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August 19, 2024 - 10:00am
Was the end of Roe v. Wade the beginning of religious conflict in America? The announcement of a sellout abortion-on-wheels clinic at this week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago has highlighted the increasingly divisive nature of this issue as a political, cultural, and spiritual scissor in the Land of the Free. Indeed, it is one that now openly threatens the long-treasured American principle of separating church and state.
America’s abortion debate has become increasingly bitter since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. Since then, numerous conservative states have enacted more restrictive abortion regulations; and for all that Donald Trump seems ambivalent on the issue, Democrats have leaned into it, embracing what the New York Times recently called “a new, unbridled abortion politics”. Kamala Harris is now campaigning on “reproductive freedom”, while those around her strike an increasingly strident and even celebratory note on abortion, including spectacular promotional stunts for their preferred policies, such as the DNC abortion bus or protestors dressed as abortion pills.
Pro-life conservatives, meanwhile, are sharply critical. Georgia Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene yesterday called the Planned Parenthood clinic “truly heartbreaking”, and entreated Americans to “choose life”. Children’s rights campaigner Katy Faust decried it as “anti-child in every way”. Some online commentators employed far more colourful language, describing the DNC abortion-wagon as “demonic”, or as “free child sacrifice”, or calling the Democrats “the party of Satan”.
The latter phrasing in turn references a meme which characterises progressives as worshippers of the ancient Canaanite god Moloch, implied in the Old Testament to require the sacrifice of children. To some, this isn’t merely a metaphor but a literal resurgence of demonic forces in the world. The Jewish megachurch leader Jonathan Cahn, for example, claimed in his 2022 book The Return of the Gods that as the Christian faith recedes across the West, ancient Near Eastern deities are returning to fill the space. This includes Moloch, whom Cahn links with abortion.
So it’s probably fair to say that returning American abortion access to state level has done nothing to take the heat out of the issue. But perhaps this shouldn’t surprise us. Even before we get to the more divisive matter of “choice”, the capacity to bear children often intersects with poverty, violence, and abuse, to leave women in grim predicaments with no obvious solution that doesn’t involve someone paying a terrible price. Historically, where cultures have come down on who should pay that price has depended on that culture’s broader moral — which is to say, religious — outlook.
And the abortion debate is best understood as a proxy for a religious dispute on precisely this ground: a zero-sum conflict between two moral frameworks that cannot coexist, and which in both cases imply the need for legislation to override individual conscience. In other words, this is a matter where state cannot be separated from church, whatever the American founding may assert.
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SubscribeI need a little more help with “one side will have to win”.
Oops. Copy paste on a phone didn’t work.illcome back later
The Dems are all about a woman’s right to choose – except when it comes to the Covid jab. Bringing a mobile abortion bus to a political convention is very, very weird.
I don’t understand. Are you saying that women were forced to get a Covid shot? No one forced me. There were some schools and hospitals that said employees had to get shots, but if someone didn’t want one, for a number of reasons, the courts sided with them. If they were fired, the courts said they had to get their jobs back.
Are you saying thousands of people didn’t get fired for refusing?
That might not be the case in the US, but in Australia, it was pretty close to being compulsory.
Yes, it is only in the past year that those who avoided getting a covid vaccine are starting to speak up to one another. Before that they kept very quiet.
So untrue as to be ridiculous.
Mary has identified the religious dimension of this face-off correctly, I believe. A lot of things in the US merely apprear secular but in fact have deep religious roots. The trans-cyborg cult of transhumanism is but one new inflection of this phenomenon, with its cast of high priests, a stated creed, and altars and gods.
“Religious roots” are not the same as state sponsorship or prohibition of religion.
In other words, this is a matter where state cannot be separated from church, whatever the American founding may assert.
Mary is simply wrong. Church and moral decisions come into play in numerous issues – immigration, budget, healthcare, etc ad infinitum – and these are not considered to be a mixing of church and state. Abortion is simply one where the emotions and beliefs are hardened and the line between the two extremes is very clear. And, of course, some churches have taken a firm stand.
However, any decision on abortion will “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
The exact point made by David Deane in his ‘The tyranny of the banal’, namely, that abortion has become something akin to a sacrament in the modern West.
“A lot of things in the US merely appear secular but in fact have deep religious roots.” Might it not be the other way round (perhaps, as well)? One might say, as Harrington does, that the pro-choice ideology is “every bit as religious an outlook,” but only by stretching “religion” so broadly as to be tantamount to “worldview.” Current proponents of pro-life, the post-liberals for example, suggest that the right-to-life is deeply rooted in Catholic social thought, going back centuries. But this is not so. The view that every conceptus has an absolute right to continued biological viability would have been heresy to a (Platonic) church that would readily burn my body if it would save my soul. Something like a right-to-life (though not couched in the language of secular rights; something Vatican I would abhor) is found in the Hindu principle of ahimsa, non-killing; but for most of Christian history this might have seemed heresy (whereas, after Lights from the East, it might be thought “spirituality”). It seems to me that right-to-life gets lots of its steam from two secular, and rather recent, sources: 1) ultra-sound (“baby’s first picture” enters the album before birth, not after; which, incidentally, was the intention of the conservative Anglican OB/GYN who developed the procedure) and 2) Nilsson’s fetal photos from Life magazine, 1965. Both these things allow ginned-up visualization of conceptuses, even very young ones, as legal persons — simply pre-born. Nobody thought this way, 100 years ago; not even the very religious. (Even though they did object to abortion.)
And, therefore, it won’t do just to say: oh, well, the view that conceptuses are persons with a right to life is religious, and therefore beyond the pale of rational challenge.
Still Harrington may not be wrong in thinking it will play out as a zero-sum game among two sides who define themselves as uncompromisingly religious.
I’m not an Evangelical type Christian, but I’d rather live in a state run by them than the progressive transhuman death cult.
Yes: I see the older religions more clearly now that we have a new one. The pattern recognition is striking. The Magisterium in California moving in mysterious ways it’s wonders to perform. The noviciates, the Brides of Trans, with their libido driven fervour, are terrifyingly numerous.
The winner of the debate will, I hope, be the side that does not hide its beliefs behind euphemisms and snappy, exclusionary political slogans.
“One side will have to win, and when they do it will be ugly.”
That’s not true, Mary. Yes, returning the issue of abortion to the individual states hasn’t yielded sunshine and unicorns across the land. But, only a fool would have believed it would. In time, the people of New York will be able to have different laws than the people of Missouri, etc. That will take some time. Perhaps there will eventually be a national law. Perhaps not. But, for now, what you’re hearing is the all of the true believers calling each other bad names. Over time, we will do what works best – let the people of the different states enact laws that best suit them. It’s imperfect, but it’s better than rule from on high (in this case, a lousy interpretation of the constitution by the Supreme Court back in 1972).
The middle way consensus works in most European countries. Like most ‘cuture war’ issues though, one side is unwilling to have accept the views, concerns or wishes of the other. As to which side, most conservatives would negotiate a political compromise that acknowledged the rights of the child – in principle – and space to provide pratical help, and the righ to make a case in public.
Portugal has zero abortion, while most EU countries have limits of between 6 and 14 weeks. I’m not sure where the compromise is.
Portugal has allowed abortions since 2007, from 10 to 24 weeks depending on the circumstances. Abortions in Europe range from 10 to 24 weeks, again depending on circumstances.
We had a middle way in Roe, but the left decided to attack a Mississippi law that allowed abortion up to 15 weeks into a pregnancy, more generous than the original Roe decision The left wants no middle way.
I’m pro-choice, but I too think 15 weeks is a good compromise, depending on circumstances. Most abortions are between 10 and 12 weeks. A woman doesn’t even know she’s pregnant at six weeks.
Don’t they know they engaged in some shagging. We’re they asleep when they had a man’s p***s up then. Ha ha ha. Ooh I’m preggers. How can that be. I’m a nice girl.
I’m not sure about this “middle way” thing. I don’t understand the Democrats to be proposing to force a woman who thinks “abortion is wrong” to have one.
It may work to a degree but the (middle way consensus) is rubbish logically, philosophically and morally.
There is something rather shocking to see abortion being promoted as something to celebrate, a horror version of Baron Bombast’s kingdom in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. That the Democrat mantra of ‘safe, legal and rare’ has been junked and replaced with the aggressive anti-pro-life message is another example of a culture war being escalated by one side which will not allow the other any concession.
The whole point of Dobbs was to stop abortion being a legal and constitutional issue and allow it to be a political issue – to be settled by the polis, to take account of the different interests and beliefs of a given body of electors. That has worked in Europe where most countries muddle through with a sort of compromise that offers just enough to both sides of the argument to make it a fringe issue. Funnily enough the most sensible – in terms of political pragmatism, rather than moral certainty – is one Donald Trump.
Not funnily enough. The Donald is a wise man.
Well, Trump knows abortion is electoral poison, because a majority of Americans are in favour of it.
How many women have abortions because of poverty? Some stats would be nice. Such as the British one: of the 250000 abortions a year,5000 were because of rape..
Source of statistics would be helpful.
I don’t believe those numbers. Source?
The DNC will also be offering no-cost vasectomies, effectively moving to neuter a big part of its voting base. Do that long enough and the question of abortion becomes moot. Alternatively, think of it as a spay and neuter clinic for humans.
Reading this reminded me of an article in The Atlantic, which observed how a Satanic temple was more inclusive and compassionate compared to the religious conservatives who were (by implication) the real bad guys. I don’t know if anyone can show Democrats to be under Satanic influence, but I think it’d be fair to question whether someone who’s literally Satanic (as self-identified) would feel more welcome there today politically speaking than a religious conservative.
Found this on the topic from around that time: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65549975
“In the pro-life worldview, humans are understood as free, equal, deserving of dignity but constrained by our embodied nature and obligations. This implies legislation to protect natural human fertility from undue medical tinkering, and also to protect unborn humans. Within the pro-choice worldview — which is, albeit in a slightly disguised way, every bit as religious an outlook — the focus is more narrowly on individual freedom and equality. Here, assertions of constraint or obligation are rejected as oppressive, which in turn calls for legislation to protect women’s freedom to be sexually active on the same terms as men, but pregnant only when desired.”
Neither of these views is religious, however loosely related to “the Christian tradition.” Neither appeals to any supernatural entity, and neither invokes any specific religious doctrines or scriptures. Both sides affirm freedom in principle and accept constraint in principle. The nub of the disagreement is “protect unborn humans.” Those who believe that a cluster of cells, three inches long and weighing one-half ounce, without a functioning (ie, myelinated) nervous system and therefore without thoughts, feelings, or experiences of any kind — in other words, a fetus at 12 weeks, by which time 90 percent of abortions are performed — is a human being will oppose abortion. Those who consider such a belief ridiculous will naturally suspect that opponents of abortion have another motive: to restrict extra-marital sex.
“Neither of these views is religious.” Hear, hear. On the other hand I’m not sure that opposition to abortion always reduces to a motive to restrict sexuality. But even if so, unrestricted access to abortion is an important part of marital as well as extra-marital fertility limitation.
Just as in Africa, where genocide is an important part of reducing famine.
It does not limit your fertility just your number of children. Maybe we should allow filicide again to help all those poor parents.
Well, number of children, yes. But it has to be argued whether a conceptus is a human person, bearing rights. This is not just self-evident. So the point about filicide begs the question.
Good grief. Christianity from the beginning differentiated itself from pagan Rome by opposing abortion and literally saving the lives of infants abandoned to death, a common and accepted practice in the pagan world. This was based in the Christian doctrine of creation and the dignity of all humans, created in the image of God, the “imago dei” central to Christian anthropology. Orthodox Christianity has always had a consistent ethic of being “pro-life” based on these doctrines, derived from Scriptural teachings surrounding creation.
A developing child–the key word is “developing”–at 12 weeks has a beating heart. We can’t know what “thoughts, feelings, or experiences” it has, no more than we can with any developing organism. But because it is a human being that is developing, Christianity would say you can’t arbitrarily stop that by just killing it at that point of development, or at any point after it becomes, genetically, a human being and starts to grow.
There are some good points here but Mary neglects an important factor, yes the issue returned to the states and has taken some heat out of the argument, but the left can’t help themselves when it comes to provoking everyone else. From trans to race and many other hot-button topics, including abortion, vocal elements of the left are continually seeking to provoke anger through controversy….. as in this example, the Democrats could easily have said, Let’s not alienate our more conservative voters over abortion; but they couldn’t resist, choosing the in-your-face option.
It’s very Orwellian that Reproductive Rights is about not Reproducing.
No more so than the right to speak freely may be about shutting up sometimes. [Just a general point — no reference to present company! ;)]
Abortion was debated by the early church, permitted by Islam and so common in the Roman empire that they ran out of abortifacient plants.
But there is a significant non-religious aspect to abortion which is its economic necessity – probably the biggest reason for abortion over history and often used within marriage as well as outside it. Any prospective or existing parent has to consider whether they can afford “another mouth to feed” and the effect another sibling will have on his/her ability to keep the existing children alive.
In the past, husbands would have driven the decision to abort as much as wives, although unmarried women would have had to make that call alone.
In today’s world, women are seen as the gatekeepers of procreation, so the responsibility for considering the economic impact of having a(nother) child is ours. Since abortions are by definition almost always on unplanned pregnancies, one can assume that the pregnancy is unlikely to be optimally timed for financial stability.
Conservatives (and New Labour) in the UK never oppose abortion en masse because the alternative for the mother is usually to depend on state benefits – even though the number of abortions is quite small the ideological opposition to brides of the state, and the historical distance between Britain and the papacy, overrides belief in Catholic edicts on when life begins.
There has been around 50k traffic deaths per year in the USA typically during the last few decades. This compares with around 1 million abortions per year. So, if you accept an abortion as a death of someone it’s around 20 times as likely as a traffic accident in the USA.
I am writing about the UK above, in particular, the economic motives for women to abort and (in the UK) politicians on the left and right to allow them to do so.
There were 214,256 abortions for women resident in England and Wales in 2021. Women in more deprived areas of England and Wales were twice as likely to have an abortion than in the wealthiest areas. Around 57% had had a previous completed pregnancy. The most common age was 22 years old. The statistics above relate to my point about economic security being a primary motivation for abortions (or, equally, choosing to try to have a child).
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/abortion-statistics-for-england-and-wales-2021/abortion-statistics-england-and-wales-2021
My comment about the number of abortions in the UK was about the avoided cost to the taxpayer being fairly small compared to its existing benefit bill. In 2023, 22.6 million people were claiming some benefits, so those 214,256 extra kids (assuming most survived infancy) who would mostly have had to rely on the state to some extent (assuming the total abortion figure was much the same in 2023) would have been around 1% of the total number of individuals receiving state support.
Thanks for the clarifications – it’s good to understand especially the point on in what way you considered it a small number.
Mercifully, the British (well, the English anyway) gave the Pope his marching orders 500 years ago.
Dressing up as the abortion pill for a protest… sounds a little weird.
“….calling the Democrats “the party of Satan”“. That’s funny coming from a Party headed by Trump.
After the shellacking that is coming for it in November, the Life movement should consider rebranding as the ‘fertility’ movement. Respond to the concern abut declining fertility by defending the idea of parenthood and the love of children.
As part of this effort, Lifers will have to rethink that silly opposition to IVF. That there are people out there who want children so much that they are willing to spend a fortune to achieve it is something that Lifers, of all people, should celebrate and encourage.
The Democrats approach to abortion is made worse by tribalism but is still shocking.