Abortion, the Cult of Science, and the Body
I do not believe that life begins at conception. Conception is a scientific term for something that is too sacred to be relegated to some kind of fecund biological interaction. I take the origin of life to be something that ought to always remain a mystery to us. I take Jeremiah’s to heart when he wrote, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you…”
So, for me, the fact that abortion has merely become an issue of trying to defend a hard-line, scientific position on the mystery of human existence is, as I see, dehumanizing to begin with. I reject the notion that in order to defend life I must know the intimate details of the constitution of the human person with scientific certainty. “Scientific certainty” can mechanize the world in many beneficial ways, including this gadget I am typing on right now, but the hubris of science is in that it knows no limits and expects us all to play along—and we do.
For me, the central issue of abortion is not a matter of choice vs. life. Those two words are flimsy pieces of propaganda that are neither consistent, nor genuinely opposed by either “side.” The very idea that we use that language with the self-righteous “pro” prefixed to these empty words—and take ourselves seriously—is another defeat. No one truly believes that their position is anti-choice or anti-life, otherwise they might have interesting (albeit disturbing) things to say.
For me, I see the issue as one over the body. I do not mean to exclude the soul or use the term “body” as a corpse-like thing, I mean it holistically. The maxim is that we can never decide when to eliminate a vital body—life. In the case of pregnancy, we have a body that depends on another body for its survival. Likewise, the body supporting the dependent body can be put at great risk by such a relationship too.
In no cases can we defend the idea of taking the life of either body, at any stage. However, there seem to be cases where the competing interest of each body come into conflict. There are also cases where the bodies may not need to be conjoined together in order to survive. Late, but not full, term bodies can, and do, survive without being in the body of the mother.
We are required to preserve all human bodies as best we can given the cases when there are competing interests for survival. But I do not think we are required to force the mother to give up her body for the child beyond reason. That would include raising the child. And we need to provide all resources to her body to ensure that her dignity is being upheld in the midst of the process.
I want to think that being a mother is always a gift, but the truth of the matter is that it can be great to burden to many women for all kinds of reasons. We need not make this an issue of motherhood, we simply would have to carryout the basic maxim to never eliminate a body—even if we remove the body from the other body for the sake of its preservation. I think that science could help us by providing the means to being able to preserve the bodies that are, for grave reasons, removed from the body of the mother. If either body dies after every attempt is made, then, we should mourn and give them proper burial.
Is the cases of bodies that have not reached a stage of development to survive on their own, I think we need to give incentives—major incentives—to a scared, terrified, and reluctant mother should give the body inside her womb time to have a chance of its own. After all, the sacrifice of her body in this noble affair is no small potatoes, to say the least.
As for the Church, I think it should offer more liturgical reasons to make this point, with both bodies, in the life of a person. That would include baptism, last rites, or other rites of extreme unction for pre-fullterm bodies—human persons.
What we should not do, as I see it, is make this an issue of empty politics (not all political issues are empty) that centers around the legislation of things that are argued over from the losing perspective of the person as some kind of Dr. Frankenstein’s creation. We are not made by science and our life is a mystery like the Life which we image. Moving with love and care for the bodies of women and their children and abandoning the sloganized polemics of the choice/life divide, I think we will find a closer and better way to move forward.
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If John the Baptist himself could be cleansed of Original Sin in the womb, I don’t see why baptism, or some other ceremony to remove Original Sin, could not take place before birth. The majority of conceptions do not result in live births and would not even if there were no abortions.
I imagine it would be a powerful deterrent to Catholic women considering abortion to be under an obligation to have the baby baptized.
I may have mentioned this before, but my mother once told me that she thought she might have had a very early miscarriage (this would have been in the 1950s) and so she called our pastor to ask what to do. His answer: “Flush it down the toilet.” We were taught to treat the palms distributed on Palm Sunday with more respect.
David you are confusing with “possible” with “necessary.” If it is possible for people to be married at 14, why aren’t everyone married at 14? See. That is why I pointed out a way to deal with things is on “fitting” nature. Though it is not enough. But the argument that you offer ignores differences, and that is all I will point out (as I said, will takes min. 100 pages to deal with the question). This also goes with the question about miscarriages. Do not confuse “what is normative” for those who are born as binding to God.
Your kind of outside-the-box thinking is just the sort needed on this issue.
The way I would describe the situation (which I believe accords with your view): Neither of the two sides on this polarized issue express a position that reflects the basic realities of pregnancy and birth as experienced by real human beings. Their ideas are warped by abstract theories (whether theological or feminist/historical)–by “ideology,” to use a term you have treated recently.
Redefining the terms of this issue to develop a “third way” that is truly and effectively “pro-life”–this is something that may be happening right now, if your post and other recent writing on the issue is any indication, but getting to the goal will not be easy. The pro-life side has the basic idea right: “life is sacred,” to put it most simply; but how do you get people to accept that notion and act as if it is true without a clarion call against “murdering babies” and a misguided singular focus on a political campaign for legal solutions to the problem?
I would like to hear more about your ideas–and those of others, too–on the way forward on this issue. You give some intriguing hints in your post.
Henry,
My basic point isn’t about John the Baptist or baptism before birth. It’s that except for the hot-button life issues, it seems to me Catholicism isn’t much interested in life before birth. At least there used to be a special place all those unborns could go when they died (Limbo), but now even that’s gone, and the regarding the fate of the unborn who die, the Church says, “We don’t know. We can just hope.”
I believe (although I can’t find any information at the moment) that the blessing for couples that have lost a child through miscarriage is quite recent. I think before that (and even now) the Church gives little comfort to women who have miscarriages.
Can anybody tell me what response would be expected today from the average parish priest if someone in my mother’s situation called and asked for advice? My mother was medically knowledgeable, so if she thought she had a very early miscarriage, there was certainly a chance that she did. Of course, many women have miscarriages so early that they don’t know they have had them. But if they suspect it, aren’t they dealing (possibly) with a human body deserving of no less respect than that of a recognizable baby or adult?
It seems to me the unborn, and especially the very early unborn (embryos lost between the time of conception and implantation) really just don’t figure in the overall scheme of things.
So my basic point was (although I myself have certain doubts about Catholic teaching on when life begins) wouldn’t humanizing the unborn possibly deter at least Catholic women from having abortion, which we know they do roughly as frequently as non-Catholics? If Catholic women are no less deterred than other women from having abortions, could it possibly be that there is little in Catholic teaching or liturgy that imparts the belief or feeling that fetuses are human beings?
David,
Actually, Limbo isn’t Catholic doctrine. It’s one theological speculation, popular with some, but never with others. Many follow the “God’s grace and mercy” is possible in ways we do not know, and leave it at that. Such as at VII’s discussion of who could be saved. The general, modern view of those who die in the womb and beyond is that we can hope they are saved, and with good reasons for that hope, but we can’t prejudge or know. And baptism is done for many, too, if can be. But if not, there is still hope, and no need to have the “fire and hell” vision for them. Balthasar’s “Dare We Hope” and Ratzinger/Benedict’s “Eschatology” are good intros to that.
By the way, by humanizing the unborn I do not mean plastering pictures of aborted fetuses on billboards or flying planes trailing banners with pictures of aborted fetuses over Notre Dame.
Hey guys, cut it out, you’re scaring me… :)
Actually, Limbo isn’t Catholic doctrine.
It is clear to me, Henry, that you were not taught by nuns in Catholic grade school in the 1950s. Now, write 500 times on wide-ruled loose leaf paper: “There is a Limbo.”
You *do* realize that your column is just a summary of _Roe v. Wade_, right?
Personally, I am anti-choice. There are certain things that we should just not be able to choose. Choice is the language of Satan at the Tree.
No, “JC,” his column is NOT a “summary of Roe v. Wade”; instead, it’s a thoughtful effort to understand the FEELINGS of those who practise/support/countenance abortions, and of those who, on the other side, are revolted by it.
Those FEELINGS came before the implementation of “abortion on demand” in certain countries, and they were instrumental in creating the “culture of death,” or, conversely, in creating opposition to it.
The Catholic Church is, indeed, just as he writes, doing a VERY POOR JOB in developing the FEELINGS in her faithful that would be an absolute incentive for a non-ideological, non-politicized but active opposition to the “culture of death.”
I agree with him that there should be liturgical remembrances of the unborn dead and that women who suffer miscarriages should have their sufferings better acknowledged as being significant than to be told “flush it down the toilet.”
Here’s a question for you: do you think a NUN would have told the poor woman to “flush it down the toilet”?
You’ve got a very bizarre religious culture going on there in the American Catholic Church: a bunch of right-wing priests fomenting rebellion against a supposed left-wing pro-abortion government but giving very little support to the empowerment of women in or out of the church and cold-bloodily turning their backs on all of their female devotees’ issues relating to child-bearing and -rearing, except for that one single one that directly impacts the filling up of their pews. To any sensitive modern female, I’d say that the whole set-up must appear quite sexist.
Well, “digby” (“JC” happens to be my name: John Charles), I take it you’re not an American, and I take it you’ve never read _Roe v. Wade_, but paragraphs 4-6 basically sumamrize what _Roe v. Wade_ says: that personhood of the unborn child is irrelevant: the mother’s needs override the baby’s so long as the baby is not “viable.”
They also contradict the teaching of _Casti Connubii_.
What’s wrong is that we live in a society where feelings override truth.
Yes, we need to develop liturgies for the unborn, especially since John Paul II declared infallibly (invoking the command to strengthen the brethren) in _Evangelium Vitae_ that life begins at conception.
My website happens to be named after the baby we lost to miscarriage. We were disgusted when our “pro-life” (but also pro-contraception) “Catholic” OB/Gyn told us our baby was “just a blob of tissue.” We were even more disgusted when we went to one of the most orthodox priests where we lived at the time, whose father is a very famous “pro-life” political figure, and *he* said, “It was just a blob of tissue.”
“Here’s a question for you: do you think a NUN would have told the poor woman to “flush it down the toilet”? ”
I know lots of nuns who would say that.
As for the rest of your tirade, it’s nothing but a straw man (or woman? I’m not sure), and I tune out as soon as anyone starts accusing the Catholic Church of being “sexist,” since the very charge of “sexism” was invented by the National Organization for Women.
Digby,
Are you off your meds today?
Who here advocated telling a woman to flush a miscarriage down the toilet? That was one guy, decades ago.
Not all priests are perfect, some are even quite evil – like humanity at large.
My old parish had 24 hour support for any woman looking for help with a difficult pregnancy. Right here in the good old fascist USA. Imagine that.
We should acknowledge feelings, but the objective moral law comes first.
Well, Joe Hargrave, doesn’t the “objective moral law” have to pay attention to SCIENCE? (If you say “no,” my understanding is that you’re a Protestant Fundamentalist, not a Catholic.)
So, if the “objective moral law” has to pay SOME attention to science, consider this:
John Paul II declared infallibly (invoking the command to strengthen the brethren) in _Evangelium Vitae_ that life begins at conception.
But SCIENCE is telling us RIGHT NOW that we don’t even know WHEN that “moment of conception” occurs. The best human biological information we’re getting now is that “conception” may be prolonged over a 24-hour period after intercourse (as sperms compete for entry into an egg).
So do you ACTUALLY want to say, for the purposes of defining what an abortion actually is, that the “moment of conception” is every single act of human intercourse?
What the gentleman who wrote this article is simply trying to do is to argue that feelings regarding the “sacredness of life” have to be re-cast in a new, more humane and “user-friendly” way than the clerical demagogues have thus far been willing to strive to do–just so questions like the one I’ve asked above NEVER HAVE TO BE ASKED!
Oh, and John Charles, I’m very sorry about your family’s experience with the miscarriage.
I have read and studied Roe v. Wade many times and my position is not anything like it. If it appears to be so here, then, I take it all back. My point is the the bodies of the mother and her child give us an entry into the dilemmas of life and death that present themselves to us in this tragic phenomenon. I am also quite familiar with JPII’s writings on the matter and I love him dearly, but, I am quite ambivalent (if not disagreeable) about his trust in science and technology. As long as “conception” remains the scientific mystery it seems to be, I do not see my argument from scripture to “necessarily” be disruptive.
I am sure you (JC) are not anti-choice when you would like to make a choice about your own life.
My point in this piece is this: Science need not be the limit of possibility in thinking about abortion, and using the body as real, vital thing we can think more clearly and preserve as many lives as possible. The response to this should be something ecclesial, governmental, personal, and social, as I see it.
David,
I know some nuns with guns, doesn’t make it Catholic doctrine. And as someone whose tradition never included limbo (the East), I can tell you, the Church has never made Limbo official doctrine, even if on a popular level, some, including many uneducated nuns, thought otherwise.
Henry,
I know limbo (at least the Limbo for unbaptized babies) is not a defined doctrine. It nevertheless came as a great surprise to many Catholics when it was “abolished.” It was taught to a lot of us, and not merely by “uneducated nuns.” I know the online Catholic Encyclopedia, which is about 100 years old, is not exactly authoritative, but this is what it says:
The existence of limbo was taken for granted for centuries. I am sure many Catholics (at least of my generation) wondered what else they had believed since childhood was not Catholic doctrine when limbo was “abolished.” Of course, many Catholics of my generation were taught that the Church could never change, and seeing the changes of Vatican II were devastated.
The Church’s position on this whole issue still seems to me to be that nobody really knows.
Digby,
“So do you ACTUALLY want to say, for the purposes of defining what an abortion actually is, that the “moment of conception” is every single act of human intercourse?”
At best this would only have ramifications for the so-called ‘abortion pill’. Surgical abortions take place long after the 24 hour period.
As for this, what Sam wrote:
“I am sure you (JC) are not anti-choice when you would like to make a choice about your own life.”
I won’t speak for JC, but for myself, yes – there are choices no one, including myself, should have. Abortion is one of them.
What I meant by that is denying a choice is a choice. A negative act of volition is still an act of volition.
Sam- Can we say that life has begun at least by conception? I think so. This may be outside of your point but I wonder whether you agree that we should also say that it is the duty of the state to protect that life by all reasonable means?
Roc: I see your point, but, since conception is a fairly blurry term, I find it unreliable. I think that we can say that the body—the material matter—of a baby or baby-to-be is sacred in fact or by potency. That would be a more coherent position, I think. From that we ought to say that such bodies should be protected insofar as they do not risk the body of their mother. When they do we find ourselves in a morally tragic situation where we can not act morally, in the truest sense of the word. We should always mourn. Does that make sense?