October 8, 2007      

Garry Wills on the Abortion Question

— Martin E. Marty

"But is abortion murder?" Garry Wills asks the question in his new book, Head and Heart: American Christianities. ... He finds the abortion question important because it is the "wedge issue," the one that evokes absolutist claims that have political effects.

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I would also start with a question: If abortion is not murder, then what right do courts have to treat the murder of a pregnant woman as double murder? There have been many cases where this has taken place. The most notorious one was the murder of Lacy Peterson. Scott Peterson was sentenced on two counts of murder. If the unborn is not a person, and abortion is not murder, then the courts have engaged in a miscarriage of justice and the two-counts murder sentence should be thrown out!

My personal definition of murder is: the killing of an innocent human being. This means that we need to decide first whether the unborn is a human being, and second if this entity might have engaged in criminal behaviour deserving the death penalty. If it isn't a human being, then in what category would you place something that has all the marks of humanity and possesses its own DNA? And do not forget that by the time a woman discovers she is pregnant, the unborn's heart is already pumping blood throughout its tiny body.The answer to the second question is quite obvious, since no one would dare to suggest that the unborn might be guilty of a crime.

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Wills contends, "It is not demonstrable that killing fetuses is killing persons. Not even the Evangelicals act as if it were. In that case, the woman seeking the abortion…is killing her own child." If the fetus is regarded as a person, why would the murderous mother be exempt from the death penalty, in which most Evangelicals believe? And many Evangelicals allow abortion in the case of rape or incest. That won't work: "We do not kill people because they had a criminal parent." Some allow for abortion to save a life. Wills asks, "Why should the mother be preferred over the 'child' if both are, equally, persons?" Why opt for the "certitude" of murder over only the "danger of death?"

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The legal argument dealing with personhood is based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. So let us examine what said amendment says about personhood:

The law says that in order for a person to be protected by the Constitution, she/he must have been born in the U.S., or else have become a citizen through the naturalization experience. First, if the unborn is not a person then a great injustice has been done against Scott Peterson, because he was convicted of a double murder. Second, if being born in the U.S. is a requirement for legal protection, then perhaps we should be free to shoot all illegal residents of the U.S., because they were neither born here nor have they gone through the naturalization process.

The rest of Garry Wills' arguments reveal the inconsistencies of those who are not truly pro-life. Justifying the killing of the unborn because the father was a rapist, protecting the life of the mother while killing her unborn child, or failing to hold women and men accountable for the destruction of innocent human beings cannot be used against those who are truly pro-life. Pro-life means you will always attempt to save human life whenever possible. If you can't save the life of both the mother and the unborn baby, then you save the life of one of them at least whenever feasible. Pro-life means you live by the Hippocratic Oath, which was held in high honor for two thousand years until nine unelected justices of the U.S. Supreme Court decided to strip the unborn of personhood and thrash the Hippocratic Oath in the process.

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Wills, himself a Catholic, raises the temperature even higher: "Nor did the Catholic Church treat abortion as murder in the past. If it had, late-term abortions and miscarriages would have called for treatment of the well-formed fetus as a person—calling for baptism and Christian burial." But this was never the case. "And no wonder," says Wills. The subject of abortion is not scriptural, "it is not treated in the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, or anywhere in the Jewish Scripture, the New Testament or the creeds and the early ecumenical councils." Augustine? He could never find in Scripture "anything at all certain about the origins of the soul." And the most notable Thomas Aquinas, "lacking scriptural guidance" and using Aristotelian distinctions, "denied that personhood arose at fertilization by the semen. God directly infuses the soul at the completion of human formation."

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The Catholic Church's inconsistency in dealing with the issue of baptism and burial is irrelevant when trying to decide whether abortion is murder or not. Abortion takes the life of an innocent human being, which fulfils my definition of murder. If you have a better definition of murder, I would like you to share the same with me. The size and place of residence of an individual should not be used to deprive a group of human beings of personhood. Before the emancipation of the black slaves, residence would determine whether a black individual was entitled to his/her legal rights and the protection of the law, because we had free and slave States. Their place of residence within the same country determined their legal rights. This type of discrimination was unfair and our Civil War put an end to this unfair treatment.

The argument that abortion is not dealt with in Scripture is false. The shedding of innocent blood is condemned throughout the Bible. Everytime an abortion is performed, human bood is shed. Abortion is definitely a bloody business. Each time a physician "interrupts" a pregnancy, a human being is killed either by dismemberment of else by poison. In addition, Jesus stated that our final eternal destiny will be determined by the way we treat "the least of these." If the unborn do not qualify as "the least of these," I don't know who will.

Gary Wills must have never heard about the Hippocratic Oath, which was held in hight esteem both by Christians and non-Christians for two millenia. He must have never read about what other early Christian writers have stated about abortion. Here is a small sample:

Quote:

"The second commandment of the teaching: You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit fornication. You shall not steal. You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions. You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child" (Didache 2:1–2 [A.D. 70]). [http://www.catholic.com/library/Abortion.asp]

Notice the connection between "adultery," "fornication," "abortion," and murder. Evidently I am not alone in trying to emphasize this patent nexus!

Quote:

"The way of light, then, is as follows. If anyone desires to travel to the appointed place, he must be zealous in his works. The knowledge, therefore, which is given to us for the purpose of walking in this way, is the following. . . . Thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born" (Letter of Barnabas 19 [A.D. 74]). [Ibid.]

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"And near that place I saw another strait place . . . and there sat women. . . . And over against them many children who were born to them out of due time sat crying. And there came forth from them rays of fire and smote the women in the eyes. And these were the accursed who conceived and caused abortion" (The Apocalypse of Peter 25 [A.D. 137]). [Ibid.]

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"What man of sound mind, therefore, will affirm, while such is our character, that we are murderers? . . . [W]hen we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very fetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God’s care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it; and not to expose an infant, because those who expose them are chargeable with child-murder, and on the other hand, when it has been reared to destroy it" (Athenagoras. A Plea for the Christians 35 [A.D. 177]). [Ibid.]

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"Now we allow that life begins with conception because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does" (Tertulian. The soul 27)[A.D. 210]. [Ibid.]

Notice that according to Tertulian ensoulment takes place--not forty days after--but rather at conception!

Quote:

"There are some [pagan] women who, by drinking medical preparations, extinguish the source of the future man in their very bowels and thus commit a parricide before they bring forth. And these things assuredly come down from the teaching of your [false] gods. . . . To us [Christians] it is not lawful either to see or hear of homicide" (Minucius Felix. Octavius 30 [A.D. 226]). [Ibid.]

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"Women who were reputed to be believers began to take drugs to render themselves sterile, and to bind themselves tightly so as to expel what was being conceived, since they would not, on account of relatives and excess wealth, want to have a child by a slave or by any insignificant person. See, then, into what great impiety that lawless one has proceeded, by teaching adultery and murder at the same time!" (Hippolytus. Refutation of All Heresies [A.D. 228]). [Ibid.]

Again, here is another influential father of the church making the connection between adultery, abortion, and murder.

Quote:

"Concerning women who commit fornication, and destroy that which they have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs for abortion, a former decree excluded them until the hour of death, and to this some have assented. Nevertheless, being desirous to use somewhat greater lenity, we have ordained that they fulfill ten years [of penance], according to the prescribed degrees" (Council of Ancyra. Canon 21 [A.D. 314]). [Ibid.]

One more clear connection between fornication and abortion.

Quote:

"Let her that procures abortion undergo ten years’ penance, whether the embryo were perfectly formed, or not" (Basil the Great. First Canonical Letter, canon 2 [A.D. 374]). [Ibid.]

Here is an example where the ten-years church penalty was imposed following the abortion of an embryo.

Quote:

"Wherefore I beseech you, flee fornication. . . . Why sow where the ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit?­ where there are many efforts at abortion?­ where there is murder before the birth? For even the harlot you do not let continue a mere harlot, but make her a murderess also. You see how drunkenness leads to prostitution, prostitution to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather to a something even worse than murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does not take off the thing born, but prevents its being born. Why then do thou abuse the gift of God, and fight with his laws, and follow after what is a curse as if a blessing, and make the chamber of procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given for childbearing unto slaughter? For with a view to drawing more money by being agreeable and an object of longing to her lovers, even this she is not backward to do, so heaping upon thy head a great pile of fire. For even if the daring deed be hers, yet the causing of it is thine" (John Chrysostom. Homilies on Romans 24 [A.D. 391]). [Ibid.]

Notice again the connection between adultery, abortion, and murder.

Quote:

"I cannot bring myself to speak of the many virgins who daily fall and are lost to the bosom of the Church, their mother. . . . Some go so far as to take potions, that they may insure barrenness, and thus murder human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when, as often happens, they die with their offspring, they enter the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ but also of suicide and child murder" (Jerome. Letters 22:13 [A.D. 396]). [Ibid.]

Here Jerome condemns even those who "murder human beings almost before their conception," and he also establishes a nexus between adultery, abortion, and murder. Do not forget that the legalization of abortion in the U.S. was the logical result of the sexual revolution of the sixties. When the SDA church justified the practice of abortion and started offering abortion services--even elective abortions--in some of their hospitals, it became an accomplice in the murder of the unborn.

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"The law [Jewish law] orders us to bring up all our children, and forbids women to cause abortion of that which is begotten; and if any woman seems to have done so, she will be a murderer of her own child, by destroying a living creature." (Flavius Josephus, "Against Apion" 2:202: [Probably late first century AD]). [http://www.ewtn.com/library/PROLIFE/ABORTN.TXT]

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"At times their lustful cruelty or cruel lust goes so far as to obtain poisons to cause sterility; and if this does not work,to somehow extinguish and destroy the fetus conceived within the womb, wishing the offspring to be killed before living, or if it was living in the womb, to be killed before being born." (St.Augustine, "De nuptiis et concupiscentia" 1:15: PL44:423-24. [Written about 419 AD]). [Ibid.]

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Wills refutes arguments that abortion is a religious issue, and that anti-abortionists are acting out of religious conviction. No, it is not a theological matter at all: "There is no theological basis for either defending or condemning abortion." Even the popes say it is a "matter of natural law, to be decided by natural reason," and the pope is not an arbiter of natural law. Informed conscience, said super-convert John Henry Newman, has to come first in matters of this sort.

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If abortion is not a religious issue, then all the quotations I cited make no sense. Besides, as I argued above, the Bible condemns the killing of innocent human beings, it condemns the shedding of innocent blood, and Jesus indicated that our final destiny will be determined by the way we treat the "least of these." If this is not enough to dondemn the practice of abortion, then I do not know what else will suffice. Remember what happened to King Pharaoh of Egypt. He ordered the drowning of innocent Jewish boys, and he perished by drowning. King Herod ordered the slaughter of innocent children in Bethlehem, and he was eaten by worms.

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Wills concludes: When anti-abortionists claim to be "pro-life," they are inconsistent. Only people like Albert Schweitzer can be called consistently pro-life. "My hair is human life," yet the barber does not preserve it. What matters is not "human life" but "the human person." Sonograms of the fetus reacting do not show a human person: "All living cells have electric and automatic reactions." Don't get Wills wrong: "It is not enough to say that whatever the woman wants should go. She has a responsibility to consider..." But, he asks, do religious or political authorities have the right to take over that responsibility? Take it from there.

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If Wills can't see the difference between a human hair and a human life, then pehaps we need to question his 20/20 moral vision. Human hair is used by criminologists to determine the identity of the person whose hair they are examining. There is no difference between the DNA of my hair and the DNA of any other part of my body. The unborn has its own DNA which differs from the DNA of its mother. It has its own body with two eyes, two ears, two feet, and two hands, and a separte heart that pumps human blood by the time the pregnant woman discovers that she is pregnant. What Wills states about sonograms makes me wonder whether hs has ever seen one!

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To acces the original source of this book review authored by Martyn E. Marty, click on the following Internet link: http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/sightings/archive_2007/1008.shtml