Abortion: a personal response

Being pushed into the limelight makes you look hard at the issues

It's been an unexpectedly harrowing month for me, ever since the Upper House in Victoria passed legislation decriminalizing abortion in Victoria, making it lawful to terminate a preg­nancy up to 24 weeks, and up to birth if you can get two doctors to agree to this procedure. According to new law, doctors have no right to deny abortion to anyone who asks for it, even if the doctors have moral or religious objec­tions to it. Almost any type of medical procedure is OK, as long as the preg­nancy is terminated. An abortion clinic can perform the termination, even without a doctor present. And there's no requirement to provide counselling. It's pretty easy to do. And it's all backed by government-approved legislation.

I feel utterly depressed about this. In retrospect, I think to my shame that I've been asleep for many years, not condoning abortion, but not exactly doing anything about it either. A phone call from David Schutz one evening changed all this, as I found myself on an inter-faith committee as a Lutheran representative, making statements and representations to Parliament and the community in an effort to, at the very least, promote amendments to the existing proposal. A few clear presentations and some passionate people, reading books and listening to what is happening around me, and I slowly woke from comparative indifference.

I've been speaking to a few people from St Paul's recently (those who don't run when they see me open my mouth on the issue), and I wonder if perhaps the usual Lutheran reticence to enter politics, the all-pervasive culture of individualism and personal rights, and a super sensitivity to being seen as 'judgemental' have served us very badly here. I think that everyone is coming from a position of kindness and good intention, but I wonder if we have looked clearly at this from the basis of the Bible and the teaching of the church.

Here are some of the comments, and my personal reaction.

24 weeks is very late, and babies are often viable at this age. Would it have been better if they had stated 20 weeks?

When does a human life begin? Scientists agree that happens at con­ception. The fertilized egg which begins as a single cell multiplies rapidly, miracu­lously containing all our genetic make­up from the beginning. The embryo is far more than just a clump of cells but is fully human, not fish or fowl, and though it doesn't initially look like a baby, it is part of the continuum of human life which continues on through birth to childhood, adulthood, and old age until death. Utterly defenseless and dependent, a foetus needs our full protection, whether at 4 weeks, or 12 or 30 weeks. Any mother who desires the child knows its full humanity and life from the time she learns she's pregnant — it's non-debatable for her.

But is it a person? Personhood can't be proved scientifically. What makes a human a person? If you start qualifying it to someone who is responsive or able to obey commands or make moral choices, you are denying personhood to many people — and it's always the vulnerable who suffer in these sub­jective decisions. Taking personhood away from just being a human, in whatever stage of development, is very dangerous.

I feel uncomfortable telling women what to do with their bodies. Don't they have a right to their own choice in this matter?

The point is that there are two human beings to consider in this case, and one can't speak to defend him- or herself. The child's rights are equally as important as the woman's, if not more so because of its dependency. To state it very baldly, once we accept that the unborn is human, then the mother's 'rights' are not sufficient cause for killing a human being. We talk a lot about individual rights, but would not condone for example a person's right to speed on the roads, or satisfy warped sexual urges which involve children. Rights and respon­sibility and love go together.

The other aspect of this is the women themselves, who often don't feel they have any choice when they find them­selves pregnant. They feel desperate about their future, alone and very often pressured by partners or family or friends into aborting the baby, and their subsequent long-term grief is hugely under-rated. Read Giving Sorrow Words by Melinda Tankard Reist. It's a sobering and heart-breaking read, and is in our library.

Talking like this is cruel for all those women who have had abortions. You could be heaping them with guilt.

I really do feel great sadness for all women who have found themselves alone and isolated with an unexpected pregnancy, especially at an incon­venient time in their lives. Yet, surely these women deserve more than a referral to an abortion clinic. I under­stand that pressure to abort can be great, and is often the first suggested solution to 'the problem'. Some have called this attitude a 'culture of death', and I sincerely sympathize with women who have gone ahead with mixed motives and feelings to have an abor­tion. No-one should judge them — I suspect that many of these women have judged themselves very harshly indeed in retrospect. If anyone needs help with guilt and buried issues, they should seek counselling and care which is readily available (brochures for some helpful agencies are available in the foyer, from the pastors, or from Sue Westhorp). Those of us in their community should offer help when we see it's needed, and be open to women's distress. No, what I'm worried about is the future, so that we can save those who are yet unborn.

Lots of Christians believe in abortion, don't they?

The committee I sat on had repre­sentatives from all major denomina­tions, from the Orthodox church, from the Jewish faith, from Seventh Day Adventists, and we were able to get signatures as well from the Coptic Church, the Australian Christian Lobby, and so on. I didn't see evidence of any church leaders who would condone abortion. I acknowledge that lay Chris­tians, however, may hold that abortion is OK, especially in some exceptional circumstances. They take their position from one of perceived kindness. How­ever, no official church teaching con­dones it. In fact, a distinguishing mark of the very first Christians was the way they cherished all life, and opposed both abortion and euthanasia.

Those Right to Life campaigners with their militancy and banner waving put me right off.

I'll tell you a secret: they put me off too. I reluctantly admire, though, their persistency in keeping the issue alive, and their passion for the unborn. However, I always think that dialogue is better than shouting and thrusting unwanted banners and literature under people's noses, more often than not alienating those whom they should be drawing into further thought and reasoned debate. Dialogue takes time and effort and patience, whether in public meetings or private conver­sation, letters in the paper, or emails to the local MP; but it's much more effective.

Legalising abortion won't make any difference to the number of babies who are killed each year.

Perhaps that's true in the short term, but when we make something legal, it becomes part of the fabric of our culture. The law is a great educator, and abortion will now have no limits or safeguards or brakes, and I have little doubt that the numbers of deaths will increase.

Isn't it too late to do anything now?

It's never too late. Who else will stick up for the rights of the children in utero if we don't? Christians are perceived more and more as counter-cultural (the newspapers were full of letters telling the church to keep out of people's private affairs); but more than ever we have an enormous responsibility to be the yeast in our culture, affirming and cherishing life.

What do you mean, affirm life?

I admit I've been hung up on fighting legislation and pointing out negatives in the debate. Perhaps it was necessary for a while. But what can we do positively to help those in our families and congregation and community who are the bearers of our children? What can we do for the unborn, even those who aren't par­ticularly wanted? For starters, we can support all single mothers without judgement, and ensure they have a healthy pregnancy and supported birth. We can speak openly to our young people about their sexuality, and discuss the current acceptance and implications of sex outside of marriage. We can value all people and see them through God's eyes, especially the most vulnerable — the old, the sick, the ugly, the disabled, the bullied and unloved, and the unborn. These are the little ones we are called to protect, the ones in whose eyes Jesus calls us to serve Him. The specifics I leave up to you, but I too am challenged to think of ways I can better promote and serve life in all its shapes, sizes and ages. It's a precious gift we have, and this legis­lation chooses which members of society should enjoy it.

Enjoy your gift of life today, and help someone else to see some joy in theirs!

You be the judge

A central point in discussions of abortion is whether the unborn child is actually a human person. (We speci­fically say 'person', because it is too easy to show scientifically that the foetus is a human being.) So look at these stages of foetal development, and say when you think the transition to personhood takes place.

• j A few hours after conception, when the fertilized ovum splits into two cells. Some people say that human person­hood is defined by the act of cell splitting.*
• k About 12 days from conception, when pregnancy begins — that is, when the fertilized ovum has attached itself to the lining of the uterus.
• l Three weeks from conception, when the embryo has started to develop visible external body parts (even though at this stage it is still only about 2mm long).
• m Four weeks from conception, when the heart starts to beat.
• n Six weeks from conception, when brain waves can first be sensed and bones begin to appear. This is about the time when a mother can determine that she is pregnant.
• o Two months from conception, when the foetus and the face resemble that of a primate.
• p Three months from conception, when the foetus bgins to 'look like a baby', and its vocal chords and sexual organs begin to form.
• q Four months from conception, when the foetus' face is suffi­ciently developed for us to tell one foetus from another. At this point it is roughly half its birth length.
• r About six months from concep­tion, when the foetus becomes viable (able to live outside the womb). Some would like the brain to have developed to a particular degree: around eight months, scien­tists have measured brain waves similar to dreaming. Our son, Jona­thon, was born at 27 weeks (less than seven months).

Some people might like to argue that the foetus only becomes a person after it has been delivered and started breathing on its own. They might even quote Genesis 2:7 as a proof text, where it is only after "God breathed into it the breath of life" that "man became a living person". (A holistic view of scripture would also account for other references such as Psalm 139.)

These developmental stages say nothing, of course, about the soul — and in secular law-making, they could not, since the soul cannot be detected by any instrument. But per­haps a Christian view of pregnancy and birth must take some account of the soul. When do you think the soul 'connects'?

Peter Westhorp adapted from Contemporary Moral Issues by Joe Jenkins http://books.google.com/books?id=5dAll8_-aFEC

* This ties to the accepted biological definitions of life: Living things are highly organized; can acquire materials and energy; can respond to their envi­ronment; have an ability to reproduce (here initially referring to cell division); and have an ability to adapt. On this definition, physicians agree that the fertilised egg, once cell division commences, is a living being. We can also tell by its DNA that this living creature is a human being. Since there can be so little scientific debate about whether the foetus is a living human being, the discussion has to be about whether this human being is also a person.

by Marlene Pietsch