Have We Learned More About Choice?

In our denomination that so values freedom of thought and belief, it is generally very difficult to get us all to agree, as one body, on anything. At best this is funny. At worst it is maddening. But every so often we manage to actually do it: to come together and declare one thing, clearly and strongly, with one voice. We have done this, as a movement, around a woman’s right to choose. Many years back, we discussed the issue over a series of years, and took a series of votes over those years, that resulted in our taking, as a movement, the position that we uphold and advocate the right of every woman to fully and freely determine whether or not she wants to be pregnant. We are pro-choice.

Of course, this does not mean that all of us individually hold that position, nor does it mean that any of us individually are bound to hold that position whether personally or as a general principle. But it does mean that in accordance with our principles and purposes (which you can find this morning in the front pages of your hymnal), particularly in accordance with our belief a free and responsible search for truth and meaning; and the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large, we hold that every woman has the right to listen to her conscience, to conduct her own free and responsible search for truth and meaning, to make choices that honor her personhood and inherent worth and dignity. We believe all people, women and men both, have the right and responsibility to determine what happens in their bodies and lives.

That said, for a long time the positions have been fairly polar and fairly passionate. In this corner, pro-lifers, who maintain that women do not have those rights and responsibilities. Rather the government and medical establishment hold those rights and responsibilities instead of women. And those rights and responsibilities are also overborne by the rights of each spark of life that is a zygote or fetus to develop to term and enter the world of human life, often regardless of the impact on the mother emotionally and sometimes even physically.

In the other corner, pro-choice folks, who are fierce about the fundamental significance of this position. For a long time their argument, our argument has been that a zygote or fetus is not the same as a baby, at least not ‘til the very end of a pregnancy, and the potential for life is very secondary to the already existing, aware, fully-present life of a woman or girl. And each female has the right to determine what happens inside her at every point along to way, to whatever degree is medically and physically possible.

There are a lot of aspects to the debate between these two positions, and they’ve been present for a while now, without being resolved to anyone’s satisfaction. Some of them are physical: at what point is the fetus viable? The answer to this changes all the time, and the significance of the answer is also up for debate. Some of the questions are philosophical: at what point is the fetus human? The significance of the answers to this question are also up for debate. And some of them are religious: at what point does the fetus have a soul? Guess what: the significance of the answers to this question is also up for debate. And there are lots of answers to these and the many other similar questions that pertain to this conflict. And there are myriad implications to each of those answers. So it’s a complicated issue at best, and a morass of conflict at worst, with potential even for violence as we have seen.

Part of what makes this conflict so potent is how much the issues matter —what a difference they make in the lives of women, and also in the lives of men. And part of what makes this conflict so potent is the intransigence of many of the combatants. Sometimes this intransigence comes from the fierceness of the convictions held by the participants. People have a right to their feelings and the beliefs and understanding that arise out of those feelings and experiences.

But some of the intransigence arises from a sense, at least on the part of some pro-choice people —that to give an inch, to move from a completely absolutist position: the woman has every right, the other parent has no rights, the zygote or fetus has no rights, is to risk undermining the whole position. If the zygote or fetus has any rights or significance, if the other parent, generally a male, has any rights or significance, than the woman is no longer free to choose, and it’s that simple, because she should be, she must be, free to choose, trammeled only by whatever obligations she perceives for herself in her individual situation.

As a woman who prizes her freedom to choose, as a woman who will be marching to defend that freedom, as a woman who was raised in an era when I have always had that freedom…

As a minister who resolutely believes in a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, as a minister who resolutely believes in the right of conscience, as a minister who had a member of her congregation shot by John Salvi when he attacked the two women’s health clinics in Brookline, MA….

…. I think there’s more to say. Even as we have learned that support groups and shared pain are important in healing and struggles with what used to be so shaming: cancer, addictions, mental illness, so too are we finally beginning to learn that that also holds true for struggles with fertility and miscarriage. So we are beginning to learn how many women and parents suffer through many failed attempts to get pregnant or who mourn the premature loss of an infant they could not carry to term. And medicine has made it possible for us to see our children, our babies, our fetuses on sonograms, to hear their hearts beating, when they are still very young. We post the sonograms on refrigerators or carry them in our wallets. We buy furniture and create nurseries and pick names and pin hopes on those babies in utero, those fetuses. And if we lose them, we lose all that, and we mourn.

When assigning valuable bits of life, such as organs or bone marrow, bits of life so valuable and rare that there is more need than can be met, society has determined that we pick and choose the recipients. Among those who are suited by blood type and other crucial factors, we choose. And one of the important factors determining those choices is age: how much life is this person likely to have left before them? 20 years? 50 years? It is a terrible choice to have to make. All other things being equal, we choose the younger ones, those with the greatest potential still left to fulfill. Their potential is a pivotal factor.

The potentiality of a fetus commonly works in just the opposite way when it comes to issues of life and personhood. The pro-choice position is that a fetus is not a person yet, it is a potential person but not yet a person, and so does not possess the rights that come with personhood, that come, essentially with birth. It is potential, rather than actual, and so on this scale, takes away from the value being assessed.

How do we reconcile the reality of that child lost, against the fetus aborted? The potential life against the actual life? How do we even admit the relationship between those two realities?

How can we not? If we do not admit the relationship, we are in denial of dual truths that exist nonetheless, immutably, in our congregations, sometimes in our own lives.

Moreover, if we do not admit the relationship, the nuanced or perhaps even conflicting truths such as those I’ve just mentioned, we take ourselves out of relevant conversation about the ethics and justice of the choice to complete or abort a pregnancy.

It should come as no surprise that this is not a perfect world, and so there are no perfect choices, and also no absolute truths. Some women have abortions and regret them later. Some do not and regret that later. To some people it is a fetus and to others it is a baby. For some the fetus becomes a baby at a certain age, or after a certain period of time, or after a certain stage of development… and for others it’s a baby when it arrives out in the world and not before.

Whether or not a fetus is a fully human life, there is no question that it is a life, and that the experience of life it is capable of increases in complexity and awareness as it grows in the womb. And that when we choose to end that life, it is exactly that, life we are choosing to end. Most people take that choice very seriously, and for the few who don’t; those few do not epitomize the pro-choice stance, they represent that small, tragic subset of society that generally doesn’t value life very highly, their own or anyone else’s—and that is another issue entirely.

And there is no standard for understanding the ultimate significance of every potential human life while it is in the womb for its parents or even for itself. A generation after winning the right for a woman to choose, that right is threatened not only but political and religious conservatives who have never embraced that position. It is also threatened by the inability of political and religious liberals to concede on a large scale that terminating a pregnancy is a morally complicated choice —that perhaps there is a point to debating whether late-term abortions are entirely ethical and should be entirely legal —that there might be a moral difference, even a legal difference, between terminating a pregnancy, even late, because you realize you wanted a boy and terminating a pregnancy because you are a rape victim who has been struggling with your choice for months.

As medicine becomes ever more capable of sustaining pre-natal life, and our awareness of the details and experience of fertility, pregnancy, miscarriage and termination becomes finer, these issues will only become more, not less complicated. If our thinking on this issue cannot keep up, we will not be able to stay relevant in the debate, and on the national stage where the ultimate decisions are made. Let us remember our other principles as well: justice, equity and compassion in human relations, acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth, respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part, the inherent worth and dignity of every person, for all the complexity they entail. When we address these issues, let us do it better as time goes on. And if we are marching today, us march not with anger or defensiveness but with respect for the profound issue we all care about, and with hope that in seeking better understanding of ourselves and our differences, we will one day find a more peaceful place for all of us regarding a woman’s right to choose.

Amen.