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Mothers and Families Matter To God Too

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The pro-life movement catapulted to prominence in 1989 when the first major Supreme Court case to challenge Roe v. Wade hit the courts since the ruling itself. There were pro-life and pro-choice rallies at Rutgers College, Rutgers University every week throughout my junior and senior years. Christian groups sponsored viewings of the 1984 anti-abortion video, “The Silent Scream.” And evangelicals assumed if you are saved, then you must be “pro-life.”

One day that year my mother and I stumbled into a heated argument. With exasperated arrogance, I bent backwards to convince her that her pro-choice position on abortion was immoral, unfaithful and unchristian.

She asked: “What if the life of the mother is at stake? Should abortion be allowed then?”
“No,” I countered flatly.

“Lisa,” she explained, “do you remember that time I was pregnant, a few years ago, and I went into the hospital and the baby didn’t make it?”

“Yes…” I said.

“I had an abortion,” she said. “I almost died and the doctor had to take the baby to save my life.” She paused.

“I could have died,” she said.

I wish I could tell you I responded with compassion and humility, but I can’t. Determined to win the argument, my heart turned to steal. I looked my mother in the eyes — my mother, the woman who almost died to bring me into the world, who worked nights to put herself through college while raising three small children, who would give up anything to make sure we were provided for — I looked my mother in the eyes and said: “They should have saved the baby.”

On November 8, 2011, Mississippi voters voted down Ballot Measure 26, “the Personhood Amendment,” which would have granted the status of legal person to a fertilized egg. The measure would have effectively outlawed abortion in all circumstances within the state, deeming it murder. It would have made protection of the mother’s life a criminal offense, if that protection risked the life of the fertilized egg.

According to a November 2011 Mother Jones article, “Personhood amendment” lobbyists were poised then to introduce Personhood ballots in Montana, Oregon, California, Nevada, Ohio, and Florida.

There are lots of points of controversy over measures like these. They are so extreme that even the Catholic Bishops denounced Measure 26. For me the most haunting question is this: “Who would it harm most?” My conclusion: families — especially poor ones. When mothers — especially poor ones — die of complications in childbirth, families fold.

Thirty-two percent of households led by single women were poor in 2010, as opposed to 6 percent of two-parent households. In the case of Measure 26, Mississippi is the poorest state in the nation with an overall poverty rate of nearly 22 percent and a number of counties with rates as high as 48 percent. If Measure 26 passed, the state’s foster care system would have had to watch out. With no provision to protect the lives of mothers, the system would have likely seen a rise in the rates of children processed and placed in the system. This wave would have included both the fertilized eggs and fetuses born to dead mothers and their motherless brothers and sisters. How’s that for family values?

I often think back to that conversation with my mother. It took decades for our relationship to heal after I knifed her with my words that day. Since then, God has countered the effects of my hardened heart. God has whispered words of truth and health to my mother’s soul, “I care about you… I see you… You matter to me… The well-being of your family matters to me.”

May the mothers of America hear the same for years to come.

Amen.

 

This article was adapted from an article that originally appeared on the Huffington Post.

Abortion in the 2012 Election

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Well, we certainly cannot complain in this election cycle that the abortion issue is being ignored.  The selection of the resolutely pro-life Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney’s running mate and the continuing fall-out from the Todd Aikin controversy has ensured that the abortion debate will receive plenty of attention in coming weeks, much to the dismay of Romney, who clearly is trying to change the subject.    

While I’m always glad when electoral campaigns range over many issues, I have my doubts as to how constructive this discussion will be, particularly at a time when the two parties both seem preoccupied with their ideological electoral bases instead of reaching for the independents that are so important for success on election day.  What I hear are strong, defiant statements of principle, expressed in “here, I take my stand” tones, and full-throated rejections of alternative points of view.  Civility is an early casualty in this form of political discourse.

Of course, it’s not hard to understand why candidates would seek to distinguish their own views from those of an opponent.  But candidates (and their staffs) would do well to recognize that a move towards civility does not weaken one’s position, and actually might strengthen it.  I distinguish two ways this may be true with respect to the abortion question. 

First, in a civil discussion, statements of principle require justification.  My sense is that in a society where there is so much disagreement about moral foundations, we attempt to avoid explaining why we hold the moral positions we do—we simply expect that others disagree with those foundations, or even that others simply cannot understand them.  And so we have pro-lifers arguing their position as though it descended upon them from the sky, and we see pro-choice advocates repeating the “right to abortion” mantra as though a rights claim isn’t a moral claim that needs to be considered alongside other moral claims.    

For a civil debate, we need more than this; otherwise we simply hurl our principles at each other, again and again, while the public moral ground is ceded to mere pragmatism (go with what works) or majoritarianism (the majority is always right).  The loss of a genuinely principled public discussion is a loss for all sides.

Second, in a civil discussion that is taking place within the political space, we need arguments that are genuinely political.  This requires, among other things, the recognition not only that there are people who disagree with us, but also that after the election, some of those people are still going to be hanging around.  This means that if we want to make progress on the policy front, we’re going to have to get along with these people.  So while I personally find many of the pro-life arguments to be persuasive, I think it spectacularly unwise to seek nothing less than a full abortion ban.  In the America in which I live today, there are simply too many people who disagree—many of whom I otherwise have great respect for—and so I have to accept that for the time being, any legal protections for unborn children that we might achieve politically will be partial and incomplete. 

Again, for a civil debate, we need more than what we have—we need arguments from the candidates (on both sides) concerning how they will pursue their goals with respect to abortion politically—that is, we need to know how they get from personal morality to political morality.  We need to see how the candidates see their goals concerning abortion policy as part of their larger task of promoting justice in politics—how abortion policy fits into their political worldview.

Given how important the issue is to so many people, it’s remarkable how rarely candidates take up the abortion question.  This time around, there’s a genuine opportunity for an alternative political conversation—let’s make the most of that opportunity.