Over the past 35 years, I have counseled thousands of women faced with unintended pregnancies. Almost every one of them wrestled with what would be best in her life circumstances and with what her faith taught her. Many struggled because they incorrectly believed the prevailing rhetoric that people of faith oppose abortion, that Scripture opposes abortion, and that having an abortion would be a sin. Many believed that a religious woman would not choose to have an abortion, despite the fact that women of all faiths have abortions. Few knew that many faiths recognize that women are moral agents who have the capacity, right, and responsibility to make the decision as to whether or not abortion is justified in their specific circumstances, and that men have a moral obligation to support women's decision making.
The Christian and Hebrew scriptures neither condemn nor prohibit abortion; in fact, abortion is not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible or New Testament, despite it being present in biblical times. Scripture calls us to act compassionately and justly when facing difficult moral decisions. The scriptural commitment to the most marginalized means that pregnancy, childbearing, and abortion should be safe for all women. Religious traditions have different beliefs on the value of fetal life, often according greater value as fetal development progresses. However, the teaching of many religious traditions is that the health and life of the woman must take precedence over the life of the fetus, a position supported by Exodus 21:22-23:
When men fight and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other damage ensues, the one responsible shall be fined according as the woman's husband may exact from him, the payment to be based on reckoning. But if other damage ensues, the penalty shall be life for life ...
The death of the fetus was punished by a monetary fine; the death of the pregnant woman herself required punishment by death. Although this passage is not directly a statement on abortion, it demonstrates that the woman, in contrast to the fetus, at that time had the legal status of an independent human being.
Religious leaders have been in the forefront of the movement for abortion rights for more than fifty years, advocating for women to be able to make their own moral decisions. Before abortion was legal in the United States, the Clergy Consultation Service helped women obtain safe abortions, and clergy were in the lead in the fight for the repeal of abortion laws. During the past forty years, many religious denominations have passed policies in support of legalized abortion, including the Christian Church (the Disciples of Christ), the Episcopal Church (USA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Union for Reform Judaism, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the United Church of Christ, The United Methodist Church, and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.
It is because of my religious beliefs that I am unwavering in my support for abortion, family planning and sexuality education. It is because life is sacred and parenthood so precious that no woman should be coerced to carry a pregnancy to term. Millions of people ground their moral commitment to abortion in their religious beliefs. We understand that the sanctity of human life is best upheld when it is created intentionally. As religious leaders, we seek to create a world where abortion is safe, legal, accessible, and rarely a decision that women and couples need to face.
Several years ago, the Religious Institute along with a leading group of theologians created the "Open Letter to Religious Leaders on Abortion as a Moral Decision." The central grounding of the Open Letter is that abortion is always a serious moral decision. It can uphold and protect the life, health, and future of the women, her partner, and her family. Almost 1500 clergy have endorsed the "Open Letter", and more than 3600 clergy have signed the Religious Declaration on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing calling for a faith based commitment to access to voluntary contraception, abortion, and HIV/STD prevention and treatment.
I, of course, acknowledge that not all religious traditions or leaders support abortion. However, no single religious voice can speak for all faith traditions on reproductive health services, nor should government take sides on religious differences. Any attempt to make specific religious doctrine concerning family planning, pregnancy, or abortion the law for all Americans or for the women of the world must be vigorously opposed by those of us committed to religious pluralism.
Surely there is common ground across the religious spectrum to work together to reduce unintended and unwanted pregnancies. Poverty, social inequities, ignorance, sexism, racism, and unsupportive relationships may render a woman virtually powerless to choose freely. And surely people of all faiths would agree that no woman anywhere in the world should die giving birth to the next generation because of a lack of contraception, prenatal care, emergency obstetric care, safe delivery and post-natal services, and post-abortion care.
Religious leaders must not cede the right to speak out on family planning and abortion to those leaders and organizations on the right who claim to speak for all religious perspectives, and we must use our pulpits and our public opportunities to support reproductive justice. Our religious message is clear and simple: Our faith-based commitment to the moral agency of women means every woman must have the right to make her own decisions about when and whether to have children, and every woman must have access to the broad range of safe and legal reproductive health services.
May it one day be so.
Read the full text of the Open Letter to Religious Leaders on Abortion as a Moral Decision.
The Reverend Dr. Debra W. Haffner is the co-founder and executive director of the Religious Institute. She is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister and a certified sexuality educator.
Follow Rev. Debra Haffner on Twitter: www.twitter.com/revdebra
1. Does god not give you free will, to live as you please and deal with the consequences good or bad?
2. If god wanted a fetus' rights to equate to or supersede a woman's, why did god make a fetus dependent on a mother's womb and her health?
You can't have it both ways. Either you do have free will, and so should everyone else, or this god business is wrong. Make up your minds.
2. Just because someone is dependant upon another does not make their life of lesser value. Even after a child is born they are dependant upon their parents, but that does not make their life less valuable that their parents'. WHat makes you think dependancy lessons the value of a person's life?
http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/articles/the-misuse-of-exodus-2122-25-by-pro-choice-advocates
John Piper's doctorate is a ThD from the University of Munich, oddly although she is refereed to as "the Reverend Doctor" Rev. Haffner's CV lists no earned doctorate.
Passing a law requiring people submit to an unnecessary medical procedure involving probes being jammed up very private orifices and making them pay for it ...
That crosses multiple lines.
1 - Any additional requirements must be paid for by the state.
2 - Any additional requirements may not involve simulated rape.
Pass a law requiring people to watch a video of an ultrasound for a typical fetus of the same gestational age if you like. They all look pretty much the same at the stages where virtually all abortions are done anyway.
Except you won't pass that law. Because you don't actually want women looking at things like this:
http://www.baby2see.com/development/ultrasound_sonogram/first_trimester_scans.html#week8
Most abortions are done at or before this stage. There is nothing human about the embryo at this point. Its a blob of tissue less than an inch long with no brain. There is literally nobody home.
The reason they went for the "government shoving a probe where the sun-don't shine" approach was cause they knew that wouldn't fly in the courts and it was great grand standing. Actual education on embryonic development is the last thing they want.
Every woman I know who has had an abortion got a sonogram done at their physicians suggestion ( at Planned Parenthood btw ) and while the sonogram did have an effect it was the precise opposite effect of the one you hypothesize will occur.
Don't partake of the the flesh of other people unless you'll die else-wise. And NEVER the flesh of the unwilling. Not even if your life depends on it.
The taboo against cannibalism and organ/tissue theft is incredibly strong. I would literally choose to die rather than take flesh from an unwilling person. And I would be shocked and amazed if someone chided me for my choice or called me immoral for choosing to end my own life rather than take a bit of bone marrow, or a kidney, or whatnot that someone else can live without against that person's will.
If someone were to do the deed for me I'd be in a real moral pickle. Because in that case *I* didn't steal the flesh of another and now that its been taken be a shame to waste it ... But this is unlikely to happen because the taboo against body-theft is so strong in our culture that nobody would do such a thing.
We don't even harvest corpses for life saving tissue. We burn or bury organs and sentence children, teens, and adults to death for the lack of them.
I am content to abide by these codes of conduct and find them moral, ethical, and religiously correct.
The fetus I was is also content to abide by them.
Fetus or person, flesh can only be morally given. Never morally taken.
How do you reconcile your position with a fetus using an unwilling woman's body as life support?
The fetus I was should also abide by the same codes of conduct we expect all adults, teens, children, and infants to live by and only consume that which is given freely.
Even if it will die otherwise.
I can't take of my Mother's flesh or fluids now without her permission so *obviously* I couldn't then either. Consequences of pain or death on my part are irrelevant now even though I posses sentience and can truly suffer. I still need consent. Without it I must suffer and/or die. So even if the fetus I was could feel pain, had a sense of self/understanding of death, and was capable of the same depth of suffering that I am now ... well these thing don't entitle me to body-theft *now* so they couldn't do so *then* either.
There is no act of heroism so amazing that it can entitle me to take unwilling flesh now. Einstein, mother Theresa, war heroes ... all require consent to take of another body. Nor an atrocity so horrible that I can be used for parts against my will now. Even our mass murderer's and war criminals may not be harvested against their will.
And even if this wasn't so fetus's aren't heroes and having sex doesn't put you in the same league as Hitler so neither group would qualify to receive extraordinary privileges or have their basic right to bodily autonomy stripped away.
The "scripture" (the Bible) is composed of books from many different authors who have very different writting styles. It's a very poor line of argument to imply that because this is how a verb or noun is used in one book that its used the same in another book if the authors are different.
And while it is possible to use a word in a new way, there needs to be something to actually indicate this is what is being done. Looking at the particular passage there is no reason to assume that the word in question is being given a new meaning. The decision to translate it as "miscarriage" is completely arbitrary. Does it not make more sense to go with the dictionary definition or to baselessly assume a new meaning not found anywhere else?
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perhaps "work together to reduce unintended and unwanted pregnancies" should also include work to reduce abortions.
This is fine if you consider the Bible to be authoritative. Much of the world does not - including many Unitarian Universalists - so in honor of religious pluralism we must find the most rational middle ground.
Forcing women to bear children they do not want and/or which may harm their health is nowhere close to middle ground on this issue.
I do agree, however, that reducing unintended and unwanted pregnancies is a great idea. Proper sex education (including the UU Our Whole Lives program) starting at an early age and freely available birth control are great steps in the right direction.
Jeremiah 1:5
- there are so many translations that render this passage as a premature birth and not a miscarriage. I don't know why Haffner would go down this path. It goes against her position.
It would read - if a premature birth occurs - a financial penalty should be paid.
But if there is further injury, there is is further penalty, including a life for a life
(the loss of the life of the child means the life of the person who inflict the injury on the pregnant woman)
The argument used against contraception is where God chastised one particular man. Per the Bible, a baby is alive when God breathes the first breath into his or her lungs - this happens at birth not in the womb, prior to that is just hope and expectation. The bit about subjecting women is where they really go off the deep end in twisting scripture. They take the teachings where women are told to submit to their husband - as in voluntary submission - and make that mandatory or even change the translation to "be subjected to their husband". Then they leave out the corollary teachings where the husband is told to love his wife as himself and as Christ loves his Church and instead may even teach that a husband has the right to discipline his wife perhaps even "by any means he sees as appropriate and necessary". Who would voluntarily and knowingly abuse himself? And I'm quite sure Christ wouldn't go about abusing his Church just because he could.
Children are meant to be blessings, not curses that keep women dependent upon and subjected to their husbands. Husbands should love and respect their wives. Allowing use of contraception would do a lot. So would teaching men how to be proper husbands
Not so different from when men were legally allowed to beat their wives -- some men treated their wives well and some didn't. No difference among the women - their value was tied to their husbands' attitudes toward them.
The worth of one person is not contingent on the attitude of another. This minister hasn't thought through any of the issues. Her thinking is incredibly superficial.
The whole point of elective abortion is that you don't want to be pregnant. Actually, this is a "duh" thing. Nobody every wants to be pregnant. It's an unpleasant, painful, dangerous, messy, undignified, trial.
That people willingly endure when they want a child badly enough to go through it. And they do this frequently enough that the species can thrive and increase without forced gestation luckily.
Now, less than 1% of abortions happen in the last trimester. This is a tiny tiny number. There are more than enough instances of health complications and horrifying defects to explain a number this small.
Late term abortions are virtually always abortions of fetus's that the mother's want to keep. That they fought, and bled, and gave of themselves for months to build. But something went wrong. And an abortion was needed.
To insinuate otherwise is incredibly insulting.
Comparing a sentient thinking woman to a mindless cell blob is also pretty insulting.
Rather than demanding better behavior and accountability from men, women behave irresponsibily and just abort their babies. With the ease of access to contraception in the U.S. - the abortion rate should keep going down -- but it keeps going up. The reason Margaret Sanger had to help those women was, well,frankly, their husbands were making a lot of sexual demands on them that tanslated into more and more pregnancies - i.e. women had little say over thier sex lives as well as their reproductive lives. Husbands demanded what they felt they had legally coming to them. Read the early feminists on abortion -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, etc.. they were all very much against abortion as they saw it as a terrible by-product of partiarchy not as a way to liberate women. They understood that children (wanted or unwanted) were not the enemies.
Abortion is always morally wrong except if a mother's life is on the line or in the case of rape. Women have many options, including birth control
I have several relatives who wouldn't exist if their mom's hadn't chosen abortion as single teenagers. If you stopped those abortions you'd be murdering the planned children they had later since not being pregnant set their life on a path that resulted in marrying men they would otherwise have never met and having children that would otherwise never exist with those men.
Fatherless unwanted child now or wanted children born in the bonds of matrimony later? Seems to me their mothers made the moral choice.