This is not a post I ever dreamed I would write. For 20 years or more, I actively shunned discussions of abortion, because I resented the way politicians, activists and press made that issue, and that issue alone, the focus of every judicial confirmation in this country. Was the nominee fer it, or agin it? That’s all that mattered. Abortion didn’t matter to me that much one way or the other, and I despised the laser-focus on it to the seeming exclusion of far more important and immediate issues.
But that’s changed. Like many, many other Americans, I have been forced to think of the issue this week. I discovered, to my surprise, that I have strong opinions that have been simmering for a long time beneath the surface. They’re boiling over, now.
They began to boil over about ten years ago, following a “very special” Relief Society lesson – “very special” in the sense of an After-School Special that fell outside the norms. I don’t know who in the ward decided that we sisters needed a lesson that was in no manual, that came from no Conference talk, and that was not called for by any general church leader.
It went wrong, as far as I’m concerned, from the very beginning, when the teacher pronounced abortion an abomination, opposed by God, opposed by the Church, and contrary to every doctrine of the restored gospel. Those sorts of claims that “X is Church Doctrine,” when I knew that there was no such settled doctrine within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, put my Skept-o-Meter on high alert.
The lesson went wronger the longer it lasted. It was the first of three times I’ve witnessed in my current ward where a spirit of frenzied one-upmanship took over. Almost immediately the teacher lost control of any plan she may have had for the lesson, as she called on sisters with raised hands. Their comments were all stories: “I knew a girl who got pregnant under such-and-such circumstances, and she was repentant enough not to get an abortion.” “Well, I knew a girl who got pregnant under even more horrific conditions, and she didn’t get an abortion!” One after another the stories came, each more extreme than the other. The climax came when one sister, very prominent in the ward and even the Church, told about a woman who got pregnant when her ex-husband raped her, “but SHE didn’t get an abortion, because she knew what a good man he was!”
A rapist? Even if he wasn’t a stranger in a dark alley? A good man?
I could have supported the woman’s decision wholeheartedly under just about any circumstance, but I could hold no respect for her judgment.
That lesson radicalized me, in a way, and started that under-the-surface simmering which boiled over this week.
These are some points I think Latter-day Saints, at least those in America, need to consider:
1. Latter-day Saints know that human life is sacred, and that obtaining a body is one of the primary purposes for the creation of this earth. That is doctrine.
What is not doctrine are some of the ideas that cluster around this one, chief among them the notion that the bearing and raising of children in righteousness is the primary, if not sole, purpose for women’s lives. As a never-married, never-mothering woman – who would have welcomed both, had the possibility presented – I have long had to wrestle with finding other purposes for my life. The Church may prize motherhood above all else, the Church may have no use for me in the standard scheme of doctrine and practice, but I know my life has value. I know God loves me, and has given me gifts to exercise outside and beyond motherhood. Mortality is not merely a time to exercise patience while I wait for “real life” to begin after I am dead. I am not a spiritual dead-end. And because I know that’s true of me, I know it’s true of other women.
The idea that a woman has no right to bodily autonomy may arise in part from this commonly held if infrequently stated idea that a woman exists solely for her body to be of service to husband and children.
2. A human embryo, a fetus, is alive in some sense, and carries the potential for life, but it is not in itself a living, mortal being. That is Church doctrine.
Despite a variety of individual statements through the years, the Church has no settled doctrine on when the spirit enters the body. Yes, many have assumed that the “quickening” – the moment when a mother perceives movement in the child she is carrying – is the entering of the spirit into the body, but that is not Church doctrine. Throughout the 20th century, and no doubt up to the present, would-be mothers who desperately wanted their babies have written to Church leaders (I’ve read scores of such letters) asking about the status of unborn babies following miscarriage. The answer has consistently been that we do not know when the spirit enters the body. Some have responded that the spirit does not inhabit the physical body until the child is born and takes his or her first breath. Others have simply said we don’t know.
The practice of the Church bolsters the thought that body and spirit are not joined until birth, because a child who dies in the womb, at any stage and from whatever cause, cannot be sealed to his or her parents and is not carried on Church records as a child of a family even if the parents were previously sealed in the temple.
The notion that human existence begins the instant sperm penetrates egg is a sectarian notion – and a recent one, at that – that has no support in Latter-day Saint doctrine. The notion is a purely (impurely?) sectarian notion without scientific support or revelation held by members of radically conservative churches hell-bent on imposing their religious belief on the rest of an unsupporting population.
3. This does not mean, of course, that we have any justification for treating a body in a womb as meaningless, and can destroy it casually. Present Church teaching and practice (Handbook 38.6.1) allows for abortion when pregnancy results from rape (I refuse to endorse the Handbook’s term “forcible rape” – all rape is forcible, even in the absence of a weapon or threats to the life of the victim) or incest; when the life or health of the mother is threatened; or when fetal defects are so severe that the child could not survive birth. We are not anti-choice in those situations – conditions where existing and proposed legislation would ban abortion and bring the punishment of felony murder on any woman who defies the sectarian bigots in control of state legislatures.
The Handbook makes clear the Church’s current consideration of abortion as “like unto murder,” while admitting that so far as is known, abortion, unlike murder, is subject to repentance and forgiveness. Nevertheless, “abortion is a most serious matter. It should be considered only after the persons responsible have received confirmation through prayer.”
4. We like to believe, I think, that all women who seek abortions are selfish sluts who schedule “murder my baby” just after their morning Zumba and just before joining their gal pals to go shoe shopping. You’d have to be willfully blind, however, not to be aware this week, if not before, of the enormous numbers of expectant mothers with sudden, unexpected medical emergencies, or who learn very late in pregnancy of the malformation of their infants. To believe that women use abortion as casual birth control also discounts the women who are so desperate not to be tied to an abuser, not to have a father (their own or the baby’s) learn of a pregnancy (pregnancy is one of those times when women are at an exceptionally high risk of being murdered by their own “loved ones”), or for other reasons, for whom the risks of illicit abortions are a trivial consideration in their desperation not to be discovered as pregnant.
Women who are in fact living human beings must not be ranked lower on the scale of human value than the mere potential of life represented by a fetus. Nothing in Church doctrine – or human compassion – justifies that.
5. It is true that in 1985, repeated in nearly the same language in 2008, President Russell M. Nelson decried abortion as “war on the defenseless and the voiceless.” He claimed that God had forbidden abortion from the dawn of time – but cites no scripture, no prophetic authority, only John Calvin, the Protestant reformer. (I acknowledge that much later in his talk, he cites President Spencer W. Kimball to support an opposition to abortion.) He claims that threats to maternal life are “very rare,” that abortion (but the criminal acts are not rare!) for rape or incest are “also rare.” He dismisses the legitimate known statistics of fetal abnormalities by telling of one case where a child of a mother who had measles during pregnancy was born without a handicap after all, as if a single instance of a happy ending outweighed the now-diagnosable-in-utero cases of tragic ones. He said, wrongly, that “most abortions” were “simply a form of birth control.” He says that the rights of a fetus are equal to the rights of a living, breathing woman. He speaks as all pregnancy coming from the choice “to embark on a journey that leads to parenthood” – absolutely ignoring the cases of women who did not so choose. He announced – contrary to the statements of numerous other General Authorities — that life begins at conception, something he claims to have learned “in the course of my studies as a medical doctor” – although science can have absolutely nothing legitimate to say about when the spirit enters the body.
Although he has not yet done so with regard to abortion, President Nelson has – several times – codified as Church practice or even doctrine ideas he taught as an apostle, ideas that were not adopted at the time by his fellow apostles or by earlier Church presidents. If he were to do the same with respect to his claims about abortion, Latter-day Saints will have yet another point to consider in their evaluation of the rightness or wrongness of abortion. Such a pronouncement would not, however, justify claiming that science presumes to know when life (not merely potential life) begins, or that the lives and bodily autonomy of women are of no concern, or that women should be prosecuted as murderers for treatment following miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, or other adverse maternal health events.
No Baptist or Catholic or other sectarian Christian has any legitimate right under the Constitution to dictate public policy based on their sectarian beliefs. Neither would any Latter-day Saint have such a right to impose his or her beliefs on the nation as a whole. Latter-day Saints can teach Latter-day Saints whatever the doctrine or preferred policy of the Latter-day Saints might be, without imposing that private doctrine or belief on others.
Abortion must remain legal in the United States.
UPDATE: A reader commented on another forum that I was disrespectful to President Nelson, so I’ve reread that section carefully. I intended no disrespect, and I don’t think I’ve inadvertently shown any. Believing Latter-day Saints (a description that includes me) will certainly consider the teachings of the president of the Church in any question this important. I could find no direct statement made by President Nelson as president, only the talk twice given while he was an apostle — certainly a teaching also demanding consideration but not one as authoritative as statements by Church presidents. My summary of that talk is choppy as I picked out the details that corresponded to general points I had already made, but I think it was a fair summary, and I think it is fair to note points where that talk may fall short (e.g., the idea that any churchman knows, in the absence of any announced revelation, when life begins), and unsupportable claims (e.g., allowing one report of a happy ending to override contradictory examples). I also acknowledge that if President Nelson gives another such talk or makes such statements as president, my position would need to be considered again in light of whatever statement he made. What my conclusions might be then are only hypothetical at this point.
The one point that I know cannot change is that no matter how anti-abortion the Church could theoretically become at any point, it is not the Church’s right, anymore than it is the right of evangelicals, to impose such a hypothetical law on the rest of the country. Freedom of religion does not encompass imposing one flavor of religion on the whole of civil society, under our system of law.
(Caution to drive-by commenters: Keepapitchinin is MY space, and I will decide what comments may be posted.)
Ardis, thank you for such a well-articulated statement. You are a gift to those who follow you. Keepapitchinin!
The greatist gift God has given us is free aggency the right toe choose for ourselves. Wasnt that what th whoe war in heaven was suppoes to be about. That battle continues. Does any govenment have the right to take that awya! No!!! and yet they try to in may various forms and under labored pretence.
“I refuse to endorse the Handbook’s term “forcible rape” – all rape is forcible, even in the absence of a weapon or threats to the life of the victim”
The term “forcible rape” is necessary here because there is a type of rape (as defined by law) that can happen between two consenting individuals: statutory rape. Statutory rape occurs when at least one of the individuals is younger than the legal age of consent, even when both individuals are willing participants. In theory (though usually not in practice), any sex between two people who are both below the age of consent can be charged such that both are guilty of raping the other. (California, Idaho, and Wyoming all outright prohibit sex with anyone under the age of 18, regardless of the age differential.) They can consent as the term is understood in plain English, but not in a legal sense.
See https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/statutory-rape-guide-state-laws-reporting-requirements-1 for a table of the age of consent in all 50 states.
This is an important distinction in the Church’s policy, because a 17-year old girl in California who gets pregnant by her boyfriend was a victim of statutory rape by law, but would not be justified in getting an abortion according to the Church. The same girl would be justified in getting an abortion had she been a victim of a forcible rape (i.e. did not consent to sex in either the plain English or legal sense).
Thanks, Ardis.
Observer, we’re talking about the Handbook in the context of that term, not a legal text. It is NOT an important distinction in the Handbook, because the Handbook makes no mention of any other rape beyond “forcible.” There is no distinction between one thing that is named, and another thing that isn’t even hinted at.
If it did matter, there is no way for a member or a bishop or other official to apply the counsel given in the Handbook without specialized training that I’m pretty sure isn’t given — especially not to lay members.
When I learned post-mission that the Church I belong to does not have an absolute ban on abortion, I realized that I had been wrong along with many people telling me otherwise and I went out and registered as a Democrat. Extended family members have said that I support “baby killers” and even the selling of babies for parts. Divorce is generally against Church policy but there are exceptions. I’ve been trying to figure out ways to divorce myself from some of my extended family.
Thank you for being willing to share your well-thought, well-explained position. Thank you for being willing to publicly identify as someone who believes abortion must remain legal in the United States. I’ll add my name and witness to yours in support of legal abortion in the United States.
Thank you for the honesty of this post. I have my own opinions about abortion but they center on respecting the agency of others and not judging. It is very easy to hear others with leadership callings give their opinion and assume it must be doctrine. Your well-researched words give us a baseline of truth against which to check those assumptions.
Anyone who ever framed or even thought about abortion as “baby killing” and fell in step with the evil misuse of the issue as the political propaganda effort to control American politics needs to (a) repent and (b) watch all the seasons of Call the Midwife.
I might feel to find it charming that people are so innocent of the messy realities of human reproduction, but it really isn’t charming.
Strict adherence to controlling all aspects of reproduction—including current efforts to ban treatment for ectopic pregnancy—feels like either willful ignorance, or as concluded in the field of public health, part of a large-scale effort to drive women out of the workplace.
Whatever politicians and activists might say, this is an economic battle. It’s an effort to control women’s work and income, rather than a moral fight.
Thank you, Ardis, for using your gifts as a thinker and a writer to articulate the complexity of this problem. In both politics and religion, there is a strong tendency to make things simple so they fit neatly in the cubbyholes we know. That often results in rough approximations of the best policy and the best results. We live with that in order to get things done. Then there are problems like abortion that can’t be simplified without intolerable distortions. I agree that a patient, compassionate analysis of abortion policy leads to a pro-choice position, but I recognize that for many people this is a surprising and counterintuitive result.
The fact that it’s a surprising result to many people does not make the problem any less urgent. It is a life-and-death matter. From the unique perspective of the Latter-day Saints, the hidden issues here are the integrity of our teachings and our compassion as a people. You’ve put your finger on the way we can start to look like a nasty mob when we buy in to the too-simple view of this issue.
With respect to the phrase “forcible rape,” I think Observer might be correct about why this phrase is used in the Handbook, but as you point out, Ardis, the context gives no indication that we should read it is this legalistic way. This tweaks one of my peeves: the unwise use of legalisms in Church documents, and more generally a legalistic approach to doctrine and policy. Who is the audience for the Handbook? Is it judges and lawyers, or is it regular members of the Church who need to understand policy and the reasons for it? If the Handbook needs to distinguish statutory rape, then it can do so without the lazy use of a term that is guaranteed to lead to harmful misunderstanding among people who are not able to read the Handbook like a legal brief. Though I don’t doubt that the authors of the Handbook have been very careful about its wording, I do doubt that they have taken themselves sufficiently out of the lawyer’s mindset in that process.
Loursat, thanks for recognizing my objection to that term, and softening my rather harsh response to Observer. And Observer, I’m sorry for reacting as if I had been attacked by you, when you didn’t attack but did clearly explain your reasoning.
And thank you all for your measured responses. I’m on edge, for probably obvious reasons, but your remarks are all courteous and thoughtful.
Thank you for this, Ardis. I especially appreciate your strong defense of women’s spiritual worth and autonomy. So much of this comes down to the fact that, at bottom, many men are uncomfortable with women’s right to make the difficult decisions associated with abortion.
The fact that it is not only about the state’s interest in the life of a child, but also about women’s autonomy is also highlighted by the details of the laws being considered by the states. In my state, Missouri, several forms of care I have received–dilation & curettage after miscarriage, the medicines used to control a postpartum hemorrhage (which are also used for medication abortions, and without which I likely would have had to have a hysterectomy), and the IUD which my doctor suggested not as birth control, but to alleviate problems associated with (peri)menopause without increasing my (already high) risk of breast cancer–will all become illegal when Roe is overturned. That an overwhelmingly male state legislature cannot be bothered to learn even the basic medical facts involved in their lawmaking, and do not trust better-informed women–whom they will spend Sunday lauding for their superior spiritual intuition and willingness to prioritize their children’s wellbeing–to make ethical choices about their own bodies and their children, betrays the deep misogyny at work here.
What do you make of the fifteen year old girl who is impregnated by her thirty-five year old “boyfriend,” who she thought she loved? Any compassionate person can’t possibly decide that statutory rape doesn’t count as “forcible” rape when the coercion used is power and manipulation rather than physical force. Rape is rape.
I agree with your conclusion, with qualifications. But I’ll leave those aside for the time being.
That being said, the judiciary is a terrible place to negotiate the competing interests that you refer to in your original post, and the Supreme Court’s arrogating to itself the power to speak on the issue has corrupted our politics for the last half century.
How ironic it would seem to the founders that for the past half century we have structured so much of our politics around the question whether a particular candidate, if elected president, will appoint the “right” man or woman to the Supreme Court, where he or she will serve for life, leading the American people to engage in the ghoulish business of handicapping the expected death dates of the justices, in the hopes, again, of having the right president appoint a successor.
Lincoln, speaking of another controversial Supreme Court decision, said that “At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”
It’s time to reclaim our governance on the difficult questions surrounding abortion from “the hands of that eminent tribunal” and to engage in the difficult business of self-government that is the central and highest ideal of the American experiment.
Exceptionally delicate topic, but just one comment here: there’s no magic to birth. An emergency c-section can be performed on a pregnant woman and in a matter of only a few minutes (the one I participated in took less than 7 minutes start to finish, woman was 32 weeks pregnant) a living breathing human being exists outside the womb. Seems exceptionally unlikely that God waits and “just in time” inserts a spirit moments before that c-section is performed…
Still, we don’t know, Tubes. Revelation is the only possible source for that knowledge, and it hasn’t been given.
Mark, you’re much more eloquent than my visceral, almost wordless resentment of the way this single issue has, for most of my life, monopolized national, if not local, governance.
And on another day, I’d probably qualify my statements, too! It’s such a complex subject (except for those who take an unreasoned, unreasoning black-and-white position) that it isn’t possible for one sincere but hastily written post to capture it.
Again, thanks for all the comments, even if I haven’t addressed them all individually.
You capture my thoughts very well and more beautifully than I could ever. I appreciate your thoughtfulness.
In addition to the lack of doctrine on when a life enters, President Nelson, doesn’t equate it to murder. He says (of abortion), So far as is known, the Lord does not regard this transgression as murder. We have no doctrine that this hampers God’s plan.
There are many sincere faiths that don’t oppose abortion, including Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, and Christian denominations, including Episcopalians. We must respect these points of view in our society, as well as those who act simply out of what they think is right, regardless of whether they have formal religious teachings, just pray about it themselves or have other beliefs that cause them to act to terminate a pregnancy. Religious freedom says that we must respect and not constrain another’s personal actions based on their beliefs.
Thank you for sharing your perspective. I am with you, I am pro-life, but don’t think we should legislate abortion restrictions, particularly those currently being discussed.
Thanks, David. You’re right that Pres. Nelson doesn’t equate abortion to murder — it’s the unsigned Handbook section predating RMN’s administration that suggests abortion is “like unto murder.” But not Pres. Nelson directly, in anything I’ve seen.
Thanks for sharing this. There are so many issues to address in our country, and yet abortion continues to be the linchpin for judicial appointments. It’s exhausting.
I appreciate your thoughts on this. I wish your #5 could have been as concise as all of the rest! But I sppose it cannot be, as that is where the ambiguity lies. I love and support the LDS leadership! I hope this will pull them more deeply to consider statistics and numbers on the matter! Limited hours in a day, limited ability to contemplate the matter – so many pressing matters of a world-wide religion! Thank you!!
I took no offense, Ardis. In fact, I only just was able to come back to check for responses.
I find it helpful, especially when reading the Handbook, to keep in mind that it’s not just written by general authorities. While they give a lot of input into it (and provide the final approvals), directly authoring the various sections is not an efficient use of their time. Many of those sections were probably written or thoroughly edited by lawyers before getting Q12 and 1P approvals.
I find that explains a lot of why they write things the way that they do, especially as they have been more open and transparent about the contents of the Handbook.
Thanks, Ardis. This is a much needed exploration of a delicate topic, and misunderstood by a growing majority of members. You are brave for sharing it, and in my mind, so right to do so.
You words really spoke to my soul. I haven’t tried to write out how I feel about abortion, but I feel I could just point everyone to you and your words. Thank you for taking the time to do this.
I want every woman to feel safe during the years she could get pregnant. I have grown, married daughters. I need them to have the proper medical treatments available if any pregnancies they may have don’t progress as a simple and non-complicated full-term pregnancy. I am terrified that their very lives could be lost due to medical options being taken from women. I want to cry when I think too long about all of this.
Thank you again for sharing your heart.
Thanks for your thoughts Ardis!
Lawyer here. Forcible rape is an older legal term that refers back to the time when a victim had an obligation to offer the “utmost resistance”. That is a very old relic that has thankfully been replaced by the idea that all rape is forcible.
My guess is that the handbook language is actually quoting an old legal standard (happens more than you think) and no one has bothered to update it for decades.
Here’s a summary I found online: The antiquated common law definition of rape was unlawful intercourse by a man against a woman who is not his wife, by force or threat, and against her will. However, most states have refined and broadened the statutory definition of rape so that marriage, gender, and force are no longer relevant; The victim’s lack of consent is the crucial element. A lack of consent can include the victim’s inability to provide consent (functionally or legally) due to age, mental disability, or even the effects of drugs or alcohol.
Very well said. And I especially agree that my own personal beliefs about when I would consider an abortion for myself should not dictate the limits I place on others.
Thank you Ardis.
Thank you for writing this. It’s so frustrating to see people uncritically repeat the Catholic and conservative Evangelical Christian teachings about the beginning of human life.
Outstanding, Ardis. I find especially frustrating the part you point out about how Russell M. Nelson (along with other GAs) describe rape and situations where the fetus isn’t viable or the life or health of the mother are in danger as “rare” or “very rare.” It’s hard to read these as anything but an attempt to downplay them as negligible edge cases that need not be taken into account.
I don’t get the thing about exceptions being “very, very rare.” What does that even mean? How many life-threatening pregnancies constitutes “rare”? Less than ten per year? Less than 500? Less than 100,000? And why does it matter? If you’re the one whose life is at risk, then you should be able to make your own decision, regardless of how many others there are. If we hit our quota of “rare” life-threatening pregnancies in May, does that mean that everyone after that will just have to die?