Tyler and Kendall are sharing in this conversation together. Kendall likes to intimidate Tyler with her size and strength and ability to worry about unforeseen events, while Tyler lives footloose and fancy-free.
With the recent news that the U.S. Supreme Court may be planning to overturn Roe vs. Wade, this seemed like a good time to have a conversation on the issue of abortion. Let us preface this conversation with a couple points:
1) We are not trying to endorse either the Pro-Life or the Pro-Choice perspectives as we find both to be too deeply entrenched in American politics to be helpful.
2) We are not trying to find a final answer on the question of whether or not abortions should be legal or under what circumstance they should be legal.
3) Our main conviction is that this is a topic that requires a much deeper conversation - especially among Christians - than our world is offering through social media posts, bumper stickers, and yard signs. The issues are complex and reach deep into some of our most cherished beliefs. Let’s begin.
Kendall: Like many other issues that the Evangelical Church in America wrestles with, this is a fairly recent conversation. Within the last month, I heard a podcast from a woman who explored the abortion underground. She realized that there is much more to the story than what most of us are aware of. I learned that the issue of abortions being legal (or more importantly, moral) wasn’t widely considered until the past 150 years. The first abortion medicines were available to “bring down the menses” in a woman who hadn’t felt the “quickening”--the baby kicking at around 4-5 months in utero. These options were dangerous and often ended in death for women. The first attempts at creating safe abortions were just that–an alternative to the dangerous and often deadly solutions that existed in the back alley. Interestingly, the first anti-abortion leader, Horatio Storer, was motivated by racism–in a country that was quickly growing less white and more diverse, limiting abortions in white women was one way to combat the growing influence of immigrants.
Tyler: That’s a good point. I remember when I was reading Kristin Kobes Du Mez’ Jesus and John Wayne, being shocked at how new this issue is, at least for evangelical churches and how recently it became tied to politics. She writes that, “As late as 1971, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution urging states to expand access to abortion.” By the 1980’s their tune was changing, but it seems clear to me that the issue of abortion in the country has been about a lot more than just morality.
And I think that is the bigger issue that needs to be part of this discussion. There is a moral issue to discuss with abortion. But there is also the political issue, and the morality of how those in power are seeking to affect the change they want to see. We shouldn’t ignore the likelihood that their motivations may be more related to gaining/maintaining political power than the real moral issues around abortion.
Kendall: And there are real moral issues! Handling the issues of life and human dignity shouldn’t ever be dealt with flippantly. I’m guessing that, like us, we all have our own strong opinions about the rights of women and their children. Unfortunately, what should be a highly personal and nuanced conversation has become extremely black and white. There doesn’t seem to be any room for gray space in the abortion conversation. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be any room for conversation at all.
Tyler: And this is a topic that is replete with gray space. Which is perhaps why it has devolved into one side shouting about reproductive rights and the other side shouting about the sanctity of life. We talk about this every semester in my ethics class and it is always a fascinating conversation. Just the idea of when to assign personhood to the fetus garners a slew of opinions. The fetus has the potential to be a full-grown human being with full personhood from conception, but when does it gain all the rights of a human?
And I might add that the Bible doesn’t clearly state when life begins. An Old Testament perspective would probably be that life begins when the breath/spirit enters a person’s body (e.g. Genesis 2:7, Ezekiel 37:7-10, etc.), which is decidedly after birth. Every point has a counterpoint. Read Psalm 139:13-14, Ecclesiastes 4:2-3, and Psalm 137:9 together and you won’t get any clear answer on the fundamental issues that lie behind the abortion discussion. More than giving us answers, the Bible calls us to wrestle together and seek wisdom.
Kendall: This issue was fairly black and white for me growing up. But then our mom told me the story of her own two grandmothers, and as is often the case, the stories of real women deciding to abort a baby or not adds a human dimension to this often caustic battle. Our great-grandmas both lived in an era of limited contraception (if any) and big families. Access to medical care was sparse, and often children and mothers died in childbirth. Our grandpa was the 2nd child of fifteen. After great-grandma’s fourteenth child, she was told that she wouldn’t survive another pregnancy. Unfortunately, the unthinkable happened, as it did for many women, and she became pregnant again. As the doctor had forecasted, she died in childbirth, and sadly, her infant didn’t survive either. The family never talked about these events. The older sisters were left to care for the younger children, and the family’s reluctance to talk about what happened to their mother has left scars on their family that persist even to this day. In fact, our mom tells a story of visiting her aunt with grandma when her aunt asked, “Why didn’t my mom have an abortion?” The decision had haunted her for decades. Even as elderly women, the scars hadn’t fully healed.
Our grandma’s mom also had a large family. She had five children and was pregnant with her sixth, when problems developed with her pregnancy. She and her husband were faced with an awful decision: would she abort the baby and survive to care for her family? Or put the life of her child first? Thankfully, her father-in-law (who was a widower and raised his own sons by himself) counseled her that both the baby’s life and her life were important. She made the choice to have an abortion and lived many more years with her children and husband.
Did one mother make a better choice? How did each decision affect their family and the generations to come? These are hard questions to answer. Many people were implicated in each decision. But they illustrate that this topic is much more nuanced than yard signs, Facebook posts and the rants of pundits would have us believe.
Tyler: There is a lot more to say about this issue. Maybe we’ll do a follow up conversation, but here’s the bottom line: If you are reading this in the context of a church, we can almost guarantee that there is someone in your church who has had an abortion. Someone who worships God beside you every week. The way we talk about this matters. The way we imagine, speak about, and engage the women who have had abortions matters. This issue is not just about “them,” it is about all of us. Abortion was common in the ancient world, or unwanted infants were just left for dead. Jesus spent time with prostitutes who I’m sure only maintained their work by terminating some pregnancies. There was no option for contraceptives. If he didn’t condemn, should we? I have had to counsel women in my church who have had abortions and are convinced they are going to hell, that they can’t be forgiven, that they don’t deserve God’s grace. They didn’t get this message from the world, or from the Bible. They got it from the church. We need to do better.
So again we invite you to listen. Listen to real stories, not just impersonal platitudes and one-sided rhetoric. You don’t have to like what you hear. You don’t have to agree with the decisions that were made. But there are real humans, made in the image of a loving God who are really affected by this issue. Listen to their stories. And remember that God loves them more than you can possibly imagine.
We wrote up this conversation before we had heard about the Uvalde school shooting. We mourn for those who died. We also recognize that our elected officials could do more to prevent such tragedies from occurring. And we are deeply frustrated that those who claim to care so much about the lives of the unborn seem to care so little for the lives of the children in our schools.