Recently at Vox Nova there has been a bit of a spat about how abortion relates to the 5th and 6th commandments (in the Catholic reckoning), i.e. the prohibitions against killing and against adultery, respectively. I write this post in the spirit of calling out one’s allies. I am an ally of Matt Bowman who insists that abortion is the primary social justice issue of our time, and I am an ally of Morning’s Minion who believes that abortion will never be abolished as long as it is treated separately from the rest of the life issues, broadly conceived.
Now, to be fair, MM’s post was not about this question specifically and debates in comboxes may not be the best places to gather someone’s systematic thoughts on the matter, so it is entirely likely that both MM and Matt Bowman will find much they agree with in my post. At least, I hope they will. My manner of calling out is not meant to be a strident one. I seek common ground, not continued polemic.
First of all, I think everyone involved in the debate admits that abortion is a direct violation of the prohibition of killing. Second, I don’t think anyone denies the relationship between sexual license and an abortion culture. A reading of the debate may give this impression, but the two sides have been forced into such awkward readings because they are responding to each other’s polemics.
I want to propose that a wider reading of the issue can get us past the incomplete positions that our polemics force us into. And I want to start by noting a very simple fact: the argument is about abortion’s relationship to two consecutive commandments. We are talking about the 5th and the 6th, not the 3rd and the 8th, or even the 5th and the 7th.
The commandments are not structured arbitrarily, and they are not simply structured from most grievous to least grievous sin. There is a logic inherent in them. The first three deal with our relationship with God because, without that, our relationship with our fellow humans (dealt with in the final 7) hasn’t a leg to stand on. They are not in this order because failing to keep a given Sabbath holy is of greater concern to the Almighty than killing a given human.
The first of the final 7 deals with our relationship to our parents because of its foundational nature in our human formation as moral people. The last four deal with our relationship to our neighbor, particularly our neighbour’s property and good name. That leaves number 5 and number 6, side by side, smack dab in the middle of the list. Why?
I propose that these two should be read together just as naturally as numbers 9 and 10. Have you ever noticed the correlation between those people and communities who think the world is 6,000 years old and those who believe in the rapture? The overlap is almost complete. Why? Because if you don’t understand the beginning, you don’t understand the end. Crazy ideas about creation lead to (or stem from) incoherent and unchristian ideas about God and God’s relationship to creation. And that leads to crazy ideas about eschatology.
Myth becomes useless, a lie. Symbolic religious language loses its power to convey deep truth and the only truth we have left is that utterly flat bit that fits under the rubric of the scientific method and modernist (not post-modernist) readings of history. Reality becomes so constricted that there is not room for real transcendence and God becomes one more actor on the stage of history, different from the rest only in terms of immense power. Yahweh abandons eternity and takes up abode, not in Bethlehem, but on Mount Olympus.
What does this have to do with the 5th and 6th commandments?
If, in the cosmic scheme, misconceptions about the beginning and the end are intertwined with each other and with misconceptions about the meaning of God, the universe and everything, the same is true in the social scheme. The commandments about murder and sex go side by side because murder ends life while sex initiates it. If you don’t understand the beginning of life, then you don’t understand the meaning of life. And if you don’t understand the meaning of life, you don’t understand the meaning of death.
But the commandments actually reverse the order of Genesis and Revelation. The prohibition to kill (the end) comes before the prohibition of adultery (beginning). In other words, we cannot truly understand life if we do not understand death. A few thousand years after the 10 Commandments were written, another Moses came along and said roughly the same thing. First he said, “those who lose their lives will find it.” And then he showed us how, dying on a cross before leaving the empty womb, I mean, tomb.
What does this relationship have to tell us about abortion? First of all, we are right to link abortion with sexual license. The right wing is correct if they point out that our material prosperity alone will not end abortion. We must change people’s attitudes towards sex and its place in human life. Without that, all the health-care, maternity leave, or childcare subsidies in the world will not stem the tide of blood.
But the right wing is incorrect to dismiss the place of such programs in reducing abortions. It is not simply that poor people in the richest nation in the history of the planet get abortions while living with air-conditioning, jewelry, cable TV and motor vehicles. It is that, in denying the importance of universal health care in such a wealthy country we make a statement about the value of life. In the vast expenditure of resources on military adventurism, we make a statement about the value of life. In the perpetuation of a gun-loving culture, we make a statement about the value of life. In the Satanic and ever-increasing gap between the rich and the poor, we make a statement about the value of life. In the public executions by the state, and the fervid support thereof, we make a statement about the value of life. In the perpetuation of the consumerist status quo we distort, by utterly flattening, a genuine understanding of human fulfillment.
We tell people, by our actions and our political priorities that death is trivial and that life is dull. And then we tell them that it is their own selfishness that causes them to misunderstand sex. No. We must teach our children and our neighbors about the value and meaning of human sexuality if we hope to end abortion, but we will have no impact on their views about the beginning as long as our witness about the end is ambiguous. You can’t teach people that killing solves some problems, but not others. They won’t believe you.
Brett Salkeld is a doctoral student in theology at Regis College in Toronto. He is a father of two (so far) and husband of one.
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