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Abortion is a divisive issue in part because it is closely tied to other divisive issues. This month, in commemoration of Roe v. Wade, we will explore the links between abortion and classism; racism; sexuality, homophobia, and sin; free speech and religious freedom; equality for women, and violence against women. We will also explore the medical, legal, and theological history of abortion and contraception.
"The motto of the NBCL [National Birth Control League] was "The first right a child should have is that of being wanted." " page 194
Sharon Thompson: "If we could get a photo of a fetus masturbating, we might be able to short-circuit their whole movement."
The following links contain pictures of fetuses which were aborted in the third trimester. These are NOT pretty pictures of healthy babies which the pro-lifers would have you believe they are. These are pictures of severely deformed fetuses. I do not recommend viewing for children or the faint of heart.
links at http://www-medlib.med.utah.edu/Webpath/jpeg/PERI089.jpg, PERI095.jpg, PERI148.jpg,
If you ask a fundie to quote chapter and verse which prohibit abortion, they quote passages which have metaphorical references to "knowing you before you were born" and which discuss murder in general. Never do they quote a verse which clearly prohibits abortion - because there isn't one. The Bible is silent on induced abortion with one exception. In Num 5: 27, God mandates "trial by ordeal" for women accused by their husbands of adultery. The priest is instructed to make a potion, the accused is ordered to drink it, and if she miscarries, she is considered guilty. In other words, God commands the priest to give the woman a potion which may induce an abortion.
Exodus 21:22-24 presents the law regarding a pregnant woman who miscarries because of a fight between her husband and another man. If the woman miscarries and there is no harm to her, then her husband determines what fine he thinks he deserves (subject to review by the court). If harm comes to the mother, then there shall be "life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."
That is the extent of overt Biblical references to induced abortion and accidental miscarriages.
Judaism and abortion: the life of the already born takes precedence over the life of the unborn
In Gen 2:7, God forms man from the dust of the earth. After man is completely formed, God breathes the breath of life into man and man became a living creature. Consequently, most Jewish traditions agree that life begins after the baby takes its' first breath. Hence, all traditions support women's access to therapeutic abortions since until the fetus is more than half-born it does not become a person and the mother's life takes precedence.
Since good arguments can be made about when ensoulment occurs for various points in the development of the fetus, no one argument has prevailed. By definition, controversial issues lack clear answers and so cannot be used as a definitive question on the topic. Consequently, ensoulment is not an issue.
The fetus is a part of the mother, just like a calf is part of a pregnant cow. When a cow who was pregnant when it was sold gives birth, its previous owner has no claim on the calf.
The majority of Jewish legal sources indicate that abortion is permissible at any stage of the pregnancy if the well-being of the pregnant woman is jeopardized, while it is clearly not permissible if the well-being of the future child is the issue.
In Islam, as in all other religions, theologians differ on many aspects of abortion and contraception. All agree though that a woman has should have access to contraception and abortion until the soul enters the fetus - variously claimed to be at 40 days, 80 days, or 120 days after conception. Consequently, during the medieval period, while research on contraception in medical academics stagnated, Arabic medical writings explored both contraceptive and early stage abortifacients, perhaps to the limits that critical, concerted medical observation permitted.
Buddhism and abortions - the fate of the aborted one is not to come into this world at this time in that woman's body. The aborted soul went back to that place where souls reside until it is time for it so come back into this world. Abortion is not murder, it is part of that soul's fate.
If we can have a morally justifiable war, why can't we have a morally justifiable abortion?
The oldest extant writings on contraceptive practices come from Egypt and date to the nineteenth to the eleventh century BCE.
John Riddle in Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance (Harvard University Press, 1992) studied ancient medical texts, identified the plants in their contraceptive and abortifacient potions, and determined that the ancient contraceptives and abortifacients were probably effective and as safe as giving carrying a pregnancy to term. These herbals were commonly used by all strata of society. Although some plants were added to and other plants were dropped from the herbal lists over the millennia, many plants, plants which modern science has determined contain natural chemicals that could cause a woman to miscarry or become infertile, remained on the lists for thousands of years. After all, would the same plants show up in medical texts for thousands of years if they were not safe and effective? 2 Many traditional societies without access to Western medicine still use herbal potions as contraceptives and abortifacients. If modern women use safe and effective herbal contraceptives and abortifacients, why couldn't ancient women have used them?
The Assyrians, Sumerians, and Babylonians had laws which forbade abortion. The Greeks and Romans considered abortion and contraception a crime only if the father objected because the crime was in depriving the father of an heir, not in murdering a human being.
The earliest Catholic theological objection to abortion and contraception was that abortion and contraception were not sins in and of themselves. Neither of them were considered to be murder since the fetus had no soul. (According to Augustine, the fetus acquired a soul at 40 days for boys and at 90 days for girls. The pig.) These practices were objected to because they hid the true sins: fornication (sex with someone you are not married to) and adultery. Not until 1869 did the Catholic church declare that the soul entered the fetus at conception, making contraception and abortion murder.
Until the second half of the nineteenth century, American law, following in the tradition of English common law and like the laws in most of Western Europe, permitted abortion until quickening - the instant in time when the mother first felt the baby move. After all, for most of history, unless a woman was visibly pregnant she was not pregnant unless she declared herself to be pregnant.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, with the advent of the germ theory of illness, the establishment of medical schools, and the beginning of systematic medical research, the medical profession began differentiating itself from folkhealers and midwives. To establish themselves as a true profession (and to drive the folkhealers and midwives out of business), laws restricting the practice of medicine to university trained doctors began to appear. Anti-abortion laws were passed ostensibly to protect women from quacks and incompetents. [These laws were opposed by religious groups on the grounds that since the fetus had no soul, no crime was committed. ???, verify accuracy in Mohr]
The Comstock Law of 1873 forbade the distribution of obscene material through the mail. According to the Comstock law, obscenity encompassed "every lewd, lascivious, or filthy book, pamphlet, picture, paper, letter, writing, print, or other publication of an indecent character," "every written or printed card, letter, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement or notice of any kind," and "any article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing." The Comstock law specifically mentioned contraception and abortion by declaring that it was a crime to advertise or mail any information "for preventing conception or producing abortion." Virtually anything could be considered obscene. For example, it was illegal to place an add in a newspaper for contraceptive products or services, for a mother to write her daughter a letter telling her how to avoid pregnancy, for a flyer to advertise a seminar on contraception, for a medical journal to discuss certain complications of pregnancy, for two medical researchers to use the mail to trade information on the relative efficacy of various forms of contraception, for a pharmaceutical company to advertise contraceptive products in medical journals, indeed, for a physician to discuss contraception with a married patient in the privacy of his own office. Even mentioning that it was possible for a woman to control her fertility without describing how to do so was obscene. For a first-time offender, the penalty for obscenity was a fine of up to $5000 fine or five years in jail or both, and for repeat offenders, a fine of up to $10,000 fine or ten years in prison. page xx Dennett
For many of us who have had access to fairly reliable, safe, easy to use, and inexpensive contraceptives for most of our adult lives, it is hard to imagine the world of our foremothers, and of many women in many parts of the world today. Before modern medicine, child birth or the effects of repeated child births was one of the leading killers of women. For example, in 1913 more women between the ages of fifteen and forty-four died in childbirth than from any other cause except tuberculosis.
Without artificial contraceptives, women feared too many pregnancies because it could kill them, destroy their health, or leave them with more children than they could properly care for. Men often had trouble understanding women's reluctance to have sex and labeled as frigid women's fear of becoming pregnant. Without contraception, women's attempts to avoid pregnancy by avoiding sex often resulted in a woman's husband going to a prostitute or taking a lover thereby destroying marriages. The churches stressed woman's submission to her husband and defended a man's "right" to "chastise" his wife when she refused to pay the "marital debt," turning a woman's home into her dungeon. Morality for women began to mean almost nothing else but chastity.
One study estimates that at the turn of the century, in the days before anti-bacterial drugs, more than 1/2 of American men had gonorrhea- which they passed along to their wives. Yet, herbal folk medicine and safe surgical abortions had long been available. New contraceptive techniques were available with the discovery of the vulcanization process enabling rubber to make into diaphragms and condoms. And the Comstock laws effectively blocked discussion of all matter pertaining to human sexuality for the half century from 1875 to 1925. dennett p 160
Little by little the Comstock law was whittled away. Much progress in making birth control information and contraceptive products available to all women was made during the Great Depression of the 1930s when it was in men's best interest to limit the size of their families without restricting their access to their wives' sexual services. Using legal arguments based on the 9th Amendment right to privacy, women's control over her reproductive processes gradually broadened. In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court struck down the last remaining laws forbidding distribution of contraceptives to married couples. In Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972), the Supreme Court extended access to contraceptives to single women. In Planned Parenthood v. Danforth (1976), the Supreme Court voided a law that required the consent of a woman's husband for an abortion. In Bellotti v. Baird (1979), a minor's right to privacy was established when Massachusetts' parental consent requirements were struck down.
All news was not good new, however. With the election of the republican Regean administration and the appointment of conservative judges, the Supreme Court turned hostile to women's reproductive freedom. In Harris v. McRae (1980) the Court upheld a Congressional ban on the use of Medicaid funds to pay for abortion. In Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989), the Supreme Court explicitly stated that states could regulate abortion as all public health issues are regulated.
For the last few years, Court rulings have been a mixture of good news and bad news for abortion rights advocates. Hopefully, with at least another 4 years of a Democratic Presidency, more moderate appointments to the judiciary will result in a strengthening of women's reproductive rights. Hoping for a Republican Presidential victory in 1996, the last Congress was slow to fill vacant seats in federal courts. We must make sure that open judicial seats are filled promptly. Roe v Wade (1973) which was argued on 9th and 14th amendments right to privacy overturned by a vote of 7-2 the state laws of 46 states - only Alaska, Hawaii, NY and Washington had statutes that met the Court's standards. Roe gave women unlimited access to abortion in the first trimester, allowed states to regulate abortion in the second trimester to protect maternal health, and permitted states to prohibit abortion in the last 10 weeks of pregnancy, unless the life or health of the mother was at stake.
Some constitutional scholars argue that abortion and contraception are not appropriate legal questions: they are moral, philosophical, and religious questions about a medical procedure. - as is evidenced by the fact that the most vocal, strident opponents of abortion claim a religious objection to abortion. If that small faction is allowed to prohibit abortion for other women, then they are in effect forcing those women to abide by religious beliefs which they do not share - a violation of our first amendment rights to the free exercise of religion.
Other scholars claim a 13th amendment prohibition against involuntary servitude to justify abortion. To them, the fetus does not have a right to use a woman's body for its own purpose. Still others claim a 14th amendment right to equal protection of the law - after all, if men don't have to get pregnant from having, why should women? This approach seems frivolous on the surface but it masks deeper questions, such as - why should a woman be required to risk her life, her health, her job, her career because she had sex when a man does not have to risk his?
When abortion was illegal, rich, native, white women had access to safe abortions, while poor, black, immigrant women did not. The elite either had enough money to pay a competent illegal abortionist, had connections to have an abortion performed in a hospital, or had resources to travel to a local where abortion was legal. Many speculate that anti-abortion activists are really about controlling the sexual lives of their teenage children through controlling their access to birth control and abortion. Since in effect, anti-abortion policies are racist, and they will not prevent middle-class, white teenagers and adult women from having abortions.
In the late 1960s, Jane, the Chicago underground abortion service, began by referring women to competent, medically-trained, illegal abortionists. Eventually, one of their members befriended one of the abortionists and discovered that his only medical training had come from another abortionist. He taught the women of Jane to perform surgical abortions and Jane became a provider of safe abortions. Jane members estimate that in its four years of operation, they performed 11,000 illegal operations with no fatalities. Jane, a non-profit organization which had reduced rate abortions for the poor, ceased operation shortly after the Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion. So, although there were many unsafe sources of illegal abortion, there were many safe places for illegal abortions, too.
If Roe v. Wade is overturned and abortion again becomes illegal, I foresee history repeating itself. Elite women, largely rich, white, native women, will have access to safe abortion while poor, black, and immigrant women are denied access to safe abortion. I also foresee the creation of a whole new billion-dollar-a-year market for drug dealers - women seeking RU486, a drug that will provide them a safe abortion in the privacy of their own homes at their own convenience. I wonder if those white, middle-class teenagers for whom the "pro-lifers" fear, will move on to mind-altering drugs after they are introduced to the system by seeking RU486. Perhaps the fundies should accept that "the devil they know is better than the devil they don't know."
The Abortion Pill: RU486
1) Last summer, the FDA announced that it was ready to approve RU486 as an abortifacient - as soon as the language on the drug inserts was agreed to by the manufacturer and the FDA.
2) But you can have an abortion in the privacy of your doctor's office, NOW. In the Aug. 31, 1995 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Richard U. Hausknecht of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York published a study abortions using the drug combination methotrexate and misoprostol. Several doctors, including a woman doctor, released the same information but after the flurry of the first news story, the information was quietly ignored/suppressed.
Methotrexate is FDA-approved for use against cancer; Misoprostol is FDA approved to treat ulcers. Because both are FDA-approved, they can be prescribed by physicians today. Together they produce abortions at a better rate than the RU-486 pill.
Save this information. If the radical right ever comes to power, a woman may need this information. I wonder how long it would take illegal drug dealers to add 1 1/2 million doses of these drugs to their stocks. If abortion if made illegal, drug dealers will be handed a $300 million (minimum) a year market. Maybe we should call anti-choice legislation, "drug dealers relief" legislation.
3) Also, for abortions in women with ectopic pregnancies: your friendly birth control pills works just fine.
Partial Birth Abortions
Each year, about 600 women per year require a third-trimester abortion. Women's access to the intact D&E ("partial birth abortion"), used only when other procedures, such as induced labor or vaginal delivery, present higher risk to the woman's life, health or future childbearing, is under attack. Intact D&E may be safer than other procedures because it reduces blood loss and prevents tearing the woman's cervix and uterus, leaving her able to get pregnant and give birth later.
If the media is so liberal, why don't newscasters, political pundits, and commentators use the less inflammatory and more accurate medical terminology "intact D&E abortions" to mean "partial birth abortions" ?
The Sex Side of Life: Mary Ware Dennett's Pioneering Battle for Birth Control and Sex Education by Constance M. Chen, The New Press, NY, 1996 The university trained, professional designer married architect Hartley Dennet. Their professional partnership flourished as did their love and their family. Dennett bore three children while continuing her career. During her third pregnancy, her uterus tore, leaving her with chronic reproductive health problems. Her year-long recovery from her final pregnancy left her convinced that if she conceived again, she would loose her life. After several months as a celibate, her husband began an affair with a mutual friend. After several years, her husband left her to live with his lover and her husband. Shortly thereafter, Dennett was divorced.
Dennett, a life long social activist, had been active in the Twilight Sleep Association, an organization which promoted the use of pain-killing drugs during child birth. Realizing that she needed an income and not being willing to return to art which had son many connections to her husband, Dennett accepted a position with the National American Woman's Suffrage Association as public relations officer. Her arrival marked the turning point of the NAWSA which had been in the doldrums. She flooded the country with suffrage propaganda. When Washington state granted suffrage to women in 1910, her publicity and fund-raising efforts began to bear fruit.
Tired of internal politics and ready to tackle a new social problem, in 1914 Dennett left the suffrage campaign. By now Dennett's sons were teenagers and she wanted to give them an accurate sex education. Unable to find accurate written sources which her sons would be able to understand, Dennett wrote her own pamphlet on sex giving accurate names to the sex organs and accurate drawings of male and female anatomy. Wanting to ensure the accuracy, she asked her physician to review her pamphlet. He thought it was the best he had ever seen and passed a copy of it along to the local medical society. Her sons enjoyed her pamphlet and she circulated it to friend. Eventually, Dennett published and distributed thousands of copies of her pamphlet, The Sex Side of Life.
So began Dennett's involvement with the birth control movement. Only a few other people were active in the birth control movement when Dennett entered the field. Emma Goldman and Dr. William J. Robinson, early American birth control activists, began their b.c. activities some ten years and Margaret Sanger had only been active for a few months when Dennett took up the cause, which was still seen as disreputable. In an age when women's only destiny was to be a wife and mother, disseminating information on b.c. was a grave criminal offense and was assumed to be attacking the foundation of society.
While Sanger wanted to limit access to contraceptive by requiring patients to get information from their physicians, Dennett stood firm on the principle that contraceptive information should be available to all - men and women, rich and poor. Dennett understood so well that sex for women could mean chronic health problems, death, or bearing too many children for a woman to care for properly. She also understood that sex was a normal, healthy part of a marriage that withholding sex to limit their fertility doomed many women's otherwise happy marriages.
After her children were educated, she went to live with her son, entered semi-retirement, and returned to her first love, art. Dennett advocated what we call today a marriage as a partnership, where both individuals are free to grow to their full potential in all areas and where both people share child-raising duties and financial responsibilities. She advocated financial independence for women for as long as women were financially dependent on men, talk about equality was just empty words. Dennett wanted to eliminate fear of and shame about sex since she understood that as long as sex was a shameful subject, birth control could not become a popular movement. She believed that sex had a purpose more than reproduction, that sex combined with love was almost ennobling, and that sex without love was an act befitting an animal. Yet, she did not wish to see young people "yelping noisily about freedom . . . ostentatiously showing the world that they dare all sorts of exhibitionism." She separated knowledge from license, wanting women to engage in sex responsibly. Until the end of her days, Dennett remained interested in the b.c. movement.
For more information on abortion and contraception, information in this month's newsletter came from the following books:
Websites
GOP In-Fighting Update 130, 131
And the RCRC Website articles:
"Respecting the Moral Agency of Women" by Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, Ph. D.
"Abortion: A Christian Ethical Perspective" by Dr. John Swomley
"Partial Compassion"
"Considering Abortion?"
Newsletters
The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice is an ecumenical movement composed of Christian, Jewish, and other non-Christian clergy and laity who believe that the pro-choice side needs a religious voice. The Coalition has out reach programs at national religious meetings, testifies to state and federal legislative committees, and lobbies state and federal legislatures on behalf of keeping women's right to abortion. RCRC may be contacted at: snail mail: 1025 Vermont Ave. NW., Suite 1130, Washington DC 20055 ;phone: 202-628-7700; fax: 202-628-7716 or visit their website at http://www.rcrc.org
"The woman has the task of being pretty, and of bringing children into the world. That is not such a crude and old-fashioned idea as it sounds. The female bird cleans herself for her husband, and cares for the eggs. And in exchange, the male bird takes care of bringing home dinner. He also stands watch and fights away all enemies." - Joseph Goebbels
Adolph Hitler's staunch anti-abortion policies are summarized by one historian:
"On May 26, 1933, two pieces of penal legislation . . . prohibit[ed] the availability of abortion facilities and services, . . . resulting in a 65 percent increase in yearly convictions between 1932 and 1938, when their number reached almost 7,000. From 1935 on, doctors and midwives were obliged to notify the regional State Health Office of every miscarriage. Women's names and addresses were then handed over to the police, who investigated the cases suspected of actually being abortions. In 1936 Heinrich Himmler, head of all police forces and the SS, established the Reich's Central Agency for the Struggle Against Homosexuality and Abortion, and in 1943, after three years of preparation by the Ministries of the Interior and of Justice, the law entitled Protection of Marriage, Family, Motherhood called for the death penalty in 'extreme cases'."
Sounds almost like Pat Robertson. There is a difference between being anti-abortion and being pro-life.
from the website of Refuse & Resist!, 305 Madison Ave., Suite 1166, New York, NY 10165, Phone: 212-713-5657 email: refuse@calyx.com
sunshine@pinn.net
Sunshine for Women encourages you to support our feminist sisters by purchasing their books, reading them, disseminating the ideas they contain, but most especially, by making their book available to our sisters, our daughters, and the community at large by requesting your school library, your public library, and area bookstores to carry their books. Remember it is not enough to write literature, history, and theology, we must pass these works on to future generations. Help us to preserve these works for a new generation by putting them on library bookshelves.
last updated December 1996
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