(Note; (If you haven’t read my previous blog “No Freedom, No Justice” please do as it will give some of the historical context surrounding Roe vs. Wade that this blog builds on.. link:
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Inside Dobbs are new possibilities for national renewal, clearer vision of deeply personal and yet profoundly communal values in caring for our mothers and our children and the choices that should have been.
I am pro-life and emotively embraced it as a young father when holding in my hand our child of weeks, resulting from a natural abortion. That moment emblazed in my heart the reality of Divinely created human life as nothing else could. My heart groans even now in the memory.
Until I sinned deeply,1 choosing to live against the values God, society and I held, I had the privilege of being a pastor—who has walked with women, young and older and value the myriad of complex issues faced by mothers, pregnant. The awareness of medical risk, sense of overwhelming emotional distress that a sudden pregnancy can bring in the midst of financial hardship, abusive relationships, the isolation of abandonment by the father or extended family, etc.
The wisdom of Dobbs can and will be debated in the ensuing months. I believe history will reveal that Dobbs reset the terms of the debate allowing the country to find common ground, allowing for a wider social/political narrative about the value, place, sacrifice and calling of being a mother, as a vocation and what caring for our children really entails.
Roe vs. Wade was never settled law, for both practical and philosophical reasons.
For 50 years the pro-life and pro-choice movement has shared the middle ground of influence, depending on how the questions were framed—specifically along two central areas of fundamental agreement.:
1) Abortion is a medical procedure of necessity and thus should be legally protected. However, it should not be used for anything other than the safety of the mother and in cases of emotional injustice when carrying a child is to create a crime upon a crime, such as rape or incest or if the child’s health is severely compromised, at risk.
2) No abortion should be performed past viability, save clear and present danger to the life of the mother, again, depending on how the questions are raised.
According to Gallup, even in the 3rd Trimester: 75% want abortion legal if a mothers life is at risk—22% opposed. If the child were at risk of being born mentally disabled, support for a legal abortive procedure drops to 35%, 61% illegal. If the child is going to face significant medical risk the procedure is approved by 48%, 49% illegal. However only 20% want abortion legal on demand, 77% opposed.
Americans have consistently wanted, as President Clinton said, for an abortive procedure to be available, rare and safe. When framed as a medical procedure of necessity Americans consistently want it available. When framed as a right—as abortion on demand and especially in the second third tri-mesters, strong majorities want the unborn child’s interest to be protected.
A fundamental right must have 80-90% support in a democratic republic and for 50 years we have been a nation divided, in part because the consensus that was gathering in the 1970’s around layered choices, depending on the mothers health and developing human child was cut off suddenly and the debate shifted from the nuanced choices about mother and child to private, autonomous, isolated decisions about a woman and her fetus. The polling, over time, clearly shows America did not buy the philosophical basis of Roe, though they came to value a woman’s need for choices in limited medical contexts.
Philosophically, the difficulty of Roe was locating the inherent right in “privacy.” Admittedly personal and familial, a decision to terminate a pregnancy is also the termination of a human in the making. Two lives are at stake and there is nothing more fundamental to a culture than who is and who is not included in the body politic and afforded the basic rights as citizens. There is nothing more relevant to a person or nations’ soul as to wether in choosing we (mother, father, family, community) have taken both the child and mothers needs into account. To attempt, in the area of pro-creation. intended or not, to narrow the choice to a woman’s body has three negative outcomes:
1) It’s a false choice. We would all agree, likely, that a pregnancy should not be terminated because of the race of the human developing or because the child is a girl and not a boy. Why? Because these are morally reprehensible in both motive and outcome. We protect the spotted owl or the grey whale and for good reason, but are adverse to protect a human in the making?
2) Failing to see a child in its embryonic stage is a failure to see a mother, a woman. It’s a way of isolating a woman even further so that a father, a society doesn’t have to assume responsibility for what is, after-all a unique creation. It is a statistical reality that many women feel deep regret and shame following such a choice and in addition feel the isolation of having been alone inside the decision.
Conversly, a failure on the pro-life side to recognize that there are medical, psychological, relational concerns that surround an especially unwanted pregnancy that need the comfort of listening, knowledgeable hearts.
3) Many medical and psychological issues are especially painful and do not fall neatly within the absolutist ideologies, left and right. A ten year old rape victim’s emotional needs are decidedly more valuable in the first tri-nester than the child in the womb.
For government to make the call arbitrarily is to isolate the young woman, literally creating crime upon crime. Even so, the interest of the community legitimately increases as viability approaches. Two humans needs are assuredly on the table.
Many judicial watchers, right and left, have noted that Roe was originally decided on the thinnest of constitutional grounds—a perceived and at best implicit right to privacy or autonomy. Ruth Bader-Ginsburg was herself critical of Roe’s legal foundation, having been active in working a pro life—pro choice case she believed laid a much stronger foundation, rooted in the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment to the constitution assuring, in the case she represented, that the Navy could not require a termination of pregnancy of its officer as a condition of employment. On that case she believed a strong equal Protection case could be made giving women the central, though not exclusive role in choices surrounding termination of pregnancy.
What Roe did, in creating a right to privacy. was forever frame the question in a way that seperated the body politic into separate and increasingly polarized camps—pro-abortion or anti-abortion, instead of pro-mother and the developing human she carries. Lost is the more nuanced understanding held almost universally in the 1960’s that one could be pro-life, celebrate the human child and her mother, recognizing that pro-choice simply meant respecting every woman, every child and acknowledging that pregnancy termination (abortion) was sometimes the only reasonable choice if a mothers life is at risk physically or emotionally. Such decisions, it was understood was painfully difficult, always tragic, rare and to never taken lightly, casually.
America now too often frames the choice by its extremes—murder verses autonomous power, “my body, my choice.” The right to literally take the life of a human becoming is celebrated up to and even minutes beyond actual delivery —all under the thesis that a child in the womb is no different than any other organ or worse a cancer needing cut out. It’s all very sterile, separate, isolated, antiseptic.
Such a view of the magic of creation is actually the cancer we should have been concerned with. Freedom of speech, petition, assembly, religion are self-evident human rights and are always a good if acted upon in peace. (At least they were once self-evident as a good. Now several are under attack.) Abortion is tragic and should be a part of medical choices available (as needed), not a life-giving celebrated right.
How did we ever get to the place where mothers became birthing parents? Actually, I know. It is an attempt to correct the imposition upon women of a gender identity imposed by men and culture declaring in effect, “you, lady have no worth unless you are knocked up.” Human sin is costly. At risk of sounding too opportunistic, we have quite literally thrown out the baby, the bath water and the very gifting of motherhood, in our search for and appreciation of alternative lifestyles.
Dobbs was properly decided. As much as we may wish to claim a medical procedure, in all of its complexity, is a constitutional right, it has never been self-evident, given the presence of two humans , one in the making. The “right to life” is in the text and two paths are given for the people to consider the relative guidelines in which choices are determined.
If the pro-Abortion advocates believe termination of a human in the making is only a woman’s decision and no one else’s business they will need convince sufficient numbers of Americans that a human in the making has no value; certainly less than embryonic protection afforded to many animals on the endangered species list. If partial birth abortions are ever accepted by a vast majority of our fellow citizens--other than exceptional risk to the mother--may God help us. At that point we as a people should be considered "the endangered species".
Whether you or I find ourselves leaning toward 'no Abortion" ever or celebrating the termination of a 9 month old child who find themselves on the wrong side of a thin membrane, let us agree to listen better, talk less.
Blessings! Terry
1 If you wish to see more of my current journey simply look under "portfolio" above, in the header of this blog site. I deeply appreciate any prayers in my own recovery and for the many whom I've harmed as a result.
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