update: i'm glad to say that the doctors in El Salvador have figured out a way around the ridiculous decision of the court and have given the woman a cesarean section to remove the fetus. it is worth pointing out here that the fetus was developing without a brain or most of a skull, so it was not a viable pregnancy to begin with.
the supreme court had said
"the rights of the mother cannot take precedence over those of the unborn child or vice versa, and that there is an absolute bar to authorising an abortion" under the Salvadoran constitution.if forcing a woman to continue a non-viable pregnancy that may kill her is not giving the unborn child precedence over the mother, then i have no idea what is.
let's be clear here. pregnancy kills women. not all women, and not all the time, but it does. and somehow, people have decided that the appropriate Christian moral and ethical response is to let 2 people die instead of 1.
i'm not sure i recognize that Christianity.
original post:
ok, so i am going to wade into a fairly controversial topic, but it's been bugging me.
in several countries, abortion is 100% illegal. these bans are usually supported by religious people, especially Christians and the Roman Catholic Church.
the problem is, in my perhaps not-so-humble opinion, that these bans are actually making things worse.
they are done with the express defense of the life of the fetus. life must be protected because it is a gift from God goes the logic. and i do agree with that statement. life must be protected because it is a gift from God. and further, all human beings are created in the image of God, which makes all human beings, even fetuses suspected of having severe defects, inherently valuable and worth protecting. i am a pacifist in the Anabaptist tradition; i do not believe in killing humans even in self defense, and i do not believe there is any such thing as a "just war." if i buy meat, i try to buy meat from places that treat their animals well and slaughter them with a minimum of suffering.
however, i refuse to identify myself as "pro-life" in the "abortion debate." this is because so often, the "pro-life" stance devalues the life and image-of-God-bearing body of the woman who is pregnant. the fetus, potentially viable or not, is given priority over the life and physical and mental health and well-being of the woman in almost every case.
this has been especially brought to my attention with several news stories recently. in august 2012, a pregnant teen in the Dominican Republic was denied chemotherapy because it might kill her fetus. she died and so did the baby.
in Ireland, a woman was denied medical treatment due to internal bleeding while she was in the process of miscarrying because the fetus was technically still alive. she died and so did the baby.
now in El Salvador, a woman has been denied the ability to terminate a life-threatening pregnancy. i am hoping and praying that this does not end in 2 more deaths.
that is the problem in all these cases. the fierce determination to protect the life of a fetus has lead to not one, but two deaths. somehow, the logic of protecting life because it is a gift from God is leading to the logic that it is better that two people die than one.
i don't get this. it seems to me to be a blindness, a devaluing of all women by saying it's better that their life be ended along with their unborn child's. why are 2 deaths better than 1? how is this defensible for a Christian? i do not understand.
the ending of a child's life is always a tragedy. i do not deny that. but the ending of two lives is, it would seem, even more of a tragedy. i fully support the medical option for terminating a pregnancy when the mother's life is obviously at stake. also, as the survivor of sexual assault and as someone who lives with depression, i will not restrict this to just physical health in extremis. in all of these cases, the fetus was going to die anyway. it does not make it better, it does not protect life any more to doom the mother to death as well.
if Christians really want to be taken seriously in "the abortion debate" and really do care about protecting life, then i believe this is not only the only logical position to take, but also the only spiritually responsible one as well. women are not lesser humans, and we are not baby factories. we are bearers of the image of God, valuable and loved, and i cannot see how any Christian can say it is better to take a chance on two lives than end a potential life to definitely protect a life.
