Exactly eight years ago, Sojourners printed a special issue titled, "What Does It Mean to be Pro-Life?" Members of the traditional anti-abortion movement had prescribed an acceptable "pro-life" position as one that argued for a constitutional amendment banning abortion. Nothing less would do, and nothing more was deemed necessary.
Confessing our own lack of clarity about specific legal remedies for abortion and our mixed feelings about the Right to Life movement, we nevertheless declared our opposition to abortion. And we argued that the "pro-life" label, to be true and accurate, should reflect a commitment to the sanctity of all life, born and unborn.
It was a definition that stretched and challenged two dissimilar and often antagonistic groups to be consistent in their values and to unite around a shared reverence for life. Peace and justice groups that opposed nuclear weapons, capital punishment, and violence were encouraged to see opposition to abortion as another issue of preserving and protecting life; while anti-abortion groups were urged to be as concerned about women's rights and life after birth as they were about life in the womb.
While that argument, more recently referred to as the "seamless garment" ethic, has won some converts over the years, abortion has continued to divide people and groups more than unite them. Most peace and justice groups remain "pro-choice" on the issue; the vast majority of persons affiliated with the Right to Life movement have not wavered in their support for nuclear weapons and capital punishment or their opposition to equal rights for women and many social programs; and even the churches have been unable to agree on abortion. Sojourners remains committed to the sanctity of all life.
In the 15 years since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion, there have been very few changes in the size, constituency, or tactics of pro- or anti-abortion forces. Every two and four years abortion has been the determining issue for millions of American voters, on both sides of the issue, when they enter the voting booth. Yet despite the election of numerous anti-abortion legislators and an anti-abortion president, abortion laws have remained largely unchanged.
A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that Americans oppose a constitutional amendment banning abortion by 60 to 34 percent. Yet even statistics themselves produce disagreement and argument. The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) points to results of its own recent poll to argue that 88 percent of Americans support some type of abortion rights. But a close reading of NARAL's poll results indicates that only 39 percent of those polled support abortion under any circumstances and 59 percent oppose abortion except in cases of rape or when the mother's life is endangered.
Yet, for all the complexity and emotion of the issue, for all the anti-abortion letter-writing, marches, prayer services, abortion clinic pickets, and other tactics of the Right to Life movement--some of which have been considered questionable, and even offensive--and for all the millions of dollars spent both to outlaw and protect abortion, abortion rates in this country have remained essentially unchanged.
GIVEN SUCH entrenchment and deadlock, many of us were pleasantly surprised this summer to see what appears to be significant movement on the abortion issue within the churches and within the pro-life movement itself. Three Protestant denominations recently voted to, at the very least, re-examine their positions on abortion.
The previously pro-choice American Baptist Church, which claims 1.6 million members, overwhelmingly passed a resolution that stresses the sanctity of life and urges the avoidance of abortion whenever possible, while encouraging sex education, sexual abstinence, contraception, and adoption. American Baptists also voted to withdraw from the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights. In other meetings the Presbyterian Church (USA), representing three million members, created a task force to review the pro-choice position it adopted in 1970, and the 9.3 million-member United Methodist Church condemned abortion as a method of birth control or "gender selection."
But the biggest and most controversial new development on the abortion front is Operation Rescue, a nonviolent, direct action, anti-abortion campaign. With drama, organization, and speed, Operation Rescue has brought massive civil disobedience to the pro-life movement; by mid-September more than 5,000 persons had been arrested and hundreds of those had been jailed for participating in sit-ins at abortion clinics in 30 cities.
According to Operation Rescue founder Randall A. Terry of Binghamton, New York, the campaign has four goals: to stop all abortions at a clinic on the day of a sit-in; to close other abortion clinics in a city on that day; to put pro-choice forces on the defensive; and to create the social pressure necessary for political change.
The Operation Rescue campaign has managed to upset groups on just about every end of the spectrum. While anti-abortion heavyweights such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have endorsed the campaign, former Southern Baptist Convention President Charles Stanley and the leadership of the National Right to Life Committee have criticized its tactics. Operation Rescue has infuriated pro-choice and women's rights groups, who have been trying to fight back with counter-demonstrations, court injunctions, and other legal maneuvers.
The Operation Rescue campaign has elicited such passionate responses in part because it raises, in dramatic, microcosmic form, the same complex questions and hard choices raised by the abortion issue itself. For example, do its actions embody both the spirit and the action of nonviolence? Is its anti-abortion stance wedded to nothing but a constitutional amendment, or does it also see working for economic justice for women, better health care and social programs for the poor, increased sex education and contraceptive availability as legitimate and necessary ways to oppose abortion? Do its actions perpetuate our society's systemic oppression of women? Are there any women in its leadership? Does Operation Rescue have pro-life positions on other justice issues?
We must consider not only the campaign's methods and principles, but also its results. It appears that Operation Rescue campaigns are saving lives: the Atlanta Care Center, that city's largest pro-life pregnancy counseling facility, reported a tripling of its case load during the long Operation Rescue campaign in that city.
The deep commitment, increased stakes, and "effectiveness" of the Operation Rescue campaign should cause all of us to ask ourselves what we are doing about abortion. Is our opposition to abortion, and the ways in which we express it, different from our positions and actions on other social and political issues? Have we allowed the problems and shortcomings of the anti-abortion movement to excuse our lack of involvement?
Recent actions by the churches and the Operation Rescue campaign must encourage us to, once again, seriously and prayerfully consider the question, "What does it mean to be pro-life?" May God give us love, wisdom, compassion, and commitment as we search for our own answers.
Vicki Kemper was news editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.
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