Focusing on Women, Chapter 1 of The Jericho Plan
CHAPTER ONE: FOCUSING ON WOMEN
Pro-lifers believe that the rights of the unborn child must prevail over the desires of the woman. In at least a few cases, this adversarial position has resulted in an exaggerated focus exclusively on the unborn child. A few pro-lifers even believe any effort to focus public attention on the physical and emotional consequences of abortion on women undercuts the moral high ground of opposing abortion simply because all human life is sacred.
Unfortunately, there are more than a few anti-abortionists who have very little sympathy for women who suffer post-abortion problems. Some have even expressed their disdain for women injured by abortion with comments such as, “They deserve what they get.”
Less punitive pro-lifers are simply idealists. They want to believe that somehow, with just a better education program, or a more articulate argument, we will be able to awaken America to the moral superiority of our position. To advance this moral argument, evidence of fetal development is relevant but scarred uteruses and tear-filled nights are not.
It is my goal in this chapter to show that the pro-woman approach is not only consistent with the pro-life moral imperative, it is in fact a fuller and more complete expression of it.
The Natural Order of Things
We begin with a very simple observation. In God’s ordering of creation, it is only the mother who can nurture her unborn child. All that the rest of us can do, then, is to nurture the mother. To help a child, we must help the child’s mother.
There is nothing startling about this observation. Crisis pregnancy centers have known this truth, and have been living it out, for decades. But we must explore this insight more deeply to understand all that it can teach us.
God has created a connection between a mother and her children that is so deeply personal and intimate that the welfare of each is dependent on the other. As every mother knows from personal experience, this interdependence is for both good and ill. When a mother’s children are joyful, their joy lifts her heart. When they are troubled by sorrow, their sorrows weigh on her as well. This principle can be summed up in the following truism: One cannot help a child without helping the mother; one cannot hurt a child without hurting the mother.
This is why, from a natural law perspective, we can know in advance that abortion is inherently harmful to women. It is simply impossible to rip a child from the womb of a mother without tearing out a part of the woman herself–a part of her heart, a part of her joy, a part of her maternity.
One does not need to be a “biased” pro-life Christian to see this truth. Consider the testimony of Dr. Julius Fogel, a psychiatrist and obstetrician who has been a long-time advocate of abortion and has personally performed over 20,000 abortions. According to Dr. Fogel:
Every woman–whatever her age, background or sexuality–has a trauma at destroying a pregnancy. A level of humanness is touched. This is a part of her own life. When she destroys a pregnancy, she is destroying herself. There is no way it can be innocuous. One is dealing with the life force. It is totally beside the point whether or not you think a life is there. You cannot deny that something is being created and that this creation is physically happening…. Often the trauma may sink into the unconscious and never surface in the woman’s lifetime. But it is not as harmless and casual an event as many in the pro-abortion crowd insist. A psychological price is paid. It may be alienation; it may be a pushing away from human warmth, perhaps a hardening of the maternal instinct. Something happens on the deeper levels of a woman’s consciousness when she destroys a pregnancy. I know that as a psychiatrist.(1)
If there is a single principle, then, which lies at the heart of the pro-woman/pro-life agenda, it would have to be this: The best interests of the child and the mother are always joined. This is true even if the mother does not initially realize it, and even if she needs a tremendous amount of love and help to see it. Thus, the only way that we can help either the mother or her child is to help both. Conversely, if we hurt either, we hurt both.
This is not an optional truth. It reflects God’s ordering of creation. This principle is so important that I must repeat it again: Only the mother can nurture her unborn child. All that the rest of us can do is to nurture and protect the mother.
Saving the unborn, then, is a natural byproduct of helping women. Conversely, we can never hope to succeed in our efforts to protect the unborn without first and foremost protecting women. Brute-force bans on abortion will not create a pro-life society. But helping mothers through an aggressive defense of women’s legitimate rights will. It is in this very same sense that Pope John Paul II has insisted that it is necessary for those who oppose abortion to become “courageously ‘pro-woman,’ promoting a choice that is truly in favor of women. It is precisely the woman, in fact, who pays the highest price, not only for her motherhood, but even more for its destruction, for the suppression of the life of the child who has been conceived. The only honest stance … is that of radical solidarity with the woman.“(2) [Italics added.]
Learning Our Lessons, Too
Many pro-lifers scratch their heads in confusion, wondering, “How can God have allowed this to go on so long?” So many millions have died, and we seem no closer to converting our nation than we were 20 years ago. When will God stop this holocaust?
This is an important question. As Christians, we believe that from every evil happening, God can resurrect something good–at the very least, repentance and a change of spirit, and often much more. And because the onslaught of abortion is so terrible, we must pray with hope that there is an awful lot of good which God intends to resurrect from this great evil. Greater respect for the unborn and for the sanctity of life is one lesson which our society is certainly intended to learn, but it is by no means the only lesson we are meant to learn.
I believe that at least some of us are so focused on what others need to learn that we are neglecting to see what God may be asking us to learn. In short, before we can help others to see, we may still need to extract a plank or two from our own eyes. I honestly believe that, short of Christ’s return, God will not bring an end to the abortion holocaust until we Christians learn all that we are meant to learn, namely: greater compassion for sinners.
Compassion for the Pregnant Woman
Pro-lifers have clearly done a tremendous job in the last two decades promoting a more charitable understanding of women who are pregnant out of wedlock. But there is clearly much more that must be done. Churches, families, friends, and employers must make even greater efforts to be supportive of every pregnant woman or single parent, no matter how the child was conceived. There is no denying the fact that, in previous decades, righteous and judgmental Christians discriminated against and shamed women who were pregnant out-of-wedlock. And it is equally true that this condemning attitude shamed, and continues to shame, many women into seeking abortions. For this, we too share in the guilt of abortion.
If we are to be truly Christian, we must strive to live by and promote the principle that every pregnancy, every birth, is a gift from God. No matter how the pregnancy occurred, no matter what the physical gifts or handicaps of the child, every child is a blessing from God, an opportunity and challenge to follow Him in the way of love. When this gift is received by an unmarried couple, it is accompanied by the message that now is the time to become mature and responsible adults. The gift of their child is an opportunity to reform their lives, an opportunity which is built on the demand that they make a commitment to love and serve someone other than themselves: their child. Such couples, then, are given children not as a punishment for fornication, but as a cure for fornication.
As a Christian community, we must cherish life and charitably invite others to seek God’s will in their lives. To do this, we must believe that every child is a gift from God and emphatically spread this message. Therefore, the birth of every child should be an occasion of joy, not of shame.
Similarly, without ever granting approval to fornication (which causes its own long list of social injuries), we must remind our flock that pre-marital intercourse is not the greatest of sins, much less an unforgivable one. Embarrassed young girls announcing a pregnancy to their parents do not need to be reminded of their mistakes–of which they are already too pointedly aware–so much as reminded that God is now calling upon them to grow up. They need to know that we, their families, their church, and their society, want to continue to help them along that path, over which we too must struggle.
During the last 20 years, Christians have truly come a long way in learning this first lesson. But it is doubtful that we would have learned it if we had not been shocked into greater compassion for young pregnant women out of our concern for their unborn children, who are threatened by abortion. Nonetheless, the witnessing work of our many crisis pregnancy centers and the compassion of so many parents toward their single mother/daughters are evidence that this lesson is being learned. Let us pray that it is never forgotten.
Compassion for the Post-Aborted
As a Christian community, however, we are not as far along in learning the lesson of compassion toward those who have actually been involved in abortion. Many good-hearted people continue to recoil in horror at anyone who could “kill her baby.” They wonder, what kind of monster could do such a thing? For many, judgmentalism comes much easier than compassion because they lack insight into the tremendous pressures and feelings of despair which lead to abortion.
This is the second lesson which we must learn from the abortion holocaust before we can expect to conquer it. We must learn that abortion is an act of despair. It is not something women do with vindictive hearts. It is something they do when they feel trapped and helpless. Over 70 percent of women undergoing abortion believe it is morally wrong. They are acting against their consciences because they feel they have no other choice.
This is one way in which books like Aborted Women, Silent No More have helped to increase the understanding of pro-lifers. By reading the stories of women who have had abortions and by seeing what drives them to choose abortion, pro-lifers are learning more and more that “there, but for the grace of God, go I.” This understanding is the basis for acceptance and compassion. During the last 12 years, this understanding has finally established a firm foothold within the pro-life movement, but it is still far from being universal among Christians in general.
This issue, too, will be discussed at length in the following chapters. Let it suffice for now to say that Christians must refrain from condemning and judging the women and men who have been involved in abortions. Judging them will not free them from the shame and guilt they already feel. Instead, we must concentrate on sharing with them the hope of God’s great mercy. To do this effectively, we must give them more than our words; we must give them our hearts.
Who Can Best Speak for the Unborn?
The middle majority of Americans believe that abortion is wrong, but they also believe that it should be legal, at least in some cases. There are many things that can be said about this mindset,(3) but for now it is enough to say that they are uneasy pragmatists. While they firmly believe that abortion is the killing of a human being, they also believe it is sometimes necessary and almost always beneficial to the woman.
Because the middle majority are uncomfortable with the truth about abortion, they have a psychological need to push out of their minds any arguments or evidence on behalf of the unborn. When presented with evidence, such as pictures of the unborn, whether charmingly angelic or horridly dismembered, they are likely to resent pro-lifers for rubbing their noses into a truth which they already know but have deliberately chosen to ignore. For such people, exposure to pictures of the unborn may serve to solidify their calloused attitudes because it forces them to repeatedly exercise their pattern of denial. This may be why the millions of dollars spent on showing pictures of the unborn to the public have not brought about the mass conversion of hearts for which pro-lifers have frequently, and naively, hoped.
In other words, when hearts are closed, pounding heads with proofs of the unborn child’s humanity is ineffective. The truth must enter in a roundabout way, through the testimony of women who grieve over their lost children. Since the middle majority are open to the concerns of women, they will empathize with the grief of post-aborted women, and, in so doing, they will be drawn into implicitly acknowledging the unborn for whom the tears are wept.
Clearly, the most powerful witnesses for the humanity of the unborn are not scientists, but mothers who mourn. All can see that these mothers weep not over the destruction of “products of conception” but over the deaths of their children. While pictures of aborted babies may increase the resentment of the middle majority, the tearful stories of women who have paid the terrible price of abortion open eyes and hearts. Wherever facts of fetal biology will not change hearts, facts of familial relationship will: “It was my innocent little daughter who died that day!”
In this very real way, the issue of the unborn child’s human rights is not replaced by a focus on post-abortion issues; it is subsumed into it. In the final analysis, the humanity of the unborn child is revealed to be the only explanation for why abortion causes women so much grief and suffering.
Thus, for those of us who have not had an abortion, the best way that we can draw attention to the humanity of the unborn is by drawing attention to the testimony of those who can speak of this loss from personal experience. By our advocacy for women’s rights, we draw attention to wounded mothers. By hushing the din of our own cries, we are allowing the grief-filled voices of the unborn babies’ mothers and fathers to be heard by all. We are not leaving the unborn voiceless; we are offering their parents the chance to be heard. Indeed, we must demand that they be heard. After all, who is more entitled to speak for their children than they?
Looking at this same issue from another perspective, we must remember that the interests of a mother and her child are permanently intertwined. This means that the morality of abortion is built right into the psychological effects of abortion. Everyone knows that there is no psychological trauma associated with the discarding of menses. But the discarding of an unborn child’s life? That, as Dr. Fogel reminds us, is inherently traumatic.
Therefore, when we are talking about the psychological complications of abortion, we are implicitly talking about the physical and behavioral symptoms of a moral problem. By focusing public attention on the symptoms of post-abortion trauma, we will inevitably draw the middle majority back to an understanding of the causes of the problem: the injustice of killing unborn children and the guilt of weakness and betrayal which haunts the mother’s heart.
With much less ferocity, this same guilt is gnawing at the hearts of the middle majority of Americans, who know the truth but have chosen to ignore it. In helping them to recognize the psychological suffering abortion causes women, we will lead them to rediscover the horror of abortion for themselves.
A Pro-Life Lesson Plan
The discussion above is not meant to imply that appeals on behalf of the unborn are never effective. The fact that the middle majority are uneasy with abortion can be used to our advantage. My point, however, is that we are misusing our resources when we press this advantage first. Our first order of business must be to shake their belief that abortion helps women.
The importance of maintaining this sequence cannot be overstated. It is only after the dangers of abortion for women are fully understood by the middle majority, not to mention pro-abortion activists, that we can even begin to open their minds and hearts to the unborn child. If women are not being helped, they will ask themselves, then why are we killing their babies?
In a very real sense, this pro-woman/pro-life agenda is nothing more than a “lesson plan” for leading our nation to an understanding of this reality. It is a process which follows the reverse path of the pro-abortion movement.
The pro-abortion movement was born from a social vision which separated the mother’s interests from her unborn baby’s. If their interests are separate, then there is a potential conflict between the woman’s rights and her unborn child’s rights, and only one of them can prevail.
We cannot accept any part of this reasoning. We must reject every ideology which frames the abortion issue in terms of a mother versus her child. We are both pro-woman and pro-child. We believe that we can and should help both the mother and her child. We believe that the legalization of abortion was not an advance for women’s rights, but an advance for social engineers and others who are exploiting women in times of personal crisis.
Teaching Morality by Teaching Science
Believers know that God’s moral law is not given to us to enslave us, or even to take the fun out of life. It is given to us as a path toward true happiness. Christians rightly anticipate, then, that any advantage gained through violation of the moral law is always temporary; it will invariably be supplanted by alienation and suffering.
This insight gives us an alternative way of evangelizing. Whenever we cannot convince others to acknowledge a moral truth for the love of God, our second-best option is to appeal to their self-interest. If an act is indeed against God’s moral law, it will be found to be injurious to our happiness. Thus, if our faith is true, we would expect to find compelling evidence which demonstrates that such acts as abortion, fornication, and pornography lead, in the end, not to happiness and freedom, but to sorrow and enslavement. By finding this evidence and sharing it with others, we bear witness to the protective good of God’s law in a way which even unbelievers must respect.
Research and education about the dangers of abortion, then, are not just grist for political reform. They are also leaven for spiritual reform. As people become more aware of all the hardships abortion causes to women, men, siblings, and society, they will begin to respect the wisdom of God’s law. They will begin to think, “Maybe all these religious folk weren’t so crazy after all. If they were right about this, when every other power in society said they were wrong, maybe they’re right about other things, too.”
This approach also recognizes another fundamental aspect of human nature: where there is no love of God, there is an exaggerated love of self. As a corollary to this truth, we should also recognize that wherever there is only self-love, appeals to self-sacrifice will fail, and only appeals to self-preservation can possibly succeed. Often, our warnings will be rejected. But even in these cases, by giving people the warning, we are planting the seeds for repentance and belief when they inevitably hit bottom. This is another reason why we should never be focused on condemning those who are considering or have had abortions. Instead, we should be focused on warning them and offering them mercy.
Summary
The pro-woman/pro-life strategy, which places defense of women’s rights at the center of our national debate, is justified by the fact that in God’s ordering of creation, only an unborn child’s mother can nurture her child; all that we can do is to nurture and protect the mother. Focusing on women’s rights is also necessary if we, who want to live as Christians, are to better learn the ways of mercy and compassion.
In focusing attention on post-aborted women, we are actually allowing their voices to be better heard. It is their witness on behalf of their unborn, not ours, which will soften hearts and open eyes. In this sense, by focusing on women’s rights, we are not ignoring the unborn but, instead, are preparing the stage for the most compelling advocates of all for the unborn–their mothers.
Our pro-woman/pro-life strategy is actually a lesson plan for educating our nation about how the interests of a mother and her child are inextricably intertwined. One cannot hurt a child without hurting the child’s mother, and this is especially true in the case of abortion. As people learn this, they will not only reopen their hearts to the unborn, they will reopen their hearts to the beauty of God’s moral law.
None of what I have presented in this chapter is novel, as is demonstrated by a letter which Dr. O.E. Worcester wrote to the Journal of the American Medical Association over 100 years ago. Dr. Worcester wrote to complain against her male colleagues who treated women who were pregnant out-of-wedlock with great disrespect. Worst of all, she insisted, these same physicians willingly added to the guilt of these used and abandoned women by giving them abortions rather than true compassionate aid. When a colleague asked her to help perform abortions, she refused, saying, “I loved woman too well to help her add murder to her other sin. If mother love and the touch of baby fingers did not save her to God and womanhood, nothing could. That it could, I had proof in many cases where forsaken mothers had, in spite of all, carved for themselves and their fatherless children an honorable place in the world.”
Dr. Worcester concluded her reprimand of her colleagues with a pointed condemnation of misogynist abortionists, an appeal to the inseparability of woman and child, and a plea for true compassion:
I have never seen cause to hold the male element less responsible for the slaughter of the innocents than in the days of Herod. Then, as now, men seem to fear the coming of Christ born of woman….
This is my plea: “What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder,” in the medical profession or elsewhere.
Let men and women join forces under the banner of Him who said: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her,” and also: “Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more.”
Let us join forces all along the line, and fight this hydraheaded monster to the death and save our nation.(4)
To this plea I can add only one word: Amen.
End Notes:
1. Colman McCarthy “Worst Form of Birth Control Hurts Woman’s Psyche,” The Washington Post, Times Herald; Feb 28, 1971; p. B2; also syndicated as Colman McCarthy, “A Psychological View of Abortion,” St. Paul Sunday Pioneer Press, March 7, 1971. Dr. Fogel, who did 20,000 abortions over the subsequent decades, reiterated the same view in a second interview with McCarthy in 1989, in which he disagreed with the Koop report. “The Real Anguish of Abortions,” The Washington Post, Feb. 5, 1989.
2. John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 207.
3. See Reardon, On Making Abortion Rare, Chapter Two.
4. O.E. Worcester, M.D., “From A Woman Physician: An Open Letter to Dr. W.W. Parker,” JAMA 22:599, 1894, reprinted in “JAMA 100 Years Ago,” JAMA 271(15), April 20, 1994.
Copyright 1996 David C. Reardon. Excerpted with permission for from The Jericho Plan: Breaking Down the Walls Which Prevent Post-Abortion Healing, published by Acorn Books, PO Box 7348, Springfield, IL 62791-7348 for internet posting exclusively at www.afterabortion.org. All Rights Reserved.
