Is fruitful dialogue between those who consider themselves “pro-choice” and those who are “pro-life” possible? Perhaps—but first, the two sides will have to work harder to understand each other’s assumptions.
This excerpt from Daniel K. Williams, Abortion and America’s Churches: A Religious History of Roe v. Wade is published with permission of University of Notre Dame Press.
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The religious campaign for reproductive rights is grounded in a theology that emphasizes individual choice as central to what it means to be human, which is a reflection of liberal Protestant views in the postwar era. This theology has had greatest appeal to those who believe that personal moral intuition is a better guide to moral truth than fixed ecclesiastical or scriptural standards of authority. But secondarily, this campaign is also a campaign for the right of everyone to make choices that are free of state or religious coercion.
Though these principles are grounded in historic values of liberal Protestantism, they have had widespread appeal to nonreligious and post-Christian Americans, so as the number of liberal Protestants has declined and the number of religious “nones” has expanded, support for abortion rights has remained strong. But as both religious and nonreligious supporters have become ideologically removed from the mid-twentieth-century Protestant framework for valuing fetuses as at least potential human beings, the historic mainline Protestant moderation on abortion that has long influenced mainstream American politics has begun to rapidly disappear.
For several decades, liberal Protestants who wanted abortion to remain legal were still willing to question its morality, but now this attempt to differentiate between the morality and legality of abortion has become increasingly rare. When the liberal Presbyterian minister Rebecca Todd Peters insisted that she was not sinning when she had two abortions–and that her denomination should remove any suggestion that abortion was morally shameful from its official statements on abortion–it was a sign that many liberal Protestants were ready to abandon the moral reservations with which they had generally tempered their abortion rights campaigns. And when Vice President Kamala Harris became the first vice president in American history to tour an abortion clinic, it was a similar sign that the Democratic Party was ready to quit moderating their abortion rights advocacy with any hint that abortion rates needed to be lowered: The party now intended to treat abortion not merely as a choice but as necessary healthcare, just as liberal Protestant churches were doing. The liberal Christian campaign for reproductive justice is thus becoming less moderate and less markedly Christian than it has been in the past.
In contrast to the pro-choice cause, the religious campaign against abortion is grounded in a theology that emphasizes fixed, transcendent moral standards and God’s sovereignty in creating life. Pro-life Christians define the value of human beings not in terms of their relationship to other people or in terms of their ability to make rational choices or enjoy a certain quality of life, but rather in their relationship to their Creator. People are eternally valuable because they are made in the image of God–a principle that applies to all people at every stage of development, regardless of whether others around them recognize their value or welcome their existence.
That is why a zygote created in the image of God has just as much value as a full-grown adult, because it is part of God’s eternal plan. The biblical prohibition against taking human life is not merely a useful social principle but is rather an unchangeable divine mandate based on the recognition that human beings exist only because of God’s will and that God has created them for an eternal purpose and has given them infinite worth. Pro-life Christians therefore see abortion not only as an attack on human beings but as a direct affront to God. They also believe that unless the value of human life is grounded in theistic principles, no human rights or human lives are secure. To live in a society stripped of all theistic underpinnings or divinely grounded fixed moral principles is deeply frightening to them.
Pro-life Christians have not always agreed on what a pro-life society would look like. Some have imagined a liberal democratic, pluralistic society that is nevertheless grounded in Christian humanism, as Vatican II envisioned. Others have imagined a society of limited government but with a strong tradition of religious liberty and parental rights. Still others in recent years have imagined some sort of post-liberal society that emphasizes community values at the local level. But nearly all pro-life Christians have been deeply frightened of the prospect of a secular society that has no framework for valuing human life.
Pro-life Christians have often hoped that their cause might appeal to those outside of their own religious tradition. But because the pro-life cause is grounded in an understanding of the value of fetal life that is difficult for many people who lack a theistic framework to fully embrace–and because the pro-life ethic requires many people to sacrifice their own interests and wellbeing when preserving fetal life and bringing a child into the world is inconvenient–the majority of people who lack a theistic framework for understanding the value of human life have not sided with the pro-life campaign. To sustain its numbers, the pro-life cause has instead had to deepen its support among religious Americans, becoming more overtly Christian and more theologically and socially conservative over time.
What appears to their opponents to be misogyny or opposition to feminism is in reality a reflection of a very different understanding of what a good and humane society looks like.
Because the Christian framework for opposition to abortion is not based on the primacy of individual choice, pro-lifers have generally been far less concerned than pro-choice advocates about restricting people’s right to make choices that are evil. They have been much more interested in building a humane or rightly ordered, God-honoring society than in empowering people to make choices that pro-lifers think will destroy themselves and others. They believe that expanding abortion availability will not ultimately advance women’s wellbeing, because giving people the power to destroy others’ lives will never lead to ultimate happiness. What appears to their opponents to be misogyny or opposition to feminism is in reality a reflection of a very different understanding of what a good and humane society looks like. Pregnant women are not liberated by being given the tools to destroy the children they are carrying in their wombs, pro-lifers believe; instead, they are given true freedom when they are empowered to care for their children and pursue the calling that God has given them–a calling of genuine love for others.
Is there any room for common ground between these competing views? Perhaps one can start by acknowledging the different frames of moral reference that each side has embraced. If advocates of reproductive rights acknowledge that the pro-life campaign is not based on opposition to women’s rights but instead is grounded in a concern for human life and a belief in divinely ordained transcendent moral principles, they could at least understand where their opponents are coming from. And similarly, if pro-life Christians recognized that advocates of reproductive rights were motivated by a commitment to a religiously pluralistic society that values free choice and gender equality, they might be able to take the first step toward a meaningful dialogue with those who disagree with their position.
The two sides do not necessarily have equal claims to validity. When it comes to Christian theology, the pro-life position is grounded in claims that have much deeper roots in the Christian tradition than the pro-choice position. But when it comes to matters of politics, the pro-choice side is probably on much firmer ground, because its emphasis on gender equality and the primacy of individual choice accords well with the values that most Americans outside of conservative religious circles generally share.
It is difficult to see how the pro-life side can prevail at a moment when only a minority of Americans are churchgoing Christians. If the pro-life ethic demands self-sacrifice and a commitment to marriage, sexual chastity, and care for others that is largely foreign to the values of an individualistic society, an ethic of “choice” and reproductive rights will probably seem more appealing to a majority of voters in all but the most heavily churchgoing states.
Faced with this conundrum, some pro-life Christians will likely be tempted to abandon the concept of a pluralistic democracy altogether and double down on efforts to impose Christian values on American society, even when they are in the political minority. But likewise, pro-choice Americans who are outraged at the rescinding of Roe v. Wade and the rise of abortion bans across much of the Bible belt will be tempted to overlook the ways in which their own assumptions have blinded them to the reasons why a majority of American churchgoing Christians view the pro-choice agenda as a grave threat to human rights and an attack on fundamental American values.
These incompatible premises are why this debate is so intractable. But if we’re ever going to make headway, it will come not from trying to crush one’s opponents but by dialoguing with them. And when we do that, we may find that despite deep disagreements, all of us want to live out the values of our own consciences, honor the principles of God as we understand them, and champion foundational human rights that are the basis for a humane and just society. Yet we have different understandings of what those values are and how they should be applied–and that’s where the challenge lies. More than fifty years after Roe, we are still left with the questions that the Supreme Court could not resolve in that decision. As a result, the debate continues, both in our churches and in our national life.
Image Credit: Cyprien Eugène Boulet, “Woman with green shawl” via Wikimedia.
