Let’s Talk About a Frankly Pretty Difficult Topic
On Monday of last week, May 2, 2022, Politico obtained a leaked draft of a decision written by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. This leak indicated an intention by the Supreme Court to overturn the decision made almost fifty years ago in Roe v. Wade. If this overturning of precedent remains in the final draft, states will have the power to set more restrictive abortion laws if they so choose. The rights to life and bodily autonomy will now be clashing in individual states. Naturally, many people within the ELCA are divided on this issue. More conservative pro-life members of this church are probably celebrating this decision as it allows states to make stronger decisions to protect the lives of unborn humans in the womb. People who lean left and favor the pro-choice perspective are mourning and protesting what they see as a massive removal of protections for women’s freedom to make choices about their own bodies. Obviously, there are a lot of tensions at play here, so instead of talking about a Scripture reading, this week we are going to talk a little bit about abortion and the church’s perspective on it.
The ELCA’s social statement on abortion seeks to find a middle ground between all of the diverse voices within this church body. The document acknowledges some situations in which abortion is a responsible moral choice, such as cases in which the mother’s life is threatened or when the sex that resulted in pregnancy was not consensual. However, it also strongly encourages mothers to deeply consider the ethics of terminating a pregnancy and choose life when that is the morally responsible decision. At the same time the ELCA acknowledges that many women choose abortion because of the need to “survive in a hostile social environment.” This is a way to address not only the stigma around having a child outside of marriage, but also a way to acknowledge the reality that many mothers face overwhelming financial and social hardships that would make it exceedingly difficult to raise a child without more support. The church sees a need to move toward a more socially supportive society, so that fewer people feel the need to make the choice to terminate pregnancies.
Really, this is something that we should be talking about more openly, perhaps not as fierce debates, but as civil discussions that acknowledge the wide variety of viewpoints that may exist within a single congregation. Unfortunately, there are two problems that afflict this topic: political polarization and the taboo nature of it. In talking about abortion, not only do we have to talk about the difficult philosophical questions of life, humanity, personhood, and bodily autonomy, but we also have to acknowledge one thing that we absolutely hate talking about in polite company: sex.
The taboo that exists around talking about sex has produced a lot of negative consequences throughout the church and society. We want sex to be our own business. We don’t want to hear about it from other people or talk about it with other people, at least not seriously. All the serious talks seem too awkward and overly personal. The unfortunate reality is that this stigma does nothing to prevent young people from having sex. You can’t scare the sex drive out of teenagers and young adults. All it does is fail to give them the guidance and support they need to do it with relative safety.
But the taboo around sex inflicts two other significant negative consequences as well. Our failure to talk about it leads many people to think of it as some spectacularly egregious sin. Sexual purity has become a marker of elevated importance in determining who “real” Christians are. In failing to discuss it, we allow it to become a monster that people have to be especially ashamed of. This is a theological error. I can’t find any reason to talk about sex as being any more sinful than any other sin, especially those sins that actually hurt our neighbors: greed, arrogance, anger. But because sex is treated with such shame and secrecy, while pregnancy is something that cannot be kept secret for long, many young women find themselves in a trap. If they made a mistake and got pregnant, they will have to live with the consequences. People will speak badly about them. They may feel particularly impure and disconnected from their church families. I have known people whose parents have been very upset with them when they reported their pregnancy to them, this includes parents who are distinctly pro-life. Aside from the potential financial concerns, a young woman, especially a young Christian woman, may face a wide variety of personal and social challenges related to getting pregnant outside of marriage in the first place. If only bad people have sex outside of marriage, then being an unmarried pregnant woman is a constant reminder of immorality. I can’t imagine the voices of my loved ones playing in my head, telling me they are ashamed of what I’ve done every time I look in a mirror.
In addition to the social stigma, which can produce significant mental and emotional effects, the Church recognizes the harsh reality of poverty that impacts many potential mothers. While adoption can be a good option, this can be a difficult and scary process for women in some places. And simply carrying a pregnancy to term with the health effects prevalent in that experience can be overwhelming for poor and working class mothers without the proper support at home. If access to abortion is eliminated, women in this difficult situations will need support from the community around them. This may include the church.
If the overturning of Roe v. Wade leads to strict abortion restrictions in Nebraska, the church must consider all these things when determining its own path forward. While some are celebrating, mourning, or protesting this week, we must look ahead to the changes to come. If abortion access is restricted, the church needs to provide more support and care to mothers in difficult situations who no longer have access to this procedure. The church must do what it can to meet their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. We may need to provide diapers and baby formula to a young single mother who couldn’t afford them herself. We may need to take steps to distigmatize sex and help unmarried pregnant women find refuge in the church. We may need to be more supportive of parents who need to talk to their teenaged children about sex and how to do it safely without an unwanted pregnancy.
NPR’s podcast Consider This had an episode about the potential impact of this decision. During this episode, they featured a brief segment of an interview with an anti-abortion rights group leader named Herb Geraghty who said, “For so many pregnant people, they feel as though abortion is their only option, and there is nothing pro-choice about that. I hope that we can unite and work together to meet the needs of young families. Those needs need to be met in our communities.”
I obviously can’t speak for everyone, but I think this quote expresses something that both sides can agree with to some extent. The best way to reduce abortions is to remove the need for abortion: providing education to young people, removing the social stigma around unplanned pregnancies, and providing financial, physical, and emotional support to young single mothers and families. Naturally, some people will disagree with this middle ground, but if abortion is restricted, the church must rise to the occassion in loving service to those who need it most.
