An Exploration of the “Christian” Issues: Abortion and Gay Marriage

Introduction

To be honest, saying that this post is about the “Christian” issues is a bit tongue-in-cheek.  I believe that all issues are (or ought to be) Christian issues.  I believe that how our government handles its finances, cares for the poor, or interacts with other nations are moral issues that Christians need to be just as concerned with when it comes to choosing who to vote for as abortion and gay marriage.  The issues of abortion and gay marriage have become the issues that Christians seem most concerned with, and as such, I felt that that needed a post of their own, separate from my exploration of all of the issues.  This does not mean that I think these issues are any more important than any others, just that they needed special attention in this series.

Abortion

I am pro-life.  I believe that abortion should be illegal because I believe that it is murder and should be treated and prosecuted as such.  Before I explain my stance on abortion I think we need to take a brief look at the history of abortion legislation in America.

The first law criminalizing abortion was implemented in Connecticut in 1821.  By 1900 every state had some anti-abortion law in place.  These laws varied in their scope and punishments, and there has never been a national ban on abortion.  In 1970 Norma McCorvey (using the pseudonym Jane Roe) filed suit against Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade (representing the State of Texas) for their law prohibiting elective abortion (Texas allowed abortions in the case of rape and incest).  Eventually the case was heard by the US Supreme Court, who decided in Roe’s favor by a 7-2 vote, citing a woman’s right to privacy and deciding that the right to have an abortion is a fundamental right under the Constitution.  This decision essentially made abortion legal in the US, though many states passed laws regulating it, though none could outlaw the practice.

Since Roe v Wade, there have been many attempts to ban abortion, but with little success.  In 1995 and 1996 Congress passed a national ban on abortion, but Pres. Clinton vetoed the law, and while the House overrode the veto, the Senate failed to do so.  Another ban was passed in1997-98, again Pres. Clinton vetoed it, and again the House overrode the veto while the Senate failed to do so.  In 2003 Congresses passed a federal ban on Partial Birth Abortions (a gruesome form of late-term abortions) and Pres. George W. Bush signed it into law.  After multiple suits the Supreme Court declared the law Constitutional in 2007.  This is the first and only federal ban on any type of abortion.

In some ways I find it odd that the two parties have come down on the sides of the abortion issues that they have.  The Republican Party is the party of personal responsibility, individual liberty, and smaller government, yet they want to outlaw abortion or force women who want abortions to have evasive trans-vaginal ultrasounds first.  On the other side the Democrats are the party of regulation and bigger government, yet they don’t want the government involved in a woman’s reproductive choices.

For me, the most fundamental aspect of the discussion over abortion is the question of when life begins.  This was one of the fundamental questions for the Supreme Court when they were deciding on Roe v. Wade.  The Court determined that a fetus was viable roughly after the first trimester, so their ruling really only affected made abortions legal before that point in a pregnancy.  As a Christian it is my belief that life begins at conception.  I believe that there’s Biblical support for this.  When God first spoke to Jeremiah He told him that He knew him even before he had been formed in his mother’s womb.  When Mary was pregnant with Jesus and she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who was also pregnant with her son John, Elizabeth told Mary that the child inside her leaped with joy at her presence, showing that the child inside of her had an awareness of who Mary was.

Most Christians agree that life begins at conception.  VP Joe Biden even agreed with that view (held by the Catholic Church, of which he is a member), yet some still do not believe that aborting a fetus should be illegal.  In the Vice Presidential Debate, Joe Biden gave as good of an answer on this issue as a pro-choice Christian could give.  He said that he accepts the Catholic Church’s doctrine on life beginning at conception, but that he also feels that it’s not the government’s place to enforce his religion’s belief on this issue on others.  This is a very good sounding argument, and one I might be inclined to agree with myself.  However, I cannot accept the idea that if life begins at conception, then it’s not the government’s place to block abortions.  If I believe that life begins at conception then I have to believe that aborting a fetus is murder.  If I believe that abortion is murder then I believe that it must be persecuted as such.  While it sounds nice for the Vice President to say that he doesn’t feel the government should enforce his religious belief on abortion on all people, it wouldn’t make sense for him to say the same about his religious beliefs about murder.  Now, I do understand that there is a difference here, because murder is universally accepted as being immoral, while life beginning at conception is not a universal view.  However, for anyone that believes that life begins at conception they must also logically support laws outlawing abortion as murder.

I certainly understand why people believe that this is an issue of women’s rights.  I also understand why people believe that a woman should have the right to make decisions about her reproductive health.  However, I believe that once a woman is pregnant, she has already made a decision about her reproductive health (I want to be clear here that I am not talking about pregnancies that are the result of rape).  While I understand that there are times when contraception fails, people need to understand that is a possibility and be prepared to accept the consequences if that occurs.  When I get in my car I have the expectation that it will work correctly and that I will be safe, but I also have to be willing to accept the consequences if something doesn’t work correctly.  I know that this is a poor analogy, and for that I apologize, but I just do not understand why people feel that they have the right to end a life because they view it as a negative consequence of a decision that they made, knowing full well that sex often leads to pregnancy.

I honestly go back and forth on whether or not there should be exceptions for rape, incest, and for the life of the mother.  I want to make it very clear that all of these instances are incomprehensible, and are horrible circumstances.  I also want to be clear that I find it unimaginable that Republican candidates would say things like legitimate rape doesn’t result in pregnancy, pregnancies resulting from rape are what God intended, that rape is just another method of conception, or when they refer to it as “the rape thing.”  Statements like these are hurtful, and further than that they are wrong.  God never intends that rape would be the way that a child is conceived.  When a woman is raped it is always a horrible thing, and if she gets pregnant as a result of that rape, it makes the situation even worse for her.  However, if I also believe that life begins at conception and that aborting a fetus is murder, then I must hold this belief regardless of how the child was conceived.

I believe that abortion is murder, that murder is a sin, and that murder should be illegal.  However, I also understand from scripture that there is a difference between murder and killing, and that there are times when killing is justified and isn’t considered murder (in war, for instance).  I don’t know if aborting a fetus when it is the result of rape or incest would be considered killing and not murder (this is an issue out of my pay grade), but I’m inclined to think that it would be.  For this reason, I current support measures that would make exceptions allowing abortion in instances of rape and incest.  On a more personal note, I find allowing abortion in these instances to be more compassionate to the victims of these unthinkable acts than forcing them to bear the child to term.  In the case where the mother’s life is threatened, it becomes an issue of whose life is more valuable, because it becomes a choice of one life over another.  As difficult as this sounds, in most cases, the life of the mother would be more important to save because of other children she may have that need cared for.

I still have questions on this issue though.  What defines rape?  Is statutory rape considered rape that would allow for an abortion?  Does a woman need to go to the hospital and have a rape kit done or file a police report in order to have an abortion?  Is a woman’s word good enough, or does the court or a doctor need to decide if she was raped?  Is non-consensual sex within a marriage considered rape, and of so, does a pregnancy that results from this qualify for an abortion?  These are questions about this important issue that I feel need to be addressed.

Another question I wonder about when it comes to abortion has to do with the Christian idea of the "age of accountability."  It is universally agreed upon within Christendom that it a baby is aborted, miscarried, or still-born, or if a baby dies in infancy, that they are covered  y God's grace and go to heaven because they never sinned and never had to opportunity to accept Christ.  This has led to the idea in much of Christianity that there is an age of accountability, a point where children become accountable for their actions and are capable of accepting Christ.  This belief states that if a child dies before this age that they are not held accountable for their sins and will go to heaven regardless of whether they accepted Christ.  Others argue that God knows whether a child whose life ends too soon would have become a Christian had they lived longer, and they are saved or not based on that special knowledge.  Christian views on when the age of accountability is range anywhere from as young as age two to as old as age twelve.  The Mormon faith officially recognizes age eight as the age of accountability.  I am going to sound like a heretic for a moment, but please bear with me, because I feel that I must discuss this issue to it's logical end (anyone familiar with Glenn Beck will be familiar with doing this).  If children are not accountable until they reach a certain age, and therefore are guaranteed to go to heaven if they die before reaching that age, then doesn't abortion become an act of mercy?  Wouldn't ending a child's life before that age ensure their entry into heaven and avoid the possibility that they might reject the gospel and go to hell, and wouldn't that make abortion actually a good thing?  The problem here is that the Bible is mute on the issue of an age of accountability and I'm not a wise enough theologian and know whether it exists or not.  I trust that if a child dies before it had the ability to sin or accept Christ then it will go to heaven, and that somehow a young child who knows the difference between right and wrong will be saved by whatever level of faith they are capable of at that age.

Clearly I am pro-life and believe that there should be a federal ban on all abortions, except in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is at risk.  However, I have questions about the Republican Party’s approach to abortion, or even how seriously they want to outlaw abortion.  This has been the primary issues for Republican campaigns ever since Roe V. Wade, and if abortion were outlawed, the Party would now need a new issue to run on.  This would drastically change the Republican Party going forward.  Because of this, I question how serious the Republican Party is about actually outlawing abortion.  When Pres. George W. Bush was in office he had a cooperative (read: Republican) Congress from 2003-2007, and they only passed a ban on partial birth abortion.  Even when Clinton was in office Congress twice passed a ban on abortion and nearly overrode the president’s veto of the law both times.  If there was ever an opportunity to pass a federal ban on all abortion, that was their chance.  Perhaps they didn’t do it because they knew that it wouldn’t hold up in the Supreme Court, but I think part of it may be that of it did, the Party would need to find a new cause to define them.  Right now the Republican party as a whole seems more anti-abortion than they have ever been, yet they have nominated a person for the presidency who until he began running for president didn’t believe that it wasn't the government’s place to outlaw abortion and was supportive of upholding Roe v. Wade.

I also think that a pro-life stance needs to be all-encompassing, and not just be an anti-abortion stance.  If we are going to outlaw abortion, then other things need to happen along with that.  We need to make the adoption process easier, faster, and cheaper in this country, so that the children that would have been aborted who now go up for adoption can be adopted by families more easily and at less expense to them.  Along with this, we would need to encourage people to adopt more than they do now, and personally I believe that those who are pro-life should be more actively involved in adoption.  We also need to make health care for pregnant women less expensive or even free.  For many women abortion is a more financially viable option than carrying a child to term, giving birth, and putting the child up for adoption.  If we outlaw abortion, then I feel that our government needs to make it easier and cheaper for women to receive the healthcare they need during their pregnancies.  I also believe that we need to be a better job of educating people about birth control and making contraception more easily accessible and less expensive or even free.  Studies have proven that abstinence-only education is not effective in preventing premarital sex, and that access to contraception does not increase a person’s likelihood to have premarital sex.  However, free and easy access to contraception would likely decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies.

On the other side of the issue, there are some questions that never seem to be asked of those who are pro-choice, that I would like to see answered.  If someone believes that life begins at conception (especially a Christian) then I want to know if they believe that ending that life before birth is murder.  If they believe that it isn’t, I want to know why not, and if they do then I want to know why they don’t think it should be prosecuted as such.  If someone doesn’t believe that life begins at conception, I want to know when they do believe it begins, and if abortions should be allowed after that point.  I want to know if people support laws that allow a teenage girl’s right to have an abortion without need parental consent or even parental notification.  I want to know if they consider pro-choice laws to be racist, since nearly 60% of all abortions in the US are performed on minorities, when minorities make up only about 25% of the population.  I also want to know what makes abortion a tragic choice (as many pro-choice people like to say) if it isn’t morally wrong to have an abortion.

There is no question that I am pro-life and that I believe that the government should ban abortion (except in cases of rape, incest, and when the life of the mother is at risk), and if this were the only issue that was important to me then there’s no question that I would vote a Republican ticket.  This is indeed the most difficult issue for me when deciding to vote for a Democrat.  However, this is not the only issue, so it cannot be the only issue that determines my vote.

Gay Marriage

Marriage is a strictly religious institution.  It was created in the beginning by the Creator when Adam was unable to find a suitable companion from among the animals, so God created for him woman to be his companion, blessing them and commanding them to be fruitful and fill the earth.  When I think about the word marriage, I consider it to be a religious term, and as such, it is only God, and not the government, that can define it.

The Bible is very clear that marriage is an institution which is reserved for one man and one woman.  Whenever homosexuality is mentioned in scripture (and honestly, it isn’t mentioned much) it is always very clearly defined as being a sin (it's mentioned in Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13, Judges 19:22-23, Romans 1:24-27, and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11).  While the Bible never explicitly says that two people of the same sex cannot marry, it doesn’t need to.  Homosexuality is clearly a sin in scripture, so there’s no need to explain that homosexual marriage would be prohibited.  It was so unthinkable that two people of the same sex would seek a marriage that it didn’t need to be directly addressed.

My biggest issue with the government possibly redefining marriage and allowing same-sex couples to marry is less about letting gay couples get married, and is more about the government redefining what I see as a strictly religious term.  The real issue here is that the government has co-opted a religious term to mean something different than what it really means.

When the government refers to marriage, it is actually talking about a civil union.  The religious institution of marriage is a covenant between a man, a woman, and God, to live and work together and to love one another until they are separated by death.  The governmental institution of marriage is a contract between a man, a woman, and the government, that allows them to jointly file their taxes and provides them with legal benefits, like hospital visitation, insurance benefits, and tax breaks.  This is why I think that the government needs to stop using the term marriage all together and start calling all legal marriages civil unions.  If two people go before a justice of the peace and are united, and their covenant is not made between themselves and with God, then they are not involved in a marriage (from a Judeo-Christian view of marriage).

In many ways, I wish that the US government would adopt a system similar to that in Mexico.  In Mexico, only a civil marriage is legal.  People can have a religious marriage ceremony (wedding), but it isn’t legal as far as the government is concerned.  With this system there is recognition that there is a difference between the religious and civil institutions of marriage.

If the government were to stop using the term marriage and call all legal marriages civil unions then I would have far fewer issues with the government extending same-sex couples to same rights as male-female couples.  For me, the government redefining the term marriage is a violation the First Amendment and the separation of church and state.  It would be like the government giving a legal definition for baptism.

If I have the opportunity to cast a vote to define marriage, I will always vote to retain the Judeo-Christian definition as only being between a man and a woman (a vote I got to cast when the issue was on the ballot in Ohio).  At the same time, I understand that when the government uses the term marriage, that it is not talking about the same institution described and outlined in scripture.  Because of this I know that if the government chooses to extend marital rights to same-sex couples, that it doesn’t change what marriage is.  It doesn’t mean that same-sex unions are marriage, because the government doesn’t define what makes a marriage, God does.

It’s for this reason that I oppose same-sex marriage, but am far less concerned with it becoming legal than I am about whether or not we are feeding the poor or how the government interacts with other nations.  I find that it’s far more for Christians to reach out to homosexuals and let them know that even while homosexuality is a sin that God still loves them and that Christ died in their place for their sins, instead of fighting to make sure that they don’t have the same legal rights as same-sex couples.

Conclusion

I am pro-life and support the Biblical definition of marriage.  I believe that abortion needs to be banned on a federal level, that exceptions should be made for instances of rape, incest, and threat to the life of the mother, and that any anti-abortion platform needs to include provisions for making adoption easier and cheaper, provide for the healthcare needs of expectant mothers, and make contraception more easily accessible.  I also believe that marriage is defined by God and that He has defined it as being between a man and a woman, and that even if the government redefines the term to include same-sex couples, it is really only redefining civil unions and not marriage, because marriage isn’t a civil institution.

Many Christians view these as the most important issues.  Many view them as the only issues and only choose to vote based on these two issues.  However, as Christians, we need to understand that while these issues are important, they should never be the only issues that determine who we vote for.  I refuse to be a single-issue voted, and will consider these issues along with all of the other issues facing our nation when deciding who to vote for.