(A statement received as information by the Eighth General
Convention of The American Lutheran Church by action GC76.9.34 and
transmitted to the member congregations of The American Lutheran
Church as a statement worthy of study by their members.)
I. A Personal Preface
This statement is a response to a request from the Rev.
Walter R. Wietzke, executive director of the Division for
Theological Education and Ministry of The American Lutheran Church.
The request had its origin in the following action of the ALC
Church Council:
That the Church Council request the Division for Theological
Education and Ministry to develop a theological paper concerning
abortion based on biblical exegesis, the history and doctrine of
the church, and if possible to have this ready for presentation to
the 1974 General Convention (CC74.6.199).
As it turned out, there was no possibility of producing this
statement prior to the 1974 convention. Procedurally, the work was
time-consuming because it required reading and interviewing as well
as writing, and had to be done in the midst of many other
responsibilities. Combined with that, however, was the intrinsic
complexity of the issue. "Theology" and "biblical exegesis" and the
"history and doctrine of the church" are in all cases, but
certainly in the case of abortion, intertwined with one another.
They are also at every point tied into medical, social, legal, and
moral considerations. It may be possible to distinguish these
elements for analytical purposes, but any responsible position on
abortion will not isolate "theology" from its wider ethical
contexts. The issue also carries a large emotional charge, which
makes it difficult at times to clarify the actual content of
differences of opinion. The result is that the statement now
appears as an "exhibit" in relation to the "Value of Human Life"
report to the 1976 General Convention.
The statement is a personal one. There is no attempt to get at
or to gather up the majority opinion in The American Lutheran
Church, nor of the ALC theological faculties. On the other hand, it
is hoped that the statement is a responsible one that can at least
be taken seriously by people with widely divergent views.
It was decided that the best way to respond to the request would
be to sketch a brief statement without elaborate argumentation or
extensive documentation. It would be entirely possible at this
point to add a great deal of information. The assumption has been
made, however, that it is basically a position paper which is
desired at this time, and that a more lengthy or complicated
statement would probably not receive the attention that this issue
deserves.
A draft of this paper was presented to the spring 1976 meeting
of the Board of the ALC Division for Theological Education and
Ministry and was distributed to the ALC theological faculties. It
was also sent to a number of friends with special competencies and
concerns in fields relating to this issue. The many careful and
considerate responses have been pondered and have influenced at a
number of places the revision of that early draft. The statement,
however, remains a personal one even though responsive to the
suggestions of colleagues and sensitive to the specific request
from the ALC Church Council. That the Church Council request the
Division for Theological Education and Ministry to develop a
theological paper concerning abortion based on biblical exegesis,
the history and doctrine of the church, and if possible to have
this ready for presentation to the 1974 General Convention
(CC74.6.199).
2. A Lutheran Preface
Article VII of the Augsburg Confession states that "it is
sufficient for the true unity of the Christian Church that the
Gospel be preached in conformity with a pure understanding of it
and that the sacraments be administered in accordance with the
divine Word." This means that Christians find one another united in
the Body of Christ not on the basis of their ethical decisions and
actions but on the basis of the Good News which focuses in the
forgiveness of sins (Augsburg Confession, Article IV). Because the
Christian is always at the same time justified and sinner, and
because the whole creation is at the same time "substantially good"
and "accidentally evil," (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration,
Article I), nothing we decide and nothing we do is ever totally
pure or good or right in any simple way. Original (that is,
conditional and not only actual) sin remains after baptism and
throughout life. We thus stand in need of forgiveness whatever our
ethical decisions and actions, including those having to do with
abortion.
But that does not mean that what we decide to do makes no
difference. It makes a great deal of difference. Living in the
gospel, the Christian is placed into a situation of awesome
freedom, but also of awesome responsibility. The person who lives
in the forgiveness of sins is free to risk mistakes because thereis
the possibility of forgiveness, but is obliged to be concerned
about consequences because the actuality of sin penetrates our
social as well as our personal life. Luther says that the Christian
is free, lord of all, and at the same time slave, servant of all.
It is possible to do great damage to one's self and to society and
even to nature by behaving inappropriately even though that
behavior can and may be forgiven. Thus our decisions and actions
regarding issues such as abortion, while ultimately not
determinative for our personal salvation, are penultimately of
great importance for the living out of our lives as God's servants
in his world and for the health and survival of society.
There is no unbroken or straight line from the Bible or from the
theology, and history, and doctrine of the church to any specific
position on abortion. Although the Bible is for Lutheran Christians
the final authority in all matters of life as well as of faith, it
is always necessary to take into account the setting in which a
particular text is contextualized, and then to recontextualize that
text in our new place and time. Differences of opinion and
interpretation will arise even among those who direct their appeal
to the same Bible and to the same tradition. But that does not mean
that every position is automatically as faithful to Scripture and
tradition as every other, nor does it mean that the social
consequences of all positions are equally harmful or helpful.
3. Dimensions of Ethical Decision Making
A. Personal-Moral. It should be obvious that many
people do not make ethical decisions on the basis of gathered
information and careful reflection, but rather of ethical
intuition. This is not to say that such people necessarily behave
inappropriately or immorally. Their intuition no doubt often serves
them and society very well. It is rather to say that ethical
reflection is hard and sophisticated work and many people are
neither disposed nor equipped to do it.
Thus conversation about abortion is sometimes limited to a brief
exchange of opinion embedded in a tangle of assumptions and
prejudices so complex that it is almost impossible to isolate and
unravel them. Or a single over-riding concern may settle the
problem in a final way for an individual. One person may think it
self-evident that a woman has an absolute right to control the use
of her own body. Another may think it self-evident that every
child, once conceived, has an absolute right to be born. One says,
"Let's not go back to coat hanger abortions." Another asks, "What
if the mother of Johann Sebastian Bach had decided to abort him?"
Or an overwhelming experience may have shaped a person's attitude
about this matter for life. The memory of a mother or a daughter
with an unplanned pregnancy who did or did not choose to have an
abortion, and the real or imagined consequences of that decision,
may outweigh in an individual's mind all other factors that could
possibly relate to this question. Or one's experience with, for
instance, deformed or abnormal children may have moved one toward
or away from abortion as a solution to such births, depending on
the circumstances of one's experience and the response to it.
Positions on complex moral issues are changed by ethical
reflection and moral argument only in some cases and then
ordinarily only after a great deal of discussion. If the only task
of the church in ethical matters were to affirm and support its
members in whatever decisions they make, regardless of the
consequences of those decisions, it would be sufficient to deal
with the question of abortion in a purely personal-moral way. If,
however, the church seeks to exercise its concern for society and
for the world as well as for the individual seeking counsel, it
must be willing to enter into wider dimensions of the ethical
decision making process.
B. Pastoral-Educational. Christians
(specifically Lutherans) attempting to relate to and minister to
one another in difficult situations ought to remember that the
unity of the church focuses in the proclamation of the gospel and
the administration of the sacraments rather than in agreement on
moral issues. This fact creates an atmosphere in which a sensitive
and mature conscience can be encouraged to function with relative
freedom.
On the other hand, it is important to recognize that no
conscience is absolutely free. Prior to any specific decision, it
has been influenced by every facet of genetic heritage and life
experience, and has been powerfully shaped by the mass media and by
entire configurations of signals received from the environment. And
the counselor also does influence the person being counseled by the
manner and also by the sounds and words with which the counselor
responds to information and questions and comments. Non-directive
counseling, if thought of in any absolute sense, is a myth that
ought to be exploded. The counselor may be indirect and subtle in
exerting influence, but there is no possibility of total
neutrality. Even the way a person lists the options in a situation
tends to prejudice the outcome. Thus for any Christian, but
particularly for the person in a counseling responsibility, it is
important to think through with care an issue such as abortion so
that the influence which one does in fact have upon others can be
expressed with awareness and integrity.
Further, it is not only inevitable but salutary that the church
play an active role in the formation of Christian conscience. To
refuse to do so is to abandon the conscience to all those other
influences which do continually shape it. It would seem, then, to
make sense to take with utmost seriousness the need for parish
education on the abortion issue. There is no reason why people
should wait for an unwanted pregnancy to begin formulating a
position on abortion any more than they should wait for a fatal
illness to begin thinking about death and dying. The woman with an
unwanted pregnancy has already been massively influenced by a
multitude of factors. It would be both naive and irresponsible if
the church were to seek neutrality by restricting its involvement
to after-the-fact crisis counseling. At the very least,
distribution of study materials and the opportunity for discussion
should be on the agenda of every congregation.
C. Social-Political. Although there is
a long-standing distinction between personal ethics and social
ethics, it should be clear that this distinction is useful for the
purpose of analysis only. In fact, personal and social ethics
interpenetrate one another at every point. On the one hand, the
social mores of a people feed into the decision making process of
the individual and, on the other hand, every decision of the
individual contributes to the formation of social conscience. In a
(relatively) free society, the environment is forged through
political activity in which all, to some extent, can participate
and for which all, to some extent, are responsible. Those who work
in the "sociology of knowledge" have demonstrated that one's
perception of the world and therefore of reality and of truth and
of goodness are to a large extent "givens" about which people are
generally unaware. So a great deal of an individual's decision
making has already been done for that person by the society in
which that person lives. Since the church does care about moral
issues, and about the society which is influenced by and which
influences the moral decisions of its members, it ought to seek to
find appropriate ways in which to work in the political arena.
Lutherans in this country have been very active and effective in
influencing policy and practice regarding, for instance,
immigration quotas. There is no reason to shrink from political
activity regarding abortion. Although Lutherans especially have
good reason to maintain the proper distinction between church and
state, they have equally good reason to insist that church and
state cannot, and must not, be separated.
Therefore, it is singularly inappropriate to reduce the church's
involvement in the abortion issue to the context of a one-to-one
counseling relationship. One-to-one counseling may be entirely
appropriate in a given situation. But if that one-to-one situation
is going to be such that the person involved can make a responsible
decision, it will be necessary to pay attention to the unconscious
assumptions of, and influences from, the society in which that
person lives, and to the laws which play such a large part in
molding the social conscience.
4. Parameters for Reflection
The history of doctrine in the church is the story of the
church setting parameters for reflection upon the biblical witness
to the good news in Jesus Christ. Doctrine is not formulated to set
down for all time the true and simple and absolute truth. Doctrine
is formulated rather to set parameters within which a variety of
appropriate positions may be taken. The church's confession, for
instance, that there is one God and three persons does not for all
time settle all questions relating to the Triune God. What it does
say is that both tritheism (three gods) and unitarianism (one
person) are outside the parameters of appropriate Christian
discourse. Or, when the creeds and confessions say that Jesus
Christ is true God and true man, that does not settle in detail the
Christological question. What it does do is to rule out both
ebionitism (Jesus Christ as merely human) and docetism (Jesus
Christ as merely divine).
In a similar way, ethical reflection within the church, in
particular within the Lutheran tradition, is largely a history of
the setting of parameters for appropriate action. Christians facing
the issue of abortion may, for instance, be instructed by the
history of Christians facing the issue of war. The Lutheran
Confessions specifically state that Christians may "engage in just
wars" (Augsburg Confession, Article XVI). But "Just War Theory"
does not yield specific directives to the individual Christian
concerning that person's involvement in or resistance to a
particular armed conflict. What the "Just War Theory" does do is to
set the parameters within which responsible decisions can be made.
It rules out, on the one hand, the crusade or holy war and, on the
other hand, the absolutizing of and universalizing of a pacifist
position. That is, the robust doctrine of sin in Lutheran theology
automatically excludes the naive notion that the will of God can be
done in a simple way either by always going to war or by never
going to war. It also provides a set of criteria by which a ruler
or a government, an individual or a society, can arrive at a
responsible decision in a specific case. (The criteria are stated
in various ways, but include such things as "last resort," "just
cause," "right intent," "proportionality" of good to be
accomplished over evil brought on, etc.) In the context of a given
armed conflict, the conscientious Christian will always see the
situation as involving some kind of moral tragedy and will seek to
affirm, rather than to condemn, those Christians operating within
appropriate parameters who come to contrary conclusions.
One contribution that could be made by the Lutheran Church in
the present highly charged atmosphere revolving around the issue of
abortion is to point out the error of absolutizing positions on
either side of the parameters of appropriateness. No right is
absolute. The right of a woman to control the use of her own body
is not an absolute right, especially if it involves the taking of
another life which is (temporarily) dependent on her. The right of
a child, once conceived, to be born is not an absolute right
either, especially if it involves the taking of the life of its
mother. Once it is established that no right is absolute, the stage
is set for an examination of factors which might help to adjudicate
claims in conflict situations. In similar fashion to the way in
which "Just War Theory" points to the moral tragedy of any decision
made in the context of an armed conflict between nations and
provides some criteria for Christian decision making without
assuming a simple "right" solution, a theory of justified abortion
could point to the moral tragedy of an unwanted pregnancy (a
conflict between two temporarily inseparable lives), and could
provide criteria for Christian decision making within designated
parameters for appropriate reflection and action.
5. Some Factors for Consideration
Everything in the universe is ultimately related to
everything else. A thorough treatment of the issue of abortion
could readily lead into almost every facet of contemporary life. At
the very least, it ought to be recognized that abortion is this
complex an issue. Accordingly the following are only some factors
to be considered. The list is merely suggestive rather than
exhaustive or even representative.
A. Biblical-Ecclesiological Factors.
In the Mediterranean world into which Christianity was born,
abortion was a very common practice. Roman law gave the father
absolute rights over his offspring, and both infanticide and
abortion were practiced with impunity. Both Plato and Aristotle had
considered abortion as a way to curb excess population, and there
is ample evidence that people of means practiced abortion in order
not to have to divide their estate among too many children. It is
not that abortion was practiced with no restraint whatsoever. The
Hippocratic oath, with its pledge not to give to a woman an
abortifacient pessary, was widely known. Aristotle said that
abortion should be done before there is "sensation and life." Roman
Law did prohibit abortion committed without the father's consent,
and it did proscribe the giving of drugs for abortion. But it is
nevertheless the case that the world into which Christianity came
was a world in which abortion was very widely practiced. The right
of the father to dispose of his offspring, either before or after
birth, was taken for granted.
Early Christianity appeared on this scene and rigorously opposed
this practice. It is true, of course, that there were some
Christians in the early church, as there are today, who also
opposed contraception, military service, the theater, and even
marriage. But the evidence from the Church Fathers seems to be
impressively coherent and consistent in support of the view that
the early church saw its attitude toward abortion as a decisive
mark of distinction between itself and non-Christian society.
There is little explicit material in the Old Testament on which
the injunction against abortion could be based. Exodus 21:22 speaks
of hurting "a woman with child, so that there is a miscarriage."
The famous "life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth" passage
follows a discussion of whether "harm" results from the "hurt." It
is an extremely important passage for reflection on the abortion
issue but the problems arising from differences in the Masoretic
(Hebrew) and the Septuagint (Greek) texts of the verse are
notorious. There is no problem, however, in establishing in the Old
Testament the fact of God's creative involvement in a person's life
prior to the time of birth. Psalm 139 (vv. 13-16) is a powerful
statement to this effect:
For thou didst form my inward parts,
thou didst knit me together in my mother's
womb.
I praise thee, for thou art fearful and wonderful.
Wonderful are thy works!
Thou knowest me right well;
my frame was not hidden from thee,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately wrought in the depths of the
earth.
Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance;
in thy book were written, every one of
them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
Job 10:l0f. and Job 31:15 could also be cited. The word of the
Lord to Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and
before you were born I consecrated you," would make little sense
unless set in the context of God's creative involvement in a
person's life prior to birth.
In the New Testament, the infancy narratives provide some useful
material for reflection. The infanticide practiced by Herod along
with its violent threat to the life of Jesus provides for Matthew
(2:1-18) an introduction to the life of the Messiah. Mary is
described as having in her womb that which is "of the Holy Spirit"
(Matthew 1:18). The creedal affirmation "conceived by the Holy
Spirit" is the church's liturgical reminder that the story of the
Messiah began there, at the time of conception. There is no
indication that what has been "conceived by the Holy Spirit" is
merely a piece of tissue or simply a part of Mary's own body. In
Luke's Gospel Mary is greeted in pregnancy by Elizabeth "as the
mother of my Lord." The "fruit of her womb" is talked about as
"blessed" (Luke 1:42). The infant in Elizabeth's womb "leaps" when
Elizabeth is greeted by Mary (Luke 1:41). It seems impossible not
to recognize the very great interest in and valuation given to life
from the time of conception by the community out of which the New
Testament documents have come. It is obvious that the Herod who
slaughtered infants for the sake of his own power was doing an evil
thing. In a world where abortion was widely practiced it is taken
for granted by the Christian community that Joseph does not
consider abortion. His first reaction to the pregnancy of his
betrothed is rather to set her aside.
The word pharmakeia, from which "pharmacy" comes, in
Galatians 5:20 (translated "sorcery" by RSV) is sometimes
translated "medicine." There is no certainty that Paul was talking
specifically about abortion here, but the fact that various herbal
preparations were used as abortifacients makes it possible, at
least, that abortion was included in the proscriptions designated
by that term. Pharmakeia appears again in the book of
Revelation in 21:8 and 22:15, where the use of the word seems
similar to that in Galatians. Although there is considerable
ambiguity in the use of this term, it can be argued that
pharmakeia did include abortion because in the
second-century Didache it is used specifically in the
context of the condemnation of abortion.
As everything in the universe is ultimately related to
everything else, so every verse in the Bible is related to every
other. It would certainly be possible but far beyond the scope of
this statement to pursue, for instance, the intertwining of the
"sanctity of life" and the "quality of life" in the Bible. Whatever
the distinctions, however, between "biological life" and "eternal
life" (no simple identification of this set of terms with the
previous set is intended), it should be clear that the one who came
that we might live abundantly (John 10:10) is also the one through
whom everything is made that is made (John 1:3). In the Bible the
God who redeems is always also the God who creates. Christians
ought therefore to exercise great care before declaring any human
life to be "merely biological" life.
A significant development in the church's reflection on abortion
came with the formulation of the "law of double effect" in
pre-reformation times. The formulation had to do originally with
the problem of self-defence and exhibits interesting parallels to
"Just War Theory." The argument was that a single act may have two
effects. If a man defends his life by killing another person, one
effect is that his own life is preserved, another is that the
other's life is taken. Thomas Aquinas said that one effect could be
by intention, the other beyond intention. If a person's intention
is to defend his or her own life, and in order to do that another
must be killed in the process, this is beyond intention and thus
the one who kills is not guilty of murder. The conclusion is that
killing in self-defence may on occasion be justified, although
murder (killing another by intention) is never justified. The law
of double effect was later applied to abortion. It was stated that
if the intention is to save the life of the mother when threatened
by, for instance, an ectopic pregnancy, the necessary killing of
the fetus in the procedure would be beyond intention and therefore
justified. Or, if the saving of the life of a pregnant woman
requires the removal of a cancerous uterus, and a fetus is thus
killed in the procedure, this killing is justified because it is
beyond intention rather than by intention. This kind of reasoning
is deeply embedded in Roman Catholic ethical reflection and ought
to serve to remind Protestants that the Catholic tradition, though
very conservative, has rarely held to an absolute prohibition of
abortion under any and all circumstances. What it has done is to
struggle with the serious question of when killing can be
justified.
The history of Protestant thought about abortion is far too
complex to attempt even a summary statement here. Luther,
Melanchthon, and Calvin were all opposed to abortion at any stage
of pregnancy but their reasons and their lines of argument varied.
Seventeenth-century Anglicans and Puritans tended to distinguish
between the "unformed" and the "formed" fetus, which led to some
leniency toward the aborting of an "unformed" fetus. Perhaps it is
possible to risk the general statement that the history of American
Protestantism has exhibited gradual moves toward more liberal
views, culminating in the last decade in active movements for
abortion-on-request. The movement has not been in one direction
only, and the viewpoint has certainly not been unanimous. But,
particularly following the Supreme Court rulings of 1973
Protestants in America who are opposed to abortion-on-request have
been placed on the defensive.
B. Legal-Moral Factors. It is
customary to distinguish between legal and moral considerations.
The law says what we may do; morality says what we
ought to do. The church, it is said, must not try to
legislate morality, although it is free to counsel its members
regarding moral decision and action within the limits of the
law.
That is an important distinction, but it ought not to be pushed
too hard. The law must reflect some degree of moral consensus among
the governed, or it cannot do its work. On the other hand, the law
also plays a major role in the formation of conscience, which in
turn directs individuals in moral decision and action. The
interaction between the law and morality (private and public) may
be extremely complex, but there is never a situation in which no
interaction occurs.
In the case of abortion, it is clear that shifts in private and
public morality and in the law have contributed to one of the most
radical about-faces of social conscience in modern history.
Throughout the Christian era, vast majorities of western
populations have considered abortion to be a serious act that at
the very least required careful regulation. Within two decades,
vast numbers of the same people have come to consider
abortion-on-request to be an inalienable right. It is not the case
that the law simply protects the right of the individual to act
according to conscience. The law also plays a major role in the
formation and education of that conscience. The story of recent
legal changes regarding abortion is well documented in many places.
For United States citizens, however, the watershed decisions of the
Supreme Court came on January 22, 1973 (Roe v. Wade;
Doe v. Bolton).
The Supreme Court summarized its decision in this way:
(a) For the stage prior to approximately the
end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its
effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant
womans attending physician.
(b) For the stage subsequent to approximately the
end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in
the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion
procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal
health.
(c) For the stage subsequent to viability, the
State, in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life,
may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except
where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the
preservation of the life or health of the mother.
Mr. Justice Blackmun, explaining the court's decision,
stated:
We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins.
When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine,
philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the
judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is
not in position to speculate as to the answer.
It is difficult to understand how Mr. Justice Blackmun's
explanation can be taken seriously. It seems obvious that the court
has resolved for itself the question of when life begins, namely at
the time of birth. An argument could be advanced stating that the
Supreme Court has opted for a "developmental" position on this
question, since it does differentiate the three trimesters. But it
is clear that abortion-on-request can be a legal procedure right up
to the day of delivery. A state may, if it
chooses, regulate abortion procedures in the second and third
trimesters (specifically not in the first). But if a state chooses
not to regulate it, that decision is clearly sanctioned by the
Supreme Court. Either the court has decided that human life begins
at the time of delivery, or it has decided that the arbitrary
(totally unregulated) killing of human life may be, if a state so
decides, perfectly legal. That it is actually the former is
attested to by the fact that the court speaks specifically of the
"potentiality of human life" even in the third trimester.
The unacknowledged decision of the Supreme Court that human life
begins only at the time of birth has made possible-and-actual-an
absurd and frightening situation in which a live fetus delivered
prematurely by Caesarean section is placed in an incubator and
treated as a human being because its mother "wants" it, and a live
fetus at exactly the same stage of development aborted by
hysterotomy (a procedure similar to Caesarean section) is placed in
an incinerator, treated as a mere piece of tissue because its
mother does not "want" it. A few states (Minnesota, for instance)
have at this time passed legislation requiring that aborted live
fetuses be treated as human beings. But most states have not, and
the absurdity continues (in actuality, of course, in extremely few
cases) with the full sanction of the United States Supreme
Court.
For this reason, Senator James Buckley of New York has sponsored
a proposed constitutional amendment which would define the word
"person" in this way:
With respect to the right to life, the word "person," as used in
this Article and in the Fifth and Fourteenth Articles of Amendment
to the Constitution of the United States, applies to all human
beings, including their unborn offspring at every stage of their
biological development, irrespective of age, health, function or
condition of dependency.
In September of 1976 the newspapers are reporting daily on the
struggle between the Roman Catholic hierarchy and presidential
candidate Jimmy Carter over such a constitutional amendment. It is
an issue, if not a major one, in the presidential election.
It is difficult to imagine the legal complications of giving
full personal rights to a one-day-old conceptus. Would such
"persons" be counted by the census takers? Would the use of any
post-intercourse contraceptive (intra-uterine device or douche)
make the user guilty of murder? On the other hand, consistency has
never been a necessary predicate of the law. At the present time
there is no constitutional protection of personal rights until
after birth. Yet birth and death certificates are regularly issued
for spontaneously aborted (by "miscarriage") fetuses, and pregnant
women may receive funds through Aid for Dependent Children for
their yet unborn child (or fetus). At any rate, as a polar
alternative to the decision of the Supreme Court, the Buckley
amendment, or some similar proposal, does set in bold relief the
issue which cannot be avoided, namely the decision as to when human
life begins.
There are those who distinguish between human life and personal
life, where personal life would require a capacity for reasoning,
willing, desiring, relating to others, etc. In this way the fetus,
or even the conceptus, can be acknowledged as human life, avoiding
the "piece of tissue" syndrome, yet also avoiding the complexities
of requiring legal protection. It is an intriguing and perhaps even
necessary distinction. The problem arises in restricting the human
family of persons to those human beings who meet certain
requirements of self-determination. What happens, then, to those
severely handicapped and mentally retarded people who will never be
able to take care of themselves in even the most elementary way?
And what happens to those aged and critically ill people who have
lost precisely those factors of self-determination that some would
require of a human in order to qualify as a person? Are all such
people to be excluded from the human family and from legal
protection? To allow terminally ill patients to "die with dignity"
is one thing. To rob all those incapable of self-determination of
their legal rights as persons is quite another. It is precisely on
the grounds of this distinction between human and personal life
that some people advocate defining birth as at least twenty-four
hours after the fetus leaves the womb. This definition would allow
for "postnatal abortion" or "neonaticide," or to use a more
familiar term, infanticide, in cases where the newly born is not
desirable or desired.
Lest anyone think that this is merely inflammatory language,
Nobel Prize winner James D. Watson was quoted in Prism, a
publication of the American Medical Association (May, 1973), as
saying:
If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth,
then all parents could be allowed the choice only a few are given
under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die
if the parents so choose and save a lot of misery and suffering. I
believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to
have.
The same suggestion is made by Paul and Anne Ehrlich in
Human Ecology, Problems and Solutions-also a 1973
publication!-and a bill entitled "Death with Dignity" was
introduced and defeated in the Florida state legislature the same
year which included a provision for the killing of babies after
birth.
It is not as though the problem of "when life begins" had not
been thought of prior to the Supreme Court decision of 1973.
Numerous medical and legal bodies had considered the question and
decided that life begins at the time of conception. In September,
1948, for instance, the World Medical Association (of which the
United States is a founding member), after discussing information
gathered by the United Nations War Crimes Commission, adopted the
Declaration of Geneva which said, "I will maintain the utmost
respect for human life, from the time of conception; even under
threat, I will not use my medical knowledge contrary to the laws of
humanity." In October, 1949, the International Code of Medical
Ethics stated that "A doctor must always bear in mind the
importance of preserving human life from the time of conception
until death." On November 20, 1959, the General Assembly of the
United Nations unanimously adopted the Declaration of the Rights of
the Child, the preamble of which stated that the child, precisely
because of his or her physical and mental immaturity, needs
"special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal
protection, before as well as after birth." The World Medical
Association, in the 1970 Declaration of Oslo, stated that "the
first moral imposed upon the doctor is respect for human life as
expressed in the clause of the Declaration of Geneva, namely "I
will maintain utmost respect for human life from the time of
conception." The California Medical Association wrote as late as
1970 that "human life begins at conception and is continuous,
whether intra- or extrauterine, until death."
All of which is to say that the January, 1973, decision of the
Supreme Court is a radical reversal of what was for many years- and
still is, even legally in many ways- a consensus that human life
begins at the time of conception and that life is entitled to some
legal protection. The implications and consequences of that radical
reversal are far-reaching and have already begun to take effect.
The moral factors are intrinsically linked to the legal ones. So
although the Supreme Court claims to have avoided the question of
when human life begins, the church must insist that this question
be asked. And it has some stake in the answer.
Many other moral and legal factors are, of course, involved.
Those who claim great concern for the unborn are frequently, and
legitimately, reminded that they should demonstrate their concern
for those born into difficult lives and difficult situations. The
spectre of world hunger and overpopulation hovers over the issue.
Attitudes toward sexual intercourse and contraception inevitably
figure into one's attitude toward abortion. How ought a Christian,
how ought the church, how ought society, to adjudicate conflicting
claims between the sanctity of life and the quality of life? (Every
society allows behavior which has a predictable, yet limited,
mortality rate, i.e., automobile driving, mountain climbing, hang
gliding. The sanctity of life is regularly qualified by the quality
of life.) What about the opinion that laws regulating abortion
discriminate against those who cannot afford an airplane ticket to
a place where abortion-on-request is legal? What about the
male/female issue? Ought all laws passed by predominantly male
bodies to be considered sexist? Again, what about that troubled,
unmarried teenager, or that forty-five-year-old woman with four
grown children, who finds herself pregnant? And what about the
right to privacy? And what about the question of the enforceability
of the law?
The moral and legal problems that impinge on the question of
abortion are endless. And they are all important. The question that
cannot, however, and must not, be avoided is the question of when
life begins. The answer will never be self-evident or obvious. It
will always be a decision based on data which could be otherwise
interpreted. But to formulate personal ethical decisions, and
public policy on abortion without squarely facing that question is
intolerable for common morality as well as for Christian ethics.
Some attention to medical-biological factors is certainly in
order.
C. Medical-Biological Factors. The
medical and biological factors which contribute to opinion
concerning the abortion issue are many. The safety factor in
various abortion procedures, for instance, is going to influence a
pregnant woman's decision about whether or not she should carry her
baby to term. The long-range influence upon medical professionals
of dealing with V.I.P. (voluntary interruption of pregnancy =
abortion) in a routine (nontherapeutic) way is still to be
determined. The biological development of the conceptus through the
embryonic stages to the fetus and the infant is surely not
insignificant as a factor in decision making about abortion. Any
responsible position on abortion will at least have to acknowledge
the importance of such matters. The following are simply
representative items in the medical-biological configuration of
data impinging upon the abortion question.
At the moment of conception, the fertilization of an ovum by a
sperm, a new event occurs which is unrepeatable. A genotype, which
has never before existed and which will never again exist, is
brought into being. There is no way to predict with any precision
what this genotype will be, although some probabilities can be
determined, for instance, with respect to known genetic defects in
the parent or parents.
Since "there are no uninterpreted facts," since "all data are
theory-laden" (Ian Barbour), the Christian will bring even to this
event a perspective which may not be shared by non-Christians. That
is, the Christian perspective on nature is set in the context of
the confession of God the creator and that implies creation and
creature. Nature does not exist in and of itself apart from God
(metaphysical dualism), nor does it emanate from God (metaphysical
monism). The entire creation and every creature is totally
dependent upon God. The Christian will be inclined, then, to speak
of the origin of the genotype not as the "genetic lottery," but as
procreation, a process in which the creature shares with the
creator the transmission of life which is necessary for the
continuation of the creation. Genital intercourse is not simply the
expressing of affection and love, although it is that. It is
designed to be set in the context of participation in God's
creative work.
Three or four weeks after fertilization, a head is present, and
rudimentary eyes, ears and brain, a body with a digestive tract,
heart and bloodstream, simple kidney and liver, and bulges where
arms and legs will grow. The conceptus is at this point called an
embryo. By the end of six weeks all internal organs are present in
rudimentary formation. After eight weeks, the embryo is called a
fetus. At eight weeks it is possible to detect electrical activity
from the brain. By the eleventh week thumb sucking has been
observed. By twelve weeks it is possible to monitor heartbeat by
EKG, and by the eighteenth to twentieth week by stethoscope.
The time of "viability," a modern medical equivalent to the old
notion of "ensoulment," is gradually being pushed back. The
dividing line between spontaneous abortion, or miscarriage, and
premature delivery has been about twenty-eight weeks. Modern
technology, however, may in the future make it possible to save
fetuses separated from their mothers at a considerably earlier
time. (The July 24, 1976 Minneapolis Tribune carried an
item about Pepper Tamika Root, born 4 1/2 months prematurely at 1
pound and 6 ounces pronounced "clinically dead at birth," who
developed into a normally healthy child after two months in a
respirator.) Fetal medicine (fetology) is becoming sufficiently
sophisticated that the line between the existence of the fetus and
the existence of the infant is becoming even more
flexible.
The fundamental question raised by medical and biological
factors is whether it makes sense to define the beginning of life
as the time of delivery and to allow for abortion right up to that
time. By amniocentesis (medical examination of the fluid from the
amniotic sac) it is possible to determine genetic defects of the
fetus and to advise for or against abortion. (It ought to be clear
from that procedure that the fetus is not just a part of the
mother's body.) It is only one very short step, then, to simply
wait until the infant is born, as James Watson and others have
suggested, to see whether it has any grave genetic defects or
bodily damage, and then to kill it if desired. It is clear that
"viable" fetuses are now aborted with full legal sanction. It is
also clear that premature babies are born (many via
medically-induced labor) with a shorter gestation period than some
fetuses which are aborted. Whether the fetus just prior to birth or
abortion is a living human being or a disposable piece of tissue in
this post-1973 situation has nothing whatever to do with medical or
biological factors, but purely with the decision of the woman to
abort the fetus (unborn child) or to give birth to it. Perhaps
abortion should be referred to as fetal euthanasia or as fetacide,
rather than cloaked by terms such as V.I.P. (voluntary interruption
of pregnancy). And if there are no biological or medical reasons
for distinguishing sharply between fetal life and infant life, are
there any moral or theological reasons for distinguishing sharply
between fetacide and infanticide? There are vocal and powerful
people who are answering "No" to that question. The focus has been
changed from that of the father to that of the mother. But other
than that, are we so far now from the days of the Roman Empire when
the father had absolute rights over the life of his prenatal or
postnatal offspring?
6. Some Comments
"Conclusions" would be an inappropriate heading for this
section. The reader will have to draw his or her own conclusions
from the material presented. "Suggestions" would perhaps be
presumptuous. So there will simply be some comments.
The Lutheran Church, with its emphasis on unity in the gospel,
has a unique opportunity to provide an atmosphere for serious
conversation about the abortion issue. Lutherans need not question
one another's Christian faith on the basis of positions taken on
this or other morally debatable issues. The church, then, should
provide materials for discussion which will assist such serious
conversation. In the same way that a local parish ought not to
provide opportunity for talk about death and dying only to those
people immediately involved in such crises, so also a parish should
not restrict its interest in the abortion issue to crisis
counseling. Very important questions for the future of our society
are at stake and the parish ought to provide a context for serious
talk about those questions. It is assumed that people will have
various opinions. The important thing is to provide an atmosphere
in which information can be dispensed and in which conversation
(rather than shouting or name-calling) can take place.
The Lutheran Church also has a unique opportunity to explode the
myth of the absolute freedom of the individual conscience. If the
Lutheran doctrines of "The Orders of Creation," the "First Use of
the Law," and the "Kingdom on the Left," tell us anything, they
tell us that decisions are made in a moral nexus of a great many
factors, all of which interpenetrate one another. Most decisions
are already made long before an individual enters the counseling
room, not only by that individual, but by the whole configuration
of law and social mores and contemporary world views which
contribute to the formation of social consciousness and individual
conscience. The church does have a stake in the formation of law
and cannot treat it as a matter of indifference.
Specifically, Christian people have a responsibility to raise
objections and to argue convictions in the public policy arena on
matters of moral and social consequence. This may take the form of
direct action effort regarding legislation. It may involve the
deploring of a practice without an accompanying attempt to change a
law. It does, however, seem difficult to escape the conclusion that
the current and widespread practice of totally unregulated abortion
is morally intolerable. There are very few people who wish to
prohibit all abortion in every situation. The most important
question, then, for most thoughtful people is going to be how to
effectively regulate abortion so that it will be perceived to be
the very serious (and only occasionally necessary) moral tragedy
that it is. State legislatures will be active in this area for some
time to come. Christian people should make their voice heard.
Thirdly, the Lutheran Church has a unique opportunity to make
clear that freedom, rightly understood in the context of sin and
forgiveness, is not freedom to do as one pleases, but freedom to do
the will of God. Although the will of God is never absolutely
clear, it is absolutely clear that the will of God ought to be
sought. The taking of life may in some instances be justified. It
must never be a matter of indifference. The pursuit of justice must
be relentless. The content of that justice-what justice means in a
given situation-must be constantly struggled about. The seeking of
the will of God must be by and for the Body of Christ, of which the
individual Christian is a member. Thus the church must never be
satisfied with handling an issue such as abortion as a matter of
one-to-one counseling relationships, but must seek ways in which to
know and to do the will of God in a sin-penetrated and morally
ambiguous world. The corporate study of the Bible, the doing of
Christian theology and ethics, and the sharing of experience and
concern ought to be central in this task.