Introduction
As any of my previous readers can attest, I often blog while I’m angry. Usually I take to my blog to vent about a major issue that is important to me. My method is often a mix of logic and politics, and then I show how it connects to the Bible. Well, this post is different. This will be my first post calling someone out. Me, an internet nobody, will be burning someone a the stake to show what's wrong with a movement.
But who could it be? The CEO of Planned Parenthood? An author of a neo-feminist website like Jezebel? I'm out of examples so I'll just tell you: Abby Johnson. If you're not familiar with her, she was an employee of Planned Parenthood, saw the light, repented, and is now a major voice in the Christian pro-life movement.
Lest I sound as if I am referring to my own faith in the third person, I mean this distinction for a reason. The pro-life movement can be classified as religious or secular. The most active voices I hear under the religious banner are Christians, which makes sense due to the prevalence of the faith. In this post, I will be contrasting these two main branches, the Christian vs secular pro-life movements.
The Background
If you're familiar with both secular and Christian pro-life groups, skip to the next section.
The main pro-life message is "Life begins at conception." Indeed, the most heated debates are "What counts as life?" Is conception immediate? After the zygote is implanted on the uterus? The main idea is not to destroy potential life. After all, conception occurs but for some reason pregnancy doesn't occur, then that's that. The pro-choice logic of "Well you don't know," is begging the question. Generally, but not in all cases, this "wait and see" approach means things like Abortion and Plan B are out of the question.
The Christian message is usually "life is sacred, thou shalt not kill, Jesus loves you, please reconsider." Or some such form. When I see Christians back off from all four of these factors (or three if you combine the first two), I get anxious. It's the same feeling I get when Christians say to put aside disagreements on doctrine. After all, if putting aside doctrine was so easy there wouldn't be so many denominations.
Go to Abby Johnson's Facebook page. Scroll down if you're reading this at a later date to posts on 14 November. It's right there. I'll even quote the first sentence "If there was ever a time for ALL people of faith to put down their disagreements on religious doctrine, it is now." This is a problem.
Consider that Johnson is a Catholic. If I remember correctly, this means no contraception. So my issue is, what does putting aside doctrine have to do with anything? Some denominations allow contraception, but none that I am aware of allow abortions or Plan B. Additionally, as far as I remember, all denominations are against premarital sex. Catholic doctrine might have material from Popes and other high ranking members of the church, but the message is still the same across Christianity. This isn't to mention the dangers of ignoring doctrine.
It's always a bad idea to ignore doctrine because "set aside" really means ignore. We can't be ignoring the part about being pro-life by default as Christians, after all. I'm guessing if I went to a Catholic church, they wouldn't just set aside doctrine at my demand as a Protestant. There would be no point in being Catholic, or any denomination, if things could just be set aside.
This is all unless she is referring to other people of faith. Are we talking about the “not-mentioneds” like Muslims and Jews? Does it include pagans? If so, this is even less reason to not put aside doctrine. Unity in the pro-life movement is good, we don’t have to set aside doctrine to do it in any case, whether Christian and Atheist, Christian and Muslim, or any pairing.
The entire quote is either dangerous or vacuous. I'm not the FB status police, but there's more to this.
Problems in Paradise
I have taken the liberty of taking a comment on the thread of the aforementioned status (grammatical mistakes in original):
I think the focus needs to be more on not having a woman get to the point where she feels like she needs an abortion. we have no paid maternity leave. not a lot of single moms have a good support system (including child care and housing options). we shame moms who are young, single by telling them they should have kept their legs closed if they didn't want to get pregnant- saying nothing about the man who impregnated them. we tell our girls to say no, but not how to say yes with using protection, we deny our daughters birth control by insisting they take a purity pledge and when they suddenly end up pregnant- wonder why. we have girls who are in abusive relationships, parents who will disown their daughters over a teen pregnancy. women who are up over their heads in student loans who were raped at a party and can't pay their rent let alone raise a child. doesnt take a genius to figure out that socially we have a lot of work to do. instead of just focus on how to save the babies. save the women who have the babies.
It has some good points. Johnson herself liked the comment and replied that she completely agrees. It's the completely part that sent me into mental convulsions.
Maternal leave and support for mothers in general is a good thing. As a conservative, I want such matters taken care of responsibly by business that hire women, but I can see how the more liberal viewpoint is taken. If a business does give leave, it's usually not much. Method aside, the fact is that it's ridiculous to expect a woman to have a family and work the whole time, even while very pregnant. I have no fancy solution for this; I'm just saying I agree. The same goes for support and quality child care.
As for shaming single mothers, I agree that it isn't a very Christian response, which is implied in the comment. On the other hand, as Christians we're not supposed to have premarital sex. Period. Call it as it is. That doesn't mean you don't love the heck out of the single mother and her child and help if possible, but dammit, don't lie. I do agree that if a woman wants to have sex, she should use protection, though as you know I am against things like Plan B*. So here we are, already ignoring doctrine, as in the Bible, as in regardless of denomination.
This is the part where someone says "But Lu, maybe Abby doesn't agree with that part." To that I say "Great, then she should unlike the comment I reproduced, edit the reply comment to only agree with the relevant parts, and get rid of the doctrine part of the status while she’s there."
Moving on with the comment dissection, abusive relationships, being cast out of a family, and rape are touchy subjects. While I am firmly against all three, they are somewhat red herrings. If a woman is raped (God help the rapist, because I won't), or abused (same comment for rapists), I wouldn't want them to have an abortion. Why do we have to set aside doctrine to help them? And how can the person making this comment say how horrible abuse and abortion are, but say use protection? It’s a big mixed message.
May as well drop the Christian part and join the secular pro-life movement. Following the quotes I’ve used, that’s the bottom line.
Closing
If Abby Johnson means what she says, she should continue being Catholic but drop the Christian label from her work. Doctrine is core to Christianity and cannot just be set aside. If a denomination has to set aside doctrine to do pro-life work, it isn't Christian; the same goes as far as interfaith pro-life work.
Endorsement of the popular "If you're going to do it, use protection" is ludicrous. That's what non-Christians are doing with mixed results. It's a bad idea for a Christian and since methods can fail, it's a bad idea for pregnancy. In fact, proposing help sources for pregnant women and that old tagline about protection are the hallmark of the "They're going to do it anyway" approach. Isn't that what got us here in the first place, Christians or not?
Create the resources, yes, but be consistent. Be Christian, or don’t bother. Endorse opposing ideas (use protection vs don’t do it at all) and modern political correctness (put aside doctrine/our differences when it’s not necessary) and you may as well leave the church.
*The research says it doesn't cause abortions is from places like PP; it's not that I'm giving my view the default win because it says the opposite. It's that I'd rather be cautious about something so absolute.
