Roe and the bible or the lesson of unexpected parallels
It's my opinion that people of good will can honestly disagree on the subject of abortion, since it involves two irreconcilable moral absolutes: the life of the child and the free will and integrity of autonomy of the mother. You can't square the one with the other; this topic is the one where compromise fails at a very basic level. If you believe that a possible human life is the highest of all values, you won't accept that there are circumstances where an abortion is required; if you believe that a woman's right to make her own health choices and to control her own fertility is the summum bonum, you won't recognize that a potential life is a thing of great value.
I don't propose to solve the dilemma here, since I am part of the overwhelming American majority that wants abortion to be legal and rare. That's a pragmatic, not a moral position.
I did read an interesting article in the New York Times recently that sheds some light on the theological underpinnings of the subject.
The bible has nothing to say on abortion - nothing. The one time that the issue is indirectly addressed, in Exodus 21, it appears to not say what the anti-choice forces hold:
"If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."
In short, a fetus is less valuable than a living woman, since harm to it creates only a fine, while the death of a woman is subject to an eye for an eye. It's also worth noting that Orthodox Jews hold that, if a woman's life is endangered by a pregnancy, an abortion is not just possible, but a moral requirement, since the protection of the mother's life is viewed as a higher good than the potential life endangering hers. The legal parallel in our system is manslaughter in self-defense, which carries no sanction in our legal code.
The anti-choicers point to what I will deliberately refer to as penumbras and emanations from other passages in the biblical text to justify their position, such as this:
"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."
The irony is that Roe v. Wade relied on precisely these penumbras and emanations from other articles in the Constitution - which addresses abortion as little as does the bible - to find a right to abortion in the first place. It's interesting, I think, that both sides in this debate base their arguments on the same kind of deductive, extrapolatory findings from texts that simply don't say what they want to hear.
I don't propose to solve the dilemma here, since I am part of the overwhelming American majority that wants abortion to be legal and rare. That's a pragmatic, not a moral position.
I did read an interesting article in the New York Times recently that sheds some light on the theological underpinnings of the subject.
The bible has nothing to say on abortion - nothing. The one time that the issue is indirectly addressed, in Exodus 21, it appears to not say what the anti-choice forces hold:
"If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."
In short, a fetus is less valuable than a living woman, since harm to it creates only a fine, while the death of a woman is subject to an eye for an eye. It's also worth noting that Orthodox Jews hold that, if a woman's life is endangered by a pregnancy, an abortion is not just possible, but a moral requirement, since the protection of the mother's life is viewed as a higher good than the potential life endangering hers. The legal parallel in our system is manslaughter in self-defense, which carries no sanction in our legal code.
The anti-choicers point to what I will deliberately refer to as penumbras and emanations from other passages in the biblical text to justify their position, such as this:
"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."
The irony is that Roe v. Wade relied on precisely these penumbras and emanations from other articles in the Constitution - which addresses abortion as little as does the bible - to find a right to abortion in the first place. It's interesting, I think, that both sides in this debate base their arguments on the same kind of deductive, extrapolatory findings from texts that simply don't say what they want to hear.
posted by Michael at 6:38 PM
<< Home