Faithful Democrats
Abortion takes away the potential for life. Is it possible, though, that abortion-alongside the grief, the uncertainty, the sheer impossibility that must attend it-can leave a spark of hope, or peace of mind, or at the very least relief? Only those who have been through an abortion can speak to that. But those of us who want abortion to be a black and white political issue simply cannot have it so.
I have been thinking a lot about how to enter the conversation on abortion, specifically how to do so in a systematic, faith-based way. To that end, I have chosen the arbitrary-and yet hopefully engaging and insightful-approach of looking at abortion through the lens of one of the five books of the Pentateuch. The basic idea is to highlight one or two parts of each of the first five books of the Bible, and see what those parts might have to say in the current debate on abortion in the United States. This article is therefore the first of five about abortion I will write over these next five weeks.
From the outset of this series, I should state my own biases. I am a pro-choice father of two children. Most often, I am not vocally pro-choice but am firmly so, through both conviction and faith. My spouse Jennifer and I-both of whom were on the fence about abortion before we had children, and both of whom are faithful democrats-formed much clearer opinions about abortion after the birth of our first child. What I think is fascinating is that after the birth of our firstborn Jennifer became “pro-life,” while I became “pro-choice.” (I dislike these terms-see my fifth article in this series for an explanation of why.) Finally, my approach to the Bible in these articles is to treat the biblical stories as they have been treated by the Judeo-Christian tradition-as true-even if I may not consider them to be factual.
This first article, then, takes a look at what some points of the book of Genesis might tell us about abortion. And in this context, I want to highlight an issue I’ll call “creation rejection.” Genesis, maybe more than any other biblical book, assumes that God has many human qualities. Among these are, remarkably, the ability to err and the ability to regret and reject previous actions. The first text I’ll focus on is Genesis 6:5-7: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created-people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.'” We all know this story, and we all know where it leads: to Noah, the flood, the ark, the animals two-by-two, the cheery rainbow and the fun story to tell the kids. Our tendency to put a happy spin on Noah and the boat full of animals hides the fact that God is disappointed with the creation and decides to destroy it by drowning almost every human and animal alive. Surely this is an abortion of sorts-God creates some manner of life, rejects it and destroys it because God regrets ever having created it in the first place. And yes, God does so in order to begin again-God brings new life out of the old and restores a covenant with humanity. (Many women who have an abortion go on to mother a child later in life.) But still, the flood begins with a moment of creation rejection.
Later on in Genesis, a different situation entirely, a different set of people, a different scene, and yet another creation rejection. From Genesis 20:14-16: “So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, ‘Do not let me look on the death of the child.’ And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept.” Abraham, acting on God’s command, rejects his own creation, leaving Ishmael to perish in the desert alongside his mother Hagar. (It is Hagar who places Ishmael alone under a bush to die, but there is no blame to be placed on Hagar in this situation. Rather, I imagine her to be like Job and Jeremiah, cursing the day of Ishmael’s birth and her own.) In this instance of creation rejection, it is God-the same God of the flood in Genesis 6-who hears Ishmael crying in the desert and rescues both mother and child. God, who rejected the greater part of God’s own creation, now saves a child and mother once the child’s father has made the decision to reject the child.
Where does this leave us, today? What happens when a woman rejects what she has created? For the moment, let us assume the reason is unimportant: she does not want a(nother) child right now, she is unable to care for a new child, the father of the child is not someone whom she loves or feels will be responsible for the child, the birth of the child threatens her health, and so on. Any of these potentially classify as reasons for creation rejection.
In the light of the two passages I’ve looked at briefly here, it is safe to say that creation rejection is a two-sided coin: on one side, it always leads to the elimination of potential life. That’s practically the definition of creation rejection. I am not one to call or consider abortion murder, by any means, but the whole purpose of abortion is to eliminate potential life, and sometimes I think we on the left have a hard time admitting just that. The other side of the coin is that creation rejection often leaves a small spark of hope, at least in the biblical stories. The story of the flood-hard as it may be to hear that God regretted and rejected creation and destroyed all but eight people-does end with the bow in the clouds and the covenant with humanity. A small spark, eight people, remain to rebuild and recreate. Ishmael’s cries-after being left to die in the desert-inspire divine compassion and leave another small spark: a mother and son, still alone, but with their lives. The son is later described by the Qur’an as “true of his promise, and a messenger, a prophet.”
Abortion takes away the potential for life. Is it possible, though, that abortion-alongside the grief, the uncertainty, the sheer impossibility that must attend it-can leave a spark of hope, or peace of mind, or at the very least relief? Only those who have been through an abortion can speak to that. But those of us who want abortion to be a black and white political issue simply cannot have it so. Not in the time of Genesis, not today.
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Next week: On Killing Children and Ambiguity in Exodus
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