Spoiler alert. One of the most powerful scenes dealing with abortion in cinema is in the Godfather Part II (much more nuanced than, say, Cider House Rules, which is basically the pro-choice version of a preachy 1980s seminary movie.) In it Mafia don Michael Corleone’s wife admits that the child he was looking forward to wasn’t lost to miscarriage but to an abortion.
It was an abortion. An abortion, Michael. Just like our marriage is an abortion. Something that’s unholy and evil. I didn’t want your son, Michael, I wouldn’t bring another one of you sons into this world! It was an abortion, Michael! It was a son Michael! A son! And I had it killed because this must all end!
Another moving, but in a more positive way depiction of fetal personhood is a scene in Midnight Mass; I can’t find a high quality clip of it, but FWIW.
Mourning a miscarriage as if the fetus is a person, or openly referring to an elective abortion as something that is “unholy and evil” is a bold thing to do in a mainstream movie because of all the downstream implications of what that might mean vis-a-vis the abortion debate, but the natural tendency to personalize and humanize the unborn is a real thing emotionally and viscerally even if powers that be don’t want to talk about it (e.g. the obgyn nurse correcting my wife when she refers to her “child” instead of “fetus” when she was in the hospital for delivery). Whatever she’s supposed to feel, my wife went from somewhat more pro-life than pro-choice to “full Catholic” (more on that later) when she had a 13-week miscarriage in our bathroom and saw our child.
Given the Elder Andersen talk a few days ago you can see where this is going. I don’t have a lot more to add to what I and others have said here before on the abortion question, including from the President of the growing Latter-day Saints for Life, and I don’t mean to rile up things, but a few odds and ends:
- Elder Andersen’s quote of Oaks that “our attitude toward abortion is not based on revealed knowledge of when mortal life begins” suggests that we are not “full Catholic,” but rather more agnostic on the question officially. But no position means no position, it does not subtly sneak in a position that life does not begin at conception. (For me personally, I see fetal development on a continuum. Wherever we draw a line between a clump of cells and a human being seems arbitrary, whether it’s right after conception or right before birth, seeing development along a continuum better catches the gradation of personhood even if it’s impossible to fully capture its continual nature. But again, my wife is full Catholic on this issue, and I respect that.)
- A lot of reactions to Elder Andersen’s talk has consisted of people emphasizing the Church’s exceptions and the political implications…which is quite curious because Elder Andersen’s examples and talk barely touched on those issues at all, but rather focused on the spiritual aspects of elective abortions. This is a common theme in these discussions. Even if we concede the points on rape, life of the mother, etc., any discussion about the evil of elective abortion is often immediately directed towards these relatively rare exceptions. This changing of the subject in turn makes me suspect that some of this energy is coming from a desire for the Church to change its policies on elective abortions, full stop, or redefine medical necessity to include mental health vaguely enough that it essentially includes all elective abortions. And if that is your position, then it would be more sincere to address it directly instead of using the exceptions to obfuscate. If your first response to Elder Andersen’s story is to defend the exceptions, you’re missing the point because that’s not what he was talking about at all.
- One could argue that the Church allowing for an abortion in the case of rape is, ipso facto, a position on life not beginning at conception. That’s a reasonable take, but ironically one could also invoke a modified classic violinist argument to posit that life does begin at conception, but is still okay in cases of rape. (I’m not sure I would take that approach, but it’s a possible option).
- As an aside, in a discussion with my wife I brought up the occasional pro-choice appeal-to-scripture of Jesus visiting Nephi the night before his birth. She kind of rolled her eyes and then responded with her own appeal to scripture of John leaping in the womb when Mary visited Elizabeth. So, to quote the Simpsons, “the Bible [and Book of Mormon] say a lot of things.”
- This is not abortion related, but as an interesting aside in regards to Elder Andersen’s moving story of the woman who helped saved her husband’s out-of-wedlock child from abortion and raised as her own: Emma Smith did something similar and raised the extramarital child of her second husband Lewis Bidamon as her own.
- One response to Elder Andersen’s story is that it imposes unfair expectations on women. I don’t think this is the case. As I noted in a Facebook post: “I don’t see a problem in pointing out when somebody has done something good and inspiring. Telling the story of Gandhi fasting almost to death to get Muslims and Hindus to stop fighting is inspiring, but nobody complains that it sets unrealistic expectations for the rest of us who have never gone on a hunger strike.”
Comments
13 responses to ““Something That’s Unholy and Evil””
The reason why people talk about exceptions is because of abortion legality. Proving exceptions, especially in a court of law, is often infeasible under the time constraints, messy, or just plain cruel. If exceptions exist and are allowed, it drastically changes what we should about abortion legality. Also, if no stories ever focus on exceptions, then the underlying message is actually they technically exist, but you could never actually be an exception.
“This changing of the subject in turn makes me suspect that some of this energy is coming from a desire for the Church to change its policies on elective abortions, full stop, or redefine medical necessity to include mental health vaguely enough that it essentially includes all elective abortions.”
I can’t speak for anyone else, but that’s not the case for me. I fully support the Church’s current policy on abortion, and wish non-members as well as members would follow it. I have no objections to Elder Anderson’s talk. Two of the most sacred experiences of my mission were baptismal interviews where the person confessed in tears that they had participated in an abortion, and I had the privilege of telling them that they would be completely forgiven when they were baptized.
But in the political sphere, even abortion restriction laws that include exceptions similar to Church policy have not made a good faith effort to make them usable in practice, with tragic results. Just spit-balling, but a state that really wanted to make exceptions work could arrange for medical ethicists to be on call who could make decisions at the pace of the ER–usually not all that fast–and doctors would have safe haven if they followed those decisions. That may or may not be practical, but it’s an example of the kind of thing that hasn’t been done, or even tried.
The Church’s policy implies that sometimes the right thing to do is to have an abortion. I am much more concerned about laws that make doing the right thing illegal than about laws that fail to make doing the wrong thing illegal–the latter is quite common.
Side note: any conservative Catholic priest would tell you the Church’s policies are inconsistent with believing that human life begins at conception, not that that necessarily makes it so. We are, once again, not fully aligned with either side in this debate.
I use “full Catholic” more expansively than you do. You may recall that Catholics oppose not only abortion but all forms of birth control except the rhythm method. While Anderson may have pulled back from “full Catholic” with his statement that “our attitude toward abortion is not based on revealed knowledge of when mortal life begins…”, he goes (perhaps inadvertently) hyper-Catholic with the next phrase–“It is fixed by our knowledge that … all of the spirit children of God must come to this earth…” If the goal is to provide bodies to spirit children in the pre-existence, I would wager that the rhythm method (not to mention every birth control method of which Catholics disapprove) has thwarted that goal far more frequently than has abortion.
I want to be clear that I am not signing on to that logic. The Handbook language on birth control still maintains that “it should be left between the couple and the Lord.” But abortion, outside of the three exceptions, is clearly not just between the couple and the Lord. So the Handbook makes a distinction between abortion and other forms of birth control. But Elder Anderson’s rationale (which he attributed to Oaks) for opposing abortion makes no such distinction. I hope the contradiction is clarified sooner rather than later.
I don’t see the story of Elizabeth’s baby leaping in the womb as a counter point to the spirit entering the body at/near birth. Everyone with an infant knows how it’s struggling to control its own body and understand its senses. A spirit in Elizabeths womb wouldn’t be able to notice that the mother of the Savior was nearby. More likely, if it jumping is evidence of the Savior the fetus was being controlled by a spirit not in the body yet. One that was aware of the importance of the body that Mary was forming.
Kay Cook: Sure, I understand all that, it just seemed like the exceptions were the only abortion context being discussed.
RLD: I actually think your spit-balling idea sounds great. Of course which medical ethicists get appointed would be incredibly politicized.
Last Lemming: Some of that begs the question of at which stage are you denying a body. Yes, one interpretation is that anything short of as-many-children-as-possible is doing so, another take is that once you’ve reached a point in the process of creation the potential is actualized enough that it is a proactive act of denial to stop going any farther, and then of course the question is where that point is.
Jader3rd: Bracketing the question of the historical validity of that particular episode, it’s clear the author was connecting Elizabeth hearing the greeting to the baby leaping, it wasn’t just an incidental event.
As long as the Church insists that there is no revealed knowledge of when life begins, the question of “where that point is” will inevitably be left to individuals, just like the decision to use other methods of birth control that never approach “that point”.
“This changing of the subject in turn makes me suspect that some of this energy is coming from a desire for the Church to change its policies on elective abortions, full stop, or redefine medical necessity to include mental health vaguely enough that it essentially includes all elective abortions.”
What gives you that impression? I know a lot of “pro-choice” members that take that stance as far as public policy, but agree with and support the church’s stance, as a matter of personal morality. I can’t think of a single pro-choice member that wants the church to change its position on abortion to be okay with “essentially…all elective abortions.” Not a single one.
The church’s stance is not about public policy. The church has long stated that it does not take a position in debates over abortion policy. The handbook entry on abortion is for members, and (again) is perfectly reasonable as a matter of Christian practice to say that we do not support elective abortions for any reason whatsoever. At the same time, it is perfectly reasonable to not support elective abortions as a personal moral issue and at the same time lean pro-choice as a matter of public policy, for several reasons, including: a) protecting women’s agency and autonomy; b) protecting women’s health; and c) not believing private religious belief should be enforced on everyone.
I think the larger concern with Elder Anderson’s talk is the context in which it is given. Is abortion a problem among Latter-day Saints? That seems like a real stretch. So if it isn’t a problem for individual members (in the sense that members aren’t out there having elective abortions), then why this talk now? Could it provide some justification for U.S. members to support the current authoritarian regime? Could it help assuage some members who might otherwise be feeling remorse over their vote in November? I don’t know, but it sure seems that way. And to see the current authoritarian regime burning it all down (democratic institutions, the economy, the rule of law, global alliances, any sense of moral authority etc.) — and the fruits of that movement leading to abortion restrictions in many states that go way beyond the church’s very reasonable council to its own believing members — well, that just may be why Elder Anderson’s talk made some of us sick, even though we fully agree with the church’s stance on abortion as far as guidance for personal decision making.
“Of course which medical ethicists get appointed would be incredibly politicized.”
Absolutely, but that’s not a bug, it’s a feature. If a mother dies because a state-appointed ethicist stubbornly refused to approve an abortion until it was too late, the politician who appointed them should be held accountable by the voters. Likewise if an ethicist is stretching the exceptions beyond their intent.
Right now politicians blame doctors for not acting on exceptions, ignoring that they’ve set up a system where a doctor in that situation has to consider the likelihood that their medical judgement will be second-guessed by the likes of Ken Paxton and they’ll be arrested, jailed, put on trial, and then have to trust they can convince a jury that what they did actually fell under an exception. That’s why I conclude any pro-life politician who hasn’t responded to the resulting tragedies by trying to improve how exceptions work doesn’t really want them to work and is acting in bad faith. I respect those whose conviction that life begins at conception causes them to reject abortion without exception, but I don’t want them making decisions about the health care of my wife, my sisters, or any of the women I love.
@Dr. Rick: The left used to argue that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” It doesn’t say that anymore, and instead we have the “shout your abortion” trope, so for the kind of member who predictably is in accordance with whatever the conventional wisdom on the left is (and yes yes, there’s a version of this on the right), I do think it’s worthwhile to reemphasize the Church’s position on the non-exceptional cases like Elder Andersen did.
@RLD: Sure, but that sword cuts both ways, and by the same token the medical ethicist in a heavily pro-choice state would essentially function as a rubber stamp.
@Last Lemming: Of course, “where life begins” could be non-binary. It’s clear that while the Church is ambiguous on when “life” begins, it is clear that the post-conception embryo is not just a scab to pick off. It can have meaning and importance without being attributed the full rights of a born child.
A heavily pro-choice state would never pass such a law, and I’m not proposing to force it on them. But insofar as the system actually leads to on-call ethicists who reflect the values of the people, that’s again not a bug but a feature. (Living in a heavily gerrymandered state, I’m not too confident of that.) If we want to change that outcome, we need to change hearts, not laws.
Dr. Rick’s comment resonated with me.
The Church teaches it members personal righteousness regarding abortion, and has no opinion on public policy.
I’m fine with the leaping of the fetus inside Elizabeth’s womb as contributing to her learning of the importance of Mary and Jesus. I don’t think that it points to a spirit inhabiting the body.
If the left is advertising “shout your abortion” they’re not doing a very good job. This is the first time I’ve heard that phrasing.
I think Elizabeth saw the babe leaping in her womb as a sign from God, not a sign from John. If the claim is that unborn John recognized Mary’s voice and leapt with joy because he understood her sacred role, that suggests that not only was his spirit already in his body, he was fully conscious and had not yet passed through the veil of forgetfulness. That sounds like a nine-month nightmare, so if it’s true I’m glad we don’t remember it.
Babies move before they are born–we don’t need the New Testament to tell us that. If you think it’s impossible for a body that has not yet received a spirit to move, then that’s dispositive. But the restored gospel suggests our bodies are more than a vehicle our spirits drive.
Personally, I think it is most likely that our spirit enter our bodies at birth. In both Hebrew and Greek, the word for “spirit” also means “breath” and it’s at birth that we start to breathe. In Moses 6:39, baptism is compared to birth, with the Lord saying “ye were born into the world by water, and blood, and the spirit, which I have made, and so became of dust a living soul.” This ties receiving a spirit and becoming a living soul specifically to birth. But it’s possible to read it otherwise and nothing definitive has been revealed.