Written by Roger Buchanan   

Today when a woman terminates her pregnancy she confronts a question put into the public debate by people of deep religious conviction. The woman may be devoted to a religion that regards abortion as murder, or she may be totally outside that tradition, but the question can not be brushed aside. If a woman aborts a fertilized egg, has she killed a human being? For Evangelicals or a Roman Catholic loyal to the teaching authority of the Church, the answer is yes. For others, the answer is a quandary caught up in the process of discernment. For almost everyone, questions surrounding the termination of pregnancy are at the very heart of an America divided over the question of abortion.

For women, abortion is frequently a hard decision, easily provoking pain, anguish and guilt. For a devout Roman Catholic or Evangelical woman, the anguish over ending a pregnancy is compounded by her faith position that tells her that what she is doing is murder. On the other hand, women who do not live by this religious belief are increasingly angry at having to cope with an accusation that is outside their frame of reference. Moreover, women of all persuasions are expressing anger and frustration over an ever growing mountain of State imposed obstacles that seek to deter women from making a decision they have a right to exercise in private.

Judges and politicians are likewise very troubled and divided. On one hand there is the legal decision from Roe vs Wade that regards abortion as a woman’s private decision, one that she can make in the early stage of pregnancy without interference from the State. On the other hand for policy makers there is the lingering question of whether to allow the mother to willfully kill her fetus, given the power of the State to regulate so as to protect potential life. Politicians who oppose Roe and who believe abortion to be morally wrong will go to great lengths to make abortion as inaccessible and difficult as possible. These State imposed restraints impact low income and rural women disproportionately.

Doctors are caught up in the legal restraints surrounding their practice of medicine as they serve the medical needs of their clients. Most physicians, particularly obstetricians, are uncomfortable having politicians require that they dispense false and unproven assumptions to women seeking an abortion. They appeal, without much success, to politicians who have a moral problem with abortion, urging them to get out of the exam room and permit women to make their own decisions in consultation with their doctor.

The assertion that abortion is murder is distressing to everyone, including women, politicians, and doctors as well as a very fatigued general public. It is time that we face this question that demands an answer and speak to it with clarity.

We are not having a calm conversation over a minor difference. When it comes to abortion the sides are drawn and, if we had swords, they too would be drawn. Priests for Life, Operation Rescue and PersonhoodUSA use the murder claim in almost every sentence. They and other so called pro-life organizations persistently tell us that they are protecting God’s innocent little ones. In the eyes of their followers they have captured the moral high ground. With zeal they lament the millions that have been murdered and with no less passion they attack every organization that engages in the “abortion business.”

The roots of today’s debate can be traced back to a long history. The Catholic Church has always been opposed to abortion to one degree or another. For most of Church history abortion was a minor offense, particularly before “quickening”, when the mother could feel the fetus’s movements. Terminating a pregnancy was a sin but it was one for which the guilty could obtain forgiveness. Prior to October of 1869, a woman could have an abortion and still be a faithful Catholic in full communion with her faith. In the long history of the Church, abortion, while condemned was nonetheless not murder and there are no known reports of women being charged with and tried for murder after ending a pregnancy.

In the history of the Church why was abortion something less than murder? The answer is very clear. Abortion was less than murder because the fetus was less than a full and complete human person. This is a critical understanding and made possible by the doctrine of ensoulment, or the moment when the soul enters the body. Three of the most revered Doctors of the Church, Jerome, Augustine and Aquinas believed in delayed ensoulment. Consequently, because of the soul’s delay, that is before the soul entered the body, the fetus was less than human and could, without serious penalty be aborted. In 1591 Pope Gregory XIV determined that it took 166 days of pregnancy before a human was “formed.” To this day the wisdom of Pope Gregory defines the period of permissible abortion in England.

Everything changed on October 12, 1869 when Pope Pius IX issued his famous papal bull Apostolic Sedis, a document that did away with delayed ensoulment, embraced immediate ensoulment and pronounced excommunication for everyone promoting, arranging or having an abortion. Beginning on this fateful day, ensoulment occurs at the moment of conception and the fertilized egg is no longer a potential human being but is now a full human being. With this transformation of the fertilized egg into a full and complete human being, it is possible to talk of abortion as murder, for the life of a human being is at stake. The proclamation of Pope Pius IX had serious implications. The revered Doctors of the Church who believed in delayed ensoulment, by all logic, are now excommunicated.

It is not easy to grasp the extent to which Pope Pius IX changed the conversation. We are living today in the 21st century with the question of abortion as murder simply because a Pope in the 19th century made an historic decision as to when the soul enters the body. Pope Pius IX gave the Church a rigid posture whereby the needs of women are neither acknowledged nor discussed. Beginning on October 12, 1869, the consuming focus of the Church is on the fetus and not on the woman who is pregnant. Prior to this time, theologians were free to study and discuss the reasons why a woman would seek an abortion and do so with some compassion for their situation. In the 14th century a Dominican, John of Naples, was the first to make a statement that abortion was permitted to save the life of the mother. In the 16th century the noted Spanish Jesuit scholar, Thomas Sanchez, took a good look at why women have abortions and concluded that abortion was often the lesser of two evil. If the discovery of her pregnancy put a women’s life, marital status or reputation at risk, by all means she should have an abortion. But that was then. In 1679 Pope Innocent XI condemned Sanchez.

October 12, 1869 could be considered the high water mark for the Church. When the Pope made all abortion a sin worthy of instant excommunication, he had a friendly reception in the United States. At that time, every State in the Union had a code of criminal prosecution that included abortion. Church and State spoke the same language.

It is important to understand and appreciate what has happened to this rigid position of Church and State that saw both birth control and abortion as criminal. Slowly and powerfully what happened was the birth of a new and robust women’s movement. In Connecticut women battled for decades to overturn a 92 year Catholic Church inspired law that made the selling, distribution or using of contraceptives a crime. In 1965 women prevailed at the Supreme Court and gave the Catholic Church a serious setback. The case was Griswold vs. Connecticut and argued successfully that contraceptive use was a right of privacy. The argument and decision were significant. A woman’s private conscience had legal standing in the State and the laws of the Church did not. The Church lost and found itself mostly powerless. There was not much that it could do about the matter for birth control is primarily a private decision, easily exercised beyond the reach of Church, State or police. The long arm of government intervention and the powerful voice of the Church were stopped in the name of a woman’s right to privacy.

While the Church lost the birth control issue, it came out of that fight ready to vigorously defend its teaching prohibiting the termination of pregnancy. At the same time the woman’s movement was also gaining in momentum and ready to do battle. A new generation of young progressive female attorneys were sharpening their wits and their arguments. When a young unmarried woman who could not legally terminate her pregnancy found the right attorney, her case was all that was needed. In 1971, a determined and vibrant 26 year old recent law school graduate, with no prior court experience, Sarah Weddington, persuaded 7 of 9 all male Supreme Court Justices that the realm of privacy included a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. The Court agreed, but not totally. Some restrictions were attached, and as a result of these restrictions a long history of court decisions and state legal action progressively undermined the intent of Roe while not overturning its central finding.

The case of Roe vs Wade was significant for another important reason. When cross-examined by a Supreme Court Justice, the Attorney General for the State of Texas fumbled. He was not familiar with the teachings of Pope Pius IX and could not make the case that a fetus is a person. This failure made all the difference. The Court found that if the fetus is less than a person then the State has a difficult case when it attempts to compel a woman to carry the fetus to term.

The Roe decision was a blow to the Church’s historic campaign to establish. in law, that a fetus becomes a person at conception. The Church lost and women won, but it was not an absolute victory. Women could determine the fate of the fetus until the time of viability, 24 to 26 weeks. After 26 weeks the woman’s conscience and health condition no longer counts. The State now takes over and the regulations implemented by the State reflect the rules of the Catholic Church that regard all abortions as evil. New restrictions making abortion more costly and less available are growing like an invasive weed in nearly every State. The Catholic Church and pro-life adherents have progressed boldly, having more success dealing with State government than with Catholic laity.

An unexpected fate awaited the Church after it lost both the Griswold and the Roe decisions. The Church found itself losing on a new and extremely important front. Catholic faithful were not ready to renounce both birth control and abortion. Good Catholics in ever increasing numbers stopped believing in the moral authority of the Church. And, at the same time that the Griswold and Roe cases were being settled, birth control was becoming more effective, more affordable and more prevalent. The Catholic laity joined the sexual revolution. Birth control usage among Catholics has reached a prevalence nearly equal to non-Catholics. In many traditional Catholic countries the birth rate per family went from over 7 to under 2 in just one generation. The Catholic laity has spoken, leaving the Bishops increasingly isolated and out of touch.

The Catholic laity approach to birth control was soon followed by a similar change in abortion. The Catholic laity have departed from the Bishops and do not regard the fetus as a person nor do they regard abortion as murder. A recent study found that Catholic women make up 21% of the population but 26% of women who have abortion are Catholic. On this issue many of the faithful are leaving the Church. A measure of this departure is illustrated in a recent poll. A study found that among Catholics who attend Church regularly, they tended to be pro-life. But among Catholics who dropped out of the Church or attend infrequently, they tended to be pro-choice. Similarly, it should be noted that, in April of 2012 the Vatican strongly criticized the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The nuns were faulted for being “silent” on abortion and on the right to life from conception to death. The Church is in crisis. The Vatican is going in one direction and the faithful, or the former faithful, in the opposite direction.

Having lost the laity, and to some extent the Women Religious, the Catholic Bishops have three remaining positions of possible influence, in support of their teaching that abortion is murder, namely theologians, politicians and the public. Consider the theologians and Catholic professors of philosophy and ethics. One would suspect that these eminent scholars, particularly at Catholic universities, would form a solid foundation supporting the policies of their Church. But, by many reports, this foundation is crumbling. Nonetheless, the degree to which Catholic scholars depart from the Bishops is difficult to measure. After all, professors at Catholic universities are not totally free agents and speaking out can be dangerous to one’s tenure. Many academics and Catholic scholars struggle to find a way whereby a woman in good conscience can terminate a pregnancy. Tension within the high ranks of the Church is illustrated by the case of Dr. Daniel Maquire, S.T.D., a professor of social and theological ethics at Marquette University, a school that describes itself as Christian, Catholic and Jesuit. What could be more distressing to the guardians of the true faith than Maquire’s book, The Case for Contraception and Abortion in World Religions? Another measure of stress within the Catholic ranks is the very existence of the Cardinal Newman Society, an organization created to defend faithful Catholic education. The Society roots out such digressions as a sign-up sheet at a Catholic university where students could sign up to volunteer at Planned Parenthood. It seems certain that Catholic higher education is going in the same direction as the Catholic laity, seeking a new theological voice that departs from the 1869 dictates of Pope Pius IX. When their voice is heard it will be a new day in America.

The Bishops may be running low on supporters but they retain one powerful influence, namely the realm of politics and, in particular, State legislators. Armed with a legion of pro-life devotees, the leaders of the Church use their well tuned historic skills to influence Senators and Representatives whom the electorate have chosen to manage their State governments. In the words of the Guttmacher Institute (Sept. 1, 2013), “States have constructed a lattice-work of abortion law, codifying, regulating and limits whether, when and under what circumstances a woman may obtain an abortion.” Of all the statistics available that tell the story of success by these so-called pro-life forces, one stands out. The states enacted 43 restrictions on abortion in the first six months of 2013, an amount that equals all of 2012. It is very clear that restrictions on abortion have gained political traction. The results are not unexpected. Abortion clinics are closing. Bloomberg News, Sept.3, 2013, reports that 58 clinics in 24 States, or about 1 in10, have shut down since 2011. In Texas, 1/4th of all clinics have closed. In Michigan, 10 abortion clinics have closed since 2011. As reported by Planned Parenthood, “North Dakota and Mississippi each have just 1 abortion provider left, and that’s only because court decisions blocked the laws designed to shut them down.”

In 1989 the pro-life forces came close to overturning Roe vs. Wade while deciding a Supreme Court case from the State of Missouri, Webster vs Reproductive Health Services. But two Justices, O’Connor and Kennedy foiled the effort of the conservatives and preserved the essential core of Roe vs. Wade. The Webster case was the high water mark of a strategy to defeat legal abortions using the courts. After the Webster defeat, the pro-life forces shifted to the States, and, as noted, that strategy has been largely successful. Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue brags that as a result of a State by State strategy they have overturned Roe vs. Wade in a different way. In the words of Newman. “when we close a clinic we overturn Roe”. Newman brags that Roe is now irrelevant and outdated.

Those in the Church pews may think differently and those outside the Church may not be persuaded. But at the heart of court battles and legislative initiatives is the ever present Catholic doctrine that a fetus is a complete and full human being at conception and consequently all abortion is murder.

There is a strange lack of consistency. If an act is murder it should be teated as such, but that is not the case. State legislators speak of abortion as murder, but they can not bring themselves to arrest women and treat them as their criminal code prescribes. They fall short of making criminals of those women who terminate a pregnancy but make it increasingly difficult for them to do so. Abortion has the strange status of being a crime without punishment.

Two futures can be imagined. If the Catholic Church and their pro-life supporters have their way, as suggested by the present trend, we will progress back to 1869 with State and Church speaking with one voice. Namely, all abortion is illegal and all abortion is murder, period, end of discussion. Will the new Pope, Pope Francis, allow for this political victory by the Church? Today, this intriguing question can not be answered.

A very different future may be shaping up. Consider Catholic Ireland where abortion has been illegal since 1861, as it was in the United States at that time. The law has compelled untold numbers of Irish woman to travel to England where abortion is legal. Then, on July 30, 2013 after much international discussion, Ireland changed the law to allow for an abortion to save a woman’s life, seven centuries since John of Naples taught that such abortions are proper.

The pro-life forces may have overplayed their hand. They have enrolled a devoted Republican Party fairly rapidly. A backlash has hardly begun. As pro-life becomes more successful and more people see this success as a war against women, then surely the guilty party will soon be voted out of office and State legislators will find it to their political advantage to catch up to the times and enthusiastically embrace the moral dignity of women. Cautious optimism is called for. A woman’s backlash against the State’s monopoly of abortion decisions will require a woman’s movement infused with new energy, focus and dedication. However, a future can be imagined when the word abortion is quietly dropped from the conversation, for everyone will see it as a private matter decided by women exercising a realm of privacy that is protected from intrusion by the State. In this future the only persons still talking about abortion as murder will be a gaggle of elderly celibate males talking to each other with no one listening. ABORTION: IS IT MURDER?
By Rev. Roger Buchanan
September 20, 2013