Anti-Abortion, Gospel Peace

The war in Vietnam de-militarized my conscience. And it was the war that first made me think about abortion.

I was an ardent anti-war high school kid. Then in 1969--at 17--I went to work for the United Farm Workers at a time when there was great concern about exposure to dangerous agricultural chemicals. I recall that I wrote a poem linking the many symptoms of the one violence: the war in Vietnam, the wholesale herbiciding of the drainage ditches, the clamor for abortion. Control, I thought. It's the obsession to control. People will destroy anything they can't control.

A few years later I was, as they say, sexually active. Any woman who's ever been in a similar situation can recognize this scene: a few restless nights when your period's a little delayed; then growing anxiety, tears, panic when it's really late.

Fortunately, those late periods were all false alarms. But after a few episodes like that, I had to clarify my values.

If I were pregnant, would I get an abortion?

No. I'm a pacifist.

At that time, it wasn't, "No, that wouldn't be fair to the child," or "No, that's against God's will." It wasn't even a matter of ethics, much less religion. It was more a question of self-concept: I'm a peace woman. If I kill when it's my choice, how can I ask anybody else not to kill when it's their choice?

So that's where it stood, personally; but though my lifestyle began to be transformed by that decision, I never thought of it politically. I knew I'd protect my unborn child; I didn't think of protecting anybody else's.

I remained a closet pro-lifer until about three years ago, when I started getting into anti-nuclear education. I became aware of what radioactive contamination would do to the unborn. The research of a host of anti-nuclear scientists began to press in on me--Drs. Alice Stewart and Ernest Sternglass, Rosalie Bertell, John Gofman--plutonium-239 crossing the placenta, X- and gamma-radiation zapping through the uterine wall.

But how could it be wrong--"corporate crime"--for an unborn baby to be damaged accidentally or collaterally, if it's O.K. to poison them or tear them apart deliberately?

As a movement, we anti-nukers were morally incoherent. We weren't really agreed that the unborn have any rights which the born are bound to respect.

The anti-abortion cause is, in some respects, a gospel peace movement among conservatives. Who else on the Right protests so strongly against dehumanization, or insists so passionately upon nonviolent solutions? And the anti-nuclear cause is already, in its way, the liberal counterpart of right-to-life. Who else on the Left speaks of the vulnerability of the unborn child, or proclaims the future generation as the value which must outweigh our temporary convenience?

So the anti-nuke movement radicalized me on the subject of abortion: It laid on me an equal burden to protect the born and the unborn as well. But the means for doing this continues to pose problems for me.

My background has about equal parts of anarchism and civil rights. On the one hand, I agree with Abraham Lincoln's saying that those who influence public opinion have more power than those who make laws, because they render laws capable or incapable of being enforced.

On the other hand, what would be Lincoln's response to the "pro-choice" slaveholder who said, "Look, if you don't want to own slaves, you don't have to. But you can't expect to take away my freedom to own slaves. I just don't happen to believe that they're human beings in the full sense of the word. So you have your beliefs, I have my beliefs, we live in a pluralistic society, don't bug me."

We do live in a pluralistic society. We don't have a consensus about protecting the unborn. But I believe there will be a consensus some day.

I think this consensus--including its leadership--will involve people on the Left. It will be led by feminists, and in particular by women who have had abortions, and who identify abortion as part of their emotional, financial, and sexual exploitation. It will be led by doctors and nurses who have participated in abortions but want to stop it.

When that happens, abortion will probably become illegal. Instead of pitting women and children against each other as adversaries, we will be committed to nurture both to their full human potential.

I'm not working for law directly; but perhaps indirectly. Because I, and a growing company of others, am striving to integrate--in my writing, my anti-war organizing, my soup-kitchen work, my prayers, the way I live my life--that holistic commitment that doesn't cut off anybody, even the youngest tiny child.

Juli Loesch, the founder of Pro-Lifers for Survival, was a member of Pax Christi, a Catholic peace community in Erie, Pennsylvania, when this article appeared.