In reviving a Civil War-era, pre-statehood ban on all abortions this month, Arizona has caught up with Texas. National attention created by the Arizona Supreme Court should remind Americans that reproductive rights and bodily autonomy are on the ballot in all 50 states this year.
There are clear choices — starting at the very top of the ticket — that will determine if a woman’s right to choose is going to be completely dismantled nationwide. As that possibility sinks in for voters, many Republican candidates at all levels are dodging the reality that the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 has removed a constitutional safeguard for women. In states where abortion is now illegal, Republicans are obfuscating since public opinion is clearly pro-choice. In Texas where access to abortion has in effect been eliminated even for rape victims, many 2024 GOP candidates for state and national office are suddenly waffling about their intentions, which for decades have been to restrict or eliminate abortion throughout the land, not just certain individual states.
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As a pro-choice member of the clergy, I’m sometimes pressed about moral justification for abortion. While most Christians (according to a Pew Research Center survey, May 6, 2022) view abortion as morally permissible depending on the situation, white evangelical pastors and Catholic priests have so dominated the airwaves on this issue for years that it appears (incorrectly) that the pro-life position is the only Christian point of view.
The absolutist stance of these Christian clergy is often reduced to a syllogism: (1) a fetus is a human life, (2) God says you may not take an innocent human life, therefore, (3) abortion is murder. End of debate. In fact, it is not the end of the debate and never will be. Moral decisions are rarely so simple.
While the New Testament does not mention abortion, it does present a clear and sustained narrative that Jesus was on the side of oppressed Jewish peasantry including and especially women whose basic human rights were gutted by Rome’s imperial reach in alliance with the religious elites of Jerusalem. Those at the bottom of the social hierarchy were invariably subjected to institutionalized discrimination, abuse, theft, rape and dislocation.
Jesus was criticized for associating with these marginalized victims: “sinners,” women, prostitutes and the diseased. He stood up for the woman (identified as a “sinner” in Luke’s gospel — in church tradition, a prostitute) who had the boldness to wash the Master’s feet, drying them with her own hair. “Leave her alone!” Jesus admonished Judas (in John’s gospel).
Moral arguments for terminating a pregnancy are multiple but the one foremost in my mind as a Christian is that of respecting and honoring the autonomy of women. If women are made in the image of God, then they have free will and are capable of making moral judgments in the presence of God, family and physician without interference from the secular, almighty state. Her decision, especially since it involves her body, must be not only trusted but valued. From a Christian perspective, her body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. For politicians to force her to give birth is a desecration of this sanctuary.
To put this into Baptist terminology, the woman has “soul competency,” a theological perspective on the accountability of each person before God. Compelling her to give birth (as Texas law currently does) or to abort (as laws have required in some countries such as China) is a violation of her religious rights and responsibilities. Such violation is especially egregious since forcing birth violates the integrity of the woman’s autonomy over not only her soul and mind but also her body.
In almost all other contexts, American secular jurisprudence respects a person’s body as inviolate. For example, no law requires an unwilling mother to undergo bodily invasions far less risky than pregnancy (such as donating a kidney) to save a living child. Incarcerated women are not required to undergo routine searches of their body cavities. No law requires a woman to undergo a surgical procedure to recover physical evidence (such as shrapnel) that could be used to prove that her husband had tried to shoot her. These are examples of legal respect for bodily autonomy.
Yet current Texas law without any acknowledgement that the woman is a responsible moral actor before God demands that she continue a pregnancy and go through childbirth against her will. This is sacrilegious. It is un-Christian.
In short, the state of Texas does not trust women to make moral decisions about giving birth. The fact is that many pregnant Texas women — without government coercion — would have chosen during the two years since the overturning of Roe and since the passing of the Texas abortion ban to give birth even if the conception had been unplanned or unwanted. Texas robbed them of their responsibility as co-creators to make that decision before God, reducing their status to that of mere children.
To love one’s neighbor as oneself means respecting another’s body as inviolate. Many Christian clergy and parishioners are now standing up to these legalized acts of violence against the consciences of their daughters, wives, sisters, mothers and grandmothers. In Waco, there are churches that stand with Jesus in saying to Judas, “Leave her alone!”
Baptists, Episcopalians, Catholics, Methodists and non-denominational Christians are praying for fellow Texans who are being discriminated against by the Texas abortion ban. We pray for our physicians, nurses and social workers who care for girls and women being forced to give birth to their rapists. We pray for families who assist family members whose very lives are threatened due to pregnancy so that they may travel beyond Texas to attain emergency medical care. We also continue to pray for those women who either willingly or unwillingly give birth to babies. And we pray for those children — even those that are unwanted — to find the love and care that all children deserve and need. And as we pray, we pledge to vote our consciences at the next election.