Why would ministers “bless” abortion clinics?

A Baptist minister, a Presbyterian pastor, and a Jewish cantor recently gathered to “bless” an abortion clinic in Maryland. This is one example of an ongoing effort to “host blessing services that honor patients and the sacred work of [abortion] providers.”

The Washington Post reported a few years ago on a similar gathering, this one to “bless” one of the only US clinics performing late-term abortions. The pastor leading the service prayed for the people facilitating abortions and their patients, “Keep them safe and keep them strong. And may they always know that all they do is for Thy glory.”

How do you imagine God responded to this prayer?

The God who “knitted me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13), who superintends “the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child” (Ecclesiastes 11:5), who said to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you” (Jeremiah 1:5), is a God who treasures life from conception to death. He creates each human in his image (Genesis 1:27) and loves each of us as if there were only one of us, to paraphrase St. Augustine.

Why, then, would people claiming to represent him pray for him to bless the killing of preborn people? And why would they think doing so would bring him glory?

My website paper, “What Does the Bible Say About Abortion?” is an in-depth resource on this crucial issue. It examines abortion from a historical and biblical perspective, discusses scientific and biological factors, and outlines practical responses to the various issues involved.

For our purposes today, we’ll focus only on the section of the paper dealing with theological arguments made by abortion advocates, seeking to respond to each as effectively as possible.

One: No one can say when a fetus becomes a person, so the mother is the most appropriate person to make decisions regarding it.

Argument: Only 40 to 50 percent of fetuses survive to become persons in the fullest sense. As a result, some claim that a fetus belongs to the mother until it attains personhood and is therefore morally subject to any action she wishes to take with it. They view the fetus as simply part of the woman’s body and agree with the popular sentiment, “My body, my choice.”

Response:

• The fetus carries its parents’ genetic code and is a distinct person.
• It does not yet possess self-consciousness, reasoning ability, or moral awareness (the usual descriptions of a “person”), but neither do newborns or young children.
• It is alive, reacting to stimuli, producing its own cells, and developing them into a specific pattern of maturity.
• It is human, completely distinguishable from all other living organisms, possessing all forty-six human chromosomes, and able to develop only into a human being.
• It is complete: nothing new will be added except the growth and development of what exists from the moment of conception.
• It is a scientific fact that every abortion performed in the United States is performed on a being so fully formed that its heart is beating, and its brain activity can be measured on an EEG machine. At twelve weeks, the unborn baby is only about two inches long, yet every organ of the human body is clearly in place.

Theologian Karl Barth described the fetus well:

The embryo has its own autonomy, its own brain, its own nervous system, its own blood circulation. If its life is affected by that of the mother, it also affects hers. It can have its own illnesses in which the mother has no part. Conversely, it may be quite healthy even though the mother is seriously ill. It may die while the mother continues to live. It may also continue to live after its mother’s death, and be eventually saved by a timely operation on her dead body. In short, it is a human being in its own right. (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1985 [1961]) 3.4.416.)

And note that you did not come from a fetus—you were a fetus. A “fetus” is simply a human life in the womb. It becomes a “baby” outside the womb. But it is the same physical entity in either place.

Two: Abortion must be protected as an alternative for women who are victims of rape or incest.

Argument: While this number is admittedly small in this country (approximately 1 percent of all abortions), it is growing in many countries around the world. As many as one in three women may become the victim of such an attack. They must be spared the further trauma of pregnancy and childbirth.

Response: The circumstances by which a baby is conceived are not the baby’s fault or choice. As a result, it is immoral to punish the baby by killing it. However, since the number of abortions chosen for this reason is so small, many pro-life advocates are willing to permit abortion in these cases so as to remove an argument for elective abortions (more than 95 percent of all abortions).

Three: No unwanted children should be brought into the world.

Argument: If a woman does not wish to bear a child, she may not be an appropriate or effective mother if the child is born. Given the population explosion occurring in many countries of the world, abortion is a necessary option for women who do not want children. The woman is more closely involved with the fetus than any other individual and is the best person to determine whether or not this child is wanted and will receive proper care.

Response: Pro-life advocates agree that all children should be wanted, so they argue strongly for adoption as an alternative to abortion. They also assert that an unwanted child would rather live than die. By pro-choice logic, one could argue for infanticide and euthanasia as well as abortion.

Four: The state has no right to legislate our personal moral decisions.

Argument: The government has no authority to restrict homosexuality, consensual sex, cigarette consumption, or other individual decisions that many people consider to be wrong. Since there is no constitutional standard for when life begins, decisions made regarding a fetus are likewise a matter of individual morality.

The state should impose legislation on moral questions only when this legislation expresses the clear moral consensus of the community and when it prevents conduct that obviously threatens the public welfare. Nearly everyone condemns murder, for instance, and believes that it threatens us all. However, Americans are divided on the morality of abortion. It is hard to see how aborting a fetus threatens the rest of the community.

And so abortion should not be subject to governmental control. It is better to allow a mother to make this decision than to legislate it through governmental action. Many who personally consider abortion to be wrong are persuaded by this argument and thus support the pro-choice position.

Response: Pro-life supporters do not see abortion legislation as an intrusion into areas of private morality.

Protecting the rights of the individual is the state’s first responsibility. No moral state can overlook murder, whatever the personal opinions of those who commit it. The state is especially obligated to protect the rights of those who cannot defend themselves.

But what of the claim that legislation must always reflect the clear will of the majority and protect the public welfare?

If this were the case, there would already be a national ban on abortions after the first trimester of pregnancy, since 55 percent of Americans oppose legal access to abortion in the second trimester and 70 percent in the third. That there is not such a ban demonstrates that prochoice advocates cite the clear will of the majority only when doing so helps their argument.

In addition, the collective will of the culture must never supersede what is right and wrong. And just because society is unclear as to when life begins does not mean that the question is unknowable (see Argument #1 above). If more of the public understood the physical and ethical issues involved in abortion, the large majority would consider abortion to be a threat to public welfare.

Abortion threatens the entire community in three ways:

1. Abortion ends the lives of millions, on a level exceeding all wars and disasters combined.
2. Abortion encourages sexual promiscuity.
3. Abortion permits women to make a choice that will plague many of them with guilt for years to come.

And so abortion meets the standard for legislative relevance and must be addressed and limited or abolished by the state.

Fifth: The rights and concerns of the mother must take precedence over those of the fetus.

Argument: Even if we grant fetuses limited rights, they must not supersede the rights of mothers, as the latter are clearly persons under the Constitution. If we allow abortion to protect her physical life, we should do so to protect her emotional health or quality of life as well.

This was one of the Supreme Court’s most significant arguments in Roe v. Wade as it sought to protect the mother’s mental and physical health. Many pro-choice advocates are especially persuaded by this argument and view the abortion debate within the context of a woman’s right to control her own life. I’ve heard many claim that they would never choose abortion for themselves, but they have no right to impose their personal values on others.

Response: Pro-life advocates want to encourage the health of both the mother and the child and do not believe that we must choose between the two.

As the rights of a mother are no more important than those of her newborn infant, so they are no more important than those of her preborn child. The stress, guilt, and long-term mental anguish reported by many who abort their children must be considered. The legal right to abortion subjects a woman to pressure from her husband or sexual partner to end her pregnancy. Killing the fetus for the sake of the mother’s health is like remedying paranoia by killing all the imagined persecutors.

For these reasons, pro-life advocates argue that a moral state must limit or prevent abortion.

“If we want a love message to be heard”

Mother Teresa observed: “Abortion is profoundly anti-women. Three-quarters of its victims are women: half the babies and all the mothers.”

She was right.

She also stated:

“If we want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.”

How will you put “oil” in the lamp of life today?