Abortion Was Just the Beginning

I don't remember how I ran across the blog "Abortion Clinic Days," written by women who are counselors at a clinic that performs abortions. Certainly these women have an agenda: this is their chosen profession, so their views on the issue are quite clear. But by telling the stories of some of the women they have met, they defy the stereotyping of the women who seek their clinic's services.

A couple of recent posts there have addressed the spiritual and religious dimensions of these women, like this one:

what she wanted was not closure between her and god which she felt she was on her way to finding, but rather that her pregnancy be sent to god. i told her that she could view her tissue and say whatever prayers over it that she chose, but she said no that was not what she needed. she then asked me if i would baptize the baby and i agreed to. another staff person and i went to a private room, turned down the lights, then said the prayers together.

Then there's this one, a woman who is struggling to feed the children she has:

she wonders if she will go to hell for choosing abortion, but said she would risk going to hell after her death rather than put her children at risk now.

I ask those in her church: would you really damn a woman for making that choice?

This is the thing about abortion. Those who would outlaw it don't always address the realities of what makes women seek abortions (and I could go on at length about that, but I won't); there-oughta-be-a-law changes the legalities without changing the reality--you have to provide the infrastructure to support an alternative decision if you want to end abortions. (Perhaps the gentlemen of Boring Diatribe will weigh in with discussion of the Pro-Good agenda.) Moreover, calling the women having abortions baby-killers does little to recognize the circumstances that brought them to that place. At the same time, the knee-jerk abortion-is-a-right reaction of some on the opposite side is at risk of ignoring the complexity involved particularly for anyone whose faith does lead them to believe that their fetus is something more than a lump of tissue. Making abortion an undeniable right doesn't do anything either to address the issues that put women in the position of making a difficult choice, nor help them address the spiritual consequences of that choice.

I'm not saying anything new here, or anything that hasn't been said before--it's been the story of the abortion debate from the outset.

The devolution of political discourse overall in the U.S. was in many ways presaged by the abortion debate: one side claims absolutes and says they have the authority of God; the other side claims absolutes and denies any role for God. Where is the place for all the rest of us?