Stanley Hauerwas, professor of theological
ethics at Duke Divinity School, gave a lecture at the North Carolina Annual
Conference of The United Methodist Church in 1990 entitled “Abortion,
Theologically Understood.”[1] In this lecture, Hauerwas discussed the issue
of abortion in radical way that challenged those attending the conference to
re-conceptualize the political and ethical debate surrounding abortion in the
light of faith and the church. So as to
give full force to Hauerwas’s lecture, it seems appropriate to first provide
the sermon that Hauerwas cited for his audience, which he then offered
commentary upon. The sermon was written
by Presbyterian minister Reverend Terry Hamilton, who was a former student of
Hauerwas’s. In a manner similar to Hauerwas,
I will first provide Hamilton’s sermon, after which we will consider in depth
its implications.
The text for the sermon is Matthew 25:31-46. I will be reading from the Revised Standard Version. "When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left. Then the King will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?' And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.' Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee?' Then he will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.' And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.'"
As a Christian and a woman, I find abortion a most difficult subject to address. Even so, I believe that it is essential that the church face the issue of abortion in a distinctly Christian manner. Because of that, I am hereby addressing not society in general, but those of us who call ourselves Christians. I also want to be clear that I am not addressing abortion as a legal issue. I believe the issue, for the church, must be framed not around the banners of 'pro-choice' or 'pro-life,' but around God's call to care for the least among us whom Jesus calls his sisters and brothers.
So, in this sermon, I will make three points. The first point is that the Gospel favors women and children. The second point is that the customary framing of the abortion issue by both pro-choice and pro-life groups is unbiblical because it assumes that the woman is ultimately responsible for both herself and for any child she might carry. The third point is that a Christian response must reframe the issue to focus on responsibility rather than rights.
Point number one: the Gospel favors women and children. The Gospel is feminist. In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Jesus treats women as thinking people who are worthy of respect. This was not, of course, the usual attitude of that time. In addition, it is to the women among Jesus' followers, not to the men, that he entrusts the initial proclamation of his resurrection. It isn't only Jesus himself who sees the Gospel making all people equal, for Saint Paul wrote, 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus' (Galatians 3:28).
And yet, women have been oppressed through recorded history and continue to be oppressed today. So when Jesus says, 'as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me' (Matthew 25:40), I have to believe that Jesus includes women among 'the least of these.' Anything that helps women, therefore, helps Jesus. When Jesus says, 'as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me,' he is also talking about children, because children are literally 'the least of these.' Children lack the three things the world values most—power, wealth, and influence. If we concern ourselves with people who are powerless, then children should obviously be at the top of our list. The irony of the abortion debate, as it now stands in our church and society, is that it frames these two groups, women and children, as enemies of one another.
This brings me to my second point: the issue as it is generally framed by both pro-choice and pro-life groups is unbiblical because it assumes that the woman is ultimately responsible both for herself and for any child she might carry. Why is it that women have abortions? Women I know, and those I know about, have had abortions for two basic reasons: the fear that they cannot handle the financial and physical demands of the child, and the fear that having the child will destroy relationships that are important to them.
An example of the first fear, the inability to handle the child financially or physically, is the divorced mother of two children, the younger of whom has Down's syndrome. This woman recently discovered that she was pregnant. She believed abortion was wrong. However, the father of the child would not commit himself to help raise this child, and she was afraid she could not handle raising another child on her own.
An example of the second fear, the fear of destroying relationships, is the woman who became pregnant and was told by her husband that he would leave her if she did not have an abortion. She did not want to lose her husband, so she had the abortion. Later, her husband left her anyway.
In both of these cases, and in others I have known, the woman has had an abortion not because she was exercising her free choice but because she felt she had no choice. In each case the responsibility for caring for the child, had she had the child, would have rested squarely and solely on the woman.
Which brings me to my third point: the Christian response to abortion must reframe the issue to focus on responsibility rather than rights. The pro-choice/pro-life debate presently pits the right of the mother to choose against the right of the fetus to live. The Christian response, on the other hand, centers on the responsibility of the whole Christian community to care for 'the least of these.'
According to the Presbyterian Church's Book of Order, when a person is baptized, the congregation answers this question: 'Do you, the members of this congregation, in the name of the whole Church of Christ, undertake the responsibility for the continued Christian nurture of this person, promising to be an example of the new life in Christ and to pray for him or her in this new life?' We make this promise because we know that no adult belongs to himself or herself, and that no child belongs to his or her parents, but that every person is a child of God. Because of that, every young one is our child, the church's child to care for. This is not an option. It is a responsibility.
Let me tell you two stories about what it is like when the church takes this responsibility seriously. The first is a story that Will Willimon, the Dean of Duke University Chapel, tells about a black church. In this church, when a teen-ager has a baby that she cannot care for, the church baptizes the baby and gives him/her to an older couple in the church that has the time and wisdom to raise the child. That way, says the pastor, the couple can raise the teen-age mother along with the baby. 'That,' the pastor says, 'is how we do it.'
The second story involves something that happened to Deborah Campbell. A member of her church, a divorced woman, became pregnant, and the father dropped out of the picture. The woman decided to keep the child. But as the pregnancy progressed and began to show, she became upset because she felt she could not go to church anymore. After all, here she was, a Sunday School teacher, unmarried and pregnant. So she called Deborah. Deborah told her to come to church and sit in the pew with the Campbell family, and, no matter how the church reacted, the family would support her. Well, the church rallied around when the woman's doctor told her at her six-month checkup that she owed him the remaining balance of fifteen hundred dollars by the next month; otherwise, he would not deliver the baby. The church held a baby shower and raised the money. When the time came for her to deliver, Deborah was her labor coach. When the woman's mother refused to come and help after the baby was born, the church brought food and helped clean her house while she recovered from the birth. Now the woman's little girl is the child of the parish.
This is what the church looks like when it takes seriously its call to care for 'the least of these.' These two churches differ in certain ways: one is Methodist, the other Roman Catholic; one has a carefully planned strategy for supporting women and babies, the other simply reacted spontaneously to a particular woman and her baby. But in each case the church acted with creativity and compassion to live out the Gospel.
In our scripture lesson today, Jesus gives a preview of the Last Judgment. ' Then the King will say to those at his right hand, "Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me." Then the righteous will answer him, "Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?" And the King will answer them, "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:34-40).
We cannot simply throw the issue of abortion in the faces of women and say, 'You decide and you bear the consequences of your decision.' As the church, our response to the abortion issue must be to shoulder the responsibility to care for women and children. We cannot do otherwise and still be the church. If we close our doors in the faces of women and children, then we close our doors in the face of Christ.[2]
It is uncommon
to hear a sermon preached on a political issue, much less on an issue as
inflammatory as abortion. Hamilton’s
words speak a refreshing word of truth in the debate surrounding abortion,
which is a conflict steeped in polemical rhetoric by those, on the one hand,
who call themselves “pro-life,” and those, on the other hand, who call
themselves “pro-choice.” In the face of
this dichotomy, televised for us courtesy of the media, Hamilton offers us a
new perspective. In more ways than one,
Hamilton’s sermon uproots both the pro-life and pro-choice proponents, because
Hamilton argues that abortion is not fundamentally an issue of “rights,” as so
many assume. The issue, rather, is a
question of “responsibility.” More
importantly, it is a question of responsibility to both the mother and the
child.
It does indeed
seem bazaar that, as the world has pitted the mother against the child in this
debate, as if they were mortal enemies of one another, the church has
participated, willingly in fact, with this absurdity. Christ has called his church to care for the
least among us, women and children included; he has not pitted the needy against
one another that we should choose to help one and forsake the other. Yet, in our society, we have managed to work
ourselves through all sorts of complicated loops that permit us to make
adversaries of foreign poor and native poor, women and fetuses, whites and
non-whites. The manner whereby society
weaves a tale of dichotomies never ceases to astound. The knot that we find ourselves in at the
moment, the tangled mess we call a debate between “pro-lifers” and
“pro-choicers,” must be unraveled, and Hauerwas offers us a good deal of help:
We must remember that the first question is not, "Is abortion right or wrong?," or, "Is this abortion right or wrong?" Rather, the first question is,"Why do Christians call abortion abortion?" And with the first question goes a second, "Why do Christians think that abortion is a morally problematic term?" To call abortion by that name is already a moral achievement. The reason why people are “Pro-choice” rather than “Pro-abortion” is that nobody really wants to be pro-abortion. The use of choice rather than abortion is an attempt at a linguistic transformation that tries to avoid the reality of abortion, because most people do not want to use that description. So, instead of abortion, another term is used, something like termination of pregnancy. Now, the church can live more easily in a world with "terminated pregnancies," because in that world the church no longer claims power, even linguistic power, over that medically described part of life; instead, doctors do.[3]
And as Hauerwas
notes a few paragraphs later:
You must remember that, morally speaking, the first issue is never what we are to do, but what we should see. Here is the way it works: you can only act in the world that you can see, and you must be taught to see by learning to say. Again, you can only act in the world that you can see, and you must be taught to see by learning to say. Therefore, using the language of abortion is one way of training ourselves as Christians to see and to practice its opposite—hospitality, and particularly hospitality to children and the vulnerable. Therefore, abortion is a word that reminds us of how Christians are to speak about, to envision, and to live life—and that is to be a baptizing people which is ready to welcome new life into our communities.[4]
Christians must
learn to live in a new world, with a new language. According to Hauerwas, in this new world,
parents are not just made biologically, but baptismally. All adults, whether they have biological
children of their own, whether they are married, or whether they are single,
are parents for all children in the church via baptism into Christ. Entrance into the Body of Christ remodels our
world and reshapes our language. Those
whom we call family are not necessarily next of kin in a genetic sense. To the contrary, every last member of God’s
church is a close relative: All the
elderly are our grandparents, all the young adults are our parents, all our
children are our sons and daughters, and all our contemporaries are our
brothers and sisters. The “nuclear”
family is a misnomer in light of ecclesial allegiance. The concept of leaving to begin a new family
is a societal expectation that misdirects us from the act of coming to join an
old family that has existed ever since God made a covenant with Abraham.
The church,
however, does not seem to bear its responsibility to family values, true biblical family values, as it once
did. Hauerwas says he would read the
following letter to students in a marriage course at Duke:
Our son had done well. He had gone to good schools, had gone through the military, had gotten out, had looked like he had a very promising career ahead. Unfortunately, he has joined some eastern religious sect. Now he does not want to have anything to do with us because we are people of 'the world.' He is never going to marry because now his true family is this funny group of people he associates with. We are heartsick. We don't know what to do about this.[5]
Most who hear
this letter read aloud assume that this letter was written by parents whose son
had joined some radical religious cult of eastern mysticism. However, this letter was in fact written by a
Roman senatorial family in the 300s AD regarding their son who had become a
Christian. And the concerns that these
parents had were striking: their son no
longer associated with them, but had come to see his family as the church;
their son forsook a successful career to follow Christ; their son refused to
marry because his conception of family had become colored by his faith, a faith
that upheld the Apostle Paul’s teaching that singleness is just as valid as, if
not preferable to, marriage. This Roman
family’s son understood very clearly what Hauerwas has written contemporarily:
What it means to be the church is to be a group of people called out of the world, and back into the world, to embody the hope of the Kingdom of God. Children are not necessary for the growth of the Kingdom, because the church can call the stranger into her midst. That makes both singleness and marriage possible vocations. If everybody has to marry, then marriage is a terrible burden. But the church does not believe that everybody has to marry. Even so, those who do not marry are also parents within the church, because the church is now the true family. The church is a family into which children are brought and received. It is only within that context that it makes sense for the church to say, "We are always ready to receive children. ." The people of God know no enemy when it comes to children.[6]
*******
Yet, in the face
of all this talk of family and accepting children, we have yet to contend, even
briefly, with current arguments currently being waged in the “public”
sphere. It would behoove us, then, to
consider a pro-choice argument that is among the most well-known and oft
cited. Judith Jarvis Thomson, who is a
well-known voice in the abortion debate due to her philosophically powerful essay
entitled "A Defense of Abortion," argues in a manner that is
disturbingly compelling for the right of the mother to abort her child.[7]
Thomson’s
pro-abortion argument hinges upon a reconsideration of the fifth premise in the
following pro-life argument: (1) the
fetus is a person, (2) persons have a right to life, (3) therefore fetuses have
a right to life, (4) a woman has the right to autonomy over her body, (5) the
right to life always outweighs the right to bodily autonomy, (6) therefore the
fetus may not be aborted.
There are three
primary circumstances wherein Thomson argues that premise (5) is invalid and
thus that abortion ought to be considered a viable and acceptable option: (1) abortion ought to be an acceptable option
if the mother’s life is endangered by the pregnancy, (2) abortion also ought to
be an acceptable option in the case of rape, (3) abortion further ought to be
an acceptable option if, despite having taken the appropriate contraceptive
measures, the woman in question becomes pregnant.
Regarding (1),
Thomson argues that “a woman surely can defend her life against the threat to
it posed by the unborn child, even if doing so involves its death.” Regarding (2), she argues that forcing a woman
to endure a pregnancy that resulted from rape would mean that we are requiring
her by law to be a “Good Samaritan.” We
are requiring her to go above and beyond her legal duties, which do not entail
that she, or any citizen, must go out of her way to indiscriminately, or even
discriminately, endure sacrifice for the sake of any other citizen. While the law certainly does not force anyone
to be a “Good Samaritan,” it further does not even dictate that anyone should
be a “Minimally Decent Samaritan” either.
As Thomson argues, given the current nature of U.S. law, forcing women
to endure an unwanted pregnancy would be tantamount to a “gross injustice”
should those working towards making abortion unconstitutional not also be
taking measures to have US law amended to force all citizens to be “Good Samaritans”
in all situations generally. Thomson’s
argument for (3) runs similarly to that of (2).
If a woman has taken all necessary precautions to prevent pregnancy, it
would be unconstitutional to force her to endure an unwanted pregnancy, even if
consensual sex is what led to the pregnancy.
*******
As Christians,
our response to Thomson’s pro-abortion argument need not entail a preoccupation
with the language of “right to life” up and against the “right to bodily
autonomy.” We believe that life, and our
bodies, are a gift from God; not things for which we have an arbitrary
prerogative. The notion that all human beings
have a right to life is premised on the notion that all humans have a right to
flee death. As Christians, however, we
have not been called to flee from death.
Rather, we are called to carry our cross and follow Christ. Given that Christ’s cross led to his death,
it seems only reasonable to assume that we too are marching toward our own
death. The Christian has no right to
flee from death because the Christian has no “right to life.” As Christ tells his disciples, “For whoever
wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake,
he is the one who will save it.” (Luke 9:24).
Hauerwas
asserts:
To say that life is an overriding good is to underwrite the modern sentimentality that there is absolutely nothing in this world worth dying for. Christians know that Christianity is simply extended training in dying early. That is what we have always been about. Listen to the Gospel! I know that today we use the church primarily as a means of safety, but life in the church actually involves extended training in learning to die early…
…Christians
do not believe that life is a right or that we have inherent dignity. Instead we believe that life is the gift of a
gracious God. That is our primary
Christian language regarding abortion: life is the gift of a gracious God. As part of the giftedness of life, we believe
that we ought to live in a profound awe of the other's existence, knowing in
the other we find God. So abortion is a
description maintained by Christians to remind us of the kind of community we
must be to sustain the practice of hospitality to life. That is related to everything else that we do
and believe.[8]
Though Thomson
rightly indicates that there are no laws in this country that force anyone to
be a “Good Samaritan,” we as Christians are subject to a different standard
than that enforced by “civil society.”
In the Kingdom of God, each and all have been given the responsibility
to live as “Good Samaritans.” We
especially have a responsibility to take care of the least among us. The church is meant to be a self-giving,
self-expending community; it is not meant to be an amalgam of isolated
individuals who each have rights to life and autonomy. The church must recognize that the national
and state-level debate regarding abortion is spoken in the language used by
Thomson: the language, and thus the
world, of rights, constitutionality, and law.
By the principles of this language, the standard anti-abortion position
cannot, I think, maintain its ground for long.
Thomson’s argument is compelling, and, given the current nature of US
law, her argument seems superior to the argument that abortion is
unconstitutional.
The church,
however, does not have to concern itself with “constitutionality” or the
infringement of “rights,” which supposedly belong to autonomous
individuals. Moreover, and perhaps more
importantly, as indicates Hauerwas, the issue for the church has nothing to do
with “when” life begins but rather the “hope that life has begun.” The question of “when,” according to
Hauerwas, is an issue for “legalists,” who incidentally enough must wrestle
with the question of how to avoid doing something wrong. This legalistic concern contrasts sharply
with the decidedly Christian concern regarding how to do right.
*******
As we consider
Hauerwas’s lecture on abortion, we must not fail to recognize an important
element of his argument: that the issue
of abortion cannot be placed truly in the right context until we have moved
away from making abortion a female issue only and have made it an issue of male
promiscuity and responsibility as well.
In regard to teen pregnancy in particular, Hauerwas notes:
Until we speak clearly on male promiscuity, we will simply continue to make the problems of teen-age pregnancy and abortion female problems. Males have to be put in their place. There is no way we as a church can have an authentic voice without this clear witness.[9]
Compassion, too,
is a notion that the church cannot fail to wrestle with. Those who support pro-choice often do so in
the name of “compassion” for the mother, but such a concern is based upon a
misguided sense of what compassion really entails.
Too often we assume compassion means preventing suffering and think that we ought to prevent suffering even if it means eliminating the sufferer. In the abortion debate, the church's fundamental challenge is to challenge this ethics of compassion. There is no more fundamental issue than that. People who defend abortion defend it in the name of compassion. "We do not want any unwanted children born into the world," they say. But Christians are people who believe that any compassion that is not formed by the truthful worship of the true God cannot help but be accursed. That is the fundamental challenge that Christians must make to this world.[10]
Concern for
compassion, too, can lead to other sorts of misguided understandings of
“want.” Hauerwas indicates a common
response from his students regarding the question: Why have children?
[His students] would say, "We want to have children in order to make the world a better place." And by that, they think that they ought to have a perfect child. And then you get into the notion that you can have a child only if you have everything set—that is, if you are in a good "relationship," if you have your finances in good shape, the house, and so on. As a result, of course, we absolutely destroy our children, so to speak, because we do not know how to appreciate their differences.
Now
who knows what we could possibly want when we "want a child"? The idea of want in that context is about as
silly as the idea that we can marry the right person. That just does not happen. Wanting a child is particularly troubling as
it finally results in a deep distrust of mentally and physically handicapped
children. The crucial question for us as
Christians is what kind of people we need to be to be capable of welcoming
children into this world, some of whom may be born disabled and even die.[11]
*******
When it comes to
abortion, all manner of tangled knots have served to bind the Christian
imagination. Talk of “right to life”
versus the “right to bodily autonomy,” talk of “compassion,” and talk of “want”
are nothing but Red Herrings. To truly
respond to this issue, the church must re-conceptualize its world and language
to the tune of ecclesial solidarity and, in the process, learn to separate
itself from the world and language of “secular” society. An appeal to Christian allegiances must
necessarily guide Christians as they consider how to behave as members of the
Christian polis in political space in response to abortion.
[1] Hauerwas. “Abortion, Theologically Understood.” Lifewatch. <http://www.lifewatch.org/abortion.html>
[2] Hamilton qtd. in Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] From Philosophy & Public Affairs,
Vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall 1971). (Reprinted in
"Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Medical Ethics," 5th
ed., ed. Ronald Munson (Belmont; Wadsworth 1996). pp 69-80.)
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
No comments:
Post a Comment