Opinion: An Episcopal priest wrestles with the ethics of abortion
Barely a year ago, if you had asked me how to vote on California Proposition 1, I would have hesitated. I support reproductive choice, but I am also a person of deep Christian faith. I believe that human life is sacred, which means that both termination of pregnancy and capital punishment leave me with ethical concerns — as well as with grief for all the possibilities for earthly redemption and love and healing that are lost with any premature death.
My own Episcopal Church has wrestled with the ethics of abortion. Beginning in 1988, we affirmed that “all human life … is sacred from its inception until death. Human life, therefore, should be initiated only advisedly and in full accord with this understanding of the power to conceive and give birth which is bestowed by God.” In a series of statements over subsequent decades, my church has declared that “we emphatically oppose abortion as a means of birth control, family planning, sex selection or any reason of mere convenience.” At the same time, we have maintained since 1967 (and reaffirmed this year) our “unequivocal opposition to any legislation on the part of the national or state governments that would abridge or deny the right of individuals to reach informed decisions (about the termination of pregnancy) and to act upon them.”
Note that my ethical concerns — and those of my church — do not extend to contraceptives nor abortion for the health and safety of the mother. But I wasn’t so confident about elective abortion. Then, this year — three months before the June 24 Supreme Court Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision — someone I love suffered from a life-threatening pregnancy. It was a harrowing reminder of the real risks that reproduction has posed to woman — and only to women — throughout most of history and in much of the world still today. Had she suffered preeclampsia earlier in her pregnancy, in a post-Dobbs world in a state other than California, her doctor might have been forced to choose the life of a premature baby over her own. As a friend and family member, this scenario is a cause for fear. As a Christian pastor, this scenario is a cause for conversion.
I am no longer persuaded by the political arguments that carry a banner of “pro-life,” even from those in my own church. Reproduction implicates at least two lives in every case, and decisions about how and under what circumstances to bear children properly belong to a woman and her doctor. Until the rise of conservative activism in the 1970s, both political parties supported reproductive rights in equal percentages. Likewise, most American religions affirmed the right to pregnancy termination in order to preserve the life of the mother and maintained that life that begins with quickening or with breath. It’s time to once again listen to the life that announces itself with a cry: of grief as well as of hope. Thank you, California, for choosing against Dobbs.
Rev. Julia McCray-Goldsmith is dean of Trinity Cathedral in San Jose.