by Jim Forest
"She is unmarried and pregnant, appears to be in her mid-teens, and is nearly penniless. Religiously obsessed, she suffers acute delusions. Her pregnancy, she claims, was caused by God. She asserts that she is still a virgin. Given her age and psychological condition, an abortion is clearly indicated, yet her religious scruples deter her from accepting one. Further counseling is urgently required."
But there were no social workers at the time. Abortion didn't occur to anyone in her family or neighborhood. In the impoverished culture of northern Galilee twenty centuries ago, social engineering had chiefly to do with maintaining the wells. Mary's child managed to be born. She named him Jesus.
In terms of material wealth, Mary lived in a much poorer world than we do, but in many ways our culture is poorer than hers. So impoverished is our world that abortion has become something normal. Even people otherwise devoted to peace, social justice, human rights, care of the environment, the protection of endangered creatures and the development of a nonviolent way of life often turn out to be supporters of abortion.
What the indifference, even enmity, toward the unborn?
One part of the answer must be the ice-cold "mercy" of the modern world. We are told that it is a kind of mercy in this over-crowded planet to kill the very youngest before they claim a place at the world's table. After all, some of them may later starve to death anyway, or they might become criminals, or they might be casualties of a future war, or they might not like this world with its many problems.
At least among Christians, one would expect universal rejection of abortion. After all, for us salvation begins not with Jesus' baptism, not with his preaching, not with the miracles, not even with his death and resurrection. Salvation begins in Mary's womb. St. Luke's account of Jesus' conception is followed by the story of Mary's visit with her cousin Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist. Unborn John -- John the Fetus -- leaps for joy within his mother, while Elizabeth exclaims, "Why should I be honored with a visit from the mother of my Lord?" And Mary responds out of the immense silence of the child she carries, "Yes, from this day all generations will call me blessed, for the Almighty has done great things for me. Holy is his name."
But Christians too are among those who favor abortion.
Whether religious or non-religious, supporters of abortion offer both rational and moral defenses for their position. There has never been a social evil for which justifications weren't provided -- for slavery, torture, the burning of heretics, the fighting of Holy Wars, for concentration camps and the Holocaust.
We are clever enough to know that certain words must be avoided if we are to live in peace with abortion. Thus it is not a "he" or a "she" who is the subject of abortion, but "it." And "it" is not an unborn child, but an embryo or a fetus -- not much more than an item in an unabridged dictionary, a "product of conception" best described in a dead language. A kind of virus. Anything but a child.
And what we do to that latinized matter is not to kill it. The verb "to kill" is too definite and too morally-charged. The "it" isn't killed, it's aborted. The dictionary intervenes. Abortion is turning the page in the dictionary in search of dehumanizing words. But the reality we are talking about is the intentional killing of innocent life.
How effectively death by abortion is sold! When I was in England to promote a newborn book, I did a fair amount of riding in what Londoners call "the Underground." Going down the escalators to the subterranean trains, I saw nearly as many advertisements for abortions as for sexy underwear.
One glass-cased poster, often seen on the Underground, said in huge letters, "If you're happy being pregnant, fine. If not, call..." The telephone number followed.
If I were pregnant, I wondered, how likely was it that I would be feeling happy? I might be in the third week of morning sickness. I might have a husband or boyfriend who was depressed or furious that the playing-house stage of life was threatened, someone who prefers changing TV stations to changing diapers. I might be facing parents or social workers who cry only at the movies. I might be in debt up to my chin, living in an apartment the size of an cigarette box, and with my hopes and future ambitions collapsing into the ash can.
Yet here I am being told over and over again that happiness is a precondition to motherhood, that pregnancy should only be tolerated in the event the mother is enjoying it. Otherwise -- call this number.
No Elizabeth to rejoice with Mary. No one to celebrate the fresh evidence of God's patience with the human race. No one to help me figure out how to keep the child or give it to those who could offer a welcome. No one to help me with my fears. No one inviting me to be a conscientious objector to the killing of our unborn children. No one suggesting the womb must to be kept safe from violence. No one to help me nurture and give birth to and protect this new life. But many offering death.
Jim Forest is secretary of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship and editor of its journal,
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