Fetal sonogram
Image courtesy of James C. Howell
I have many good friends who are single issue voters. For most of them, it has to do with abortion, but there are others. I respect this – although I wonder, and out loud with them if they’ll listen, that if that one issue swings the election, you could wind up with someone who supports a host of other positions you’d assume God would deplore. God cares about all issues that impact humanity, and how they intersect.
The seemingly vast gulf between pro-life and pro-choice positions has produced much misunderstanding, and rage. I’m drawn to Parker Palmer’s wisdom on 50 years of combat on this question: “Rage is simply one of the masks that heartbreak wears.” The greatest heartbreak must be in God’s own heart. And we’re heartbroken down here. Right now, many Democrats are saying We’re Pro-Abortion. That’s confused, or wrongly-worded, maybe appalling. Nobody thinks abortion is a noble, joyful good to be celebrated! Ask anyone who’s had one. And of course, you can’t ask the life that was lost. Heartbreaking dilemmas and decisions.
Heartbroken people struggle to sort through self-evidently essential truths: we celebrate the gift of life; we have an absolute obligation to protect life at its most vulnerable; we also want women to be able to flourish in their working and personal lives; we want to save a woman if a pregnancy endangers her life; we loathe any kind of forced relationship that results in pregnancy. And if you care deeply for life in the womb, and that determines your vote, you really have to care about the quality of life after birth – and so are you voting for someone who shelters life in the womb but nixes programs that would help the life that is born to flourish? Or someone all about uplifting children but not cherishing life in utero?
The Christian default position on all this? We cannot help but be pro-life. The Bible celebrates life in utero as a marvelous gift of God, as of immense value to God and to us. “You knit me together in my mother’s womb; when I was being made in secret, you beheld my unformed substance” (Psalm 139:13, 16).
Notice this is not a commandment (“Thou shalt not abort”), but it is an invitation to marvel over God’s miraculous labor to fashion yet another person. Of all God’s bountiful, marvelous gifts, the coming to be of human life is the most fabulous, the most vulnerable, and thus the most worthy of treasuring. God grieves the loss of any life, however tiny or preliminary. A miscarriage grieves God. God most surely is for life. I’m moved by Mother Teresa’s opposition to abortion. Not condemning anybody, she and her sisters valued life so highly they said “Give us your child; we will raise your child.”
Of course, not all foes of abortion sound or act like Mother Teresa. In 2016, we had a loud-mouthed protestor outside our church, hollering at little children entering our building, holding up big banner-sized photos of aborted fetuses. I do not wish to stand anywhere with him; his tactics are appalling – as are those of a protestor who spewed venom at a woman I know whose life was saved by an abortion of a fetus that would have killed her and would itself not have survived.
And so, with guys like these, but then quite a large number of very faithful, even holy women I know who are determinedly pro-choice, I find myself wondering if there is some way to be pro-life and pro-choice? Can’t we be enthusiastically pro-life, cherishing life in the womb, and at the same time affirm a woman’s right to make her own choice? It makes sense to me that God created women in God’s image with individual responsibility to make decisions about their own bodies. God never forces anyone to be moral, holy, or full of faith.
And after all, laws only go so far. The church’s dream is that our people, women and men, will be faithful stewards of their bodies, and humble in the face of anyone’s tragic dilemma. God will redeem all that has been created; nothing will be lost in God’s consummation of things.
The Church might help ourselves, and maybe even society, to think differently. Out there, one side speaks of “the right to life,” and the other speaks of “the right to choose,” and also “a woman’s right to have control over her own body.” Interestingly, in Christian theology, we don’t think of “rights” of any kind. There is no “right to life.” Life is a gift from God, which is the best conceivable reason not to take life. There is no “right to choose,” or a “right to control my own body.” My body belongs to God, so I am responsible to use it in holy ways, pleasing to God.
John Danforth, always wise, reminds us that “when we want to change society, it’s not about electing the right President or changing Congress or getting more Supreme Court seats. Real change must come from within the people.” Change will come only if we as people are converted to a more splendid way of dealing with our bodies. God creates life; and God makes space, once that life is grown up, for faithful if agonizingly difficult decisions. Could it be that God therefore is simultaneously pro-life and pro-choice? God gives life. God gives us choices.
Rev. James C. Howell
Myers Park UMC Photo
The Rev. James C. Howell is senior pastor of Myers Park United Methodist Church in Charlotte, N.C. This post is republished with permission from his blog series, The Election, Your Spirituality, & the Soul of Our Nation