15. No. 590333, California Superior Court, San Francisco, September 24, 1968. 16. Sherri Finkbine, "The Lesser of Two Evils" in A. Guttmacher, ed., The Case for Legalized Abortion Now. Berkeley: The Diablo Press, 1967, p. 15-20.

17. Rodgers, et al v. Danforth, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, Cause No. 18360-2.

18. Callahan, op. cit., p. 479.

19. March 1968, p. 17.

20. Robert E. Hall, "Abortion in American Hospitals," American Journal of Public Health, November 1967, p. 1934.

21. Gold, Erhardt, Jacobziner and Nelson, "Therapeutic Abortions in New York City: A 20 Year Review," American Journal of Public Health, July, 1965, p. 964 (Table 1).

22. 381 U.S. 479, 503 (1965).

23. 351 U.S. 12 (1956).

24. People v. Phelps, 15 N.Y.S. 440 (3dn't 1891) aff'd, 133 N.Y. 267, 30 N.E. 1012 (1892). People v. Lovell, 40 Misc. 2d. 458, 242 N.Y.S. 2d 958 (Oneida Cty. Ct., 1963).

25. 357 U.S. 449, 462 (1958).

26. 290 Fed. 411 (D. Mont. 1923).

27. Callahan, op. cit., p. 434.

Abortion:

A

Human

Choice

ALLEN J. MOORE

God has not only given man and woman the gift of life, but has also placed

upon them the responsibility for choosing how life is to be lived. To be human is to have the responsibility for making moral choices that are sometimes difficult and are often made up of conflicting claims.

To be faced with an unwanted pregnancy in which abortion is an option is one of those experiences that confronts us with the human necessity to choose between the preservation of unborn life and the general welfare of a particular woman and the society in which she lives.

Consciously or no, what such a decision requires is a sorting out of theological beliefs and ethical values which inform the choice which will finally be made.

A popular slogan of the anti-abortionists has within it an element of truth. "To make it legal does not make it right." For after the law has insured the right of a woman to have an abortion and the physician has indicated that medically an abortion is feasible and possibly even a necessity, the woman herself is faced with the very human act of making a moral choice.

Among the several concerns of theology is the question of what it means to be a person before God. To be a person is to be both free and limited, and it is in the act of making a moral decision that we come to realize how free we are to choose and how limiting the choices become. There are few questions in our time that call forth as fully our theological understanding of who we are as persons and our ethical responsibility for all of life as does the abortion issue.

23

This is not, however, a new question. From almost the beginning of mankind, the unwanted pregnancy has been a problem. As man and woman have evolved from primitive to more advanced forms of human relationships, they have been faced with the necessity to find effective means to control reproduction. Even vigorous religious opposition and social and legal prohibitions have not deterred their attempts to separate human sexual relations from procreation.

As humans have increased in their self-consciousness, they have sought to transcend the impulse to copulate blindly and to bring to sexual union controls that will either prevent conception or interrupt it if it should occur. Man and woman are decision-making beings and it is this mark of humanity. that allows them to choose how their sexual and procreative functions are to serve their welfare and that of their society.

The abortion problem in history

The use of abortion as a solution to the problem of unwanted pregnancies has varied from society to society and from one historical period to another. Anthropological data indicate that both induced abortion and infanticide have been practiced to some degree in all societies as a means of controlling the birth rate and for disposing of infants who are believed deformed or bewitched or who are felt to be a potential burden to society.

Heavy sanctions have been imposed in some societies to prevent the practice of abortion and to encourage the growth of the population. Other societies have either tolerated abortion or have made it mandatory that certain pregnancies be aborted.1

In many primitive societies, abortion was practiced because the nomadic life style made children something of a handicap for a wandering people. Eugenic concerns and an excess of children led to the widespread acceptance of abortion in the Roman world. Here as in most of the ancient societies abortion and infanticide were not basically moral issues, mainly because there did not exist the same sense of reverence and respect for human life that came to be characteristic of Christian thought.

There is no prohibition in the Old Testament and there seems to be no consensus in Jewish tradition as to the morality of voluntary abortion. Hebrew law viewed a miscarriage caused by another as an injury to the family, and not an offense against the unborn. Traditionally, a fetus was the property right of the father and one causing it to be aborted against his will was required to pay damages. It was this tradition that laid the basis. for the moral worth and value of unborn life.

The New Testament is silent on the matter of abortion and although the Christian church generally forbade its practice, it was also tolerated at times as a moral necessity. Documents dated as early as 100 A.D. counseled Christians not to submit to abortion, but did not suggest that the practice of abortion was a serious sin or a crime worthy of punishment. Apparently many Christians continued to follow the custom of their times and sought abortions in spite of some church opposition.

Church views of marriage and sex

Quite early the Church came to affirm that marriage was primarily for procreation and to believe that sexual pleasures should be repressed if at all possible. This view eventually led to an elevation of celibacy and the belief that nature, including sexual desire, was fundamentally faulty and had to be regulated by reason and in obedience to God.

This idea is illustrated by Augustine who saw every sexual act as intrinsically evil, redeemed only by a good intention, mainly that of procreation. Marriage, therefore, served the purpose of bringing forgiveness to the carnal desires of man and woman. The sexual act, therefore, became a minor sin when the couple was motivated by the desire to conceive a child. The extent to which the early Fathers understood sex as a natural sin is explained by Sherwin Bailey in the following statement:

While intention to procreate relieves coition of its sinfulness to the extent that blame is not imputed to husband and wife, the act itself still remains the channel by which concupiscence and guilt on account of Man's first transgression are transmitted from parents to child; hence the need of baptism in which the guilt is washed away—though the lustful impulse remains.2

Two other factors influenced Christian teachings. It was a common practice in the Roman world for parents to destroy unwanted infants at the time of birth. Pregnant women sometimes received little more attention than that given to livestock. This disregard for human life incensed the Christians and in 318 A.D. Constantine decreed the killing of infants to be a crime. This new regard for infant life carried over to fetal life and some early Fathers came to look upon abortion as an act of murder.3

A second reason that abortion was opposed by the Church was more sociological and, as is often the case with theologians, practical considerations became the motivation for the formulation of doctrinal guides. In its need to expand and to strengthen its position in the West, the Church encouraged large families as evidence that the husband and wife were faithful to the commandments of God. From almost the beginning the Church welcomed children as a sign that God was increasing the number of new Christians in the world. This value placed upon children as a "gift of God" was undoubtedly a factor in the development of a theology of nascent life and contributed to evolution of the idea that abortion was a sin against nature.

Moral theologians have long given attention to the question as to when human life begins. In the ancient world, a distinction was made between a formed and unformed fetus and Aristotle held that the fetus did not actually receive a spiritual or human soul until forty days after conception for the male and eighty days for the female. This view of "infusion" was apparently held by Thomas Aquinas, and it was not until the 17th century that Roman Catholics in general came to the view that infusion of the soul takes place at conception.

Because of these doubts as to the precise point at which human life begins, some moral theologians up until the sixteenth century apparently

tolerated abortions. But in response to the Reformation and as counter influence to worldly trends, Pope Sixtus V placed stringent restraints upon all carnal practices, including abortion. Although his directions were later modified by the Papacy, the Roman Catholic Church came increasingly to teach that abortion was moral sin because of the spiritual nature of nascent life.

The Protestant Reformation

The Protestant reformers of the 16th century did not initially depart greatly from the customs of their time or the teachings of the Roman Catholic church on matters of sex. What did occupy the reformers was the reinterpretation of faith and its demands upon men. The result was the formulation of classical Protestant principles that eventually came to be the basis of a new humanism and a new understanding of the nature of the moral life.

The emphasis was no longer on human virtues or on the church as a basis for ethics, but on the responsible decisions that every individual must make in the light of his best understanding of the Christian faith. Because ethics came to find its content in the realization of faith and not in natural law, it became possible for Protestants to believe that one could change one's mind about moral practices and thus for Protestant theology to be open to new truth and to the reinterpretation of scripture in the light of changing circumstances. This is what Paul Tillich describes as an ethic for "the right time"-the concrete fulfillment of love and faith in a particular time in history.

The reformers did come to change their mind about sex and quite early attacked celibacy with its emphasis upon the virtue of sexual continence. The status of marriage was thus enhanced and came to be understood as a social relationship designed for the sexual needs of men and women.

Some of the reformers continued to fear the pleasures inherent in sexual intercourse. Luther, in spite of his attempt to elevate marriage to a vocation at least as valid as celibacy, could not resolve completely his own conflicts with the flesh. Marriage, as he understood it, was at most an answer to sexual desire-“A medicine,” a “hospital for the sick," and the only effective remedy to the desires of the flesh which preoccupied mankind. For him, procreation remained the most justified consequence for sexual intercourse.

Fortunately, Calvin was somewhat more positive in his belief that the sexual act was "undefiled, honorable and holy, because it is a pure institution of God." Although he did not emphasize the enjoyments of sex, he did reject the proposition that the act itself was a source of sin.

Even while retaining the influence of "puritanism," Protestantism began to recover the sense of joy and passion inherent in the sexual act and came increasingly to see sexual intercourse in a larger context than procreation. Sex came to be understood by the later reformers as a "blessing" and as a one-flesh union that serves for "procreation, remedy against sin, mutual society, and comfort."