On January 24, 2022 the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) announced it's decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization. Their announcement follows:
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to Abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely—the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
This decision ended, probably permanently, federal protection of the right of a woman to have an abortion without limits or restriction. It left abortion to the discretion of the states in accord with the 9th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This decision came down even though the brief of the decision had been leaked to the media more than a month earlier.
The leak which had come from someone in one of the justices' offices gave a prelude to how polarizing this decision would be. The justices' homes were picketed in an attempt to intimidate the conservative justices to change their decision prior to the announcement. An assassination plot on Justice Brett Kavanaugh was thwarted. Justices were confronted at their churches and their families were confronted and intimidated at private gatherings. Other than arresting the would-be assassin of Kavanaugh, the Department of Justice did nothing to subvert those demonstrations or to protect the justices, probably because the Biden administration had made protection of the Roe and Casey decision a central tenet of his 2020 campaign, and his predecessor Donald J. Trump had appointed 3 justices who were willing to overturn Roe and Casey in fulfillment of his campaign promise to do so. Every President following the Roe, and Casey decision had enforced the ruling of SCOTUS, despite their personal views on abortion, or their party's platform. But Biden's weak response to SCOTUS's Dobbs decision amounted to a non-enforcement of the SCOTUS decision.
The Democrat party had used Roe and Casey to be the catalyst to mandate a variety of social changes, that they had been unable to achieve legislatively. The Dobbs decision was an affront to the Democrat party's political power, and electoral agenda. Some democrats argued that SCOTUS could not overturn a prior 5-4 decision that had established a precedent, yet in an earlier generation a democrat-controlled SCOTUS had reshaped education and forced the integration of public schools in Brown v. Board of education that had overturned a Plessy v. Ferguson, which had established the Jim Crow era precedent of "separate but equal schools." (President Biden as a Senator had opposed Brown v. Board of Education's forced busing requirement, saying he did not want his children going to schools in a "racial jungle." Even in the debates leading up to the 2020 election Bident would argue that forced busing was illegal and unconstitutional despite previous precedent.) The democrat caucus in the US Senate and candidates in the 2022 midterms went to war with SCOTUS, proposing adding justices to the Court or creating some kind of system that would rotate lower court justices onto SCOTUS. They entered into ethics investigations against conservative members of the court. Far from ending the political divide over abortion the decision made the debate more volatile especially for Christians.
The SCOTUS decision did not settle the abortion debate, it merely returned the decision to the states and to the ballot box. Christians are now more divided than ever over abortion. Many argue that a proper understanding of biblical anthropology (the doctrine of man) establishes that all human life is sacred and concludes from that any abortion for any reason is murder and should be prohibited by law in any case. The Dobb's decision is definitely a win for Christians. The question for us now is what is the next phase in our battle? How far can we go as Christian's living under a secular government in mandating our views on society? Can we live in society that honors life and allows any abortion or is the only Christian response to the abortion debate is that all abortions are murder and should never be legally allowed under any circumstances ever.
Like in so many issues of the past many of our pastors and theologians were not prepared for the confusion the Dobbs decision would cause. As we have done so often before the church has reacted to a decision rather than being prepared to lead with careful biblical thinking in an attempt to help Christians understand their moral boundaries. This series will attempt to set some theological and political principles Christians can follow in the upcoming election. Like so many issues the Bible does not give us an answer that applies to every crisis pregnancy. It gives principles that can lead to a wise righteous decision in any situation (2 Peter 1:3-4). A careful study of what the Word of God actually says about abortion can lead us to the appropriate political stance on the issue. While the Scripture does treat every human being as uniquely created in the image of God and worthy of respect and dignity and regards even an angry thought about another human as a homicide. (Math 5:21-16). The scripture permits homicide in some cases.
So how does the Scripture regard abortion. The practice is only mentioned in Exodus 21: 22-24, where the penalty for unintentional abortion of a child as a result of an altercation with its mother is left for judges to decide. In this case the abortion is not considered murder. For most of church history neither Protestants nor Catholics considered all abortions murder and left each case to be adjudicated individually.
While the United States is not a theocracy, our law, culture and civil law are founded on the Biblical principles and informs our politics. It is appropriate for Christians who faithfully follow the Bible in their daily lives to inform governing bodies and to cast their votes based on biblical moralities. Our political decision regarding abortion must represent our biblical world view. We can draw inferences from the Old Testament law to help shape our political actions. As believers we must always obey God above man, but at the same time we must realize what is appropriate to religious practice may not always be applied the same way socially. Jesus said so himself (Mark 12:17).
This series will attempt to defend the assertion that while all life is sacred, the scripture did not consider all abortions murder. Abortion, self-defense and the accidental killing of another human beings were lesser homicides in the Old Testament, and consequences for those acts did give consideration to circumstance. Second, there are some conditions that God accepts socially that are less than his perfect will. He does so in recognition of the harshness and difficulties of living in a sinful world. Even God permits some things that are not perfect or even acceptable to him, simply because he is merciful. While the Bible considers marriage to be sacred and inviolable, it permits divorce (Math 19: 3-9). I can think of no situation where I would ever counsel abortion, yet am I to call every abortion murder, and to prohibit it in any situation? Christians advocation for public policy in a secular society, can support laws that recognize some abortions as homicide, and as potentially justifiable in some rare cases.
As in so many issues, theology becomes complicated when it is met with reality. I experienced a defining crisis in my own abortion theology many years ago. While serving as a chaplain in a large metropolitan hospital, I was called on to counsel a non-Christian woman who had been pregnant with twins. She had been advised that one child could survive until birth, and that neither would survive if both were delivered. She was advised to abort one to save the other. This woman did something she had never done in her life she prayed to "Whomever was out there" to help her make the "right" decision. She chose to deliver only one of the twins alive, then continued to struggle with her decision afterward. She was distressed, because for the first time in her life she had turned to God and now wondered how she would be judged. The chaplain was called to provide "spiritual care."
This is the kind of situation, although extremely rare, that provisions must be made for in law, and for which the church must offer redemptive truth and grace. Of course, one wonders whether the medical advice she had been given was her only alternative, but at that point I was called on it would have been of no benefit to explore that. I was concerned for this unbelieving woman who when faced with an unconscionable dilemma had turned to God and prayed. She clearly wanted to do what was right, and to please the God that she did not know. This was not a decision of convenience or selfishness. Secondly, I wondered how I would have counselled her, had she been either my spouse, daughter, sister, or parishioner. Was it right for her to save one life, at the expense of another? Is she guilty of murdering her child? Did the living child murder their sibling, or did the doctrine of the sanctity of life require her to abort both children or deliver both dead? Third, I was concerned that she understood that she and the living child were not beyond the scope of God's compassion and his grace. She could turn to Christ and know his mercy and grace.
My response to this woman was the same as it is to women in crisis pregnancies today:
[13] For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. (James 2:13ESV)
While there is no excuse for sin, nor does grace give a license to sin, our Savior came so that God could show mercy to the sinner. God does not keep score. He does not tally our righteous action against our unrighteous. God was able to redeem this woman, whose decision had resulted in her sacrifice of one child, to save the other, because of the death of His son. The gospel redeems this situation. God sought to redeem her, and her living child and if she accepted his merciful redemptive act, she and her child would see their child and sibling in heaven. It seems to me that as believers in a civil society we can support legislation that reflect the truth while giving mercy a higher priority than judgment, because "mercy triumphs over judgment." Believers can and should support legislation that gives some latitude for the rare circumstance. The Bible does, and grace demand it. This series will advocate biblically and historically for Christians to support limited narrow abortion exceptions in our states. It is judgement without mercy to say abortion can never be allowed.
