On the Politics and Ethics of Abortion.

As y'all will see shortly (probably tomorrow), Bruce Prescott and I actually do agree on a fundamental premise about church-state separation, but let me first digress to the issue of abortion, which Bruce recently brought up in two consecutive posts, here and here.


Let's take the second post first; in that post, Bruce mentions how Christian conservatives bludgeon opponents with the baseball bat of "You can't be a Christian if you don't agree with me!" To the degree that the charge is true, it's regrettable. Christian conservatives should be ashamed of using the tactic.

The truth is, the Bible is often clear in its principles but not how to apply them politically; one would expect this to be the case for a divinely inspired book that is intended to speak to every people and every generation. I believe Matthew 19 makes clear the principle that God intended sexuality only for the lifelong, heterosexual, monogamous relationship of marriage, but it says nothing about what other relationships should be legal and/or encouraged by society's most influential institutions.

I'm not sure I would agree with Bruce here that Matthew 25 provides a "mission statement" for the church -- what about the Great Commission? -- but I agree that it's clear the Bible commands us to take care of the poor and needy. But whether we do that through private organizations, or through many local government programs, or through a handful of government programs at the federal level is not made explicit.

And Deuteronomy 30:19 enjoins us to "choose life," but it does not detail how that choice should manifest itself in our laws about capital punishment, abortion, and euthanasia. It's worth remembering that the Mosaic law that tells us to choose life also permitted the nation of ancient Israel to use the death penalty for certain crimes.

My point is, the Bible is clear on principles but not on the subsequent politics. Conservative Christians who use attempt to require certain political beliefs of other Christians are wrong to do so. I believe it's simply wrong to suggest that those who disagree with you on how to apply the Bible's principles politically are not faithful Christians.

Unfortunately, I believe Bruce is guilty of the very thing he criticizes: in this post, he very clearly suggests that Matthew 19:23-24 forbade Christians from voting for Bush because of his wealth -- that those who did vote for Bush don't "get" the passage. It struck me as a ridiculous interpretation, and Bruce never explained why he drew that conclusion, but regardless of the explanation, his suggestion that faithful Christians could not have voted for Bush is as repugnant as conservative Christians' attempt to claim, "You can't be a Christian if you don't agree with me!"


All that said, Bruce focuses on the negative consequences of the pro-life/anti-abortion side's unwillingness to compromise, and he cites former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop to do so:

In Bill Martin's book, With God on Our Side, Koop explains why he dropped out of the abortion controversy:

If the pro-life people in the late 1960's and the early 1970's had been willing to compromise with the pro-choice people, we could have had an abortion law that provided for abortion only for the life of the mother, incest, rape, and defective child; that would have cut the abortions down to three percent of what they are today. But they had an all-or-nothing mentality. They wanted it all and they got nothing.

Note that the exceptions Koop described coincide exactly with the exceptions that Southern Baptists supported before the takeover of the SBC. Since the takeover, Southern Baptists have shifted to the "all-or-nothing mentality."

The truth is, even if the Fundamentalists were correct about all abortions being murder, then Fundamentalist intransigence is responsible for 97% of the murders and compromising moderates are guilty of 3%. None of us will come out of this guiltless, but one percentage requires a lot less grace.

I'm not sure the relevance of the supposed takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. According to Bruce's own timeline, that takeover took place in 1979-80, long after "the late 1960's and the early 1970's."

And the pro-life movement's intransigence on cases like rape, incest, and the life of the mother is news to me. I was under the impression that those cases split the movement: some do indeed believe we should encourage rape victims to carry the child to term, some do not, and there is disagreement about what the law should say.

But even assuming that intransigence, it is a false dichotomy to pit them against "compromising moderates." Roe v. Wade was not a decision that reflected compromise; alongside its companion case of Doe v. Bolton, it required abortion on-demand in all states and in all three trimesters. The pro-choice crowd's positions on things like partial-birth abortion and parental notification are, likewise, not evidence of a willingness to compromise.

I think it's extraordinarily unfair to lay only 3 percent of all legal abortions at the feet of those who are so militant in their support of abortion, to paint them as "compromising moderates," or to deny their existence altogether.


Moving on from the politics to the ethics of abortion, we find that Bruce raises what he believes are interesting issues involving the human body's tendency to abort naturally:

When [Southern Baptist ethicist Ben] Mitchell studied this issue, he should have learned that enormous numbers of human embryos, or in his words "very young human beings," spontaneously abort through natural processes. At some point, those who profess to have thought through these issues might be expected to wonder why God could not also be accused of treating so many embryonic human beings "irresponsibly."

If every embryo is indeed a "very young human being," why would a loving God who designed a good universe create a process so wasteful of human life?

To my knowledge, Southern Baptist ethicists have never addressed this issue.

While I do not consider myself a "Southern Baptist ethicist" by trade, I am a Southern Baptist interested in both theology and ethics, so I'll give it my best shot.

First, the Bible is clear that ours is a fallen universe, that the world in which we live is not precisely as God intended it. If sin and the fall of man introduced death into the world, it's also possible that it introduced inefficiency; who is to say for certain whether, in God's perfect good universe before the fall, reproduction would still have been "so wasteful of human life"?

Bruce's point strikes me as a variation of the "God made me gay" argument made by homosexuals. I believe Paul's letter to the Romans is quite clear that man's nature is not completely and perfectly what God intended. Therefore, we cannot look at any aspect of humanity -- neither our short tempers nor our sexual desires, neither our physical infirmities nor the inefficiencies of reproduction -- and simply assume that the aspect was part of God's original plan.

Second, I'm not sure the precise numbers of embryos who are lost through what can be called spontaneous abortion. This site suggests that 75% of all pregnancies result in miscarriage in the first two weeks, but I struggle to see the relevance.

The worst infant mortality rate appears to be about 20 percent. If it were 75 percent in Angola, would infanticide suddenly become morally permissible?

Most people do not live to be 100 years old. Does that make it okay to kill an otherwise healthy centenarian?

The Bible records, in Genesis 7, that God killed everyone but Noah and his family, and simple reason tells us that most humans born before 1900 are already dead. Does that give people license to kill each other?

The answer to all these questions is clearly no, and the reason should be obvious to any mature Christian: God has the moral authority to do things that we cannot. God created us, and He alone can decide when each of our lives will end. If God Almighty ended the lives of 99 percent of all unborn children, that does not give us the license to kill any of the remaining one percent.

After God sent the flood, destroyed Sodom, and wiped out Pharaoh's army, He still commanded us not to murder. Let us ignore for a moment the tough issues of war and capital punishment; the taking of innocent human life is forbidden not because it is inherently wrong, but because it is God's perogative alone.

God alone has the authority to take innocent human life; statistics about how and when he does so does not empower us to take life in certain circumstances.

Welcome to the Arena.

Greetings and welcome to the Baptist Arena; I extend an especially warm welcome to the frequent visitors of "Mainsteam Baptist," the personal blog of Bruce Prescott, President of the Oklahoma Chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

I'm honestly not sure about the long-term future of this blog. It could become a parallel blog to Bruce's, one where debate and discussion is actually fostered. It could morph into a more general discussion of issues that interest Baptists today. Or, it could wither away over time, as I already have more than enough on my plate, both online and in the real world.

I do not wish to get ahead of myself: I'm a Christian -- Southern Baptist by denomination, mostly conservative both in my religious beliefs and in my political positions -- and I have attempted to engage in a genuine discussion with Bruce through email and through the comments threads on his blog. He has apparently quit the email discussion, and he is now clearly committed to deleting every single word I add as a comment.

The fact of the matter is, it's his blog. He has final say about the content of his blog, and he should have final say. I would not be objecting now to his decision to excise my comments from his blog, but for two things.

First, I am offended by the slurs he's thrown my way. He writes that my intention was to "post the equivalent of electronic graffiti," and he twice more compares me to a gang-member spray-painting graffiti on other people's property. The comparison is simply ridiculous, since my comments were thoughtfully made, and very clearly so. He suggests that I was "rude and obnoxious," and I was certainly no more rude than Bruce himself.

Second, his hypocrisy is glaring:

"I am more than happy to engage in honest, respectful dialogue with people who disagree with the positions I take on this blog."

"I enjoy passionate debate as much or more than anyone."

And shortly before he closed the comments so he could purge them of my conservatism, he wrote this:

At times, atheists can be as fanatical as evangelical Christians in expressing their religious convictions. The chief difference being that atheists are eager to engage in genuine dialogue with people who question the reasons for their unbelief, while most evangelical Christians systematically avoid genuine dialogue with anyone who questions their beliefs.

If his refusal to answer any of my emails and his commitment to delete every one of my comments do not qualify as a "systematic" effort to avoid genuine dialogue, I do not know what would.

I genuinely strive to see the best in people, and I want to see Bruce as a good, decent Christian with whom I happen to disagree. It is simply becoming more and more difficult to do so.

Bruce, if you see this post, I welcome you to send me an email or add a comment. Perhaps we could use this blog as a place to discuss church-state separation and the interpretation of Scripture. It could be fun, we could learn from each other, and it would demonstrate that you are serious about your love of debate.