The main issue is to understand that the point of view opposed to the one we hold is not evil incarnate, but simply a different point of view. If we react harshly to those who disagree with us, then we will never come to agreement, or even compromise.

And this leads me to my second point. The responses in the abortion debate in society in large has been so dramatic and extreme, that it makes discussion about the subject almost impossible.

Could it not be that Anabaptists, with concern for mediation and peacemaking, could open up this discussion to all, trying to understand the other point of view, even while disagreeing with it, setting aside the propoganda and seeing the true human feeling and compassion on both sides?

I have hope in some of the present discussions about public policy, seeing possibilites that both sides might agree to having abortions reduced by reducing poverty, and increasing opportunities for well rounded education about sex and contraception.

As a future physician, I have appreciated everyone’s commentary here. I imagine I will have to wrestle with these questions more in the future. I don’t have anything new to say really, but I do feel that there are significant “gray” aspects to this question. As others have pointed out, I think that as people who claim to value life, we should focus on that, and not as much on trying to “legislate morality” (my dad always said it would never work anyway).

This morning I found this BBC article and thought it was relevant.

I deeply believe tht everyone–not just Anabaptists–should be “anti-choice” both on abortion and on other types of killing. But we also must offer alternatives to every kind of killing. I try to do this on my web site, http://www.meehanreports.com, which includes articles on “Peaceful Alternatives” and “Practicing What They Preach” and “Saving Lives through the Churches.”

Eric, I wasn’t actually talking about abortions when I said some people use sentience as the criteria for life-taking. Well, I was by extension, but I was referring to animals. Some people believe that since animals can feel pain (are sentient), humans should not kill them or inflict pain. If someone is opposed to “taking life,” and they’re only including humans in that, they need to know why. What about humans makes our lives special? What about animals makes it OK to kill them, inflict pain, use as we see fit, etc?

These are not questions I see most Mennonites asking. Are we radical enough on YAR to ask them? (In another thread, not this one.)

For those of you who are anti-abortion (and I use that term, because I believe that’s what we’re talking about - we are talking about the fact that you consider abortion wrong in all (?) cases, and I don’t… and I think almost of us are “pro-life” in that we aren’t “pro-death” - but we all have our lines… most of us eat vegetables (and even meat, ie, animals) and contribute to cutting down trees through our use of resources… so we all have a line at which we can no longer be completely “pro-life”… but on to my question):

Are you also against contraception? Because if you aren’t, then where, really, is the line? Every egg and sperm are a potential half-a-human. For that matter, what do you make of all the times women have periods and shed unused eggs? Is that lost life? What about times when men ejaculate with no possibility of that sperm meeting an egg? Again, is that lost life? Is that murder?

If not, then where is the line? Is it simply when the egg and sperm meet? Why does it then suddenly become a problem?

But I turn that question back on us pro-choice pacifists, too: When does it become a problem? If not in the first 6 weeks, because it is a mass of cells that doesn’t have consciousness, then is it a few months later? Is it when the organs form? Is it when the baby is born and thus, we define “murder” as any taking of life after the baby leaves the uterus? That seems a little simplistic, too.

I am challenged by this issue.

I guess I am pro-choice because I don’t believe that I should create laws for women (and men too, yes - they also deal with the outcome of whether or not an abortion takes place) when there are so many situations I cannot imagine. Some are financial, some are health-related, some are related to maturity, some are related to rape.

It is the “moral” objections of the anti-abortionists that bother me most. There is an implication that the woman should have the baby because she didn’t take precautions (in the case of consensual sex - ie, we deem her a whore, or an irresponsible married woman) (and does she really not take precautions all by herself?), or because it is her duty to always protect life even when it was thrust upon her against her wishes (in the case of rape) or may hurt or even kill her in the process (in health-related issues).

There are few other areas where we make people pay for their mistakes, or the mistakes of others, in such a complete and life-changing way as a baby affects a woman (or a couple). Why do we single this particular situation out?

I am pro-choice, because I also don’t believe in telling someone they have to have an abortion.

I am pro-choice because I value the woman’s life and body, and don’t believe a baby (and the responsibility that comes with it) is public domain. I don’t believe in telling people they have to have children they don’t want, for one reason or another.

While all of this is complicated, yes, I also believe being pro-choice is very consistent with a (radical) belief in peace and justice. Abortion is not an easy choice. I don’t know anyone who has had an abortion and said it was a breeze, or that they felt so much better afterwards. But it can be the “best” choice out of many difficult and painful ones, and I believe that the people who make that choice have the right to make it.

I’m also not too worried about us men. But I think it is important to keep clear - a patriarchal system that favors men is a different thing from all men being evil and malicious. I like to think I’m not evil and malicious, but I am certainly part of a patriarchal system that gives me the privilege to vote on how women relate to their own bodies, without ever educating myself about what women deal with. The privilege is not in “not birthing” - yes, that is natural - but in the systems around us which are not.

Enough about men, this is a post about abortion. Skylark says, and I think this is accurate, “Sentience is the criteria some use to determine which forms of life are acceptable for humans to take, and which are not.” If that is the case, can anyone really argue that there is anything tragic about abortions, most of which happen while the fetus is not more than a lump of cells.

Tumors are also a lump of living cells, living parasitically of the host ‘parent’ and potentially hurting them.* The point being, it is not being “consistent” in a pro-sentient-human-life stance to be anti-abortion. It just doesn’t actually add up.

*Yes, I just called fetuses parasites. I’m not being derogatory, I’m being literal. Look it up.

What I was reacting to (perhaps carelessly) is the seemingly ever-present “let’s blame males again” phenomenon.

Don’t get me wrong, there are many men out there who deserve blame, but I often feel that blame is leveled at mere “maleness” or masculinity. Not every bad thing is the fault of there being men in the world. Again, question me if you think I’m off track. I need sharpening….

I want to say women have a choice, as my feminist instincts kick in, but my moral conscience kicks in now to say that its more of a heavy, unasked-for responsibility. That being said, legislation makes no difference in whether a woman has abortions or not, and abortion is not a simple word, or a matter of yes and no. Several countries have broken down this question into several categories, as shown in the Reproductive Rights website. My own country, Trinidad and Tobago falls in the middle ground, which allows abortions to save a woman’s life, preserve her physical health, and protect her mental health. Countries go far and wide on these restrictions. My church association worked with and set up a pregnancy resource center in our country which sought to educate and empower women who were considering their options, and to connect them with resources to help them during and post-pregnancy.

Most of the women choose to keep their babies, receiving assistance from the church for their economic reasons. Most of the people who came in to the center had economic reasons to do so, as they couldn’t afford to have a baby at that time in their life. When the center, the church, came alongside them, they were able to be in that place. Counter to that, the girls at my university or even in highschools whose parents could afford it, and were of a higher socioeconomic bracket, they all somehow knew where to get access to the ‘morning-after’ pills and even the doctors who’d do ‘back-room’ abortions. There are no abortion clinics in Trinidad, but somehow it still happens.

I remember reading a story this year of a grandmother who helped her grand-daughter after she’d had a back-room abortion, she lay on her bed clutching her dead fetus. The grandmother upon seeing this cleaned up her grand-daughter and took the fetus and hastily buried the dead fetus in her backyard, before taking her grand-daughter to the emergency room, where all was eventually revealed. Where this is a will there is a way, for people who have money and people who don’t. I think governments have better things to do than waste tax-payers dollars debating abortion laws. People who want abortions will always find a way.

I remember meeting a very outspoken public speaker, who shared her life with us when I was campus during my university years (10 years ago). She was talking about abstinence and eventually the conversation with us came around to abortion. Someone in the audience was commenting how days were different and our speaker didn’t understand the risks that young women face these days. The young lady was talking about rape, and the violence of it, and how under such circumstances the baby should be aborted, for many many reasons. It was then that our speaker, shared with us that she was a child of rape, and thanked God that her mother, believed in her as a gift from God.. and not punishment for someone else’s violent sin against her.

So as Anabaptists, who value life, and as a Christian who sees God as life, I have to affirm life in every way. If we say we support life, we have to back it up with action. Not legislative action, but ‘love’ action. When your friend is scared and considering an abortion, we have to walk with them, that hard journey. What’s the point of having more starving babies coming into this world… my point isn’t that we don’t need more babies, my point is that we’re called to feed and clothe them. That being said, what happens in the US Supreme court is of no relevance to me, neither a victory nor an upset, as we’re called to live in a different way, under a different law.

Since it’s the straight white males who tend to resist changes the most, any move to give women some say-so in their reproduction inevitably encounters at least a little white privilege. Even the non-abortifacent contraceptives like the rhythm method will meet with resistance from some men who despise the idea of not getting as much sex whenever they want it from their ovulating wives.

As strange as it sounds, adoption can be a “worst option” to a pregnant woman weighing the choice. If she keeps the child, her life will never be the same. Adoption leaves her wondering if someone is abusing the child and if the child will walk back into her life at some point. If she aborts the child, it’s over, done with, and she doesn’t have to wonder. The magazine First Things has a fascinating article from ‘98 about this paragraph. http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9804/articles/swope.html (My old browser had trouble with FT’s site, so I found the text elsewhere.)

Eric, thanks for your veiled challenge as well. I’m uncomfortable with much of the way you write, maybe I’m not radical enough :) But I’m sure there are things we can learn from each other.

A couple of thoughts on your post, Eric: Can Christian believers really use “right to life” arguments–either in regard to babies or mothers? Life is a gift, not a right. Mother, father and child have only the days given to them by God. To take by force the life of one to extend the life of another to me seems like a contradiction. I doubt that the developing infant slain in an abortion is voluntarily giving its life for its mother.

And…it does not seem right to complain that this is another case of male privilege. While it may be a privilege that men do not have the burden of childbirth, it is by God’s design. By the same design, men do not have the blessing of motherhood, and they have already for centuries suffered the loneliness of being left behind when a wife has passed away in childbirth. I don’t think the male privilege argument fits here….

Yeah, except for the contraceptives that are abortifacent. :-P That would be consistent with the life-begins-at-conception brand of pro-lifers.

This may be a function of me becoming an adult and interacting with a variety of people, but I’ve become fairly disappointed with local pro-lifers. I grew up around them, parroting what they have to say. I talked in my intro post about a recent interview with three white, middle-class Catholic men over 60 and how horribly disappointed I was in them for an insistance on legislation as the answer. All had gone to the Walk for Life in DC and donated money to Right for Life, but only one had donated anything (money, in his case) to the needs of women and children. None of them knew any women who had abortions or who’d seriously considered them, and I didn’t think to ask if they tutor, babysit, or do any of the other things Tom Dunn mentioned for single/needy parents. I know some pro-lifers who do do these things, but they are definitely the minority.

I started thinking about what I have done to get involved, and it’s a fairly short list. None were things I sought out but sort of fell into by default. Now I I have to weigh journalism ethics and refrain from donating my time to established organizations, though there’s nothing stopping me from being a supporter of family and friends who opted not to have abortions. I don’t know what list to put myself on, either, but I’m sure the local women’s health providers would know more.

Brian Hamilton said: “Emphasizing the structural reasons for the high abortion rate, again important in itself, tends in practice to betray an ambiguity over whether there’s actually anything tragic happening in the act of abortion.”

Ouch. You got me. I’ve seen myself meandering in that direction, and I don’t like that. I complain about people seeing outlawing abortion as the answer, and I might border on excusing abortion in the process. Still… I’m horribly uncomfortable with raising up the personal morality issue (abortion) as more important than the community morality issues (oppression through poverty, racism, sexism, etc.)

To those of you who consider yourselves “all-pro-life”: Don’t you really mean “pro-all-human-life”? I don’t see many people jumping up and down to become vegans. Sentience is the criteria some use to determine which forms of life are acceptable for humans to take, and which are not.

Feministe’s “Pro-Life” Mississippi Has Highest Infant Mortality Rate in the Nation.

It’s not a coincidence that the most “pro-life” states are the worst places to be born. There has long been a connection between pro-choice policies and healthy women, healthy families and healthy babies. Healthy women make for healthy babies — and pro-choice policies, which value women’s health, affirm women’s humanity, and embrace women’s general well-being, make for healthy women.

I think Tom Dunn is really onto something, and I think all of us men can chalk up another point for male privilege that we get to be “just ignorant on this issue.” Tom, I think, highlights some of the very real problems to be dealt with before espousing the wonders of pro-all-life.

It really is an issue of Women’s health, equality, and right to life for themselves. The best way to be pro-life is to support comprehensive sex education and access to contraceptives.

Here are a few links for more reading:

Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog’s FAQ: What do feminists mean by “reproductive freedom”?

Thinking Girl’s Blog for Choice Day, 2007

Lora you asked, so I would say I am pro-life across the board (consistent life ethic). But I also say, what does it matter. What difference would it make if I was pro-choice and thought it would be fine if people could kill their babies up until they were three years old? I am hesitant to even say I am pro-life because I have never done anything to benefit the cause of pro-life, so in all actuality I am not pro-life. What I am saying is that I have done as much to aid abortion as I have to stop promotion. Just like the author of Ecclesiastes figured out so long ago, what I think on this issue is meaningless.

I say that everyone who is passionate about being pro-life, and finds themselves waxing eloquent about how evil it is should be put on a list. The people on this list (which should be pretty long, given how popular “family values” are) will then be used to provide counseling for anyone who is thinking of having an abortion, financial support for the raising of the said child that is not being aborted, volunteer their time to baby-sit, and help with homework, and everything else that is involved in a parenting a child. When this is happening, then these people can call themselves pro-life.

On second thought, I am not pro-life. I believe in pro-life, but I am really neither pro-life nor pro-choice. Thanks for asking though; you got me all riled up. Anyone know of a list that I can be put on?

Brian, that’s exactly what I wanted to say. Thanks.

* Proponents for a consistent ethic of life, in my experience, use the phrase as a counterpoint to an overemphasis on abortion (and sometimes euthanasia), to extend the meaning of ‘pro-life.’ That’s a good idea, to broaden that meaning, but in practice it ends up de-emphasizing abortion to the point of leaving it out. In conversations when I’ve invoked it, it’s almost always to leave abortion behind as an issue and ‘move on’ to war, capital punishment, etc.

* Emphasizing the structural reasons for the high abortion rate, again important in itself, tends in practice to betray an ambiguity over whether there’s actually anything tragic happening in the act of abortion. Honestly, if I believed in my depths that abortion was actually violently taking an innocent human life, even if I know it’s more complicated than the choice to abort itself, would I want to wait until structural reform was completed and took effect? Advocates of addressing the structural reasons for abortion tend to see abortion as only something mildly lamentable, and are usually more concerned with the structural reasons themselves than actually with abortion.

* While many accuse ‘pro-lifers’ of reducing ethics to the individual or over-simplifying the issue, the Catholic discourse against abortion has seemed to me to resist both of those things. Abortion is itself a social and structural issue: it stands in for and helps to foster the way that a society thinks about bodies and social relationships and life itself. Are intimate social bonds–familial, sexual, communitarian–to be considered as enduring and forming, or can they be chosen and discarded at will? Is the possibility of new human life something to be considered deliberately, or can we risk it and then make a decision ‘the morning after’? The Vatican, remember, has probably been the most consistent proponent of a consistent ethic of life: calling the Iraq war unjust, urging an end to capital punishment, insisting on an end to legal abortions, and reminding us of the value of ‘natural death.’

These observations don’t decide the issue of how to respond to abortion by any means. They do, however, problematize both ‘progressive’ language about concern for abortion and the stock critiques of the ‘pro-life’ concern about legislation. Sorry so long.