My grandparents on my father’s side were first generation in this country from Germany. They had a large family; all boys. I never met either one of my dad’s parents as they were both gone before I was born. My grandmother died in childbirth, not an unusual circumstance in those days. Since my father was one of the youngest boys, he lived for a while with an older brother and his wife after his mother’s death.
I regret now that I didn’t find out more family history on my father’s side, especially as my mother was adopted and her birth parents are unknown. But there was one story my father told me when I was in seminary, I’ll never forget. One of his brothers was an alcoholic. I suspect he was also abusive. He and his wife had several children and my father said she struggled mightily to keep the family together while her husband blew their limited income on his addiction. When she became pregnant again, she couldn’t tolerate the prospect of another mouth to feed. My father sat at her bedside as she died from a self-induced abortion, while her husband was wasted on another bender.
Perhaps it was this family story that led me to join the Clergy Consultation Service on Problem Pregnancies in the late ‘60s. This was a nationwide organization of ministers who were willing to counsel with pregnant women who were considering an abortion. This was before Roe vs. Wade. Abortions were illegal in this country. If you were determined to abort, your choices were “do it yourself” like my father’s sister-in-law or find a back alley butcher.
My experience in the counseling service was that most of those who sought help were already determined to find an alternative to childbirth, although we discussed all of the alternatives in every counseling session. When it was clear abortion was the only option and the woman’s choice, we gave them referrals to safe medical facilities out of the country, in Canada, Mexico and sometimes Great Britain.
Doing this counseling was a humbling experience. My conception of rape was expanded. I became aware of how often men took “no” to mean “yes.” Often the shame-faced potential father was present. I was educated in all of the varying circumstances that could make one decide bringing a child into the world was the wrong thing to do. Desperation was a common emotional characteristic one had to face and relieve, before serious conversation about alternatives could begin. I wanted all of the male legislators who were decrying abortion to hear some of the circumstances I was hearing. Most were fundamentally rooted in violence.
If it wasn’t the violence of the male involved, it was the violence of social structures that made it difficult, sometimes impossible, in the eyes of the one pregnant, to give birth. Violence begat violence.
I have some sympathy for the role of “intention” in Catholic moral theology. It’s an element that is considered in determining the morality of an action. It can’t justify an evil act but at least it’s a consideration. So you might lie to save a life; a right intention if not a moral act.
I also wonder about “intention” when it comes to the act of human conception? Does it make a difference if my intention in sexual intimacy is self satisfaction, or even violence, as distinct from a loving and mutually determined interest in having children? What if we’re young and just “having fun”? Does that intention affect in some way the consequences? In cases of rape or incest, does the trauma of that physical experience get passed on in some way to the conceived?
I have never met anyone who took abortion lightly. There are still mysteries about conception and childbirth that are with us even in this scientific age. It’s a subject where reasonable people can disagree. The tragedy in our society is that the subject has been weaponized and politicized. It has been made a fundamentally intolerable act by our legislative patriarchs and patriarchal religion. Those most opposed to abortion are male and the women who support the man as the head of the family. It’s a modern version of seeing the male sperm as the source of life and the woman as the oven, bringing that life to fruition, but not having an equal and necessary contribution.
There’s an ethical option in the Christian tradition called Situation Ethics. The primary criteria in this ethical theory is love. In each and every situation one tries to determine, to discern, the “most loving thing to do.” It takes into consideration all of the people involved and all of the circumstances. It doesn’t make ethical decision making easier. In fact, it makes things more difficult. There is no hard and fast right and wrong. Everything is measured through the rule of love. It doesn’t guarantee a right result. But at least the decision has love as the object and is considered with a right intention.
We should leave Roe vs. Wade alone. Instead, we need to do a better job as parents and teachers and churches in sharing ethical understandings, giving people the tools they need to make moral choices. And we need to stop the violence, of male privilege and destructive social structures.
