De-escalating the Abortion Wars

Abortion is extremely contentious, and for more than 45 years now, there has been considerable “warfare” between “pro-choice” and “pro-life” people. Is there any way to de-escalate such negative polarization?  

The Abortion Wars

James Davison Hunter is a “Distinguished Professor” at the University of Virginia and author of the seminal book Culture Wars (1991).

“The Issue of Abortion” is a major subsection of the ninth chapter of my book Fed up with Fundamentalism, and as I mention there, Hunter (b. 1955) has suggested that abortion could well be the catalyst for America’s next civil war.

That kind of talk didn’t end in the 1990s, though. In May of last year, the conservative Christian Post featured an online article titled “The coming civil war over abortion.” That same month, The Guardian posted “Christian rightwingers warn abortion fight could spark US civil war.”

Among Christians, abortion was primarily only a Catholic issue until Francis Schaeffer convinced Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell in 1979 to use it to gain political power—and the abortion wars have now raged for four decades among Christians as well as in society at large.

In this election year, abortion is at the heart of the political “wars” between the Republicans and Democrats. Vice President Pence said in his acceptance speech last week,

President Trump has stood without apology for the sanctity of human life every day of this administration. Joe Biden, he supports taxpayer funding of abortion, right up to the moment of birth.

(It has often been said that truth is the first casualty in war, and Pence’s last statement is misleading and untrue.)

De-escalation Efforts

In spite of the rhetoric being used by the Trump administration and its staunch conservative evangelical followers, there are both Catholics and evangelical Christians who are seeking to de-escalate the abortion wars by broadening their ethical concerns.

In 1972 a group of Catholic sisters organized for social justice as the Network. They became widely known because of their first Nuns on the Bus tour in 2012. (In 2014 I wrote about them and their leader, Sister Simone Campbell, here.)

Long known as just NETWORK, their website is NetworkLobby.org and they are promoting PopeFrancisVoters.org in their campaign against the current President. Even though they are Catholics, they say little about abortion and much about a broad gamut of social justice issues.

Ron Sider, the founder of Evangelicals for Social Action, is an example of a Protestant evangelical who has through the years been strongly against abortion. But long ago he began to emphasize the importance of being “completely pro-life,” publishing a book by that name in 1987.

In de-escalating the abortion wars, Sider was the editor of a book published earlier this year under the title The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity.

A Spark of Light

Jodi Picoult is a superlative novelist, and I was greatly impressed with her 2018 novel A Spark of Light. In fact, I decided to write this blog article mainly because of reading it.

The novel is about just one day—a very fateful day when there was a shooting in an abortion clinic.

Picoult skillfully narrates the deep thoughts and convictions of all the people involved in that tragic day: the shooter, the policeman seeking to get the shooter’s hostages released, the protesters outside the clinic, the women inside the clinic, and the doctors and nurses providing the abortion services. 

Dr. Willie Parker (b. 1962)

The doctor performing the abortions that day is based on a real-life abortion doctor, Willie Parker, who tells his story in Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice (2017).  

Even though it will be quite perplexing to some, Parker believes that performing abortions and “speaking out on behalf of the women who want abortions” is his Christian calling and his “life’s work” (p. 16).

For all of you who wonder how a Christian can justify abortion, I highly recommend reading Picoult’s novel and/or Parker’s book. Doing so thoughtfully, I believe, would go far toward de-escalating the abortion wars.

The Deplorable Persistence of Racism

In spite of having an article ready to post this morning, I felt compelled to write this piece yesterday, the day after VP Pence’s theatrical protest of the protesters at Sunday’s NFL game in Indianapolis. 

Trump’s/Pence’s Protest 

As has been in the news so much, too much, in the past weeks, the President has made some players in the National Football League (NFL) the target of repeated criticism. It all started back on Sept. 22 when DJT spoke at a rally in Alabama for Senate primary candidate Luther Strange. 

At a loss for appropriate words, as is often the case, at that rally DJT publicly called some NFL players SOBs. That was his depiction of those who have knelt rather than standing and saluting the flag during the singing of the national anthem.

From the next day on, DJT has persistently tweeted criticism of the protesting players, NFL owners, and the NFL in general for permitting such protests. 

DJT approved (or ordered?) Pence’s “political stunt,” as some have characterized it, of walking out of the stadium when (according to this article) on Oct. 8 for “the second week in a row, the 49ers had more than 20 players kneeling during the national anthem with their hands over their hearts.” 

(It has been reported that the cost of the Veep’s trip to Indianapolis for his brief appearance at the game cost us U.S. taxpayers around $200,000.) 

The NFL Player’s Protest

At most of you know, the protest of the NFL players was initiated last year by Colin Kaepernick, the then quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers. During his team’s last preseason games, Kaepernick sat and later kneeled during the singing of the national anthem. 

Actually, Nate Boyer, a U.S. Army veteran convinced Colin Kaepernick to kneel, rather than sit, while protesting police brutality during the national anthem, and Kaepernick has clearly said that he has “great respect for the men and women that have fought for this country.”

In a post-game interview on Aug. 26 last year, however, Kaepernick said,

I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.

The protest against racism of mostly black NFL players has greatly escalated this year after the President’s public remarks and persistent tweets.

Racism’s Persistence

Not only are DJT’s tweets persistent, the prevalence of racism seems to be quite persistent also.

Last Sunday when I was checking Yahoo! Sports online to see how the Colts-49ers game turned out, I began to read comment after comment in support of Trump/Pence and in criticism of the protesting NFL players.

Sadly, there were dozens of comments dissing the protesters before I saw one that mentioned the point of the ongoing protest of the black players: the persistence of racism.

I couldn’t help but wonder if many of those who wrote were not in the batch of “deplorables” that Hillary so famously/infamously mentioned last year. For example, here are a couple of the racist comments I happened to see:

“Blacks destroy their neighborhoods, why not their workplace?”

“No more NFL games for me. I'll just go skiing instead. There aren't any black skiers or blacks within 199 miles of a ski area.”

The nation continues to face real and perplexing problems. Kneeling during the national anthem isn’t one of those problems. Racism is. When are DJT and the VP going to deal seriously with that problem?

What about Pence for VP?

Donald Trump was scheduled to announce his pick for a running mate this morning, but that has reportedly been postponed. Assuming Trump will be confirmed as the Republican nominee in Cleveland next week, the person he announces, whenever that is, will become the nominee for Vice President.

Although he may surprise many people, including me, Trump will most likely announce Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his VP choice. And this seems to be a good pick, better than the others said to be on his short list.

Yesterday the Washington Post posted an online article titled “Mike Pence is everything Donald Trump is not.” The article is by Andrew Downs, director of the non-partisan Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics at Indiana University-Purdue University. 

In Downs’s opinion, Pence would balance the Republican ticket in almost every way. I think that is an accurate assessment.

Quite clearly, Pence is at least many of the things Trump is not: youngish (he turned 57 in June just a week before Trump turned 70), the husband of one wife (as opposed to Trump’s three wives), an articulate speaker (here is the C-Span link to this year’s “State of the State” address), and a seasoned politician with 12 years in the U.S. House of Representatives and now in his fourth year as a state governor.

In addition, while Trump’s Christian, and especially his evangelical, credentials are somewhat questionable, Pence is clearly a committed Christian believer. He self-identifies as a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican—and “in that order,” he says.

Pence was raised Catholic, but in the spring of 1978, while in college and still 18, he had a deep spiritual conversion that eventually led him to become an evangelical Christian.

He was also a Democrat when a young man. In 1980 when he voted in his first presidential election at age 21, he voted for Jimmy Carter.

Pence as the VP candidate should help Trump snare most of the white evangelical vote—although a Pew Research article posted yesterday indicated that already 78% of such registered voters would vote for Trump—5% more than said at this time four years ago that they would vote for Romney.

He has been called “a favorite hard-core conservative.” He takes a very strong anti-abortion rights position and in 2011 he led the federal government to the brink of shutdown in a failed attempt to de-fund Planned Parenthood.

Pence is also strongly anti-gay and was a supporter of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in Indiana—at least until it became necessary for him to waffle because of economic considerations.

He signed RFRA on March 26, 2015, and there was an outcry that the bill was discriminatory against gays and lesbians. So a week later he signed a bill that acted as an amendment intending to protect LGBT people.

Signing the first bill angered many Hoosiers who are not evangelicals, and signing the second bill angered many who are conservative Christians. Partly because of that issue, Pence doesn’t have a high approval rating in Indiana at this time (only about 40%).

Last week at the Dearborn [Mo.] Christian Church I led the adult Sunday School class discussion about “Christians and the 2016 elections.” One woman remarked that she thinks it is important for people to consider carefully who the candidates for Vice President are as well as who the nominees for President are. I agree.

Even though I wouldn’t vote for Trump regardless of who he picked for VP, Governor Pence is probably a good choice for the Republican Party.