Abortion…A View from
Empathy
Let’s play a game of Pretend. Your
daughter/friend/church sister one semester shy of completing her degree says to
you, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m quitting. I don’t have the money for fees; I
can’t afford a babysitter; my car has broken down and I can’t afford to fix
it.”
What would you do next?
1)
Take
out an ad in the local newspaper or organize a protest in front of her house,
condemning the wrongness of dropping out of college
2)
Support
legislation that would make it illegal—on pain of imprisonment—to drop out of
school
3)
Review
your resources: time (“Can I babysit for her 2 evenings a week?”); finances
(“I believe in her potential. It’s worth postponing that Thing I was going to
buy and use the funds to help her finish school”); social connections
(“I’m going to canvas my Friend group and see how together we can help her”).
Let’s say you pick #3. You are building a
plan to help her when she drops another surprise: the person who convinced her
to attend university has herself quit, taking with her the moral support she
used to provide. What would you say to her?
Now, pretend your daughter/friend/church sister’s
decision concerns an abortion. Would you check a different answer?
Abortion is a complex, divided, divisive issue. So
let me get the messy part out of the way: Personally, I believe abortion is a
decision individual women should have the right to make, the same way they have
the right to decide if they are going to enjoy the proceeds of gambling (which I
frown upon), or to commit suicide, considered in some circles the Sin of No
Return.
My belief is irrelevant. What I AM proposing though
is that before rooting ourselves in entrenched camps (Right to Life vs Right to
My Body), we look at abortion through the lens of Empathy…and, through the
ultimate hard truth question: “How can I be part of the solution?” It
takes more than passing laws.
Opponents of abortion typically point to it as an
issue of morality: ‘Thou shalt not kill’. Be that as it may, are women who
commit abortion are any more morally flawed than those of us who cheat on our
taxes; or who tell ‘little white lies’? I don’t see too many protests against
those moral failures.
St. Paul makes
an interesting statement in Romans 5:20:
“All
that passing laws against sin did, was produce more lawbreakers. But sin
didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive
forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down.” (Romans
2, The Message Bible)
Paul
was not talking about abortion. But as anyone who has read the Old Testament
knows, laws—including the 5th Commandment “Though shalt not
kill”—are inadequate for effecting moral behaviors. The Ancient Israelites had
laws coming out of their ears—613 I’m told—and still they violated God’s
standard of morality. Jesus bookended this hundreds of years later, pointing
out that murder is not just when we stab or shoot—or abort, I might
add—someone. It includes our evil, hateful thoughts towards them. (Hmmm. I
wonder how many murders I’ve committed so far this week?) He opted instead for
a state where laws are written in people’s ‘hearts’ and ‘minds’.
Empathy
begins with the root of things. Why do women, outside of medical reasons,
consider abortion? https://www.thoughtco.com/why-women-choose-abortion-3534155;
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/21/health/women-reasons-abortion-trnd/index.html):
1)
Negative impact on her life, e.g. worry that having a baby will disrupt her education, increasing the chance of her and the baby
facing poverty.
2)
Financial Instability, e.g. interruption
in jobs and careers affecting financial ability to raise the child,
particularly if she has other children.
3)
Relationship problems/unwillingness to be a single mother. Majority
of women who abort do not have committed partners (https://www.thoughtco.com/teen-pregnancy-and-abortion-rates-3534250).
Some became pregnant while their ability to understand implications of consent
was compromised, e.g. by intoxication.
I will add one more—shame, as in “What will
my family/friends/pastor think of me?”
Regardless of our belief about abortion, the real
question is how can we become part of a healthy ecosystem surrounding the
woman’s decision, an ecosystem that includes the reasons she sees an abortion
as her only option. Here are 2 things we can do:
1)
Go back to the Pretend game, substituting
“Abortion” for school. What would/can we or our church/mosque/Friend group do
for 1 woman—or women in general—facing this decision?
2)
Pause before joining that anti-abortion protest, or
giving our votes to craven politicians in a morally questionable ‘you scratch
my back, I scratch yours’ pact--as in ‘we will close abortion clinics if you
support our racist agenda’. Is this the best way to support our
daughter/friend/church sister’s decision?
How can we put Paul’s “aggressive forgiveness we call grace” into
action before, during and after woman make their decision about abortion?
Think about
it.
