The REAL doctrine behind Pro-Life

The Catholic church has focused, wisely, on "pro-life" as the doctrine that it brings to bear in public when defending restrictions and bans on abortion. Not only does this ring well with us all...who, after all, is "for death?" but it hides a much more fundamental Catholic belief which argues against abortion rights but which, when brought to the light of day, is not widely shared by anyone, including rank and file catholics.

Let's first dispense with "pro-life". To its credit, the Catholic church has attempted in these past decades to enlarge this stance beyond abortion. They Catholic church stands against capitol punishment, for instance, and against assisted suicide as a part of its pro-life stand. Gotta give them credit for attempting consistancy.

However, official Catholic doctrine still has a just war theory, and just war theory says that, if someone is seriously endangering your nation or threatening the freedom of its inhabitants, war with all its killing is justified. The nation at war must have tried all other routes to solve the problem and must attempt to avoid killing non-combatants, but there is a place in Catholic doctrine where, when fundamental human freedom clashes with life, freedom wins.

Well, I have to say, that I know of no more fundamental clash between freedom and life than that which takes place within and around every unwillingly pregnant woman, who is giving up huge chunks of her freedom for the sake of the life of another...for nine months if she can bear to give away the baby for adoption, and for at least 18 years if she can't. The fact that this is never discussed points to the fact that there's something else going on in our minds and hearts,

And it is.

The REAL doctrine underlying abortion restriction is the (old but still powerful) doctrine that sex is for procreation. Since you should never have sex unless you want to have a baby, then if you do have sex and get pregnant, you should accept the consequences.

The newer version of this doctrine is that every act of sex should be open to the possibility of creating new life, which, in a culture in which we don't need any more babies and in which every baby is a significant burden as well as a joy, amounts in practice to the same thing. Shall we have sex tonight, honey? Well...maybe not.

These are the doctrines that lie behind the church's prohibition of artificial means of birth control, which most Catholics and others don't support. But they are unconsciously powerful.

Look, for instance at the fact that, besides an exception if her life is in danger, the most common exception in anti-abortion legislation is the exception in cases of rape and incest. Why those exceptions? Because in that case, the woman didn't choose to have sex and shouldn't be expected to take the consequences.

Now I myself believe that it sex is a part of human life for far more than creating babies. Evolution made sex such fun because it's necessary to keep families together over the long haul of the lives of children and grandchildren, who benefit immensely from intact families and care from multi-generations of relatives.

If sex has two legitimate purposes, it is likely that those purposes will sometimes conflict and that conflict has to be managed. Unwillingly pregnant women are not bad people who were doing something illicit and have to take the consequences. Unwillingly pregnant women are bearing the consequences of evolution's duel purposes for sexuality and need assistance.

Or, we could all agree that sex is for procreation and we should only be doing it a few times in our lives. That, too, would solve the abortion problem.

The Crux of Abortion

This quarter's UU World contains this article about abortion by my colleague, Scotty McLennan. It's a well researched article about Christian (and Jewish) positions about when human life begins over the centuries. Abortion rights folks, so often battered by people with their Bibles, do love to see that the biblical and religious view is not as clear cut as conservatives think it is. But UU's don't tend to look to the Bible for advice about specific moral issues, so the article is at best, preaching to the converted and at worst, doing more harm than good to the pro-choice cause by belaboring the wrong point.

UU's look to science for clues to what is right and wrong, and science no longer looks for "breath" to determine the presence of life. It looks to brain waves, heart beats, and genetic science. This has been very problematic for abortion rights. There's no doubt about it...any layperson can see genetically human life squirming around in every fetal ultrasound. If we want to support abortion rights, it just won't do to travel old paths of biblical argument or parse out the ancient meanings of "person". If we want to support abortion rights in the modern world, we have to be able to clearly say why a woman who is unwillingly pregnant, or who is carrying a fetus whose life will be painful, short, or terribly compromised has the legal and usually the moral right to terminate her (early and middle) pregnancy.

Here it is in a nutshell. The western political and religious tradition values human life supremely, and we usually value human freedom even more. "The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time" said Thomas Jefferson, and there's the even starker, "Give me liberty or give me death." These two values often conflict, as in, the freedom to make money and vs. need for regulation to protect public health. In these conflicts of values, "freedom" is often the winner, as in, "If you come from a country that is threatening the freedoms of my county, I will kill you."

Thus it is that Rev. McLennan, a man, will never be forced by law to give up so much of a drop of his own blood to save the life, even of his own newborn child, as that would infringe on such a basic freedom, the freedom of bodily self-determination. He'd be asked, perhaps expected, to make this easy donation from love or duty, but he will never be forced to do it. His freedom is naturally valued, by everyone and by the law, as more important than the life of another human being, even one he is responsible for having brought into the world. Of course we might condemn him morally for his selfishness, but the law will never compel him to give any part of his body to his child.

So iMinister, a woman, thinks it's pretty irksome to hear him opine that her decision to decline to provide her uterus, which is to say, a whole lot of her body and that huge medical drama called childbirth, to a developing fetus is only ok because he thinks that the fetus isn't a human being yet. He just so doesn't get it! It doesn't matter whether the fetus is a bit of tissue or a full person. It doesn't have a right to use my body unless I want it there or consent to be it's hero and provide my body for its use. If I decline to support it I undergo and abortion and the fetus dies. That's the end of a precious possibility, but if my humanity (and freedom) is valued as much as Rev. McLennan's is, it wouldn't be against the law.

Like McLennan, but for different reasons, I think that Roe v. Wade did a good job of parsing out how this fundamental conflict between life and freedom can be managed. A woman can choose her freedom over the life of the fetus during the first 6 months of pregnancy. After that, the life of the fetus (and the trauma to society of aborting it) is the more important value, unless it's life is hopelessly compromised or hers is in danger. I honor them for seeing, a generation ago, that women are human beings with the human right to freedom.

We've spent 40 years yammering on about when human life begins in fetuses. Let's ask ourselves instead when all the benefits of a human life (beginning with the right to freely choose when to donate one's body to another the cause of life) to half of the human race begin.

Then we'll be talking.

P.S. Rev. McLennan, "Abortions of convenience" undoubtedly happen, do they? Tell me about one....tell me a real story about a convenient pregnancy, abortion, or decision about motherhood. Just try it.

There are other posts on this subject in the backfiles. Search for "abortion" in the search box above.