On the Church and Planned Parenthood

I am not American but the current Planned Parenthood scandal certainly strikes a nerve. I haven't watched any videos but have read some transcripts and a variety of solicited and unsolicited opinions on the matter. I'm not through thinking about this, but having failed to keep quiet on social media I now find myself feeling compelled to try to articulate a concern. It's about a temptation which always crops up in churches when we get talking against abortions. It's the temptation toward sanctimonious outrage which tends to be the go-to response from people who, like me, have been pro-life in name but not so much in action. We can offer up all the legitimate excuses in the book, but not many of us have really pushed ourselves against our felt-limitations all that much.

Let's face it: Abortion is tough because for many of us the act itself a cut-and-dry ethical no-no, and yet the context in which it occurs makes opposition to it very complicated. Like it or not, ours is a society which protects sexual liberty while simultaneously heightening pervasive sexual temptation to inhumane levels, and then puts most of the responsibility for dealing with the consequences on individuals themselves. Female individuals, mostly. When it comes down to it, most of the responsibility is on women--particularly less-privileged women. That means sexual liberty is significantly more 'liberating' for men than for women. We could wish this fact away but it is still there.

Thus in the current scenario there are a number of related issues which make a straight-up de-funding of Planned Parenthood problematic. One is the (apparently) inadequate level of preparedness to replace the non-abortive services which Planned Parenthood offers, were it to disappear. This is more than a merely pragmatic issue. It is a real and recurring moral problem for pro-lifers like me. So much so that it stings: Without such readiness our anti-abortionism really does put us on the wrong side of a woman's rights issue. We cannot hide behind the dictum that 'these women should simply not get pregnant in the first place.' The statement only proves the point and exposes our own complicity in the social politic (of inconsistent individualism). Anti-abortion legislation which leaves unchallenged the exploitatively male-biased sexual-culture on one side, and offers inadequate help to pregnant women (especially of lesser means) on the other, is simply not prepared to be pro-life in the fullest sense of the term.

I say this as a long-term 'pro-lifer' who has done next-to-nothing about it other than to throw votes away to conservative parties who, in the end, were simply dangling anti-abortion sentiment like a carrot on a stick. This is a legal and political issue but it should never have been left to legislators and politicians. To be honest I'm not sure what exactly I personally should have done, but that probably just tells you I let it slip from my mind most the time because I was too daunted or alone. And yet we all know people who have done things (worked for crisis pregnancy centres, fostered and adopted children, fought against sexual exploitation, etc), and we can all say to what degree we've been helpful to them. Me not so much. Part of it, I confess, has been paralysis. Seeing the forest for the trees has been overwhelming, and I have caved to hopelessness rather than living in hope, faith, and love.

John 8:1-11

This is not a guilt-parade. It is just to say that our anti-abortionism, where it exists, needs to be penitent rather than sanctimonious. Not all Christians are in fact opposed to abortion, but those who are do need to try to be consistent. A church opposed to abortion has to be a church which thoroughly supports women before and after pregnancy. It also needs to be a church which is prepared to lean into and offer if not a completely alternative social politic at least a credibly viable one. Else it ends up offering mostly words. Words which on this issue feel like more for the pile of inequity against women. Words which starkly contrast to Jesus' silent solidarity with the woman about to be stoned for adultery.

Jesus had things to say on other occasions of course. Words which established a powerful alternative of life in self-giving community, where sex finds its rightful place in covenant health. Words which established grace-communities of daily confession and forgiveness, mutual support and accountability. Powerful words--as long as they don't end in the futility of resurrection-less inactivity. By the grace of God I hope I might at least be found among those who follow where those words take them. I don't have much to offer at the moment, I'm afraid, except maybe these few unpolished words about our words. I guess it is just that I have heard how I sound in moments like these, when words spouted in black and white, without attention to the greater web of implicated actions required, were exposed for their emptiness--if not their outright pharisaism. I say this in the penitence of political and personal paralysis. Christ have mercy.