Archive: Abortion in America

By James V. Heidinger II

When abortion was legalized in 1973, many Americans—Christians included—were either neutral or in favor of the Supreme Court’s decision. Now, some 15 million abortions later, many of those same people feel it is time to rethink the issue. In this article James Heidinger looks at where we are today concerning abortion in America, how we got there, the legal battle, and how the United Methodist Church is responding.

Where Are We Today?

On January 22, 1973, just 11 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its controversial Roe vs. Wade decision making abortion legal in America.

Since then, the number of abortions performed each year has skyrocketed. One in every four children conceived is now aborted by legal medical means. An estimated 1.5 to 1.6 million legal abortions are now performed annually. Abortion has become the most common surgical procedure in America.

The court’s decision has had a dramatic impact on how Americans view abortion. At the time of the decision, most Americans considered abortion cautiously, as a necessary evil. Soon many began to see it as a moral or religious question which should be left up to the individual. And finally more and more Americans came to view it as a positive good, a constitutional or human right that deserves public support. Millions of Americans today accept abortion casually, as one more means of birth control.

As a result, abortion has reached epidemic proportions in America. Our rate of abortion has increased 10-fold over the past decade. Some major American cities report that abortions now exceed live births. Approximately one in ten American women of reproductive age have had at least one abortion.

On the heels of this epidemic has come a cheapening of human life. Reports of fetal experimentation and infanticide are on the increase. The case of Infant Doe brought the matter to public attention. That was the case in which a child born with congenital defects died because needed medical treatment and nourishment were withheld.

In the short time since abortion was legalized, some in the medical practice have moved from using extraordinary measures to save handicapped children, to no measures, to positive action to destroy human life (i.e., administering a sedative to a newborn so it does not feed and thus dies of starvation).

But doesn’t the medical profession oppose such practice? Not always, not anymore.

The July 1983 issue of Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in its lead editorial:

We can no longer base our ethics on the idea that human beings are a special form of creation, made in the image of God. … Only the fact that the defective infant is a member of the species homo sapiens leads it to be treated differently from the dog or pig. Species membership alone, however, is not morally relevant.

In addition to infanticide, increasing cases of euthanasia or mercy-killing are reported. Some elderly in nursing homes supposedly lack a “meaningful life,” so their lives are ended by the withholding of needed medical treatment.

A disturbing aspect of all this for United Methodists is that our church has done little to help stem this life-cheapening tide. In fact, the church may have contributed to the problem by its participation in the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights—an advocacy group supporting the rights of women to choose abortion.

How Did We Get Here?

Until the 1960s there was little support for abortion, except in those rare instances when the mother’s life was in danger because of the pregnancy. Then came the urban unrest of the ’60s, rapid technological advance, the Vietnam War, the sexual revolution, as well as the widespread dissemination of the birth-control pill.

As women pressed for political and economic equality, they also felt they should exert new control over their own reproductive destinies. Increasingly, abortion seemed to offer a ready answer to the problems of unwanted children, overpopulation, child abuse, juvenile delinquency, and welfare costs.

Also, in the early ’70s, a new ethic emerged among some in the medical profession. This new ethic moved away from the traditional Western view that every human life has intrinsic worth. Doctors moved toward a more utilitarian “quality of life” ethic that sought the greatest good for the greatest number, even if that meant some individuals must be sacrificed in the public interest.

Thus, the groundwork had been laid to prepare Americans for the sweeping changes Roe vs. Wade would bring to the practice of abortion.

Another factor in bringing us to our present dilemma is that Americans, including many evangelical Christians, were not prepared to exert the mental and spiritual energy needed to challenge the faulty arguments of the pro-abortion movement. Consider several examples.

First, the pro-abortion movement has insisted that a woman has a right to do as she chooses with her own body. That sounded logical and self-evident when we first began to hear it. But it’s simply not true. A woman does not have the right to commit suicide, to appear nude in public places, to willfully spread a communicable disease, or to take thalidomide while pregnant. The freedom of one person always ends where the freedom of another begins.

Or again, we were told prior to Roe vs. Wade that the availability of abortion would reduce child abuse. But child abuse has climbed by nearly 400 percent since 1973! A recent study of some 500 battered children revealed that 90 percent of these children were the result of planned pregnancies.

Another popular argument from the pro-abortion folks was that abortion would reduce the number of illegal abortions. That, too, sounded good. But the facts dispute such claims, according to U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop. Koop attests that in every country where abortion on demand has become a legal right, including America, illegal abortions have increased rather than decreased.

And how often we have heard about our duty to protect the unwanted or deformed infant from entering a hostile world. We should distinguish, however, between an unwanted pregnancy and an unwanted child. Among Swedish women who delivered after considering abortion, 84 percent were glad they had not terminated the pregnancy. Some declared it was inconceivable that they could have considered such an option.

The pro-abortion camp continues to rely, for its argument, on the few cases which are admittedly difficult. However, these hard cases (involving rape, incest, or possible loss of life to the mother) account for only 2-3 percent of all abortions.

To argue that anti-abortion measures are an attack against the poor is another smokescreen. Abortion is not a rich vs. poor issue. Of women seeking abortions, 70 percent are white, 79 percent are unmarried, and 75 percent have graduated from either high school or college.

Finally, after 11 years and over 1 5 million abortions, Americans, both religious and non-religious, are beginning to realize they have been sold a bill of goods by the pro-abortion movement. They are discovering that the arguments for abortion on demand are weak in logic, based primarily on emotion, and utilize half-truths that don’t stand under careful scrutiny.

The Legal Battle

The legal issues in the abortion controversy are of vital importance to all Americans, especially to Christians. Why? Because the law is a primary teacher of values. Since the Roe vs. Wade decision of 1973, millions have concluded that abortion is right because it has been made legal.

With this decision seven Supreme Court justices imposed their views on 220 million Americans. In his dissent, Justice White strongly criticized the abortion ruling as an exercise in “raw judicial power.” Noted legal scholars such as John Hart Ely of Harvard Law School and Archibald Cox of Watergate fame have found the reasoning of the court to be an embarrassment.

The court made a serious mistake when it first considered, then decided to reject, the precedent of the Hippocratic Oath. The Hippocratic ethic, which opposed abortion, is at the heart of all medical ethics. It came to be accepted not only by Jews and Christians, but also by Arabs, medieval doctors, men of the Renaissance, Enlightenment scholars, and scientists of the 19th century.

For the courts to rule in contradiction to the ethic of the Hippocratic Oath concerning abortion was, says Harold O.J. Brown, to reject “the very heart of our ethical tradition, of principles common not merely to Judeo-Christian religion in the narrow sense, but to Western civilization as a whole” (“What the Supreme Court Didn’t Know,” Human Life Review, Spring, 1975, p. 13).

Since 1973 the court has made other rulings concerning abortion. In 1976 it ruled that neither husbands nor parents could hinder their wives’ or daughters’ decisions to get abortions.

In 1979 the court ruled that unmarried, minor females could obtain abortions without parental consent. That same year, it ruled that the definition of “viability” would be left with the physician.

In the summer of 1983 the court, in a 6-3 ruling, struck down an array of local legislative restrictions on access to abortion. These included the Akron, Ohio, ordinance that had been a model for requirements in some 15 states. That same summer, the Hatch-Eagleton Amendment, which would have allowed the states to restrict abortions, was voted down 50-49, falling far short of the two-thirds approval needed for a constitutional amendment.

In October 1983 Congress passed the Hyde Amendment which banned federal payments for Medicaid abortions. That is expected to remain in effect at least through 1984.

What efforts to change the legal status of abortion might we expect in the near future? Most Christian analysts do not expect a constitutional amendment to emerge in this present Congress.

Congress could attempt to formulate legislation that would recognize the unborn as a person having legal rights. Such legislation, were it to pass, would bring Congress into conflict with Roe vs. Wade.

Another possibility could be an appeal, on the personhood of the fetus, from a state supreme court. On August 28, 1983, for example, the Springfield, Missouri News Leader reported a decision by the Missouri Supreme Court stating that a fetus is a “person” and that “the fetus itself has an interest in being protected from injury before birth.” Such a decision could be appealed to the Supreme Court.

However, the best chance for change may come when new justices are appointed to the Supreme Court. Whoever is elected president this November could have the opportunity of appointing several justices. A new court could vote to reverse Roe vs. Wade.

How the Church Is Responding

The sad truth is that United Methodism is doing very little to help curb the abortion epidemic in America. On the contrary, we may well be fueling the crisis. Our denomination has been involved in and helped fund the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, which is housed in the Methodist Building in Washington, D.C.

Our Social Principles statement on abortion, as generally understood, is “pro-choice.” (The Social Principles found in the Book of Discipline represent the attempt of General Conference to speak to the social issues in our contemporary world.)

In Para. 71.G, which deals with abortion, we find the phrase, “In continuity with past Christian teaching,” which is followed two sentences later with the obviously pro-choice statement, “We support the legal option of abortion under proper medical procedures.”

But if, in fact, our denominational stand is pro-choice, we are not “in continuity with past Christian teaching.”

We are not in continuity, for example, with the unified voice of the early church fathers. Nearly unanimous in their condemnation of abortion, they referred to it as killing and murder. Such statements may be found in the Didache. Letter to Barnabas. Tertullian’s Apology, Clement’s The Teacher, and others.

A later writer of the early church, Caesarius of Aries wrote, “No woman should take any drug to produce an abortion, because she will be placed before the judgment seat of Christ, whether she had killed an already born child or a conceived one.” Such statements are found repeatedly in the writings of the church fathers.

Neither is the pro-choice position in continuity with the more recent giants of the church like the late Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian and pastor Helmut Thielicke, and United Methodist theologian Albert C. Outler. All affirm the humanity of the unborn child.

Another giant in the church today is Dr. Paul Ramsey. A UM layman and professor at Princeton University, Ramsey is perhaps the preeminent ethicist in America. He claims that pro-choice is not the official position of the church as presented in the Social Principles statement.

Ramsey should know. He is the author of the original Social Principles statement that came before General Conference in Atlanta in 1972.

Ramsey included in his version the important phrase (which is still there), “the sanctity of unborn human life.” Unfortunately, an additional statement calling for removal of abortion from the criminal code was introduced as an amendment from the floor. It was done hurriedly and with too little debate. And it passed.

That amendment, says Ramsey, contradicts the meaning of his language which accords life to the unborn. That action, Ramsey claims, has left United Methodism with a confusing and contradictory statement on abortion.

Ramsey says, ” If there is unborn human life, and if there indeed is a ‘mother,’ then abortion is not like any other ‘standard medical practice.’ Not until euthanasia or ‘neo-naticide’ becomes ‘standard.’ ” He concludes, “And life-and-death decisions involving lives possessing sanctity have never before in the history of our civil community been believed to be a proper subject for purely privatized choices” (Protecting the Unborn, Testimony before Senate Judiciary Committee, 1974).

It is sobering to realize that though the intent of the author of the Social Principles statement was anything but pro-choice, United Methodist leaders have taken that statement and employed it as the basis for their pro-choice position.

The United Methodist Church’s pro-choice advocacy amidst the rampant epidemic of abortion in our country is a rebuke to us all.

We have crusaded against Nestle’s infant formula to save children in Third World countries. But we have not raised any significant voice of alarm over 1.5 million abortions per year as well as reports of infanticide and euthanasia. Instead, the church has looked with condescension upon those who have raised voices of protest.

United Methodists could play a significant role in changing the moral climate in America concerning abortion. But first we will have to be convinced ourselves that abortion is morally wrong, a few hard cases notwithstanding.

We must face squarely the fact that most abortions today are for convenience, economic reasons, or to prevent a handicapped child from having life.

We must also recognize that a society has a fundamental responsibility to protect the life and freedom of those who cannot protect themselves. A society also has the obligation to protect itself against policies which, if allowed to continue, could eventually destroy it.

Our present policy of wholesale abortion in America could do exactly that.

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