian ethics on America, which many evangelicals insist is a Christian nation. Pastor Boyd, himself a Christian conservative, responds to that issue much more eloquently than I could, and I urge you to listen to his statements about the issue. The Christian right routinely elect unspiritual, godless individuals based solely on one issue—abortion, and define their choices for high court justices based on the judges' position on a single issue—abortion. Conservative Christians have developed a kind of snow blindness to the complexity of God’s creation, narrowing the vibrant chorus of God’s voice to a single note—abortion. They paralyze God’s hand, His loving, gentle, kind hand, by limiting His sovereignty, His holiness, His purpose for mankind to a single issue—abortion.

The church cannot, should not, must not be solely about a single issue. Let alone a single issue of which Jesus never spoke, about which the bible is silent. And this is Satan’s tool against the church: to paralyze our vocal chords to the point where our vibrant harmony becomes a single, shrill note: abortion. The mission of the church is not to stop abortion. The mission of the church is not to enact laws, banish things or punish the guilty. The mission of the church is to create disciples. We’ve got our mission confused. The church is not the arm of God’s vengeance. It is the measure of God’s love. Which is not to say that we should endorse terrible wrongs, but that we should keep our eye on the ball. Jesus Himself existed in a terribly corrupt and cruel society. King Herod, fearful of Christ’s ministry, ordered the equivalent of abortion of every male baby under two years of age [Matthew 2]. Mary and Joseph hid Jesus in Egypt until Herod was dead. Jesus never spoke about Herod’s crime, about the thousands of babies killed in an effort to stop His ministry. Jesus didn’t form any picket lines. Didn’t start any petitions. Didn’t push for a ballot referendum. Didn’t choose His disciples based on who was pro-life.

Jesus didn’t allow sin, no matter how heinous, to paralyze His ministry. His ministry was not about fixing a corrupt world, it was about reconciling mankind to God. Our two extremes here seem to be that abortion is an issue that virtually paralyzes the ministry of the white church while it is rarely even spoken of in the black church. Both extremes are wrong.

The church should be concerned with abortion to this end: more women have had one than you can possibly imagine. 42 million per year, 115,000 per day worldwide. 1996 estimates: 1.37 million per year, 3,700 per day in the United States. 1% of all abortions occur because of rape or incest; 6% of abortions occur because of potential health problems regarding either the mother or child, and 93% of all abortions occur for social reasons (i.e. the child is unwanted or inconvenient). 52% of women obtaining abortions in the U.S. are younger than 25: Women aged 20-24 obtain 32% of all abortions; Teenagers obtain 20% and girls under 15 account for 1.2%. While white women obtain 60% of all abortions, their abortion rate is well below that of minority women. Black women are more than 3 times as likely as white women to have an abortion, and Hispanic women are roughly 2 times as likely. Women identifying themselves as Protestants obtain 37.4% of all abortions in the U.S.; Catholic women account for 31.3%, Jewish women account for 1.3%, and women with no religious affiliation obtain 23.7% of all abortions. 18% of all abortions are performed on women who identify themselves as "Born-again/Evangelical". [Stats: The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform] Click here to download PDF.

Women in your pews. Women in your Sunday School. Old women. Pre-teens. The holocaust of the unborn is likely larger and more widespread than pastors could imagine. It is also disproportionately our holocaust—the black church. The abortion ratio for black women (491 per 1,000 live births, or nearly one-half—one-half—of black pregnancies end in abortion) was 3.0 times the ratio for white women (165 per 1,000), and the ratio for women of the nonhomogeneous "other" race category (347 per 1,000) was 2.1 times the ratio for white women. The abortion rate for black women (29 per 1,000 women) was 2.9 times the rate for white women (10 per 1,000), and the abortion rate for women of other races (19 per 1,000 women) was 2.0 times the rate for white women. [Stats: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control]

The Ostrich Method

Abortion is now at a 30-year low, down 33% since 1980 with the largest falloff being in white adult women (ABC News). I would imagine this owes largely to education and to developments in birth control. The AIDS epidemic has led to an exponential increase in the use of condoms—even when other birth control devices are used. All of which has led to reductions in abortion rates among this demographic. Lower income and minority women, however, have less access to those resources, and teens and minority women continue reckless behaviors, having unprotected sex in spite of access to birth control and family planning information. Much of that recklessness likely owes to issues of low self-esteem. pressure from a boyfriend, or simple laziness. Many kids simply don't read. They think they know it all or they believe it'll never happen to them. Many silly high school girls believe he'll pull out in time or they can douche after and preempt pregnancy. I'm not making this stuff up. More high school girls than you'd imagine still believe the foolishness that giving her boyfriend sex will keep him around, and getting themselves knocked up will lock him in. Many if not most sexually active teens, including a frightening number of Christian teens, are engaging in oral sex and even anal sex in the misguided belief that these activities aren't "real" sex, that since they can't get pregnant they've maintained their purity. This foolish, dangerous thinking is a direct consequence of the failure of parents to parent their children or to communicate with them on any level. Many parents just abandon their teens to this fantasy camp, the parents assuming the school is teaching them what they need to know and assuming (or hoping) their child will put that knowledge to good use. Mom—she's a kid. Kids are slackers. Kids are lazy. Kids won't even clean their room, and you're depending on her to remain celibate, or, failing that, to insist he uses a condom? Mommies who refuse to even discuss these things with their kids on the grounds that they demand their child not have sex, or, even more idiotic, that they fear simply providing this information will encourage their child to have sex, are simply rolling the dice with their child's future. This is the Ostrich Method of parenting, which leads to your child, alone and frightened in the clinic waiting room.

Jennifer Manlove, Suzanne Ryan, and Kerry Franzetta from the organization, Child Trends, published research in the journal, Demography (August 2007), that analyzed data from high school students to help identify patterns of contraceptive use. Key findings from this study reveal:

• Many teens use contraception inconsistently. In fact, in 4 out of 10 relationships, teens inconsistently used contraception or never used any birth control at all.

• Teenagers’ contraceptive consistency varies across their sexual relationships.

• Teens continue habits from previous relationships. Those who consistently used birth control in a previous relationship are more likely to do so in a current one. This implies that teens may learn from their relationship experiences.

• Female teens who chose sexual partners who were more similar to themselves, particularly in age, had higher odds of always using contraceptives.

• Teens involved in romantic relationships were more likely to use birth control at least once but were less likely to use it consistently (perhaps, the researchers argue, because they may regard a pregnancy more favorably).

• Teens who are older when they first have sex are more likely to use contraception but were less likely to use it every time that they had sex.

• Teens who view their relationships as "romantic" and who spend more time with their partners in dating activities are more likely to use birth control, suggesting that being involved in a more serious relationship may be beneficial as teens may feel more comfortable negotiating (and thus using) contraception with romantic partners as opposed to casual partners.

• Female teens who discuss contraception with their partners before sex are twice as likely to practice safe sex. In fact, 62% of female teens and 51% of male teens who discussed birth control with their partners before having sex for the first time reported always using contraception.

• Teens who engage in a high number of relationships are less likely to consistently use contraceptives in these relationships than teens who have fewer relationships.

• Female adolescents who are using hormonal contraceptives, such as birth control pills, Depo Provera, NuvaRing and the Ortho Evra Patch showed a higher level of contraceptive consistency. Also, female teens who used a hormonal method in a previous sexual relationship were 74% more likely than female teens who used other birth control methods or no method to consistently use contraception in their subsequent relationship.

Black women make up 13% of the population but comprise 35% of performed abortions. Abortion clinics are disproportionately located within minority communities. Many teens and young adults are repeat patients, using abortion as a form of birth control. If I had a child, I'd talk to her about, first and foremost, her relationship with Jesus Christ. Absent that spiritual foundation in her life, all the rest of this is largely futile. This is why abstinence programs in schools don't work: they've taken God out of the schools. Without some moral imperative, some goal to achieve through sexual purity, teens are simply not motivated to ignore the overwhelming urges of their own bodies. But, for the kid who has Christ in his life, you can begin a dialogue about sexual purity. Not as a demand of a judge ready to condemn them to hell, but as an offering, a sacrifice [Romans 12], which the Apostle Paul described as our reasonable service—the least we can do for God is remain pure.

In 40+ years in the black church, I've never, not once, heard this idea from a black pulpit. If it is discussed at all, it's done in small groups on Wednesdays where the bare remnants of your church family show up for bible study and other activities. Pastors: like it or not, the main body on your church family attends only on Sundays. If you have anything important to say, any life-saving information, it needs to come across the pulpit on Sunday morning. We're hollering and catching vapors, rolling in the aisles while our teens tune out, sitting in the back texting one another and carrying burdens both immense and obscene. It's easy to get up and shake your fist, pastor, but check your rearview. First: this is our mess. This is our doing. We're holding teens to a moral standard most of us do not ourselves maintain and we abandon them at the time of their lives when sex is on their brains twenty-four hours a day. You're on your own, kid. Good luck. Most churches would throw a pastor out if he advocated giving out condoms and birth control pills, information on STD's and other Abstinence Plus materials. That's because most churches put morality (how we think people should live) above ministry (seeing to their needs regardless)—something Jesus never did. Jesus allowed the prostitute to anoint him with perfume [John 12:2], to dry His feet with her hair. Jesus refused to condemn the woman caught in adultery [John 4:4], and He welcomed a thief into paradise [Luke 23:43]. But we sit in judgment, mute and impotent, while our girls, our sisters, form long lines at these sad places.

The church's job is not to be The Morality Police. The church's job is to create disciples. To minister to the spiritual and physical needs of people. Without terms or conditions. Without a morality test. Not discussing sex won't stop kids from having sex. Not giving them condoms, birth control and information about STD's won't stop them from having sex, it'll stop them from having safe sex. Our ignorance is the very antithesis of the personal example of Jesus Christ, Who was much less concerned about someone's moral status than He was about connecting them to God. Let's connect people to God and let God do His job—transforming these girls, these women, through a renewing of their minds, through an indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Let's stop judging. Stop folding our arms. Let's stop trying to help God out by looking down our nose at people who need us.

I know, personally, dozens of church pastors. I’ve never, not one single time, had a conversation—not one—about abortion, an issue that should absolutely keep pastors up at night. Not for political reasons, but because people are suffering. On your watch. Under your nose. Within the sound of your voice on Sunday, there’s at least a half-dozen sisters who have either had an abortion or who feel abortion is the only solution to their problem. All around town, girls, women, are crying. Are walking the floor. Hiding their pain and suffering. And they can’t even call the pastor. They’re too ashamed. They feel God has deserted them, that human weakness has led them to a place of unbearable sorrow, sorrow made all that much worse by their solution to it. And their pastors are snoring. He’s done his part: he’s pushed for that ballot amendment. He’s condemned the practice form the pulpit.

Pastors: Jesus never asked you to condemn anything. He asked you to feed His sheep, to find those lost ones up in the middle of the night, lying to their kids, to their husband. Oh, I’m just a little restless. She’s suffering, pastor. And most of us are simply tone deaf to this suffering because it does not readily present itself to us. But, I guarantee you, in your church, on your watch, there are women and girls drowning in unbearable grief. Make all the McCain/Palin placards you want, God never told you to be legislators. He told you to be pastors. Putting all your energy toward political solutions to social problems simply demonstrates how out of touch with God you've become.

Misrepresenting
The Biblical Record

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By Brian Elroy McKinley

One sided. That's the abortion stance of most Christians -- one sided. We hear the Christian Coalition speak against abortion. We hear Focus on the Family tell Republican candidates it will not support them unless they state their opposition to abortion. We hear Operation Rescue's Christian members praying God will turn back the clock and make abortion illegal again. Over and over we are bombarded with the "Christian" perspective that abortion is outright wrong, no exceptions.

With all these groups chanting the same mantra, there must be some pretty overwhelming biblical evidence of abortion's evil, right?

Wrong. In reality there is merely overwhelming evidence that most people don't take time to read their own Bibles. People will listen to their pastors and to Christian radio broadcasters. They will skim through easy-to-read pamphlets and perhaps look up the one or two verses printed therein, but they don't actually read their Bibles and make up their own minds on issues such as abortion. They merely listen to others who quote a verse to support a view they heard from someone else. By definition, most Christians, rather than reading for themselves, follow the beliefs of a Culture of Christianity -- and many of the Culture's beliefs are based on one or two verses of the Bible, often taken out of context.

This is most definitely the case when it comes to abortion. Ask most anti-abortion Christians to support their view, and they'll give you a couple of verses. One, quite obviously, is the Commandment against murder. But that begs the question of whether or not abortion is murder, which begs the question of whether or not a fetus is the same as a full-term human person. To support their beliefs, these Christians point to one of three bible verses that refer to God working in the womb. The first is found in Psalms:

"For Thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to Thee, for Thou art fearfully wonderful (later texts were changed to read "for I am fearfully and wonderfully made"); wonderful are Thy works, and my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from Thee, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Thy book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them."
Psalm 139:13-16

Although this passage does make the point that God was involved in the creation of this particular human being, it does not state that during the creation the fetus is indeed a person. According to Genesis, God was involved in the creation of every living thing, and yet that doesn't make every living thing a full human person. In other words, just because God was involved in its creation, it does not mean terminating it is the same as murder. It's only murder if a full human person is destroyed.

But even if we agreed to interpret these verses the same way that anti-abortion Christians do, we still have a hard time arguing that the Bible supports an anti-abortion point of view. If anything, as we will soon see, abortion is biblical.

Anytime we take one or two verses out of their context and quote them as doctrine, we place ourselves in jeopardy of being contradicted by other verses. Similarly, some verses that make perfect sense while standing alone take on a different feel when seen in the greater context in which they were written. And we can do some rather bizarre things to the Scriptures when we take disparate verses from the same context and use them as stand-alone doctrinal statements. Some prime examples of this come from the same book of the Bible as our last quote.

Forcing Christian Values At Gunpoint

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Anti-Choice Measures Enacted in 2012 Included:

• Arizona, Georgia, and Louisiana enacted pre-viability bans on abortion care after 20 weeks. None of these laws has an adequate exception to protect women's health or for cases in which the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest. Only Georgia and Louisiana offer a narrow and ambiguous exception for a "medically futile pregnancy." These unconstitutional laws are clearly designed as a challenge to Roe v. Wade.
• The Missouri legislature overrode the governor's veto and enacted a law that allows employers to refuse to cover birth control, abortion care, and sterilization. Arizona also broadened the existing refusal provision in its contraceptive-equity law. Lastly, Kansas broadened its existing abortion refusal law to sweep in birth control and referrals for these two services.
• Four states – Alabama, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wisconsin – passed abortion-coverage bans. These measures ban coverage of abortion in the states' health-insurance exchanges.
• The Missouri legislature overrode the governor's veto and enacted a law that allows employers to refuse to cover birth control, abortion care, and sterilization. Arizona also broadened the existing refusal provision in its contraceptive-equity law. Lastly, Kansas broadened its existing abortion refusal law to sweep in birth control and referrals for these two services.
• Arizona and North Carolina enacted laws restricting state funds from going to Planned Parenthood or to any health center that provides abortion care. (North Carolina's legislature overrode the governor's veto.) These types of laws make it difficult for reproductivehealth centers to provide birth control, prenatal care, and cancer screenings to low-income women who rely on those centers for their health care.
• Arizona, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Virginia enacted forced-ultrasound laws that require a woman seeking abortion care first to undergo an ultrasound procedure that neither she requests nor her doctor recommends. When a similar law was struck down in Oklahoma, the state's anti-choice lawmakers passed a new one.
• Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee imposed onerous regulations on abortion providers that are intended to make abortion care all but unavailable to women in the state. In Louisiana, the law prohibits certain qualified health-care professionals from providing abortion care. In Mississippi and Tennessee, in addition to the extensive and unreasonable requirements to which providers are already subject, each state now requires that all physicians providing abortion services must have admitting privileges at a local hospital, a near impossibility when nothing in the law requires hospitals to grant such privileges.
• Utah enacted a law forcing women to wait 72 hours before accessing abortion services. Mandatory delays create extreme burdens for women, especially women in rural areas who must often travel long distances to reach a health-care provider, or women who simply do not have the resources to take extra time off work or pay for child care. Although mandatory-delay laws are common, Utah is only the third state in the country to enact a delay of this magnitude.
• South Dakota enacted a biased-counseling mandate that effectively forces providers to interrogate their patients who seek abortion care. It forces doctors to violate a woman's privacy by asking about deeply personal topics, including her religious beliefs. Perhaps more alarming, it requires that her answers then be recorded in her medical records. The law has been temporarily enjoined pending litigation.
• Voters in Montana approved a ballot measure that requires physicians to give 48 hours notice to a young woman's parent before she can obtain abortion services, and provides no exception for rape or incest. The measure jeopardizes the health and safety of young women who may justifiably fear physical or emotional abuse if forced to disclose their pregnancy.
• This year, two states defeated ballot measures attacking choice under the guise of religious freedom. Residents of North Dakota and Florida voted down constitutional amendments that could have led to discriminatory practices endangering women's access to reproductivehealth care. Measure 3 in North Dakota would have allowed employers to deny their workers access to affordable contraceptives or to fire an employee who had a child out of wedlock, claiming an interference with their religious belief. Amendment 8 in Florida could have allowed a health program to deny information about birth control to victims of human trafficking.

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