BLASPHEMY : ABORTION AS A MORAL CHOICE

BLASPHEMY: ABORTION AS A MORAL CHOICE
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Abortion as a Moral Choice
By Rev. Anne Fowler
Created Dec 6 2007 - 9:06am
In April of 1973 my husband left me, pleading that he had fallen in love with our upstairs tenant and wanted to spend his life with her. I was four months pregnant. Roe v. Wade had been decided three months earlier.

My obstetrician sent me to see a social worker to help me sort out my feelings and make my plans. She began every one of her questions or suggestions with, "if you want an abortion...", until I finally shouted at her, "I DON'T want an abortion. " "Well, " she observed, "That solves that problem."

I had wanted this baby fiercely for some time, and my husband's defection did nothing to diminish my desire. But that conversation with the social worker, and the knowledge that an abortion would have been legally available had I felt unable to proceed with the pregnancy, added depth and resonance to my desire. This was a most wanted child. I had the choice, and I chose to have a baby.

My daughter told me recently, in a discussion about her father- who has never figured into her life except as an absence, a question mark- "Mom, when I was a kid and used to ask about my father, you always said, ‘You were a very wanted baby.'" So that knowledge has been central to her sense of her self.

At another point, a few years later, I did have an abortion. I was a single mother, working and pursuing a path to ordination in the Episcopal Church. The potential father was not someone I would have married; he would have been no better a candidate for fatherhood than my daughter's absent father. The timing was wrong, the man was wrong, and I easily, though not happily, made the decision to terminate the pregnancy.

I have not the slightest regret about either of these decisions, nor the slightest guilt. I felt sorrow and loss at the time of my abortion, but less so than when I'd miscarried some years earlier. Both of my choices, I believe, were right for me and my circumstances: morally correct in their context, practical, and fruitful in their outcomes.

That is, both choices were choices for life: in the first instance, I chose for the life of the unborn child; in the second, I chose for my own vocational life, my economic stability, and my mental and emotional health and wholeness.

Shortly after my ordination to the priesthood, I was asked to speak at the National Abortion Federation's annual meeting, on a Clergy Panel, with the theme of "Abortion as a Moral Choice." I wondered skeptically who would attend such a panel, but to my surprise, the room was packed with people - abortion providers and other clinic workers. Our audience was so eager and grateful to hear their work affirmed, to hear religious authorities assuring them that God was on their side! I understood that I had a responsibility, indeed, a call, as a pro-choice religious professional, to speak out and to advocate publicly for women's reproductive rights 1 and health, and I have tried to be faithful to that call.

To talk theologically about women's right to choose is to talk about justice, equality, health and wholeness, and respect for the full humanity and autonomy of every woman. Typically, as moral theologians, we discuss the value of potential life (the fetus) as against the value of lived life - the mature and relational life of a woman deciding her capacity to continue or terminate a pregnancy. And we believe that, in general, the value of that actual life outweighs the value of the potential.

I like to talk, as well, in terms of gift and of calling. I believe that all life is a gift - not only potential life, but life developing and ripening with its many challenges, complications, joys and sorrows. When we face difficult reproductive choices we balance many gifts, many goods, and to fail to recognize the gifts of our accomplished lives is to fail to recognize God's ongoing blessing. I believe as well that God calls us all to particular vocations, and our decisions about whether and when to bear children are part of that larger pattern of our lives' sacred meanings.

Visit RH Reality Check throughout December to read about the ways in which individuals, both clergy and lay people, connect their religion or spirituality to their commitment to reproductive rights. To learn more about the connections between religion and reproductive justice, visit the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice 2.





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Source URL:
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org//blog/2007/12/06/abortion-as-a-moral-choice
Links:
1 http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/glossary%23Reproductive+Rights
2 http://www.rcrc.org








Rev. Anne Fowler

Organization/Company
Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice



About Me
Reverend Anne Carroll Fowler is an Episcopal priest and Rector of St. John's Church in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts and is currently co-convener of the Pro-Choice Religious Leadership Council of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. She is also a member of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice Speakers Bureau. She is a former member of the Boards of Preterm and Planned Parenthood and of the Ethics Committee at Faulkner Hospital, a former chair of the Women-in-Crisis Committee and the Sexuality Study Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. She is a participant in the Public Conversations Project, the ongoing dialogue among "pro-life" and pro-choice leaders in Boston. She is also President of the Board of the Massachusetts Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry.









Protestant
by Dr. Paul D. Simmons

The biblical portrait of personhood begins not with an explanation of conception but with a portrayal of the creation of Adam and Eve. The biblical portrait of a person, therefore, is that of a complex, many-sided creature with godlike abilities and the moral responsibility to make choices. The woman unquestionably fits the biblical portrayal of person.

The abortion question focuses on the personhood of the woman, who in turn considers the potential personhood of the fetus in terms of the multiple dimensions of her own history and future. Because the pregnancy is hers, the decision to continue the pregnancy is uniquely hers. She is aware that God wills health and happiness for her, for those she may bring into the world, and for the human race. Thus, she is engaged in reflection on her own well-being, the genetic health of the fetus, and the survival of the human race.

The absence of prohibitions against abortion in the Bible does not mean either that abortion was widely practiced or that there was a cavalier attitude about pregnancy termination. Then as now elective abortion posed substantive issues with which a woman or couple must come to terms. Respect for germinating life, one’s own beliefs, and one’s life plan all enter into the decision. Certainly reasons beyond mere convenience are needed to make the morally serious decision to terminate a germinal existence. Abortion is never to be taken lightly, but it is not a forbidden option.

Roman Catholic and Protestant doctrines differ in, among other things, the degree to which they are legalistic. The Catholic Church would have us obey the rules formulated by the Vatican, but Protestants believe that we are free by grace and justified by faith. The phrase “the sacredness of life” means one thing to Catholic bishops—that the life of the fetus is all-important—but to most people of other Christian denominations it means that there is a presumptive right to life that is not absolute but is conditioned by the claims of others. For us the right to life and the sacredness of life mean that there should be no absolute or unbreakable rules that take precedence over the lives of existing human persons.

The pro-life position is really a pro-fetus position, and the pro-choice position is really pro-woman. Those who take the pro-fetus position define the woman in relation to the fetus. They assert the rights of the fetus over the right of the woman to be a moral agent or decision maker with respect to her life, health, and family security.
Learn More

Personhood, the Bible, and the Abortion Debate, by Paul Simmons, Ph.D., Th.M. (PDF)

Is the Fetus a Person? The Bible's View, by Roy Bowen Ward (PDF)

Respecting the Moral Agency of Women, by Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, Ph.D. (PDF)

Abortion: A Christian Ethical Perspective, by Dr. John Swomley