God is Pro-Choice
“Free will is a precious gift from God, for it lets us love him with our “whole heart” — because we want to.” — Matthew 22:37.
Recently, I read a headline about the number of Republican states pushing to overturn Roe vs. Wade. It made me sad. For those who don’t know, in 1973 Roe vs. Wade determined that access to safe, legal abortion was a woman’s constitutional right within the first trimester, or before the pregnancy is considered viable. After the 15-week mark, the state has the right to regulate abortions and in the third trimester, abortions can be outlawed by state. The case was first raised as a concern over whether women’s medical privacy and physical autonomy were being invaded by the state in order to determine if an abortion was necessary. Because of Roe vs. Wade, today women’s right to an abortion before 15 weeks pregnant is protected by federal law, for now. However, abortion is still controversial. Controversial is one thing. Illegal is another.
At the end of the summer of 2015, I was 6 weeks pregnant and waiting at a Starbucks just off a bustling highway in Southaven Mississippi. It was busy in that kind of unrealistic way that exists halfway in reality and halfway in your perception. This was my first visit home since moving to Virginia almost two years before, and subconsciously I think I’d been envisioning it as if it were waiting for me. Instead, it had grown.
I spotted my friend in the clustered line backed against the glass doors and waved. I’d staked out a spot by the window with two plush chairs and an awkwardly low table between them.
I remember she was dressed in scrubs and ready to head to work after. She worked as an ultrasound technician in Memphis. She brought me a baby book as a gift, and she talked about work as I quizzed her on what to expect in the coming months. At one point we got on the topic of friends, and she asked me, “Did Suzy tell you?”
Suzy was a mutual friend. I’d seen her on the way down, as I was passing through Nashville. She hadn’t told me anything noteworthy.
“Did she tell you, she was pregnant last December?” The words hit me a bit out of order. I heard pregnant first. Pregnant like I was pregnant. And then the was. She was pregnant…
I know I was quiet. Should I ask what had happened? Should I stop her there and wait for Suzy to tell me herself? Would she ever tell me? She hadn’t told me yet.
“I know you two weren’t talking a lot then, but I still thought she would tell you.” I could hear the accusation in those words.
“What happened?” I finally got out.
“She had an abortion last January. It was hard. Tennessee is set up to slow down the process as much as they can, in hopes that the mother will change her mind or end up past 15 weeks and have to keep the pregnancy. There was a lot of red tape, so she was already ten weeks along by the time she had the abortion. The father didn’t even come. I picked her up from the clinic, but I had to get back to work after that.”
I hadn’t been there when she needed me.
Suzy and I had a falling out at the end of college. The kind that only happens between two selfish people who actually care about one another. We’d been roommates for almost four years. She was like a sister, but those kinds of fights hurt the most and we had both gone our separate ways. She moved to Nashville for a job and I got married and moved to Virginia. We had been slowly patching things up since then. Last December we still hadn’t been talking beyond tentative texts. I’d been busy with a new job and she’d apparently been pregnant.
I drove back to Virginia still reeling. I’d tuck the information away inside and then carefully unpack it again, trying to untangle what it was I felt. In college she had always told me she would never have an abortion. She loved babies. She wanted a family. But she had been ten weeks pregnant in January and had an abortion. She hadn’t told me. Did she think I would blame her for her choice? I didn’t. But I did feel guilt and loss. In my mind her baby was as real as mine, except now they were gone. A piece of my friend had died, and I hadn’t even known.
About a week after that, I went in for my eight-week ultrasound, but the doctors didn’t find a heartbeat. They called it a missed miscarriage. The DNA just didn’t zip up right, they said.
For me it was a loss after a loss. Suzy’s loss had been in January, but to me it was fresh. There was a senseless sort of parallel between our tragedies. Her baby had been ten weeks along with a beating heart. My baby had two loving parents already waiting, but no heartbeat.
I felt guilt for not being there for Suzy. I felt guilty over my own miscarriage, guilty for wanting a pregnancy in the first place. And I was angry. I was angry that I had lost a baby I’d wanted while she had to decide to abort hers. Greif is senseless in that way. It exists outside of reason. But choice does not. I was angry that she had to choose, but I am grateful that she had a choice. We all deserve a choice. I want to defend that right.
I started this article with the story of my friend’s abortion and my miscarriage, because I wanted to write this without standing inside a designated box. Sometimes when we categorize one another by what makes us different, we forget what unites us. My friend Suzy and I had two very different problems, and I will never be able to say how I would have handled hers if I had been in her shoes. But I do know that despite the reasons being different, we both lost a baby, and that grief is the same. I believe that inside each of our designated boxes, we are just people trying to defend what we believe is sacred. I hope that as people, we can find a way to respect each other’s opinions even if we believe they are wrong.
A lot of the time, when people argue about abortion, they argue about whether or not the baby is alive. It comes down to that word, viability. Abortion is legal before a pregnancy is viable and legally we have determined that to be at 15 weeks. Medically the viability of a pregnancy is determined as early as 10 weeks, or whenever a heartbeat can be detected. The problem here is that an attempt to qualify life based on cell number and function won’t satisfy everyone. The conservative parties pushing to overturn Roe vs. Wade have stated that they believe it hinders their state’s ability to look out for the best interests of those potential lives. In other words, they still see early pregnancies as lives. I understand that. My baby never had a heartbeat and therefor, by the doctors’ standards was never alive and yet I still felt their loss. They were more dreams than cells, but I would like to think all people are.
Debates about abortion often feel like two or more conversations happening simultaneously, but in separate rooms. Pro-Life supporters want to protect an innocent life. They disregard the possibility of abortion because life is sacred and to terminate a possible life would be murder. Pro-Choice supporters defend the option of abortion, based on the fact that the baby’s life is tied to the mother’s body and it would be inhumane, as well as a violation of privacy to force someone through a pregnancy.
Pro-Life and Pro-Choice are political opponents, but that does not make their ideals opposite. Religiously the words, life and choice actually have a lot in common. Both are important topics in theology, and both are thought to be sacred gifts from God.
“This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.” Deuteronomy 30:19 NIV
The bible tells us to choose life and it would be simple to see this verse as a validation of Pro-Life politics, except it also includes the word choose. It places life as a possible choice. Choose Life, both words together, as a whole concept, instead of apart as opponents.
Most people feel that life is sacred, even if they don’t attach any religious significance to it. Christians believe that life is a gift from God, as is free will. Free will or the ability to choose is important to religion, because without it, life would be meaningless.
“Free will is a precious gift from God, for it lets us love him with our “whole heart” — because we want to.” — Matthew 22:37.
So, why do we forget this when we think about abortion. The Bible tells us that murder is wrong. If we equate abortion with murder than it would be against God’s commandments. But, He also states that He wants us to choose to follow His commandments. How can we justify removing a woman’s ability to choose, if that right is God given?
Free will and even freedom are controversial topics in the bible.
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1 NIV
In this verse slavery is thought to be symbolic of our bondage to sin instead of any literal interpretation. Following this is an entreaty to use our freedom well.
“You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.” Galatians 5:13
1 Peter 2:16,17 even equates our love of the Lord as slavery, saying, “Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves.” However, the bible continually demonstrates the importance of choosing God’s path and how God waits for our choice.
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” Mathew 7:7–8
Choice gives our lives and our faith meaning. If we remove women’s right to a safe abortion based on our desire to protect life are we really honoring God’s law? If we believe that all life is in his hands, then why do we not trust in Him in matters of abortion?
The Bible tells us, “Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master servants stand and fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.” Romans 1:4
We are not meant to make the world follow Gods commands. By our own faith it already does. We do not have to agree with one other’s choices to respect them and recognize the sanctity of choice itself.
