Abortion, Amputation, and Votes
by Jack Hoehn | 12 September 2024 |
What are the politics of conscience? On the sidewalk outside of your church, have you heard things like this? “Surely every Seventh-day Adventist must vote in favor of life? How can we do anything but hold our noses and vote for politicians we may not like—but who promise to make abortion of unborn children a crime?”
Is there anyone who doesn’t want healthy, happy babies to be born into loving families? I surely do.
But then there’s the voting part.
Being identified with any political organization besides the kingdom of God can hinder Christian ministry. But there is no way a genuine Christian can neglect the political world God has placed us in.
Jesus was not born to become a commander-in-chief of armies. He assured Pontius Pilate that he was no military risk to his government. But Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords. He does challenge all authority, all armies, all governments, and all economics by his politicking. He campaigned for a new government, one based on love and mercy, and abolishing lies or violence as tools of change.
Adventists’ unable-to-vote 19th-century prophetess said Adventists who could vote (males only, at that time) should vote on moral and community health issues, even if voting took place on Sabbath.
Amputation
Before we talk about abortion, let’s talk about amputation. I am firmly against amputation. Two arms, two legs, two thumbs, and eight fingers are the God-given plan for human beings. There is no way that I am going to vote for anyone who allows people to willy-nilly amputate.
Except when necessary.
As a mission doctor I have been forced to amputate necrotic limbs that were killing the person to whom they were attached. My leprosy patients and diabetic patients living in poverty sometimes developed incurable wounds, allowing toxic bacteria to enter their bodies in spite of antibiotics and the best wound care we could offer. A choice had to be made by patient and doctor. An undesired, unwanted procedure would then be performed—carefully, legally, and safely. What you didn’t want to do was done. Destruction became life-preserving, life-affirming. The choice to amputate became the pro-life choice because of necessity.
Jesus never mentioned abortion. But Jesus did approve of necessary amputation.
“And if your right hand is a snare to you, cut it off and away with it; it is better for you that one member should be destroyed rather than that your whole body should go into Gehenna.” Matthew 5:30, Weymouth
I am asking us to consider the possibility that both pro-life and pro-choice abortion positions are a very similar issue to amputation. Abortion, like amputation, should not be done. Unless necessary.
Honor mothers
The issue for those of us who don’t like abortion is, when is stopping pregnancy “necessary,” and who gets to decide? The decision can be influenced by church, culture, finances, friends, relatives, other children, and their father. But in the end it is a pregnant mother, advised by her doctor, who must choose. 100% of abortions are done for pregnant women. 60% of them already have children before an unplanned, unwelcome, unwise, unsustainable, or orphan-threatening pregnancy occurs.
The 5th commandment tells us to honor fathers, but it also says we must honor mothers. Is it honoring mothers to tell them, “We male theologians, politicians, judges, and voters will not permit you to stop this pregnancy even to save your own life, practice family planning, child spacing, birth control, or prevent a child from being born to a short painful life of pathology”?
The Bible
The Bible’s origin story is that life occurs when God “breathes life into a person’s nostrils.” This has been interpreted by most Jews and many Christians to mean that “soul” life begins at birth. In other cultures the fetus is considered to become alive at “quickening” (when a mother could first feel movement of the growing fetus in her womb—usually about the 20th week of pregnancy). But “at 20 weeks” is not a Biblical tradition.
The Bible generally ignores abortion, except for a few passages such as Job 3:16 that suggest being aborted would be preferable to being born into extreme suffering and sorrow. Job wishes he were:
”Like a miscarriage buried where I had not been, and like embryos who did not see the light.” Aramaic Bible in Plain English
“Or like a miscarriage which is discarded, I would not be, As infants that never saw light.” NASB
Torah law (Exodus 21:22) says that if fighting men injure a pregnant woman so she aborts, the guilty party must pay a fine. Causing an unwanted abortion apparently was considered of less magnitude than cursing one’s parents, worshiping other gods, violating the Sabbath, adultery, incest, or murder—crimes that the Bible deemed deserving of a death penalty.
If incest or adultery deserved a death penalty, why doesn’t the unwilling victim of those crimes deserve an abortion of the criminal pregnancy?
Theologically speaking
Since Jesus and Paul never mention abortion, why are some churches determined to ban any abortion for any reason? Where do the theologies come from that claim “sexuality divorced from procreation is shameful, women are inadequate to make weighty moral decisions, and forced childbearing is appropriate punishment of women for sexual irresponsibility”?
Some pre-Christian philosophies denied the goodness of sex:
“In the great pagan religions of the ancient Mediterranean, celibacy was practiced in various contexts. In Rome the institution of the Vestal Virgins, who were required to remain celibate for at least the 30 years of their service, indicates that celibacy was a very ancient aspect of Roman religion.” (Encyclopedia Britannica)
Greek Stoics tried to control the power of sexual attraction by abstinence. But how did these pagan ideas get into Christianity?
Perhaps by the convert known as Saint Augustine. The pre-Christian Augustine had, beginning at age 17, a 15-year sexual relationship with the same girlfriend who bore him a son when his method of contraception (a form of rhythm) failed. This attractive but poor girl he did not consider his “wife,” because she came with no property or wealth, and they had no legal state ceremony. With male hubris, he ended this long-term relationship when he felt he needed to “properly marry” a certain woman of means. When that didn’t work out as he planned, he studied to become a celibate Manichean monk. Once the Roman emperor in AD 380 decreed that Christianity was the only legitimate religion and proclaimed in AD 382 death to all Manichean monks, he became a Christian.
Augustine brought his pre-Christian ideas about sex, marriage, celibacy, and male superiority with him, and became the key figure in Roman Catholic history for celibate males’ defining sex, marriage, contraception, birth control, and family planning issues with their male headship.
Catholic historian Gary Wills has characterized it like this:
“The whole attitude towards sex in late antiquity—pagan and Jewish as well as Christian [was] marred by misogynism, fear of the body, and the lure of false spiritualisms. It is not the place to look for sanity on these matters.”
Roman Catholic sexual theology is based on this single idea: that the only legitimate purpose of sex is procreation. Any sex not making babies is sin. And any intentional loss of a fetus becomes murder. Pope Pius IX (1846–1878) was the pope confirming early Adventism’s attitudes towards the papacy. When newly improved rubber allowing birth control by condoms happened, birth control and family planning were attacked by that pope, who was also strongly urging his own infallibility. Later, when Anglican bishops voted to allow contraception to their members, Pope Pius XI declared that “Anglicans could no longer claim to be Christians at all.”
Papal dogma (here directly quoting St. Augustine) claims
“Intercourse even with one’s legitimate wife is unlawful and wicked when the conception of the offspring is prevented. Onan, the son of Judah, did this and the Lord killed him for it.”
Pardon me, sir. Onan’s crime was not contraception. It was defrauding a widowed sister-in-law by promising her a remedy for infertility and the security of children but only wanting to use her for sex. The sin was fraud and abuse of a woman, not family planning.
If from the moment the sperm fertilizes the ovum these cells have a human soul, rigid Catholic believers should baptize and have a funeral for the fetal cells (if large enough to physically find) after any miscarriage or abortion. Since 30 to 50% of all fertilized eggs fail to implant and spontaneously abort, this could be a full-time industry for a strictly doctrinaire church.
In addition, this doctrine deforms the godly desire of infertile couples for children and the treatment of infertility by IVF (in vitro fertilization) into sins. IVF is now in some states a legal crime, based entirely on Catholic doctrine. Selection of the healthy fertilized ova from a test tube and discarding the unhealthy ones is theologically transformed from life-affirming into murder—based on the so-called “personhood” of every fertilized egg, healthy or not, needed or not. This is the same theological opinion that has now criminalized for many women and their doctors the abortion of any fetus, healthy or not, welcomed or not, wise or not.
Denying abortion even to girls or women impregnated by predators is the same theology: the person-ified blastocyst is considered a “soul” or “a person,” not just a potential person or eventually to become a person. The “every sperm is sacred” theology turns into a law that could put the victims of rape into the same jail as their rapists and punish their doctors and nurses as well.
Both pro-choice and pro-life
The previous Chinese Communist “one child policy,” with the government mandating abortions of all subsequent pregnancies, was as wicked as the banning of all abortions. In the United States, no one was ever required to have an abortion because of “Roe” (used here as shortcut for Roe v Wade, a 1973 Supreme Court decision which legally permitted abortions until reversed by the recent Dobbs v Jackson case in 2022).
Permitting abortion is not requiring abortion. Women were free to not abort under Roe. Doctors were free to not provide abortions under Roe. Catholic hospitals were free to not provide tubal ligations under Roe. Before the Supreme Court took away the their protection, anti-abortion hospitals and religions were not free to close down other denominations’ hospitals or criminalize doctors and their pregnant patients who do not accept Catholic theology. That protection is now gone on a state-by-state basis. 1 in 3 American women live in states where they are no longer are able to decide to continue or end a pregnancy in a safe and legal manner.
It is not inconsistent to vote for women to retain the right to terminate a pregnancy, and at the same time act to make abortions less frequent—provide universal health insurance and pregnancy care, make widely available accessible contraception, make minimal wages family-supporting, permit selection of healthy fetuses for IVF for infertility, and continue tax incentives for adoptions. These are all positive pro-life ways to reduce the need or desire for abortion while not criminalizing necessary abortion.
Beastly Christianity
Authentic Christianity is an appeal and invitation, not an enforcement. Apostate Christianity is what passes Blue Laws and legislates religious conformity. The God-must-reign-with-our-help and we-are-in-charge-of-everyone theology of Christian Nationalism is not an authentic Christianity. It is what Adventists have always called Beastly Christianity.
Surely Seventh-day Adventists will study the issues and vote not because they favor amputation or abortion—except when necessary—but in favor of freedom of religion that permits women to choose their theology and make difficult decisions with their doctors (more and more often women doctors) about her fertilized eggs. Women patients, women doctors, women judges, women vice-presidents, and women presidents need no longer be manhandled by priests, politicians, judges, or voters.
Abortion is a moral issue for some religions and a health issue for others, but it is a freedom of religion issue for all nations. And Adventists have always been strong supporters of freedom of religion. The Christian choice is to vote for politicians who promise to vote laws and appoint judges who let women and their doctors decide if and when an abortion is necessary.
And to make quality, affordable health care available to everyone all the time.
Jack Hoehn as a medical doctor has delivered hundreds of babies and cared for their mothers. He did not perform abortions, but now he has to choose how to vote for candidates who say they will permit, or candidates who say they will prevent, abortions from being done.