Gary Cartwright
My Choice
When Norma McCorvey, America’s most famous pro-life activist, asked me how I could be a Christian and still support legalized abortion, I realized I didn’t have an answer. So I went looking for one.
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The nut of the issue—when does life begin?—is also the point where faith and science diverge, or get intentionally mangled. McCorvey’s attorney, Allan Parker, the founder and president of the Justice Foundation, explained his belief this way: “You’re human . . . when you have forty-six chromosomes, because unless your life is interrupted, you’re going to develop and die the same way as every other member of the human species does.” One of the arguments that Parker will take to the Supreme Court is that, in the time since the original Roe justices considered this case, “vast scientific evidence [has emerged that] conclusively [proves] that life begins at fertilization.” What is this vast evidence? He cited such things as cloning and DNA. “If you send two samples of DNA to a lab,” Parker told me, “one from the mother and one from the fetus, they will tell you the samples come from two separate people.” Does that make a fetus a person? I put that proposition to Robert McFarlane, a Palestine cardiologist and a good friend of mine. McFarlane told me, “The chemical reaction that is life clearly begins at conception, but when those dividing, moiling cells become a person depends on what you define as a person.” Is it logical to define these cells as a person, thereby giving them greater rights than the woman in whose body they are situated? I don’t think so.
None of us have a hotline to God. The Holy Scriptures are filled with messages that advocate respect for the woman and the child, but there are no specific commands in the Bible about abortion. Jewish tradition teaches that life begins when the baby’s head emerges from the mother. “The life of the mother is our top priority,” explained Cantor Jaime Shpall, co-clergy of Congregation Beth Israel, in Austin. “Anything that jeopardizes the physical or emotional health of the mother must be put aside.” The mother’s health is also the primary concern of groups like Planned Parenthood, which prefer prevention of pregnancy to abortion.
The case against abortion is absolute; the case for choice is relative. “Life is messy,” explained the Reverend Kathleen Ellis, of Austin’s Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church, who serves on the local Planned Parenthood advisory council. “We can’t always find one rule that fits every situation.” The Reverend San Williams, a pastor at University Presbyterian, in Austin, my spiritual home, told me about his attending the Presbyterian General Assembly in 1989 and listening to Mother Teresa. “She was so passionate, talking about the least among us, which obviously includes the unborn,” Williams told me. “My conscience was moved by her words. At the same time, I was on the Planned Parenthood board in Corpus Christi. Abortion is an agonizing choice.” The Presbyterian Church (USA) believes that abortion is the “ethical decision of the patient . . . and therefore should not be restricted by law.” Talking with these clergy members, I discovered the answer to McCorvey’s question: How can one be a Christian and still be pro-choice? By recognizing that life is indeed messy. A Christian doesn’t have to view every moral decision as determined by God’s word or even the word of church hierarchy. We are individuals who are created by God with the ability to make ethical decisions based on our own personal beliefs and experiences, within the framework of Christianity. In the event Scripture has not specifically spoken—and I believe abortion is such a case—it is wrong to speak in moral absolutes.
But it is also wrong to refuse to acknowledge the moral force of the pro-life argument. Several pro-choice friends have talked about how their faith in their stand was shaken when they saw sonograms of their own developing child. “When you see little arms and legs moving, you know it’s a tiny human,” one friend said. Jan Williams, the wife of my pastor, made a similar observation. “I don’t believe that a cluster of cells is a person,” she said. “But you have to start this discussion with the admission that you are killing something.” Baird, the Baylor philosophy chair, told me, “I find every abortion tragic. At the same time, I think there are times when it’s morally permissible. I object to any repeal of Roe v. Wade. I think we need to leave that option open.” I agree: Sometimes abortion is the best of bad alternatives.
So what to do? For starters, the moderates have to reframe the abortion debate. They should start by affirming the moral seriousness of the pro-life position, even while holding fast to their belief that there are situations where abortion is morally justifiable, ranging from rape, incest, and life-threatening pregnancies to teenage flings and middle-age mistakes where women never intended to get pregnant and can’t emotionally or physically handle parenthood. Pro-life advocates who say they love fetuses should care about the prevention of pregnancies as well as their termination and about children as well as fetuses.
The right-to-life movement is so certain that life begins with fertilization—and that its conclusion forecloses all other discussion—that it feels entitled to force its belief on the rest of us, not only through the church but also through the political system. Two new laws backed by the pro-life movement were passed by the Texas Legislature in 2003. One makes it a crime to kill a fetus in the course of harming a pregnant woman; although it specifically exempts abortion, the law states that a fertilized egg is “an individual,” thereby throwing the weight of the state behind the idea that a fetus has legally enforceable rights. Another bill makes having an abortion more difficult by imposing such requirements on abortion clinics as a 24-hour waiting period, parental consent for minors, and informing patients that they have the right to view photographs of dead fetuses. Pro-choice advocates vigorously oppose these restrictions, perhaps too vigorously. The weakness of the pro-choice side is that it risks coming across as pro-abortion rather than pro-choice. I believe that the avoidance of abortion is a legitimate goal, that if a woman who has had to go through these state-mandated obstacles changes her mind and decides to carry the baby to term, everyone wins. Abortion should always be the last choice. At the same time, those who are dead set against abortion should stop opposing birth control, sex education, and other things that help prevent pregnancies. Nobody is really for abortion, but unless people stop having sex, it’s here to stay.
I thank Norma McCorvey for making me explore my own beliefs and for helping me understand and respect her position on abortion. But ultimately, I agree with Robert Baird and Jan Williams and with the teachings of my church: Abortion has to be a woman’s choice. Regardless of what happens to Roe v. Wade, that should be the law, and from it moderation should flow.
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