Serious Saturday: Talking about abortion

A digression from movies to talk about a complex issue.

I like to keep this newsletter focused pretty tightly on movies, and not use it as a space for political opinions. Historically, I have been reserved in talking about abortion because it’s a topic that I don’t think we have proven ourselves able to discuss civilly. Tweets don’t do it justice. But I thought, given The Supreme Court’s decision yesterday, I would take some time to write, if only to wrap my brain about my thoughts, because the issue is a complex one for me, mixed with a lot of personal baggage, contradictions and more questions than answers. 

As such, this is a bit of a rambling piece, and I apologize for the lack of coherence I’m sure will develop. But right now, I’m thinking through my fingers. 

I grew up in a culture that taught that abortion was one of the most unconscionable sins a person could commit, a heinous crime against humanity and God. Most people I knew voted based on this one issue; for a long time, I did, too. No matter what other views you might hold, you were always told to vote for the anti-abortion candidate. It made things simple; you didn’t have to think too much about any other issues. Democrats were “baby killers.” Republicans were “pro-life.” This was a black-and-white issue with good guys and bad guys. 

That’s a great way to build alliances and wage a culture war, things that need a common enemy.  It doesn’t work as well in reality, though, when real are people making real decisions, the deck is stacked against an entire gender and the same politicians who wear the “pro-life” label seem not to care about those lives once they’re breathing. 

In the interest of making enemies on both sides, I’ll admit that my personal view is that I dislike abortion. As a Christian, I believe that God is sovereign over who’s born, who dies and when. I don’t believe I should have the power to take away the chance of life for a child, just as I don’t believe we should execute a criminal or end a life early, even due to severe illness. If I had the choice, I would not do it (but I don’t have that choice, and we’ll get to that).

These are all concepts that make sense to me philosophically, morally and theologically. But they get a lot more complex when you put skin on them. 

First off, let’s dismiss the idea of good guys vs. bad guys. The fundamentalist evangelical culture I was raised in loved to present the specter of “The World.” The Bible talks about the dangers of worldly systems and ways of life that are opposed to goodness and love, but I was raised to believe “The World” just meant people who didn’t believe in Jesus. They were enemies. Pray for them and love them from afar; don’t build close relationships unless conversion is your goal. And by the way, Democrats and liberals were automatically part of The World, and it was strongly implied in the circles in which I ran that they were not Christian. 

In my Christian bubble as a teenager, it was easy to view those outside of my faith as boogeymen. But in high school and into my career, when I actually began to get to know people who didn’t share my faith, I realized they weren’t antagonistic, depraved or evil. They were fun. They were kind. They were good friends who loved their families and their communities. They made me laugh. And sometimes, they were the ones there for me when the Church wasn’t. We could disagree, sometimes vehemently, but we respected each other and our differences. I’ll be honest, I couldn’t always say the same in Christian circles, when a tiny doctrinal disagreement could ruin friendships and rip a congregation apart (I once saw a church split because some people believed the pastor had bought a copying machine without proper permissions). 

My views began to change during that time. My political leanings became more flexible, as did my views on faith issues ranging from creation/evolution to the church’s perspectives on women. But I always said that while I was politically flexible, I remained staunchly conservative when it came to abortion. 

That was until I started talking to my friends, including several who had had abortions. And my perspective began to soften on many things. 

Unimaginable choices 

There are many reasons why women choose to get abortions. But growing up, the picture painted for me of why most women sought out abortions came down to “they don’t want to deal with the consequences of their actions.” 

Basically, I was told that abortion was a way of trying to get rid of proof of sin. Someone disobeyed God and had sex outside of marriage, we were told, and they got pregnant and they wanted to get away scot-free. It was, we were told, murder to try to assuage their conscience. [Note: I thought about deleting all the “we were tolds” in this paragraph, but it really highlighted to me how many of my earliest beliefs were formed because a person in power told me their view of how the world worked and I just believed them.]

Which is a really unloving and un-Christlike way to discuss the situation. 

Yes, abortion involves sex and a pregnancy a woman does not want to bring to term. But, as with many things, we lose so much humanity when we don’t leave room for nuance. 

First off, to Christians addressing this issue, we should be aware that our faith in particular should be extremely empathetic toward the complexities and difficulties that accompany an unplanned pregnancy. We follow a man who was born to a mother who became pregnant through no plans or choice of her own, and had to bear the shame of bearing a child who didn’t belong to her husband-to-be, at a time when that very well could have meant her death. I heard a lot of Christians use this story to cluck their tongues and say “Mary didn’t abort Jesus.” What I wish more recognized instead was that our faith simply acknowledges the hardship and difficult choices Mary had before her, and so we must respond with empathy and love. 

It’s worth remembering that receiving a positive pregnancy test isn’t always the joyful occasion that it might be for others. A pregnant teenage girl might face harsh judgment at home; many are kicked out of the same homes that are stringently anti-abortion. For many people, a positive pregnancy test means economic hardship. Their job may not pay for the health care they need or pay the time off required for a healthy pregnancy, let alone care for a child as it grows. There may be health concerns for the mother; it’s worth noting that many women who have abortions are married women who get pregnant even after taking all proper precautions and face a life-threatening pregnancy. Economic status, race, age and other factors all play into why the same occasion that brings joy to one woman might mean isolation, poverty and sickness for others. And, I should mention, we are mistaken if we think this decision is made lightly or flippantly by most women. 

Let’s also address the fact that for a number of women who get abortions, it wasn’t their choice to get pregnant anyway. There’s the dude who coerced his girlfriend into sex who then abandons her with the baby, the husband who runs away when that plus sign shows up on the pregnancy test. There are cases of rape and incest where a pregnant woman must now bear the child of the abuser, spending nine months constantly reminded of the worst moment in her life. There’s the mother of four whose husband had the vasectomy that didn’t take or the 1-in-100 condom that didn’t work and has left the woman facing health concerns and complications. For some women, it wasn’t just that the pregnancies weren’t planned; it’s also that the sex wasn’t their choice. 

And I want to focus on that word “choice.” Because growing up, I was told that Pro-Choice was a hypocritical term (we’ll get to Pro-Life shortly). After all, I was told, the baby didn’t have a choice. And as someone who believes in protecting the most vulnerable, I concede that I’m sympathetic to that viewpoint. But in all those scenarios, you know who absolutely had a choice? The man. The man who could just run when he didn’t want to be a father and didn’t have to be held to any account. The rapist who went uncaught, the abuser who was able to slip back into the shadows. The man who doesn’t have to deal with health complications of pregnancy. Men have always had a choice when a woman gets pregnant; and with the Supreme Court ruling, men are the only people involved in pregnancy who still have a choice in states where abortions will be illegal. The consequences of today’s decision affect women only, and that should give us pause. 

---

---

A fine mess 

Again, my faith compels me that God is sovereign over life, and I’m not comfortable with an operation that allows us to erase the chance of a life at will. 

Except, of course, when I am. 

When my wife and I were first married, we used birth control because we didn’t want to have a baby right away. After my son was born, we used it again until we were ready to try for our second. When she was born, I had a vasectomy shortly after. Does that also try to thwart the sovereignty of God, or has He given us the medical knowledge to make our own decisions? I don’t regret any of those actions, but isn’t that just the same way of playing God? I don’t know why one is right and the other is wrong for many, but shouldn’t that fact cause us to have some grace?

Of course, that’s also dancing around the elephant in the room that, while the Supreme Court case was technically based on the merits of law, the abortion debate revolves around religion. The reason that many people of faith are anti-abortion is because they believe abortion stops a life. They believe the fetus is a living being based on scriptures that say God knit us together in our mother’s womb. I’m sympathetic to this perspective; when my wife was pregnant, you couldn’t convince me that wasn’t a living being inside my wife. 

[A quick personal story. When my wife became pregnant with our second child, there was a brief concern that her health could be at risk during the pregnancy. I remember thinking that if it came down to it, I would argue for my wife to get an abortion to save her life. I don’t like thinking of that, because had it come down to it, we wouldn’t have ever had my beautiful, wonderful daughter, who is one of my great joys. But it was proof to me that this issue is more complex than we like to assume. Also, I realized quickly that whatever my stance, it wasn’t my call to make. Whether to take the risk or get an abortion would always be my wife’s decision to make – which, again, altered my perspective]. 

But different faiths have different interpretations of when life begins. In fact, many Christian denominations are in disagreement over whether life begins at birth or at conception; as late as the 1970s, abortion wasn’t even a major focus of evangelicals. I’m not saying this to say it doesn’t matter. But rather, when people of faith can’t even come to a place of agreement on the subject, it seems ill-advised to take it out of the church and into the halls of Congress. And considering that our nation is founded on freedom of religion — and, if desired, freedom from religion — it makes me a bit queasy to think that this discussion is so heavily rooted in religious interpretation of when life begins (but, then again, if you wanted to ensure protection for all, wouldn’t you err on the side of going to the earliest point when life could begin? This isn’t cut-and-dried).

The complexities of this issue, brushing up against my own personal convictions, posed a major conundrum for me. Again, I don’t like abortion as a solution. But we don’t get to legislate based on my personal views and religious faith. And I have to say that it seems really unfair for this decision to be in the hands of men (95% of all Supreme Court justices have been men; currently, only 3 out of the 9 justices are women; 1 of those women voted to overturn Roe), the people whose situation won’t change at all as a result of this decision.

And, again, I realize there’s the case itself, which has legal technicalities those smarter than me can unpack. And there’s the politicization of the Supreme Court, which is its own festering bag of worms. And the fact that overturning Roe doesn’t mean an outlawing of abortion but reverting the case back to the states, which is going to cause its own headaches. But I want to focus more on the broad issue, since the majority of voters don’t care about the technicalities of the ruling but on the larger issue. 

All of this mess led me to a place where my stance has historically been to support candidates and policies that would eventually make abortions unnecessary. This means not pushing to outlaw abortion or overturn Roe, but fight for financial and medical support for mothers and children, guaranteed leave time and health care, laws that hold men to account when they father a child, free access to birth control, proper sex education, guaranteed housing for in-need mothers. The hope is that you would eventually create a world where people felt they were supported enough that abortions would largely be unneeded, save for cases of rape or incest or when the life of the mother was at risk. You create a world where abortion isn’t necessary. 

But instead, the Supreme Court’s decision removes choice and leaves no safety net. And while I’ve heard a lot of urgings from pro-lifers today that now the work starts of protecting mothers, I simply don’t have faith that the same Congress where 200 Republicans voted down an attempt to ease the baby formula shortage will vote in the interest of expectant mothers, especially when money is on the line. Pardon my French, but the Supreme Court just created as shit show, and I’m terrified what the ramifications might be. 

In defense of pro-lifers

Many people, included myself, have called the Pro-Life movement hypocritical, focused on pregnancy and then turning a blind eye once the child is actually born. 

There is some merit to that description, particularly when it comes to people who have turned issues of life and death into political power cards. I don’t believe many U.S. senators or representatives truly care about abortion with the fervor they say they do; it’s simply a card they use because they know it brings in votes. And they don’t care about life like they say; as soon as that life costs their constituents money and increases taxes, they can abandon it. I truly don’t believe that the majority of our congressional representatives really care about the people of this nation, unless it comes down to how those people can help them keep their jobs and pad their pockets.

But, having grown up in the church, I have seen many, many people who wear the badge of pro-life, and they mean it. I’ve been in churches that collect money for expecting mothers. And while some churches have a bad reputation for judgmentalism, I’ve seen many congregations show love and support to single mothers in their midst, creating family and community when these mothers have none. My sister and her husband have been dedicated foster parents for years and ultimately adopted one of their foster children. These people collect clothes to give away, give to church collections that meet the needs of people in their congregations, and build healthy relationships with people who are doing the best they can. I wrote earlier about seeing the bad side of the church growing up, but I’ve also seen the beautiful side. 

They turned to a pro-life cause not because they were hateful or politically minded (although politicians too often exploited their passion for their own gain). They did it because they believed in defending life, and they did it because they believed the most vulnerable lives deserved a chance. Whatever issues I’ve seen with the Cultural Church wielding this issue like a cudgel, I’ve seen the local church rise up more often with love and grace. The pro-life movement in churches looks nothing like the Pro-Life circus that wages a culture war on the Senate floor. And although I’ve disagreed with their political stances, I’ve never doubted the integrity of their convictions. 

I hope and pray that they’ll continue to show love and support to expectant mothers, children in need and people who have nowhere else to go. I pray that churches will give sacrificially to women who will now face a huge financial burden, and show love, empathy and support to the many who are scared and despairing right now, and use whatever political capital they’ve used in the fight against Roe to get their representatives to pass bills that provide financial support, health care, and whatever else these women need. Because I have no faith that our elected officials will do it on their own. And I pray that the Church, which in some ways contributed to what will become a very big mess, will play its role in cleaning it up. 

Hey Chris, stick to movies! 

I know; you subscribed to this thing because you wanted my movie thoughts, not my political digressions. And I don’t want to do this a lot. But just to stay on brand, here’s a movie suggestion that’s been going through my mind since the draft opinion first leaked: 

One of the most powerful and heart-wrenching films of 2020 was Never Rarely Sometimes Always, an empathetic look at two girls traveling across state lines to procure an abortion for one of them. It’s a thoughtful and harrowing look at the reality of this situation, and it’s sadly going to only become more relevant now that abortion rights are in states’ hands. You can rent it on most platforms.