Posts tagged ‘Abortion’
It’s Not About The Supreme Court Ruling
Credit: Wikipedia
There was the ruling. And then there was the reaction to the ruling. When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the arts and crafts chain Hobby Lobby, saying it did not have to pay for certain types of birth control as mandated by the Affordable Care Act because it considered them abortifacients which violated the theological beliefs of the company’s owners, the reaction was swift and fierce – from both sides. Mark Goldfeder, senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University, announced:
Here is what the decision means: People have First Amendment rights, and even if the corporations themselves are not entitled to Free Exercise exemptions, the people behind the corporate veil, the business owners themselves, certainly are.
On the other side, Judy Waxman, vice president of health and reproductive rights at the National Women’s Law Center, lamented:
We think it’s a bitter pill to swallow for women, and that the decision is saying that bosses know best and their religious beliefs can trump very basic health-care coverage. It’s especially harmful to women, but beyond this, down the line, there will be other cases, other challenges, that could have an even broader effect.[1]
Of course, along with these measured responses, there were also the less measured responses of the Twitterverse, like one post advocating arson: “#HobbyLobby are scum of the earth. Burn every single one down, build a homeless shelter there instead.”[2] Then, there was another very humble post from a person who agreed with SCOTUS’s ruling: “Ha. Ha. It’s The. Law.”[3]
What fascinates me about all these responses – whether they be sophisticated or sleazy – is how little they have to do with the actual legal ins and outs of this case and how much they reflect the radically disparate worldviews of our society. I have found no better synopsis of the clash of worldviews in this case than this from Trevin Wax:
A generation ago, a person’s religious observance was a public matter, a defining characteristic of one’s identity, while a person’s sexual activity was something private. Today, this situation is reversed. A person’s sexual behavior is now considered a defining characteristic of identity, a public matter to be affirmed (even subsidized) by others, while religious observance is private and personal, relegated to places of worship and not able to infringe upon or impact the public square.
The culture clash today is less about the role of religion in business or politics, and more about which vision of humanity best leads to flourishing and should therefore be enshrined in or favored by law.[4]
This is exactly right. Different people value different things. For some, their faith is their defining characteristic. Thus, they have a strong desire to practice their faith in every area and aspect of their lives, including their business dealings. For others, some other thing – like their sexuality – is their defining characteristic. And anything perceived as an affront to their sexual identity is worthy of unrestrained caustic choler.
As a Christian, I really have no choice when it comes to how I will define myself: my life must be defined by Christ. In the words of the apostle Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). So what does this mean for my interactions with those who define themselves by other things? A few things come to mind.
First, I must love those with differing worldviews. As Ed Stetzer so pointedly says in his article on the Hobby Lobby ruling, “You can’t hate a people and reach a people at the same time.”[5] People who live outside a Christian worldview are not to be destroyed or oppressed in a political or judicial power grab, but loved through a winsome witness.
Second, I must realize that my worldview is no longer a privileged majority worldview in our society. Indeed, many people are not at all concerned that a Christian may be legislatively or legally forced to do something that goes against his conscience. Again, Ed Stetzer writes, “Most Americans are not as passionate about the religious liberty issue (when connected to contraception, even abortifacient contraception) as most evangelicals and conservative Catholics.” Trevin Wax reveals that “a record number of Americans (1 in 3) said the first amendment [which grants religious liberty] goes too far in the freedom it promises.” This is just a reality.
Third, I must make the case – through both a rigorous intellectual defense and a gentle, quiet lifestyle – why my worldview should be seriously considered and why it does indeed lead to true human flourishing. It is important to note that this case cannot be made quickly. Indeed, it cannot even be made by just my life or in just my lifetime. No, this is a case the whole Church must make. And blessedly, the Church has been making it for millennia. For instance, the Church made its case here. And here. And here. And here. This is why I doubt any Supreme Court ruling – be it in favor of or against religious liberty – will kill the Church’s case. For this is the case and cause of Christ.
Let’s keep making it.
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[1] Ashby Jones, “Legal Experts, Advocates React to Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby Ruling,” The Wall Street Journal (6.30.2014).
[2] Costa Koutsoutis, @costa_kout, 6.30.2014
[3] Harriet Baldwin, @HarrietBaldwin, 6.30.2014
[4] Trevin Wax, The Supreme Court Agrees With Hobby Lobby, But Your Neighbor Probably Doesn’t,” The Gospel Coalition (6.30.2014).
[5] Ed Stetzer, “Hobby Lobby Wins: Where Do We Go from Here?” The Exchange (6.30.2014).
Beyond the Pale: What UK Hospitals Are Doing With Aborted Babies
Moral standards are moving targets. Ask three people for their thoughts on a contentious moral or ethical issue and you’ll get four opinions. But there are some things so unequivocally horrifying – so undeniably mortifying – that they command universal and reflexive shock, outrage, and revulsion. Enter an exposé by London’s Telegraph newspaper on what’s heating some UK hospitals:
The bodies of thousands of aborted and miscarried babies were incinerated as clinical waste, with some even used to heat hospitals, an investigation has found.
Ten NHS trusts have admitted burning fetal remains alongside other rubbish while two others used the bodies in ‘waste-to-energy’ plants which generate power for heat.
Last night the Department of Health issued an instant ban on the practice which health minister Dr. Dan Poulter branded ‘totally unacceptable.’
At least 15,500 fetal remains were incinerated by 27 NHS trusts over the last two years alone …
One of the country’s leading hospitals, Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge, incinerated 797 babies below 13 weeks gestation at their own ‘waste to energy’ plant. The mothers were told the remains had been ‘cremated.’[1]
No matter how many times I read this article, it still makes me sick to my stomach. And I’m not the only one who finds this story nauseating, as the comments posted under the story indicate. One reader comments, “I think I am going to be sick.” Another writes, “The horror of it … what has our country become folks? This is just too much.” And still another existentially inquires, “Dear God, what have we become?”
Though much could be written about this story – and, I would add, I hope much is written about this because this is a story that needs to be thoroughly vetted – I want to offer two initial observations about this terrible, tragic report.
First, it must be admitted that here is an unabashed display of human depravity at it most dreadful depths. Just the thought of treating fetal remains so carelessly and callously should turn even the most hardened of stomachs. In Western society, we pride ourselves on making moral progress. We trumpet our advances on the frontier of human rights. A story like this one should give us a gut check. Moral progress is never far from moral regress. Indeed, even secular theorists are beginning to realize that humanity is not on an ever-improving, ever-increasing moral arc. Alan Dershowitz, one of the great secular thinkers of our time, admits as much in an interview with Albert Mohler when he says:
I think the 20th century is perhaps the most complicated, convoluted century in the history of the world perhaps because I lived in it, but it had the worst evil. Hitler’s evil and Stalin’s evil are unmatched in the magnitude in the world … On the other hand, it was the century in which we really ended discrimination based on race and based on gender. We made tremendous scientific progress … So I think the 20th century has really proved that progress doesn’t operate in a linear way … We don’t evolve morally, we don’t get better morally as time passes.[2]
Morally, we must be continually careful and endlessly vigilant. We will never become so good that we are no longer bad. To quote the caution of the apostle Paul: “If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12)!
The second observation I would offer on this story is that we are sadly deluded as a society if we decry the burning of fetuses on the one hand while supporting abortion on the other. There is a reason incinerating fetuses to heat hospitals has raised so many moral hackles. And it’s not because these fetuses are nothing more than “tissue.” Indeed, I find it quite telling that The Telegraph refers to these fetuses as “remains.” A quick perusal of a dictionary will find that the noun “remains” refers to “dead bodies,” or “corpses.” In other words, dead people. This is not just aborted tissue. These are aborted people. Aborted babies. But now these babies have passed. And to treat the dead in such an undignified manner as these UK hospitals have is unconscionable. The difference between the passing of these babies, however, and the passing of others who die in hospitals is that these babies have died intentionally at the hands of abortion doctors.
Yes, I am well aware of arguments for abortion that center on a woman’s right to do with her body as she pleases. But if she can do with her body as she wishes, I’m not sure why a hospital can’t do with its procedural remains as it wants. If it can throw away fluid drained from someone’s lungs in a biohazard bag, why can’t it burn a baby? Yes, I am aware that some may accuse me of making a fallacious “slippery slope” argument and they would counter-argue that you don’t need to ban abortion to decry the burning of fetal remains. But this counter-argument intimates that abortion is somehow a lesser evil than burning aborted corpses – an assumption I do not share. Indeed, I think abortion is a great and deep evil – but not just because I believe it deliberately ends the life of a child, but because I hate what abortions do to the women who suffer through them. Case in point: a recent study in The British Journal of Psychiatry shows that women who undergo abortions have an 81 percent higher risk of subsequent mental health problems.[3] Nevertheless, proponents of abortion could claim that one can support abortion without sliding all the way down the slope into the moral morass of these UK hospitals. But I would point out that we already have, in fact, slid all the way down this slope. The charred now non-remains of 15,500 babies testify to it. So perhaps it’s time to repent and, by the grace of God, start scaling the slope – and not just halfway up the slope, but all the way off the slope. Human depravity warns us that if we don’t, we’ll slide right back down again.
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[1] Sarah Knapton, “Aborted babies incinerated to heat UK hospitals,” The Telegraph (3.24.2014).
[2] Albert Mohler, “Moral Reasoning in a Secular Age: A Conversation with Professor Alan Dershowitz,” albertmohler.com.
[3] Priscilla K. Coleman, “Abortion and mental health: quantitative synthesis and analysis of research published 1995–2009,” The British Journal of Psychology 199 (2011), 182.
Sacrificing the Wrong Lives
It was an article that took my breath away. Yes, I’ve read many an article arguing for “a woman’s right to choose.” Yes, I’ve heard the cries from Planned Parenthood, insisting that a woman’s “reproductive rights” be maintained. But this article did not invoke any of the more traditional language wielded by abortion proponents, except to criticize it. Writing for Slate Magazine, Mary Elizabeth Williams opens her article analyzing the state of the abortion debate thusly:
While opponents of abortion eagerly describe themselves as “pro-life,” the rest of us have had to scramble around with not nearly as big-ticket words like “choice” and “reproductive freedom.” The “life” conversation is often too thorny to even broach. Yet I know that throughout my own pregnancies, I never wavered for a moment in the belief that I was carrying a human life inside of me. I believe that’s what a fetus is: a human life. And that doesn’t make me one iota less solidly pro-choice.[1]
Mary Elizabeth Williams is bold enough to write what so many people have suspected for so long: there is no way around the fact that a fetus is a life. Abortion, then, by logical default, ends a life. Williams, in contradistinction to many other abortion advocates, is willing to admit this. But this does not temper her view on whether or not abortion should be legal and widely available:
Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.
Williams is willing to cede the argument on whether or not a fetus is a life. She admits it is. But that does not matter. It may be a life, but it is a life that can be extinguished at the will and whim of the woman who carries the fetus.
Such a crassly genocidal view of abortion is new, even for its advocates. Margaret Sanger, the very founder of Planned Parenthood, would have winced at this kind of notion:
We explained what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way no matter how early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way – it took a little time, a little trouble, but was well worth while in the long run, because life had not yet begun.[2]
Margaret Sanger, though she certainly paved the way for abortion’s modern-day legality, availability, and promotion, promoted contraception over abortion, at least publicly, because abortion ended life. Until now, pro-choice advocates have been largely unwilling to engage the question “Is the fetus a life or not?” and instead focus on a woman’s “right to choose” because many abortion advocates would be loath to talk about ending a life. No longer. Williams is perfectly willing to speak of a fetus as a life. And she’s perfectly willing to talk about ending it. As she concludes in her article, “I would put the life of a mother over the life of a fetus every single time – even if I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the fetus is indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing.”
In the face of words like Williams’, words from the prophet Jeremiah come to mind:
This is what the LORD says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because her children are no more.” (Jeremiah 31:35)
May we weep with Rachel at the children who are no more. They were not lives worth sacrificing. The life worth sacrificing has already been sacrificed.
[1] Mary Elizabeth Williams, “So What if Abortion Ends a Life?” Slate Magazine (1.23.13). NB: The link posted in the title Williams’ article takes you to Google’s cached version. The most inflammatory of Williams’ statements have since been removed. The current version of the article can be found here.
[2] Margaret Sanger, Margaret Sanger, An Autobiography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1938), 217.
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