Abortion
There are many Latter-day Saints
who are Republican for one reason only: abortion. It used to be two reasons. I remember
a high priests group discussion years ago when we somehow got onto the topic of
politics and the issues we should be concerned about. Someone mentioned abortion
and same-sex marriage. Someone else said something about other issues, and my
home teacher said, “Well, what other issues are there?” Over the past few
years, the Church has changed its tune about same-sex marriage, except where it
involves Church members. So abortion is now the only reason many members ignore
other important issues and vote against their own interests.
But abortion is not as straightforward as most Latter-day Saints seem to think, especially since the Republican Party has pushed a set of extreme laws that go well beyond the Church’s stated position. But even the Church’s position is not as well thought out as many people assume. I’ve written about that topic in this space before, but in the interest of brevity, let me repeat here what I wrote in an op-ed for the Salt Lake Tribune, printed on May 23 of this year.
There Is a Hole in the LDS Position on Abortion
Since the leak of Justice Samuel
Alito’s draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, emotions on both sides
have run high and extremism has carried the day. In this climate, it would be
wise to turn down the heat, recognize the complexity of the abortion issue and
realize that the best solution is not on either extreme, but rather somewhere
in the middle.
The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints has long espoused a position on abortion that, while not in
the middle, is certainly not extreme.
“The Church opposes elective
abortion for personal or social convenience,” the policy reads, but “the Church
allows for possible exceptions when . . . pregnancy results from rape or
incest, or a competent physician determines that the life or health of the
mother is in serious jeopardy, or . . . determines that the fetus has severe
defects that will not allow the baby to survive beyond birth.”
The fact that the Church allows
for exceptions means it does not consider abortion the equivalent of murder.
The Church recognizes complicating factors that can make abortion not just
acceptable, but perhaps even preferable in certain circumstances.
Abortion, however, is even more
complex than the LDS position allows. Indeed, there is a significant hole in
the official LDS abortion statement. The unspoken assumption is that any
abortion that does not fall under the three exceptions is by default an abortion
of “convenience.”
But thousands upon thousands of
abortions are not sought for mere convenience but for reasons that include,
among others, severe economic hardship, the fear of bringing a child into a
family with an abusive husband and father, or the protection of the future life
of a mentally or emotionally fragile woman who would be devastated by bringing
an unwanted child into the world.
Perhaps the problem is the word
“convenience.” Unless you redefine the word, it simply doesn’t cover the many
complex situations that fall outside the bounds of the three exceptions. I’ve
tried, but I can’t come up with a word that covers both convenience and all
these difficult situations.
Consider the fact that 75 percent
of women who terminate their pregnancies are low-income, and nearly half live
below the poverty line. Fifty-five percent are either unmarried or do not live
with the father. The average cost of having a baby in the United States is
$13,024, which rises to $22,646 for a C-section. Such an expense would
devastate many women who seek abortions, especially since a large percentage of
them live without private health insurance or do not qualify for Medicaid. For
many of these women, an abortion is not for “convenience”; it is for survival.
Some activists argue that the
alternative to abortion is adoption. But adoption is often not a viable option.
The cost for an adopting couple using an independent agency generally runs
between $15,000 and $40,000. And adoption is not an easy, one-size-fits-all
solution to unwanted pregnancy. Often finding an acceptable adoptive couple is
not easy. There are already more than 400,000 children in foster care in the
United States. Banning abortion would certainly increase this number.
Much of the rhetoric surrounding
abortion is religious in nature. The theory that “life” begins at conception is
largely an evangelical Christian argument that is of fairly recent origin. The
LDS position on this question is undefined and is complicated by the unique doctrine
of the pre-existence of human spirits. The Church has never officially declared
when the spirit enters the body, but LDS scripture and policy suggest it is not
at conception and may even be at birth.
As historian Ardis Parshall put it
in a recent blog post, “The practice of the Church bolsters
the thought that body and spirit are not joined until birth, because a child
who dies in the womb, at any stage and from whatever cause, cannot be sealed to
his or her parents and is not carried on Church records as a child of a family
even if the parents were previously sealed in the temple.”
Abortion is a difficult decision
for any woman, and there are uncounted complicating circumstances that make
forced childbirth by blanket law an unwise and oppressive measure. Considering
all this, the policy that makes the most sense for Latter-day Saints is to
restrict abortions for mere “convenience,” but to support the right of a woman
to terminate a pregnancy when she, her doctor, her clergy, and (in many cases)
her partner deem this to be the best overall solution in truly difficult
circumstances.
___________________
My point here is that if abortion
is the only or even the primary reason you are Republican, the issue is more complicated
than you might think, and there are certainly reasons to oppose the overly
restrictive laws the GOP is promoting and passing. It is actually possible to
be both pro-life and pro-choice. It all depends on individual circumstances,
and blanket laws just don’t make sense because of the many situations where women
find themselves somewhere in that yawning hole between “convenience” and the Church’s
three exceptions.
