The story of the abortion issue in this country is one telling example of our increasingly malfunctioning system of politics that sacrifices everything for power, whatever the costs may be. And those costs are huge.
Before abortion was a partisan issue
Into the early 80s, just 40 years ago, a politician’s beliefs about abortion could not be identified by the political party to which he or she belonged. It was not a partisan issue. Indeed, four of the justices who supported the Roe v Wade decision were nominated by Republican presidents; one of the two dissenters was nominated by a Democrat.
Nor did Evangelicals associate themselves with opposition to abortion. That was considered primarily a Catholic matter. In 1968, in the leading article in a special issue of Christianity Today on contraception and abortion, professor Bruce Waltke, of the conservative Dallas Theological Seminary, explained the Bible plainly teaches that life begins at birth, a view endorsed by the magazine itself: “God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed. The Law plainly exacts: ‘If a man kills any human life he will be put to death’ (Lev. 24:17). But according to Exodus 21:22-24, the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense… Clearly, then, in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.”
Nor did the Wade v Roe decision spark opposition to abortion among Evangelicals. As Rund Abdelfatah acknowledged on an NPR podcast, the Southern Baptist Convention actually passed resolutions in 1971, 1974 and 1976 affirming the idea that women should have access to abortion for a variety of reasons and that the government should play a limited role in that matter. Rev. W. A. Criswell, a leading fundamentalist Baptist pastor in the 70s, was outspoken in his approval of the Supreme Court decision: “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person, and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed” (as reported in Randall Balmer, Thy Kingdom Come). Even James Dobson, who later became an outspoken foe of abortion, acknowledged after the Roe decision that the Bible was silent on the matter and an evangelical could hold that “a developing embryo or fetus was not regarded as a full human being” (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/08/abortion-us-religious-right-racial-segregation?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other).
Not a partisan or Evangelical issue. How times have changed. Abortion has now become one aspect of the divisiveness disease that has infected, perhaps irrevocably, our body politic. But what specifically happened to cause such a stark change?
Shaping abortion into a pawn of political warfare
Perhaps ironically, the initial activist political movement in opposition to abortion was led by liberals, many coming from the Catholic tradition of support for the dignity of all human beings, workers’ rights, and FDR-type social legislation (for details, see https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/6/2/451/htm#B4-religions-06-00451). This liberal Catholic tradition was undergirded by the social teachings contained in papal encyclicals, which in turn led to solid support of Catholics for Democrats into the 70s.
In the 60s and early 70s, this liberal movement worked under the banner of human rights, protection of life born or unborn, and anti-Vietnam War sentiments. It supported anti-poverty and assistance programs to obviate the need for abortion. The movement was also concerned that the government might use abortion to perpetrate, once again, genocide against poor people and Blacks. Although most members of this movement had links to Catholicism, that was not true for all. Jesse Jackson, for example, was aligned for some time with the perspectives of this group. “Politicians argue for abortion largely because they do not want to spend the money necessary to feed, clothe and educate more people,” he wrote in 1977 in an article for National Right to Life News. This movement had lofty goals for the United States. As Ted Kennedy wrote, “When history looks back to this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about human beings enough to halt the practice of war, to provide a decent living for every family, and to fulfill its responsibility to its children from the very moment of conception.”
Two factors led to the demise of this liberal anti-abortion movement. First, the legalization of abortion within certain conditions by the Supreme Court in Roe v Wade; and second, the rise of the women’s movement. It has often been remarked that the antiwar movement gave a supporting, non-leadership role to women, but the rise of feminism caused us to rethink and reject sexist practices. Since women are the ones who are impregnated and give birth and had the major responsibility for childcare, women argued that they too had rights, which the Supreme Court and liberals came to acknowledge. This added a whole new and important dimension to abortion issue discussions.
During this time, Evangelicals were not particularly active politically; and as mentioned above, their views on abortion were fluid. So how did they become a politically active force and decide on a fixed, negative stance toward abortion?
The political activism of Evangelicals did not have its origin in the Roe v Wade ruling but in race issues.
How that happened is not a pretty picture. Their activism had origins not in the Roe v Wade ruling but in race issues. The context had to do with how these Christians responded to Brown v Board of Education, which was to set up their own system of schools that virtually excluded Blacks. Public schools in the south were decimated. Jerry Falwell made no secret of his opposition to school desegregation and the Civil Rights Act, founding in 1967 his own Christian school in Lynchburg, which a local paper called a “private school for white students.”
However, in 1970, a preliminary court ruling denied these segregated private academies tax-exempt status. And President Nixon (yes, a Republican) directed the IRS to follow up. This policy caught the attention of Evangelicals, especially when the IRS, after years of investigations and warnings, removed tax-exempt status from Bob Jones University in 1976.
This engendered anger add outrage among Evangelical leaders, which came at a time when people like Paul Weyrich, eventual co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, were working with Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed, and others to create the religious Right as a political force. Obviously, segregation as such was not going to work as the overt hook for Evangelical followers or be palatable for the majority of Americans.
Eventually one hook did become opposition to abortion, but it was not an easy sell since Evangelicals were not readily comfortable aligning themselves with the Catholic position. Abortion was eventually associated in their minds with opposition to secular humanism (a new term generated by the religious Right), feminism, and the sexual revolution., reflecting the tendency of more fundamentalist religions to focus their behavioral guidelines on what they consider right or wrong on matters of sex and gender. Even so, it was not until after the election of Ronald Regan that abortion became a real focus of attention for their activism.
Retrospectively, Evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell asserted they were opposed to abortion from the Roe v Wade decision in 1973. But this was not true, and represented an attempt to cover up the unsavory story of their opposition to desegregation. In fact, Falwell did not preach against abortion in any sermon before 1978. As for Evangelical opposition to contraception, that arose much later, in response to Affordable Care Act mandates. (For more details, see https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/08/abortion-us-religious-right-racial-segregation, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/, and https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/10/7/16259952/birth-control-evangelical-agenda.)
In contrast with the liberal pro-life movement, the conservative movement had no interest in obviating the need for abortions through social programs or in larger questions a pro-life stance might engender regarding war, capital punishment, treatment of immigrants, and so forth. In this movement from the Right, the rallying cry was an attack the moral decay that was attributed to policies and practices of the Left. It was all about controlling behavior. Whether they completely agreed or not with the religious Right, Republicans were more than happy to welcome their potential new allies and the potential breakup of a solidly Democratic Catholic vote.
The betrayal of Catholic social teachings
In any case, this shift presented a conundrum for Catholics. As Msgr. George Higgins said in 1980, “prolife Catholics” needed to “consider the possibility that in collaborating with the right wing on abortion they risk defeat of the overall social justice agenda.” How prophetic. The Church was effectively boxed in by the partisan divide.
Whereas opposition to abortion became a political wedge issue for Evangelicals, for the Catholic Church the view that it is murder was officially declared back in 1869. Its position, however, was not grounded in any pronouncements of Jesus or any biblical text, but was tied to disputable notions of natural law, and the view that intercourse is intrinsically linked with reproductive purposes, which clearly is not the purpose of all intercourse in practice. In any case, the Church has not been able to convince a significant number of Catholics of the idea that abortion is murder, many of whom continue to approve Roe v Wade or consider abortion morally acceptable at least in some circumstances. In 2014, 24% of women who had abortions self-identified as Catholic (13% as Evangelical).
With only limited success in persuading its own followers of its views, the Church turned its attention to political strategies, working, like the Evangelicals, for overturning the Supreme Court decision and ensuring that abortion is illegal for anyone, regardless of how any particular individual may regard its morality. This move was and is overreach, and to my mind, morally questionable. A particular religion has wide latitude to declare something impermissible for its followers, but for something to be moral or immoral, it must be demonstrably so to those of any religion or no religion. Declaring abortion prior to the survivability of the fetus outside the womb as murder does not meet that test. At the extreme, the Church has even threatened to excommunicate Catholic politicians who are pro-choice, thus in practice suggesting that only Republicans are good Catholics.
Insofar as the Catholic Church has hitched itself to the current pro-life movement, and as Msgr. Higgins foresaw, it has become part of an Evangelical and Republican movement that had no interest in a social agenda or in steps to reduce the causes of abortion through sex education, health care and insurance for mothers/children, affordable childcare, parental leave, increased WIC, or harsher sentencing for rape. Nor can pro-life states seeking the end of abortion particularly boast of conditions favorable to children. Texas, where the most recent assault on abortion has occurred, registers more than twice the number of uninsured children as the national average and a 7% higher rate of teen birth. In all aspects of child well-being considered by the Annie E. Casey Foundation (economics, education, health, community), Texas ranks 46th. Mississippi, whose restricted abortion case will be decided in the next Supreme Court session, ranks 50th (https://assets.aecf.org/m/resourcedoc/aecf-2021kidscountdatabook-2021.pdf).
The story does not end there, however. As a pawn in political warfare, antiabortion foes are now linked with racial resentment and a whole host of Republican and right-wing perspectives on immigration, gun legislation, and even vaccines. We could very well ask if Republicans are being used as a pawn by the Catholic Church or is the Church becoming a pawn of the Republicans. Perhaps the relationship is symbiotic, but in the larger picture the Church has becoming associated with views that depart strongly from the teachings of Jesus.
The fallout from political warfare
There is a serious cost when abortion becomes a pawn in partisan politics. All is reduced to soundbites (abortion as murder as against woman’s body, woman’s choice). Both are deficient as moral guidelines. Most importantly, missing in the mix are moral nuances, social realities, and individual consciences at the heart of situations involving unintended pregnancies. But who but the woman who is pregnant or her family is in a position to decide whether an unintended pregnancy is an unexpected blessing or a burden that they are not psychologically or economically able to carry? Is anyone in a sufficiently knowledgeable position to decide for the woman who is pregnant or her family whether they can serve and provide well for a newborn child? The answer is no. Lastly, is anyone better positioned to decide than the woman who is pregnant, her family, and doctor about how to proceed in the case of medical complications that can arise in pregnancy? Again, the answer is no. And herein lies the tragedy of abortion as a pawn in political warfare.
According to the latest statistics, up to 85% of abortions are performed on unmarried women; 75% of the aborting women live near or below the poverty level. From that we can see what frequently prompts abortion decisions: Poor single women—without a father in the picture who will share childcare responsibilities or provide financial support; a woman who needs to work to survive, but without parental leave benefits and without the ability to hire someone to take care of a child during work hours. Whether an additional child in the family might deprive the family and their other children of scarce resources will also be a common consideration. Then, too, it could be a case of a pregnant teen or a victim of rape.
Soundbites or partisan warfare are not useful in confronting such complex realities; and in fact, they block the very empathy which would lead to an understanding of why abortion in some circumstances is chosen. In the background, though, you can hear disgruntled voices raising accusatory questions such as why did she or he not use contraception, why are unmarried females having sex anyway, why do they live so irresponsibly. Some will cavalierly just ask why not just put the newborn child up for adoption, not taking into account how such a decision can be a fraught one for the mother and, later on, for the child in question.
The decision to abort is a fraught one for many; and if it were not for political divisiveness, most of us would probably agree that reducing the causes of abortion is a goal that should be pursued. Contraception would represent a key logical place to start. Increased use of contraceptives would likely result from good sex education programs, as well as ensuring that contraceptives are affordable and accessible. But that’s the thing about an issue that becomes a pawn in a partisan divide. Finding reasonable solutions or doing the decent thing are not the goal; only political victory. It’s all or nothing. Indeed, and predictably, some states and religions are working to create obstacles to accessible contraception. Again, of course, this hurts poor and low-income mothers the most. It is as if these women are being told not to have sex unless they want a baby.
It’s one thing, however, to chart the problems; quite another to offer solutions for a way past divisiveness. On the latter score, I admit to feeling at a loss. I do think the guidelines offered by the Roe v Wade decision have by and large served the country, women, and families well. It allows for choice within limits for a very intimate, private matter. But the status quo will not be preserved. Some states will continue to challenge those guidelines in favor of imposing more and more restrictions and practical obstacles, and they will take their cases to the courts. It would be surprising if the Supreme Court does not approve increased restrictions or perhaps even make abortion a matter for each state to decide, especially given a contingent of five Catholic justices, four of whom I do not think could be counted on to keep their religious beliefs separate from their rulings.
Whether the Democrats could or would be willing to pass federal legislation that matched the broad guidelines of Roe v Wade remains to be seen. But without such countervailing national legislation, pregnant women and their families may no longer have any choice in matters of pregnancy, whatever their particular circumstances may be. That would be an impressive victory for Republicans, who will of course gloat about the number of unborn children they will save, but at a horrible cost to the victims of the political warfare once we consider the results on real live women and families. But in matters of extreme partisan politics, it’s all about the base and power.