Wednesday, November 24, 2021

Whose Ethics?

I'm gonna let the article do the talking.

Rev. Erika Forbes’ pastoral calling regularly brings her to the Whole Woman’s Health abortion clinic in Fort Worth. She blesses the clinic and escorts patients inside — sometimes past a crowd of protesters.

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“I took a sacred vow to help people live a life free of shame, stigma and judgment,” said Forbes, an ordained interfaith minister in Dallas and manager of faith and outreach for social justice advocacy organization Just Texas. Too often, she said, religion has made women feel exactly that when it comes to abortion. Seeking pastoral care may not even cross their minds.

She and other progressive pastors in Texas and nationwide are trying to change that. For four decades, the religious right has based its opposition to abortion in “the sanctity of life,” but these faith leaders say the physical, spiritual and emotional well-being of mothers is equally sacred.

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Rabbi Mara Nathan leads Temple Beth-El in San Antonio. During the High Holy Days in September, she gave a sermon on the Jewish value of choice. Reform Judaism teaches life begins at birth, she said, and also “treasures women’s autonomy.”

She’s concerned that narrow religious interests — namely conservative Christian interests — are reflected in the new law, to the exclusion of the teachings of other faiths, like hers. Nathan wanted her congregation to be clear that she supported their reproductive rights and that their faith did as well.

"I’ve always felt very pro-choice, but also I feel very confident that there are a lot of teachings that go back hundreds of years that prioritize the well-being of the woman,” Nathan said.

Rev. Amy Meyer is the head pastor of First Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in Elgin, about 35 miles northeast of Austin. In October, as the effects of the state's new abortion law were becoming clear, Meyer also felt compelled to address the issue with her church in a sermon and podcast, inviting her congregation to be intellectually honest about what the Bible does and does not say.

"I don’t think that God is quiet on the issue,” Meyer said, “But I do think the Bible doesn’t spell things out for us in terms that are helpful on today’s issues.”

In her sermon, she read from Dartmouth College professor Randall Balmer’s 2014 Politico article, in which he refuted the common assumption that midcentury Christians were of one mind on abortion, leading to the rise of the Moral Majority after Roe v. Wade. In fact, Balmer wrote, in the earliest days after the 1973 Supreme Court decision, churches were mostly quiet on the matter, and prominent evangelical W. A. Criswell, pastor of Dallas’ First Baptist Church, praised the decision, saying, “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person, and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”

.... however, within Christianity and Judaism, Meyer said, the conversation has always been nuanced. Religious teachers have debated the issue for centuries — taking into account different beliefs on the beginning of human life and reconciling this with the need to consider the health and welfare of a mother.

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Catholic Charities Pregnancy Center provides diapers, milk and ongoing support and counseling. “We want to make sure women don’t feel alone," Pimentel said.

Such an earnest effort is not reflected in SB 8, said Rev. Natalie Webb, senior pastor of University Baptist Church in Austin. “People will say that it is about ethics, but it is absolutely not about ethics. All of that legislation is about suppressing women.”

If efforts to restrict abortion were rooted in Biblical ethics, Webb said, they would include subsidized child care, social safety nets and accountability for the men involved. “We’re not talking about any of those things,” she said.

Rigid points of view are neither ethical, moral, nor pastoral.  I'm not even sure they're Christian.  And while not necessarily in the strictly constitutional sense of the word, isn't there a First Amendment issue here?

She’s concerned that narrow religious interests — namely conservative Christian interests — are reflected in the new law, to the exclusion of the teachings of other faiths, like hers. Nathan wanted her congregation to be clear that she supported their reproductive rights and that their faith did as well.

This is a lot more complicated than "abortion is murder."  And it raises the question:  if you provide pastoral counseling to a woman seeking an abortion, can you be sued under SB8?  Seems to me that runs afoul of Hobby Lobby for the Supremes, in spirit if not in law. 

Adding this for no apparent reason:

The young women I've met at abortion clinics were not children of wealth, prestige, or privilege. Their children, born or unborn, were not bound for school; at best, if they were lucky, they'd be raised by grandma while Mom worked. The support we as a society owe parents goes way beyond diapers, milk, and counseling, important as those things are. What we give them, over and over again, in the name of "ethics" and "morality," is the back of society's hand; and our condemnation. Or they are invisible, which is even worse.
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