Lori wrote:
I very often regret my decision, but it was the right one. I'm thankful that the procedure, though emotionally and physically painful, was medically safe.Lori, thank you for sharing, Once a very long time ago when I was early in seminary I had an different perspective than I have now. And Mike, it was one of a supposed consistency in being anti-capital punishment, a pacifist, and thus, anti choice. But then, as they say, life happened.
To be a pastor (actually, at the time, a vicar) and all that that implies, sitting looking at another human being and being expected to give counsel as if from God, and realize that my little supposed theoretical consistencies were bullshit in the face of the realities of life... there was no way, as a called and ordained minister of Christ, that I could place theory over reality and have any integrity left.
The circumstances can be so varied - Mike, there is no inconsistency in opposing war and opposing the death penalty and supporting a woman who, for reasons that are between her and her God, if she has one, chooses a medical procedure that may be the most life affirming choice possible in that situation. A developing fetus is not life. It is still a mass of tissue. There are so many reasons that an abortion would be life affirming in certain situations. Biology supplies us with abortions all the time. They are called miscarriages. Those are always sad events, but an abortion, like a miscarriage, is not death, it is a part of life, and that is what separates it from war and capital punishment. An abortion is akin to a hysterectomy, it removes (a certain possibility for) a pregnancy but if medically sound and advisable, who would say no?
Besides that, as a minister of the Church, I find the absolute silence of the Scriptures on abortion to be an answer in itself. There are times that an abortion is the most life affirming, the best decision a woman can make in her real life circumstances.
Are there people who have abortions for the sake of convenience. Yes, but in real life, not very often. Most women who seek this procedure are like Lori - people who reflect very intentionally on the seriousness of the decision that they make.
And I have worked in foster care, I am deeply aware of the numbers of severely damaged children out there, let alone the "un adoptables" because the they are not white, not infants, not un-handicapped. If you ask for the catalogue of children available for adoption in Michigan - available at any FIA agency for those in Michigan - you get a catalogue produced monthly the size of a Sears catalogue. Every time I see some Right to Lifer going on and on and on about their position, I really Want to beat them for their total hypocrisy, for there are so many children in need, so many children... I will never believe that RTL is anything more than hypocrites until they start doing something for the children who are already here, and suffering deeply.
(And ever notice that the overwhelming number of RTLers are opposed to paying tax dollars for the support of the right to a life of the children already here?)
There is no theoretical morality. There is only real life. There is only reality. And what we believe had better be in accord with reality, not with some abstract concept of consistency which does not exist in reality.
A couple of comments: Yes, Susan, isn't it amazing that the sex abusers and apologists for child molesters and those who covered up child molestation and sexual abuse - such as Cardinal Law - have been most strident about telling you what to do with your body?
I was a planned child. I was very fortunate.
I never take a position in the abstract. I back up with my life what I say. I support choice and I support adoption. My two children were adopted by me. And my younger child, who I adopted when he was 2, always went with me to Lansing (our state capital) when I went to lobby for choice and for increased money for programs for families and children.
My ministry is not for me to tell others what to do. It is to enable people to make their own decisions with a clear conscience before God in the realities of their lives. One of my favorite pictures is me holding a child, who I baptized, who may well, not as a person but as a fetus, have been aborted had the fetal testing had different results. It was a very real possibility that if that pregnancy had come to term, it would have killed his 44 tear old mother and left 4 children without a mother. There was no question about what the moral choice was there had the tests turned out differently. But in this case, the in utero tests came back that mom would not die if the pregnancy proceeded and it did. Had the tests shown the threat to mom's life that was feared, given the choice between life of the mother and 4 children being motherless and aborting tissue in fetal development that was not yet a person vs the opposite - I told Mom that I would drive her to the hospital and hold her hand during the procedure, if necessary.
Lori, God bless you for making the right decision at the time you had to make it.
(the Rev) Vince
