In my previous post on abortion, I discussed the leaked Supreme Court draft on the repeal of Roe v. Wade, and some political and religious aspects of the abortion debate.  Today, the repeal has become a reality and I will discuss some of the issues that are surfacing as potential consequences of it.  Indeed, other voices are now being heard.  While conservative Christians have constantly promoted the notion that their anti-abortion stance is consistent with a correct reading of the Bible, some Jewish readers of the (Hebrew) Bible have been presenting a different view.  Furthermore, anti-abortionists have often been criticized because their pro-life good will is limited to the unborn but fades away after the child is born.  Some pro-lifers, to their credit, are taking that criticism seriously and are thinking about how to do better.

In an article published on June 14, 2022 in the Atlantic, Danya Ruttenberg offers interesting insights on a Jewish perspective on the abortion issue.  Recognizing the influence of white evangelicals in shaping the debate, she writes:

“Religion is often associated with an anti-abortion stance in the American popular imagination—and white Evangelicals have been encouraging that connection for decades. Now those efforts are culminating in the most disastrous year for abortion access since Roe v. Wade was decided 49 years ago, and in the Supreme Court’s likely reversal of Roe. But many of us working to protect the right to abortion are doing so because of our religious commitments, not despite them.”

I have previously noted that many anti-abortionists refer to Jeremiah 1:5, a frankly irrelevant biblical passage, to justify their view.  Ruttenberg is a rabbi and the scholar in residence at the National Council of Jewish Women.  She provides the following biblical justification for her position:

“A story from the Book of Exodus, part of the Hebrew Bible, forms the backbone of Judaism’s formal take on abortion. Two people are fighting; one accidentally pushes someone who is pregnant, causing a miscarriage. The text outlines the consequences: If only a miscarriage happens, the harm doer is obligated to pay financial damages. If, however, the pregnant person dies, the case is treated as manslaughter. The meaning is clear: The fetus is regarded as potential life, rather than actual life.

This idea is underscored in the Talmud, a collection of statements from ancient rabbis. One declares that, for the first 40 days of pregnancy, a fetus is ‘merely water’—essentially, it has no legal status at all. From the end of that 40-day period until the end of the pregnancy, it’s regarded as part of the pregnant person’s body—’as its mother’s thigh,’ the Talmud says. Here, again, the fetus is secondary to the adult human carrying it.

This becomes most clear when a pregnancy or labor endangers the pregnant person. According to a roughly 2,000-year-old source called the Mishnah (the core of the Talmud), abortion is explicitly called for to save their life. The life of the baby comes into consideration only once the head has emerged. But beyond life-or-death situations, Jewish law permits abortion in situations where carrying the fetus to term would cause ‘woe’—and that includes risks to mental health or to kavod habriot (dignity).”

Ruttenberg then adds that concepts promoted by evangelical Christians, such as “fetal personhood” or the notion that life begins at conception, are in direct conflict with beliefs held by Jews, Muslims, atheists, agnostics and even many Christians.  In other words, imposing the beliefs of one religion on other religions raises serious questions about separation of state and religion.

These arguments provide support for a lawsuit filed by a Jewish congregation in Florida to challenge a new state law that prohibits abortion after 15 weeks.  As reported by the Washington Post,

“The lawsuit filed by the Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor of Boynton Beach contends the law that takes effect July 1 violates Jewish teachings, which state abortion ‘is required if necessary to protect the health, mental or physical well-being of the woman’ and for other reasons.

‘As such, the act prohibits Jewish women from practicing their faith free of government intrusion and this violates their privacy rights and religious freedom,’ says the lawsuit, filed last week in Leon County Circuit Court.

The lawsuit adds that people who ‘do not share the religious views reflected in the act will suffer’ and that it ‘threatens the Jewish people by imposing the laws of other religions upon Jews.’”

Of course, the lawsuit is not endorsed by all Jews and some conservative Jews reject it, denouncing it as a progressive stunt far outside of traditionalist thinking.  However, the authors of the more traditionalist opinion, in my view, entirely rely on legal arguments and do not even make an attempt to provide scriptural justification.  In fact, they appear to be in no position to contradict the biblical arguments made by Ruttenberg.  Their article could have been written by a non-Jew and offers nothing to explain why it represents more traditional Jewish thinking except for the claim that traditionalist Jews believe in the God of the Bible, with the insinuation that progressive Jews do not.

I am quite aware that abortion is not an explicit biblical topic, and I have denounced conservative Christians’ misuse of Jeremiah 1:5.  If the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is accepted as authoritative Scripture for Jews and Christians, then I have to say that Ruttenberg’s argument has more substance since it relies on biblical content that clearly implies that the Bible values the mother (adult life) more than the fetus (potential life), a notion that is intuitive to most people.  And since the mother is the one who must carry the fetus during the entire pregnancy all the way to childbirth, why should her right to choose be taken from her?  Legal arguments tend to contribute very little to the moral aspects of the debate.  They can go either way and are won by those in power, a fact that is adequately demonstrated by the current Supreme Court whose rulings are quite predictable.

Ruttenberg provides some additional insights on the moral implications of her pro-abortion stance:

“Many secular conversations center on the question of whether abortion is a right. But in Judaism, we talk about responsibilities—to one another, and to God. For me, defending abortion is about our broader ethical and spiritual obligations, as well as the specific ones prescribed by Jewish law. In the Hebrew Bible, the Israelites who have been liberated from slavery are commanded to set up systems of care for the most socially marginalized. We are taught to look for the people who are most harmed, and to focus on their needs. And indeed, abortion bans deepen every structural inequality in our society. They disproportionately affect people who are struggling financially and people of color. Limited abortion access provides additional challenges for those already experiencing barriers to accessing health care, including young people, those in rural communities, immigrants, disabled people, and trans men and some nonbinary people. And people who are denied access to reproductive health care are more likely to live in poverty and to remain in abusive relationships.”

In this statement, she is saying that she is compelled by her religion to seek the common good, which implies going beyond mere observance of the prescriptions of the Jewish law.  Such an attitude is actually not far from the New Testament notion that a spirit of love, rather than an obligation to observe the law, must guide the believer’s conduct in the world.  As I mentioned in my previous article, Adam Russell Taylor expresses similar thoughts when he explains why he is both pro-life and pro-choice (As I have said before, I reject any notion of equivalency between the terms pro-life and anti-abortion).

In a recent article, conservative commentator Cal Thomas criticizes Catholics such as President Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and “self-proclaimed” evangelicals such as Adam Russell Taylor, accusing them of being “infected” by “the world.”  He then offers advice to them:

“Here are a few verses that Pelosi and Taylor might wish to consider: ‘Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born I set you apart’ (Jeremiah 1:5). ‘For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb…I am fearfully and wonderfully made.’ (Psalm 139:13-14).”

What do these verses have to do with abortion? Jeremiah 1:5 is about God’s foreknowledge and even preplanning of Jeremiah’s ministry, and Psalm 139:13-14 is an expression of awe for God’s creative activity.  Sometimes the fetus does not survive.  Should God then be blamed for the failure?  And in case the fetus is aborted, is there anything in these verses that keeps us from assuming that God had planned it that way?  If God controls the whole process, should he also be blamed when it fails?  Does it make sense to build a theology of abortion on such isolated and clearly irrelevant verses?  On Jeremiah 1:5 Katherine Pater, a Presbyterian pastor, explains:

“But claiming that Jeremiah 1:5 clearly condemns abortion overlooks quite a bit about the passage. For one thing, our Jewish siblings have interpreted this passage differently for centuries. The widely read medieval commentator known as Rashi focuses his commentary on Jeremiah’s prophetic mission and just how young Jeremiah is to be offering reprisals of Israel’s behavior; for Rashi, the phrase ‘before you were born I consecrated you’ emphasizes Jeremiah’s inevitable call and destiny to be a prophet, not when fetal life or personhood begins. In fact, Jewish law holds that a  prenate — a term Christian ethicist Rebecca Todd Peters uses to honor the liminal, potential life in a pregnant person’s body — is not considered separate from a pregnant individual’s body until birth, or at least until the head emerges from the parent’s body.

Claiming that Jeremiah 1:5 clearly condemns abortion also overlooks the fact that up until the 1970s, many Protestant Christians also supported reproductive rights, with one Southern Baptist wire service writing in 1973 that the decision in Roe v. Wade ‘advanced the cause of religious liberty, human equality and justice.’ It’s unlikely these Christians read Jeremiah 1:5 as condemning their decision.”

But Cal Thomas has more to say:

“In the New Testament when the pregnant Mary visits the pregnant Elizabeth – a distant cousin – the unborn John the Baptist leaps within Elizabeth’s womb, prompting her to say, ‘…why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should come to me?’ (Luke 1:43). Not the mother of her fetal or potential Lord, but present tense.”

Is this the ultimate statement on the abortion issue?  What do we say about a woman who carries a baby in her womb today, in the present tense, but has a miscarriage two weeks later?  Doesn’t such a situation make the idea of “potential life” a valid one?  Furthermore, Mary and Elizabeth are the two mothers in this story.  Did they need the Roman Empire to tell them what to do with their own bodies?

Why do “self-proclaimed” Christians such as Thomas cling to such weak arguments and pay much less attention to New Testament calls to love one’s neighbor and promote justice for the needy?  Unfortunately, Thomas is convinced he has made his point and goes on to admonish his selected targets, urging them not to “conform to the pattern of this world.”

Cal Thomas’ problem is not that he is an anti-abortionist.  It is that he takes a difficult issue that must be handled with love and sensitivity and turns it into a mere legal issue.  On top of that, he uses weak and irrelevant biblical justification.  That puts him on one extreme of the debate, just as some supporters of abortion rights under all circumstances find themselves on the opposite extreme.

A recent study of abortion attitudes in the United States shows that the battle between the two extremes is a poor representation of the complexity and diversity that actually characterize American views.  Here is one of the conclusions from the study:

“None of the Americans we interviewed talked about abortion as a desirable good. Views range in terms of abortion’s preferred availability, justification, or need, but Americans do not uphold abortion as a happy event or something they want more of. Attitudinal differences about abortion’s morality and legality do not diminish the weightiness of abortion’s impact in real life, on real people. Acknowledging this does not resolve to a legal position, but makes room for humanity and for talking about hard things.”

The chart below shows where Americans place themselves on a scale that covers the range of attitudes between the two extremes.  The study also provides recommendations for more helpful approaches to deal with the abortion issue.

Along the same line, a recent article published in the Atlantic by Caitlin Flanagan denounces the debate between the two extremes as dishonest.  Flanagan describes the horrors and atrocities experienced by women who found it necessary to have abortions in the pre-Roe era.  In particular, the attempts to use Lysol (often prescribed by doctors) to induce abortions led to frightening medical emergencies and even deaths.  But while she expresses her solidarity with the women who underwent such suffering, she also describes the strong feeling she had, when she saw a 3D ultrasound of a 12-week fetus, that she was looking at a developing human being.  She then complains about the current shape of the debate:

“The argument for abortion, if made honestly, requires many words: It must evoke the recent past, the dire consequences to women of making a very simple procedure illegal.  The argument against it doesn’t take even a single word.  The argument against it is a picture.

This is not an argument anyone is going to win.  The loudest advocates on both sides are terrible representatives of their cause.  When women are urged to “shout your abortion,” and when abortion becomes the subject of stand-up comedy routines, the attitude toward abortion seems ghoulish.  Who could possibly be proud that they see no humanity at all in the images that science has made so painfully clear?  When anti-abortion advocates speak in the most graphic terms about women “sucking babies out of the womb,” they show themselves without mercy.  They are not considering the extremely human, complex, and often heartbreaking reasons behind women’s private decisions.  The truth is that the best argument on each side is a damn good one, and until you acknowledge that fact, you aren’t speaking or even thinking honestly about the issue.  You certainly aren’t going to convince anybody.“

An article written by Kevin Clarke and published by the Jesuite magazine America three days before the Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade starts with the following sentence:

“Even pro-life advocates who have long called for overturning Roe v. Wade are unsure what comes next as a Supreme Court decision that could reverse the landmark 1973 ruling that legalized abortion in the United States is expected this month.”

Clarke then focuses on the state of Texas where Senate Bill 8, the so-called Heartbeat Act, enacted in September 2021, ends access to abortion when fetal cardiac activity can be detected, at about six weeks gestation.  He summarizes his conversation with Ingrid Meyer, the director of ministries for the Catholic Pro-Life Community, the Respect Life Ministry of the Diocese of Dallas.  According to Meyer, women have been, in reaction to the new law, going very early on to their abortion providers:

“’Even if they do not know that they’re pregnant,’ she says, ‘they are going straight to the abortion center because they are afraid with this heartbeat law that they will not be able to get an abortion.’ That is where some women respond positively to encounters with sidewalk counselors from the Catholic Pro-Life Community, accepting assistance in preparing for a pregnancy instead of ending it.”

Meyer expects the number of women needing assistance to double in 2022.  The effort she leads is part of Project Gabriel, a nationwide Catholic program in existence since 1995.  She describes the current approach of the ministry as follows:

“’Whenever we get a mom who comes to us who is in need—regardless if she’s abortion-minded or not, if she’s pregnant and she needs help—we are there,’ Ms. Meyer says. The women are quickly paired with volunteers, called ‘angels,’ from Project Gabriel, part of a national network of parish-based ministries assisting women facing unexpected pregnancies.

The outreach provides emotional support, of course, but it also seeks to cover basic material needs for young people confronting unplanned pregnancies. ‘We help them with everything they might need for the baby that’s coming,’ Ms. Meyer says. ‘We have the cribs, the diapers, the strollers, and then we also, in certain circumstances, provide financial assistance.’”

The type of assistance received may even include getting a job or an education.  According to Geralyn Kaminsky, the executive director of the Catholic Pro-Life Community, women can easily change their minds about abortion once they realize that a support network is available.  As reported by Clarke,

“Ms. Kaminsky believes efforts like Walking with Moms in Need and Project Gabriel will only be growing larger in the future. ’We’re going to continue offering that support and direction for resources for pregnant and parenting moms and families in need,’ she says. ‘We will do this if Roe is overturned, and we will do this if Roe is not overturned.’”

The interesting thing about her statement is the recognition that the outreach work does not depend on the repeal of Roe v. Wade.  The women change their minds about abortion through persuasion and offers of assistance rather than legal or religious threats.

Clarke also reports on a change in the tactics used by these projects:

“Randy Bollig, the executive director at Loreto House, in Denton, Tex., wants to make it clear that his agency is not like some of the other crisis pregnancy operations in Texas. Many of them operate in ‘stealth mode,’ he says, to lure women who believe they are entering a medical clinic. ‘That was the model in the ’80s, and there are still some centers that operate like that. I don’t think that’s good for our movement.’

According to Mr. Bollig, Loreto House is upfront about its intention to assist women through their pregnancy, not helping them end it. Loreto’s model is service, he says.

‘We try to focus on loving the mom,’ Mr. Bollig says. ‘We don’t use any type of graphic images; we don’t use any type of shaming or Scripture or trying to convert them to the Catholic faith. We’re kind of like trying to emulate our Blessed Mother.’”

Mr. Bollig recognizes the need to provide assistance to the women over a period of time, and says his organization does it until the child is 36 months of age.  He also notes the need for more financial assistance from the Texas pro-life community and the state’s taxpayers.  But in this regard, even though Bollig expresses some optimism, Clarke has some words of caution regarding the willingness of red states such as Texas to fund social programs:

“And a legacy of minimal investments in social spending in Texas will have to be overcome. More than 25 percent of women of childbearing age are uninsured in Texas, the highest rate in the nation.

But inconsistency and contradictions on abortion and social support abound far beyond Texas. Many states with the toughest restrictions on abortion or impending bans have also declined to expand Medicaid, cutting off access to health care to many low-income women who become pregnant. A Tulane study in 2021 found that states with the highest restrictions on abortion also experienced the highest maternal death rates, and according to a recent analysis of federal data by The Associated Press, those states are also some of the hardest places to have and raise a healthy child.”

In summary, with the repeal of Roe v. Wade, it is clear that pro-life objectives, as exemplified by the work of the Catholic institutions discussed above, will need significant funding particularly in red states where resistance to such funding has been highest.  Such contradictions are one reason why some of us have questioned the motives of the anti-abortion movement.