Friday of last week there was a seismic change in United States law because the 50 year old Roe v. Wade ruling, guaranteeing access to safe and legal abortion, was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. There were cheers from everyone who has been fighting for this moment for years, but I wonder how many of them realize the practical and theological implications.
The God of the Christian Faith does not work through the law, but through the Gospel of salvation through grace. God granted his creation free will, in the hope that humanity freely would seek to align with the divine will. If it is legislated, it misses that important point.
When religious leaders steal others’ freedom and impose their particular understandings of God’s will (which we saw in Calvin’s Geneva; the Inquisitions; the Crusades; the massacre of the Cathars; Salem 1692), the only result is that people are persecuted and people die. The job of a Christian is to emulate Christ in living a life that inspires others to freely seek God’s will and kingdom, not to impose it by force.
Additionally, those who are stripped of their freedom usually do not embrace the ideology of those who took it. Most victims simply will reject all aspects of it. So, ironically, those who work so hard to legislate their understanding of righteousness, are actually turning others against the God they purport to serve and making themselves a stumbling block to those individuals’ salvation. Only the Holy Spirit can create faith, but humans are experts at destroying it.
On a practical level, desperate women will not cease to have abortions. They simply will lose access to safe ones. In many cases, not only the baby, but the woman will die as a result. Our history bears it out.
If you have never been raped, you do not have the right to tell a woman who has been brutalized in that way that she must carry her rapist’s child. If you have never been pregnant with a child who did not develop an essential body part, you cannot tell that mother she must carry the child to term. If you oppose abortion, you should not have one, but it is sinfully arrogant to think you understand every woman’s situation and can legislate your personal view, devoid of grace.
Many of the activists working to strip away a woman’s autonomy over her body do not remember the days when women needed their husband’s permission to use birth control or have a credit card. Only those of my grandmother’s generation remember when women could not even vote. If we allow ourselves to be led by reactionary figures such as Justice Clarence Thomas, who was already inviting court cases to revisit issues such as contraception access, women could find ourselves in a foreign land, somewhere between the literary dystopia of the “Handmaid’s Tale” and the actual history of early 20th Century United States. For now, we still have a separation of Church and State in the United States. Most of us don’t want to live in a theocracy of religious zealots of any religion. If you don’t want to some day wake up there, it’s time pay attention and to vote!
Deena Sherman was graduated from seminary in 1989 with a Master of Arts Degree from Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago.