This article appears in today's Newsweek: http://www.newsweek.com/id/236506 It's major points are that young people don't care enough about abortion rights and that the pro-choice movement needs to be begin to address the "moral complexity" of abortion.
Here's the letter I just sent them:
To the editor:
Your article on supportive attitudes about abortion rights among young people only tells part of the story. Yes, it's difficult for some people born a decade after Roe to conceive abortion being illegal, but my experience with young women activists is not represented in your article. In fact, your writer chose not to interview the many organizations headed by young women working on abortion rights.
But more concerning to me as a minister who runs an organization of more than 5000 religious leaders committed to sexual justice, are the assertions that the pro-choice movement has ignored the moral complexities of abortion. Religious leaders have been in the forefront of the movement for abortion rights for more than fifty years. The Clergy Consultation Service in the 1960's and 1970's were among the first to advocate for repeal of abortion laws. More than thirty years ago, many religious denominations passed courageous resolutions in support of women's moral agency and their right to a safe and legal abortion. Our "Open Letter to Religious Leaders On Abortion As a Moral Decision" has been endorsed by more than 1100 ordained clergy, and calls for a world where abortion is safe, legal, accessible, and rare. Rather than ignore the moral complexities, we call on leaders of all faiths to prepare themselves to support women compassionately as they also affirm women as moral agents who have the capacity, right, and responsibility to make their own decisions about unintended pregnancies.
Rev. Debra W. Haffner
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Re: ...are the assertions that the pro-choice movement has ignored the moral complexities of abortion. Religious leaders have been in the forefront of the movement for abortion rights for more than fifty years.
Your right. You're stuck on the past.
Technology's changing the future as we now have incredibly clear pictures of our kids, not far after conception, affixed to the fridge with a magnet. Humanity does begin at conception and the small humans stare at us in our homes. That's what's turning opinion on abortion as birth control. I haven't heard many Religous Liberals confront the ethics.
That's because "religious liberals" have neither ethics nor morals.
Liberals, whether "religious" or no, have very little contact with reality. Like those who refused to look in Galileo's telescope, they won't dare look at a sonogram.
Reality frightens them.
I find it interesting that the two anti-choice comments made thus far are by men, who cannot be forced to carry a fetus. A number of years ago scientists discovered that it is the fetus' body that signals the mother's body to start the labor process. So it is quite possible that this is all as a result of God doing just like in Genesis: breathing the breath of life into Adam, which is what made him, according to the Bible, a living being. The notion that God/Christ sublimate their Holy Will to rapists and pedophiles and automatically ensouls a fertilized egg in response to a crime being committed is anathema to me. And as a survivor of rape that resulted in an obviously unintended pregnancy and who chose to terminate that pregnancy, I challenge you to walk a mile in my shoes before you start spouting the results of your Cognitive Dysrationalia.
Those who distrust women to make moral decisions about their bodies are always the first ones to condone clinic violence and the killing of doctors who perform abortions. Yes, there are moral complexities about abortion - - but Mr. Baar and Kellmeyer seem to think that they are the only ones who understand those moral complexities. They are not...
I'm pro-Choice. Perhapes not to the extent of Lafferty and atrue liberal, but pro-Choice to the extent I don't believe the Government can force a woman to face the risks of child birth.
But I acknowledge the humanity of the child, and disappointed Religous Liberals cannot face up to the tragedy of the crisis and give members of Liberal Churches an adequate theology and ethics to explain it.
Instead, we get the ad hominum evidenced by Lafferty and True Liberal because, in fact; Steve K is right: we have no ethics, or are just too afraid, or tougue-tied to explain ourselves.
Easier to call those who disagree jerks... the one true path to oblivion for Liberal Faith.
As a gay man, I have little personal stake in abortion rights, but I recognize their importance.
I was pleasantly surprise by a female doctor of mine, recounting a discussion she had with a patient of Chinese or Indian (subcontinent) decent who wanted to have an abortion because her baby was a girl and not a boy. She recounted how she counciled her patient against this and spent much time discussing this with her. Personally she is against abortion, but she is for the right to choose. I know in this instance she would not have performed a surgical abortion, (I believe it was outside her practice area, as she was a general practitioner.) but she definitely would have provided a referral to a doctor who had abortions within their practice area. Its also likely she would've prescribed the appropriate drugs for a medical abortion.
In the few instances I have been aware of elective abortions among my friends, I know it is a decision that is taken with much care and an understanding of the moral weight that it entails. Elective abortion isn't, and should never be something decided upon lightly.
As a gay man, I have little personal stake in abortion rights, but I recognize their importance.
...and if she had elected abortion because some genetic test told her her child would be gay?
As a pro-choice man, one of the things about this debate which bothers me is the assumption that women who seek abortions, and health care providers who perform them, do so in a cavalier and amoral fashion.
Not as bad, though, as the argument that both abortion and contraception ought to be proscribed, not to mention meaningful sex education. So, you want to do away with abortion, but not provide the means to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies?
And if you want a thorough ethical discussion of the pro-choice position, I'd direct you to Virginia Ramey Mollenkott's excellent book Sensuous Spirituality, with particular emphasis on Chapter Ten: "Procreative Self-Direction and a More Just Society."
So, you want to do away with abortion, but not provide the means to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies?
I think juding life as intended or unintended immoral.
I don't know if I'd criminalize abortion used as "birth control" to eliminated unintended lives but I think it immoral. We can't judge life as intended or not.
@Bill: the issue is not a theoretical one of "judging life as intended or unintended". The issue is one of practical reality.
If the vast majority of abortions involve unintended pregnancy, then taking steps to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies would reduce the number of abortions. So why do so many who oppose abortion also oppose contraception and education to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies?
So why do so many who oppose abortion also oppose contraception and education to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies?
You'll need to ask them, and not me Desmond.
My point is aborting human life on the grounds that life "unintended" by some unnamed arbitrater is immoral. Whether such abortions should be illegal, I don't know. But whether anyone intended ones life is simply not a moral reason to end someone's life.
If theologians of morality want to tell me life at different stages has different moral-status, and that others can judge that life less worthy of protection, fine, then go for it.... try and convince me.
But Science tells me human life begins at conception, and who "intendened" that life, or who did not "intended" that life is no grounds for aborting it. I can't see any moral reasons for that.
Bill and Steve, I'd like to share a link. How I Got An "A" In Religion Class, or The Great Abortion Manifesto.
Abortion is too complex an issue to be decided either way by anyone other than the pregnant woman. If others cannot force a woman to have an abortion, they also cannot require her to continue a pregnancy she does not want.
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