I have written about the abortion issue before.  I do not describe myself as pro-abortion.  I even think I could call myself a pro-lifer, but I do not identify with the pro-life movement simply because I have never been comfortable with it.  For that reason, I’d rather be called pro-choice.

I think those who are not biologically capable of giving birth are not qualified to control decisions on abortion.  Furthermore, Christians who refer to the Bible to push their anti-abortion views often do it in bath faith.  Their biblical justification is bizarre.  For example, when Mike Pence quotes Jeremiah 1:5 to support his position, I wonder if that is the best he can do.  Indeed, Jeremiah 1:5 says:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

In this verse, God is talking to Jeremiah, whom he has chosen as his messenger.  He is saying that Jeremiah was predestined to be his messenger.  He knew Jeremiah before Jeremiah was even conceived.  That is definitely not a reference to a fetus.  If Jeremiah had been aborted by his mother, it would be logical to say that he was not predestined to be God’s messenger.  As for his mother’s guilt on the matter, it is an issue that has nothing to do with Jeremiah 1:5, but can be debated on the basis of the moral imperative to preserve life.  Abortion itself is not an explicit biblical topic.

It has been pointed out by many that being a pro-lifer involves much more that taking a stand on abortion, and anti-abortionists have been accused of caring more about the fetus than the growing child and his struggling mother.  Perhaps that is why known evidence points to the reality that abortions tend to be higher under Republican administrations than they are under Democrats.

Today, I will focus on two elements that contribute to lack of credibility for the anti-abortion movement: disrespect of women and questionable political motives associated with the history of the movement.

As I indicated above, it is rather odd that the anti-abortion movement has been primarily driven by men who cannot possibly understand the processes of pregnancy and childbirth.  Understandably, women who stand for their right to choose link the abortion issue to widespread patriarchal attitudes in society and in the religious establishment.  An article published by Renée Darlene Roden on September 8, 2021, in reaction to the Texas abortion law, makes this point with clarity.  The title of the article is Pro-life Catholics: You can’t end abortion without taking on the patriarchy.  Roden, who self-identifies as a pro-life Catholic who believes that “a fetus in the womb is a person,” writes:

“I am suggesting that pro-life Catholics think as much about mores and social structures as they do about legislation. In order to achieve full justice on the issue of abortion, the moral discussion has to explore the personal and theological relationships that laws incarnate and reflect but cannot dictate.

What is radically apparent to me from discussions with close family members to the Babel of the Catholic Twittersphere is that too many Catholics do not understand or even seek to understand why abortion access in some form is so broadly supported in the United States.”

In my previous post, I discussed the fact that Christian teaching emphasizes the Gospel of Christ and deemphasizes a return to legalism.  On the matter of abortion, this means those who want to impose their views through laws are not necessarily trying to achieve Christian goals, even though they claim they are.  Indeed, the Christian objective is an inner transformation that makes individuals inclined to act in Christ-like ways, without being coerced into doing so.  This is what is called life by the Spirit, and that is why the apostle Paul says: “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (Galatians 5:18).  Therefore, to Christians, a return to reliance on the law is either an admission of failure or a deliberate decision to retreat from New Testament teaching.

In the above statement, Roden is saying that there are some deeper moral considerations that need to be addressed, and whose effects cannot be erased by just promulgating a law.  She then explains:

“Maybe what supporters of abortion in the United States recognize is how deeply patriarchal attitudes about sex are ingrained in our culture, how little control women have over when and how they have sex—even with partners they love. Maybe they see the immense pressures a patriarchal culture places on women to have sex on a male timeline and its negative effects on women. Perhaps they are concerned about the horrifically high rates of domestic violence in this country. And the disturbing statistic that 1 in 5 American women will, at some point in their lives, be raped.

The Catholic Church has made it clear it stands in solidarity with unborn life. But in the three decades I have been a part of the church, I have seen it do little to address the abuse of women.”

Of course, there is no reason to believe that what she says about the Catholic Church cannot be said about other denominations.  She mentions street harassment, which she has often been victim of:

“Catcalling may seem trivial and not grave enough to incite some sort of philosophical awakening. But I would wager that anyone who minimizes the experience of constantly having men approach you and say whatever they want about your appearance, sexual desirability or body probably has never experienced it. And they certainly have never considered catcalling’s corollary—if men can say whatever they like, then they can do whatever they like.”

Going beyond street harassment, she then adds:

“Street harassment is just the tip of the iceberg of a deeper, broader system of objectification—domestic violence, sexual aggression, rape—which send the message to women that their bodies are not their own to control.”

As I said at the beginning of this post, I have never been truly comfortable with the pro-life movement.  I agree with Radon when she says:

“Abortion has been in existence as long as people have gotten pregnant. Again, I do not think it is an ethical option. But in a society in which women can statistically be assured of unwanted sexual contact or abuse, to many, it seems like a necessary lifeline.

And if the pro-life cause has somehow failed to convince the rest of the country to care about the objectification or denial of the personhood of the human fetus in the womb, it is perhaps because they have spectacularly failed to care about the objectification of women who carry them.

Abortion exists because women have yet to be recognized as people in a world that curtails their freedom, that stifles their autonomy through fear, threat of harm, shame, poverty, inequality.

Instead of being free to choose the good, women are often forced by the systems we live in to choose the lesser of two evils.”

She ends her article with the following warning:

“To attempt to outlaw abortion without caring whether or not abortions will occur illegally or without caring why so many women see abortion as so essential to their freedom, health and happiness is shortsighted. And it is that blindspot that makes the pro-life political apparatus appear so misogynist and cruel to its political counterparts. A movement that wants to end abortions has to listen to the voices of women demanding change. It has to seriously consider why women—particularly impoverished women—see abortion as a necessity.

Until all economic and social structures of sexism are transformed and the patriarchal mores in our hearts and relationships are converted, there will always be unwanted pregnancies. And if there are unwanted pregnancies, there will be abortions.”

My discomfort with the anti-abortion movement has been associated with the fact that I did not hold the people who were leading it in high regard.  An essay published by Thomas B. Edsall in the New York Times on September 15, 2021, provides an excellent review of the origins of the movement and its link to the rise of the religious right.  The essay is titled Abortion Has Never Been Just About Abortion.

Noting that abortion was not a highly partisan issue as recently as 1984, Edsall quotes Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University, who told him that in those days, “40 percent of Democratic identifiers were pro-life, while 39 percent were pro-choice. Among Republican identifiers, 33 percent were pro-choice, 45 percent were pro-life and 22 percent were in the middle.”  By 2020, the situation had changed drastically:

“73 percent of Democratic identifiers took the pro-choice position, while only 17 percent took the pro-life position, with 10 percent in the middle. Among Republicans, 60 percent took the pro-life position while 25 percent took the pro-choice position and 15 percent were in the middle.”

Abramowitz also mentions a strong connection between anti-abortion support and racial resentment:

“Whites who score high on measures of racial resentment and racial grievance are far more likely to support strict limits on abortion than whites who score low on these measures. This is part of a larger picture in which racial attitudes are increasingly linked with opinions on a wide range of disparate issues including social welfare issues, gun control, immigration and even climate change. The fact that opinions on all of these issues are now closely interconnected and connected with racial attitudes is a key factor in the deep polarization within the electorate that contributes to high levels of straight ticket voting and a declining proportion of swing voters.”

The religious right was led, in the 1970’s and 1980’s by people such as Richard Viguerie, Paul Weyrich, Phyllis Schlafly and Jerry Falwell Sr., who were motivated by politics rather than moral principles.  They opposed the civil rights movement and were looking for ways of expanding their political base.  Their strategists “settled on a concerted effort to politicize abortion in part because it dodged the race issue and offered the opportunity to unify conservative Catholics and Evangelicals.”

In particular, the so-called Moral Majority was created as a reaction to a push by the IRS, in 1978, to impose taxes on churches that ran segregated private schools.  The abortion issue was selected by conservative strategists after an intense debate that recognized that it would have been difficult to gather support for opposing a tax against segregation.  Edsall quotes Katherine Stewart, author of the 2019 book The Power Worshipers, who told him that abortion opponents

“are more likely to be committed to a patriarchal worldview in which the control of reproduction, and female sexuality in particular, is thought to be central in maintaining a gender hierarchy that (as they see it) sustains the family, which they claim is under threat from secular, modern forces.”

Ironically, this “patriarchal worldview” and this “gender hierarchy” obviously contribute to the attitudes toward women denounced by Renée Roden.

Today, abortion has become one of the most dividing issues in national politics, and Republicans are typically pro-life, while Democrats are typically pro-choice.  Of course, the Religious Right has identified itself with the Republican party.  Edsall mentions the Southern Baptist Convention as an example showing how the stand on abortion has changed between 1971 and 2020.  In a resolution published in 1971, the Southern Baptists declared:

“Be it further resolved, that we call upon Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”

In contrast, the resolution adopted last June is far more radical and states: “We affirm that the murder of preborn children is a crime against humanity that must be punished equally under the law.”  It also rejects any exceptions that had previously been allowed:

“We humbly confess and lament any complicity in recognizing exceptions that legitimize or regulate abortion, and of any apathy, in not laboring with the power and influence we have to abolish abortion.”

Edsall also refers to an essay by Randall Balmer, a professor of religion at Dartmouth, who points to the fact that the embrace of the abortion issue by the religious right was motivated by politics rather than religious values.  Balmer talks about a meeting in Washington, DC, in 1990, where Weyrich spoke:

“Remember, Weyrich said animatedly, that the religious right did not come together in response to the Roe decision. No, Weyrich insisted, what got the movement going as a political movement was the attempt on the part of the Internal Revenue Service to rescind the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University because of its racially discriminatory policies, including a ban on interracial dating that the university maintained until 2000.”

Balmer further explains:

“At a time when open racism was becoming unfashionable, these politicians needed a more high-minded issue, one that would not compel them to surrender their fundamental political orientation. And of course the beauty of defending a fetus is that the fetus demands nothing in return — housing, health care, education — so it’s a fairly low-risk advocacy.”

These historical facts indicate that the Moral Majority was more about politics than it was about morality.  I witnessed many of them, and that contributed to my discomfort with the movement.  Edsall’s article provides more information not covered here about the dynamics that led to abortion politics in 2021.