As closely associated as the antiabortion movement is with religion, the Bible gives no direct guidance on willfully induced abortion, a practice that dates to antiquity.
That doesn't prevent religious people on both sides of the issue from citing chapter and verse to support their point of view. Some religious leaders say the point-counterpoint has done little to resolve the theological issues: When does personhood begin? Is abortion a sin?
As antiabortion activists begin gathering in Washington today to mark the 22nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that effectively legalized abortion on demand during the first three months of pregnancy, the religious community remains deeply divided over abortion.
"What I really miss is more civil dialogue on the question and less name-calling," said the Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, senior minister at Foundry United Methodist Church in the District. "The kind of heavy rhetoric that treats one's opponents as completely sinful and un-Christian doesn't help us at all."
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Most Protestant and Jewish denominations, as well as most Muslims in this country, support abortion when the woman's life is at risk or in cases of rape or incest; for some, a deformed fetus is justification for abortion. Still, the majority of religious groups oppose abortion in principle -- none more adamantly than the Roman Catholic Church, which holds that it is "an abominable crime."
The most divisive theological issue is when the fetus becomes a person with a soul. Abortion opponents believe that happens at conception. Thus to end that life is to kill a human being, to violate the sanctity of life. To support their position, they invoke the commandment "Thou shall not kill" and scriptural passages that mention the Creator's knowledge of life in the womb.
Abortion-rights advocates argue that a fetus, particularly in the early stages of development, is a life but not yet a "person," so abortion does not constitute killing. When abortion-rights advocates seek help from the Bible, they quote the verses that suggest that life begins when a child takes its first breath and passages that emphasize the decision-making powers God gave to humankind.
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"We were created by God to be moral and ethical decision-makers, to wrestle with the hard questions," said the Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, an Episcopal priest and president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, a consortium of 38 denominations and agencies. "There is no formula to {reach} a known answer."
Wogaman, who taught ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary before coming to Foundry's pulpit 2 1/2 years ago, opposes abortion "in most cases" but said he does not believe that "God meant every pregnancy to come to term." Carrying a pregnancy to term "is not morally indicated," for example, with a 12-year-old girl who does not understand pregnancy or the responsibilities involved in bringing a child into the world.
In Wogaman's view, a fetus does not become "fully human" until about five months, when it develops full neural capacity and an awareness of its surroundings.
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Such arguments do not sit well with abortion opponents, who do not allow that a fetus at any stage is less than human. Among other passages, they quote Psalm 139, in which the poet says God was aware of him in the womb.
"From the earliest days, the church fathers opposed abortion because they reckoned it was the taking of a human life from the point of conception," said the Rev. W. Graham Smith, minister of Faith Presbyterian Church in Springfield. "Listen to the {passage in the psalm}: 'You knit me together in my mother's womb.' What else could it be but a child?"
A fellow evangelical, the Rev. Bill Kynes, pastor of National Evangelical Free Church in Annandale, said the circumstances that would justify abortion are "so rare as to be nonexistent." Inducing an abortion takes a human life, he said. Yet he refuses to call it "murder."
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"Circumstantially, there are differences in abortion and murder," he said. "I don't want to minimize situations, but I do think there are mitigating circumstances that would give nuance to the moral distinction between having an abortion and murdering a 4-year-old child. In law, there are lots of differences in homicide."
Why the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are silent on abortion perplexes theologians on both sides of the issue. Abortion was common in ancient Greece and Rome and prohibited by the doctor's oath written by Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.). According to Middle Assyrian Law (about 1600 B.C.), a woman convicted of inducing an abortion would be impaled on stakes without burial.
The single biblical passage dealing with an aborted pregnancy refers to a miscarriage caused by a blow to a woman, apparently a common occurrence as the Code of Hammurabi (about 1950 B.C.) and other laws of the time dealt with the issue. Exodus 21:22-25 says a man who fights with a woman's husband and hits her too, causing her to miscarry but not harming her otherwise, must pay a fine. If she receives other injuries, the man is punished in kind.
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In the Septuagint, a translation of Hebrew scriptures into Greek in the 3rd century B.C, the man's punishment is based on whether the fetus is "fully formed" or "not fully formed." Though this passage places the life of the fetus on more equal ground with the mother's life, it does not shed light on modern distinctions of personhood based on biological development.
Jeffrey Wohlberg, senior rabbi at Adas Israel, a Conservative congregation on Connecticut Avenue, said Jewish tradition considers the fetus a part of the mother until it begins to emerge from the womb. "Then it becomes a coequal," he said.
Judaism takes a "moderate" position on abortion, Wohlberg said. It "discourages the use of abortion for ... casual reasons and permits it in the most serious of circumstances," such as when parents who have had one or more deformed children are psychologically unable to cope with the birth of another.
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Generally, religious people who oppose abortion in all but extreme circumstances say the act of abortion is a sin because life is sacred. Those with more liberal views look at the sexual act that resulted in an unwanted pregnancy. If it were undertaken irresponsibly, without love or contraception, that might be the more sinful act and abortion might be morally justified.
For abortion-rights advocates, the assigning of sin is complex, taking into consideration a person's social environment and maturity. "The human soul is complicated, and our need for love can make us do things that aren't very well thought through," said the Rev. Jane Alexander, pastor of Bethesda United Church of Christ. The question is whether a woman who does not want to get pregnant acted "responsibly" to avoid conception.
Abortion "might be a good decision" for a young, unmarried woman, Alexander said. "Children should be born into families. It takes families to raise children." A more difficult issue is whether it's the right decision for a couple who have raised all the children they want and suddenly find themselves expecting again, she said.
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"Is it a sin with a captial S? I hate to pass judgment," Alexander said. "As a pastor, I'm called to compassion and mercy."
The Rev. Robert Hamilton Jr., associate minister at 10th Street Baptist Church in Northwest Washington, said he believes abortion "is a sin because I firmly believe the word of God. It teaches us not to kill." Yet he emphasizes the strength of forgiveness, especially for women who decide on their own to end a pregnancy.
"If they believe within themselves it was the right thing to do, and did it and didn't get sound advice or spiritual consultation, I believe without a shadow of a doubt that God will forgive them. But that person has to believe within themselves that they made a mistake, that they sinned." Kynes said abortion is a sin for "all who participate in the act." Yet it is only one of many types of sins. Abortion is "a very serious matter, but the jails are filled with people who have taken part in all kinds of immoral, unlawful activity," Kynes said. "We extend to them the same grace and forgiveness we offer a woman who has had an abortion or a doctor who has performed one."
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FOR ABORTION
Personhood begins at birth.
Genesis 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. The mother is a person superior to the fetus.
Exodus 21:22-25 If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief {harm} follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
God gave humankind decision-making powers.
Genesis 1:26-27 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
AGAINST ABORTION
Personhood begins in the womb.
Psalm 139:13-15 For thou hast possessed my reins: thou has covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Jeremiah 1:5 Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou cameth forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.
Isaiah 49:15 Can a woman forget her suckling child, {and} not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.
To abort is to kill.Exodus 20:13 Thou shalt not kill. SOURCE: Compiled from literature supplied by the National Right to Life Committee, the National Association of Evangelicals and the Christian Coalition for Reproductive Choice. Verses taken from the King James Version.
CAPTION:Abortion-rights advocates and foes will be in Washington this weekend to mark the 22nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Recent slayings at abortion clinics have raised the stakes of a protracted struggle. Clockwise from lower left, a 1993 face-off in the District. An opponent praying in a '93 protest. A 1990 clash in front of a D.C. clinic, one of the many targeted U.S. sites. Pickets outside a Granite City, Ill., clinic in 1993. A child participating in a '91 D.C. protest. Virginia Beach abortion foes praying this month for alleged gunman John C. Salvi III.
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