In a must-read piece in this morning's Religion Dispatches, Gordon D. Newby makes a clear--and overdue--case why the Stupak amendment undermines not only women's reproductive and sexual rights, but also abrogates the rights of all of us to freedom of religion.
"The debate about abortion, particularly as connected to healthcare reform, has been characterized as a “conservative” versus “liberal” debate," writes Newby.
What is missed in that characterization is the fact that the foundational theologies among Jews, Muslims, and even many otherwise “conservative” Christians are more nuanced and complicated than the simplistic and absolutist stands taken by the “C Street” Democrats and their supporters.
Because it takes rests on only one religious view, "The recently passed House Healthcare Bill might be paving the way to enact religious discrimination into law; on the important and fundamental issues of life and health, many religious Americans will be unable to live and act according to their own religious consciences and beliefs," contends Newby.
By largely removing the possibility of abortion from the American healthcare system, even in cases where the health and life of the mother is at risk, the Stupak amendment "goes beyond current law and practice and inserts the theological views of a vocal religious minority as a roadblock to the religious beliefs and practices of many Americans," he argues.
In Jewish tradition, for example, fertility and childbirth are celebrated, but abortion is neither forbidden nor regarded as murder in the Rabbinic Jewish system.
In Judaism, the fetus does not have the status of “person” with a separate juridical “personhood” until its head emerges from the womb. In the Mishnah, the foundational work of Rabbinic law, we are told: “If a woman suffers difficult labor in childbirth, the fetus must be cut up in her womb and brought out piece by piece, for her life takes precedence over its life. If [however] its greater part has [already] come out, it must not be touched, for the [claims of one] life can not supersede [that of another] life.” (Oholoth 7:6) On the basis of this, Rabbis have consistently argued that the health of the mother must take precedence over the fetus. This position was clearly expounded by one of the most famous rabbis, Moses Maimonides.
As additional evidence that the fetus is not a person, it cannot receive gifts, and if aborted or lost by miscarriage, it cannot receive a Jewish name or receive a Jewish funeral. Rabbinic discussions of when the soul enters the fetus are not part of the conversations about abortion in Judaism. The Rabbis were interested in ensoulment, the moment that the soul and the body were joined, but there was no agreement about the issue. And, the soul in Judaism is pure soul and immortal whether joined to the body or not and is not entangled in anything like the Christian notion of “Original Sin.” Most Rabbis agree that trivial or material reasons for abortion are to be condemned, but that abortion for the life and health of the mother is both permissible and mandated. Anything that limits this mandate restricts the Jewish mother from acting in a fully Jewish way.
Newby discusses the nuances of views on abortion in Islam, among the world’s Buddhists, and in Hinduism. Protestant Christians vary widely in their views on abortion and often hold views that are not reflected in the pronouncements of their church’s hierarchy, thus following the principle of the primacy of individual conscience.
You can, and should(!) read the entire piece here.
Finally, Newby underscores what is often lost in this debate even in regard to Catholicism: Things have changed.
It should be remembered that on this issue there is no unanimity among Christians either now or in the historical past. St. Augustine held that ensoulment occurred sometime after the beginning of the growth of the fetus and that abortion was not homicide. He, like other theologians of his time, was more concerned with whether abortion was being used to cover up the greater sin of fornication or adultery. In the late sixteenth century, Pope Sixtus V held that both contraception and abortion were homicide and punishable by excommunication, but his immediate successor, Pope Gregory XIV, held that this view was in conflict with Church practice and the theological views of ensoulment. Only in modern times has the Roman Catholic Church generally condemned all forms of abortion, even therapeutic abortions meant to save the life of the mother.
If the House healthcare bill is allowed to stand and becomes the basis for new legislation, writes Newby, "religious Americans across the spectrum of faiths will be subjected to limitations that will contravene their faith’s most well-considered and cherished views about the major questions of life, reproduction, and freedom of religious conscience, which freedoms were imagined by our nation's founders as central to the nature of our country."
