One reason many LDS voters chose to elect Trump is that they, like many social conservatives, oppose abortion.[1] However, LDS theology is not nearly as anti-abortion as many other conservative religions. Like many other platforms, this is one where both parties’ views are potentially consistent with the church’s stance. From the Church Handbook of Instructions:
| 21.4.1 |
AbortionThe Lord commanded, “Thou shalt not … kill, nor do anything like unto it” (D&C 59:6). The Church opposes elective abortion for personal or social convenience. Members must not submit to, perform, arrange for, pay for, consent to, or encourage an abortion. The only possible exceptions are when:
Even these exceptions do not justify abortion automatically. Abortion is a most serious matter and should be considered only after the persons responsible have consulted with their bishops and received divine confirmation through prayer. Church members who submit to, perform, arrange for, pay for, consent to, or encourage an abortion may be subject to Church discipline. As far as has been revealed, a person may repent and be forgiven for the sin of abortion. |
I remember the one time this issue came up on my mission. We met a woman who asked us to come teach her. She was distraught because as a Catholic, abortion was considered a mortal sin, and she was seeking absolution. According to Catholicism, there is forgiveness in confession. I suspect she wanted to hear from another minister whether it was a mortal sin or not, and that she wanted us to absolve her. She may have also felt more comfortable talking to women. As Mormon missionaries, we could not recommend her for baptism without the mission president interviewing her, and in retrospect, I don’t think she was looking to change religions. At the time, I was far too young and naive to really understand her motives. She was nearly hysterical when she spoke with us, and fear of her husband was a big part of that, as well as fear that she had committed an unpardonable sin. As a Catholic, she was taught that the fetus has a soul, and in a church that believes in original sin, that meant to her that her unbaptized fetus would be consigned to limbo upon death. Catholic abortion policies are based on protecting the unborn.
Other motives to prevent abortion include:
- The rights of fathers. To those deeply invested in patriarchal culture, allowing a woman to relieve herself of the burden of motherhood was a direct threat to the “rights” men had to impregnate a woman. Abortion was usually considered related to witchcraft, particularly since an abortion was often procured by drinking a concoction of poisonous herbs. This dangerous practice could result in killing the mother if not done right. Abortion has usually put the mother’s life at risk, but then again, so has childbirth.
- The rights of women. Most who favor allowing abortions do so based on the argument that women should not be compelled to carry or raise a child that they either don’t want or don’t feel they can support. This includes pregnancy caused by rape or incest, in which case the woman did not consent to the sexual act that created the life. LDS policy (see above) also states that abortion is permissible in these circumstances. Likewise, the health of the mother is considered in allowing abortions as some pregnancies carry a high risk of the loss of the mother’s life. Again, this is a permissible reason per LDS policy.
- Quality of life. This covers a range of concerns, including birth defects that would render the child’s life painful or onerous to support, requiring artificial means. At the most liberal end, it would also include elective abortions due to poverty or other lack of economic or emotional support. Studies in the book Freakonomics describe the decline in crime that occurred in inner cities 20 years after Roe v. Wade made abortion legal in the US, illustrating that when abortion is illegal, unwanted pregnancies to poverty-stricken mothers often create a vicious circle of crime. Children grow up with too little money and support, often in dire circumstances with minimal care and sometimes neglect or even abuse. Is it better for them not to be born?
Which brings us to the real question when religions weigh in on abortion: the theology of the soul. When does the soul enter the body? When does a fetus go from a living thing to a living person? [2] And what happens to the souls of the unborn?
In Abraham 3, scripture that is unique to the LDS tradition, we learn in v. 18 that spirits are eternal:
if there be two spirits, and one shall be more intelligent than the other, yet these two spirits, notwithstanding one is more intelligent than the other, have no beginning; they existed before, they shall have no end, they shall exist after, for they are gnolaum,[3] or eternal.
Mormon theology is murky on when the spirit enters the body. Other religions are on record with stronger opinions. The Book of Mormon provides some possible insight in 3 Nephi 1: 13:
13 Lift up your head and be of good cheer; for behold, the time is at hand, and on this night shall the sign be given, and on the morrow come I into the world, to show unto the world that I will fulfil all that which I have caused to be spoken by the mouth of my holy prophets.
If this is the pattern for all humans, the spirit enters the body soon before birth. If this is so, it means that abortions are killing a body but not dispossessing the spirit. It doesn’t necessarily follow that abortion cannot be a sin, or that it’s morally positive, but it does de-escalate the comparison to murder that many non-LDS opponents of abortion use; for Mormons to call abortion murder is theological hyperbole because we don’t share a set doctrine that the spirit resides in the body in utero. Theologically, at least, our stance on abortion is more neutral and less fraught than that of other conservative religions.
This doctrinal gray area may provide some comfort, but it also brings up new questions:
- When are spirits assigned to specific bodies? If those bodies are not born, do they just get assigned to a different one?
- Do our spirits look like our bodies? If not, what do they look like?
- Is spirit to body assigning random or is there something specific about the bodies and situations to which we are assigned?
- Is it worse to be born to a bad circumstance that might make us more likely to have either genetic predisposition to sin or to live in circumstances that lack support and will be more likely to lead to unhappiness or sin? Or does God handicap our score at the judgment bar to allow for these differences of circumstance?
Legislating morality
What moral choices do we need to legislate and what choices do we allow individuals to choose, even though many religious people would not personally participate? Liberals tend to focus on individuals making the choices that directly affect their lives, and conservatives tend to focus on the law preventing immoral actions, perhaps operating on a belief that without legislation, people will act in immoral ways that are selfish and will not exhibit sound moral reasoning. Since abortion has always existed, pro-choice voters promote abortion being safe, legal, and rare, emphasizing preventing unwanted pregnancy rather than relying on post-conception choices. Given the poor track record of religious groups when it comes to promoting contraception and sex education, there seems to be more going on than an effort to reduce unwanted births. Churches that see procreation as a duty and moral imperative, for example, will have a negative view of anything that reduces the birth rate, regardless the circumstances of those births.
In a church like ours that has become increasingly conservative over time, we often lose sight of the nuances that set us apart from other conservative faiths. A few years ago, a Gospel Doctrine teacher in my ward was trying to drum up some easy enthusiastic answers and asked what the church’s stance on abortion was. A sister who was a previous Relief Society President in our ward raised her hand and said “It should only be done prayerfully and in rare circumstances.” The teacher was frustrated with this answer. He tried again, “But are we for it or against it?” Another sister raised her hand, “It’s up to the individuals in counseling with their bishop and doctor.” He began to be very agitated. He tried a third time, but just could not get the rousing pro-life battle cry he was seeking. I’m sure results would vary in another ward, but these sisters were in fact more consistent with church policy than he was.
Jumping back to Catholicism which does officially oppose divorce and birth control and is a pro-replenishing the earth religion, an article in Time revealed that even their stance on abortion has more nuance than is usually acknowledged.
The Catechism contains only six paragraphs on abortion, including: “Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable.”
The Catholic church has long taught that abortion is a sin, but the reasons have changed over time. The early prohibition of abortion was based on a belief that only people who engage in forbidden sexual activity would attempt abortion. Many church officials and anti choice Catholics now focus on the argument that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception. This view, however, is based on faulty science from the 17th century, when scientists looked at fertilized eggs through primitive microscopes and imagined that they saw fully formed animal fetuses.
The church hierarchy has since rejected the notion that a fetus is a fully formed person. In its most recent statement, the 1974 Declaration on Procured Abortion, the Vatican acknowledged that it does not know when the fetus becomes a person: “There is not a unanimous tradition on this point and authors are as yet in disagreement.” Neither St. Augustine nor St. Thomas Aquinas, two of the most important Catholic theologians, considered the fetus in the early stages of pregnancy to be a person.
There are a few other nuances to how theology is set in Catholicism that are of interest to this argument (also from the article in Time):
- Catholicism doesn’t declare that laws that govern a country must comply with Catholic doctrine, even if Catholicism is the predominant religion in that country. Catholics support many public policies that honor the freedoms of non-Catholics.
- The notion of papal infallibility still allows for question, and there is a long-standing tradition of scholarly discussion on Catholic doctrine. Theologians are encouraged to think and write about Catholic doctrine in challenging ways.
- The concept of reception (similar to the law of common consent in our early church history) means that Catholic people must accept a church law in order for it to be considered in effect, and the Catechism states that “a human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience,” even when it conflicts with Catholic teachings.
Although both Catholics and Mormons have common ground on abortion, our own policies support making abortion legal, safe, and rare. What is considered out of bounds is for a member in good standing to encourage or participate in an elective abortion that is motivated by “personal or social convenience.” And even then, policy only states that such a church member “may be subject to church discipline.” That stance does not require that abortion be illegal, merely that it be taken very seriously. And if we take human reproduction seriously, we will take contraception and sex education seriously.
- In your experience, do church members share this nuanced understanding of abortion or are they more forceful than the actual policy?
- Is this an issue that your Trump-supporting friends considered a hot button topic that justifies voting for him?
- Do you think Roe v. Wade will one day be overturned in the US? Would that be a good or bad thing in your opinion?
- What do you think motivates abortion regulation by churches: protecting the unborn, controlling reproductive choices, discouraging consequence avoidance, or something else?
- International friends: what’s your experience with abortion legislation in your countries and in your congregations?
Discuss.
[1] Given that the likelihood that Trump has personally paid for abortions is high (unless he simply refused to pay for them), this seems ironic to me.
[2] I’m thinking around the age where they start wearing deodorant and brushing their teeth regularly.
[3] Nice made up word. Well, apparently it does come from Genesis, according to “Joseph Smith’s Use of Hebrew” by Louis C. Zucker: “One word remains: gnolaum (3:18) – “Yet these two spirits. . . shall have no beginning. . . no end, for they are gnolaum, or eternal.” This, again, is an exact Seixas transliteration; however, the Hebrew word is not an adjective but a noun, which in the plural may act as an adverb. The phrase “an everlasting covenant” (Doctrine and Covenants 45:9) is taken from Genesis 17:13, where gnolaum, in the English idiom “everlasting,” is, in the Hebrew idiom, a noun, “eternity.” Maybe that’s true, maybe not, but there sure aren’t a lot of sources out there on this one.
Wheat & Tares 
“International friends: what’s your experience with abortion legislation in your countries and in your congregations?”
Back when I was a YW we’d get presentations from a sister in the stake who was involved with Life, the pro-life organisation, and my first seminary teacher was an interesting woman who shared with us excerpts from her journal in which she admitted that her first response to finding her unmarried daughter was pregnant, was to feel she wanted her to have an abortion (didn’t happen, but that was how she’d felt). I was 13 at the time, and had to go home and consult a dictionary to make sense of what she’d been talking about – it wasn’t a topic I’d come across before then. Otherwise it wasn’t really mentioned great depth.
Gets nary a mention at church these days.
Much the debate in the news here revolves around women from Ireland (where it is illegal) having to travel to Britain should they require an abortion (which is expensive), and there was a horrific case in 2012 where a woman in Ireland died, and another in Italy this year. Another controversy is Irish women buying abortion pills online and whether women suffering miscarriage should be questioned in hospital.
Thanks for this, very well done. I was involved with the pro-life movement when we lived in Tallahassee FL in the early 1980s. Back then, the home pregnancy kits had not yet been invented, and I was a volunteer counselor and then acting paid director at a pro-life center which offered free pregnancy tests and offered alternatives to abortion to women who learned they were pregnant.
I was keenly aware that the church was firmly in the pro-choice camp from the point of view of the Catholic-dominated pro-life movement. Another wrinkle was that in that place/time evangelical Christians would play with Catholics but not Mormons. The (Catholic) director of the Right to Life movement in the area was slow to pick up on this, and was very shaky and apologetic when she explained about the issues that made me unwelcome.
And I think this was before that third point was added to church policy–at least I remember first hearing that one at a general conference in the late 1980s.
The group that best reflects my views is Feminists for Life.
http://www.feministsforlife.org/
I am not sure that a lot of church members get that LDS policy is actually considered pro-choice.
I had lived in West Germany in the early 1970s, when abortion was forbidden except for certain circumstances. They were keenly aware of the parallels between abortion on demand and the holocaust, and still suffering from national guilt over the latter, trying to regain their humanity.
We lived in Brasil in the 1990s, and that country had a horrendously high C-section rate–80%. Part of the reason was because doctors could not perform tubal ligation at Catholic-run hospitals. But if the woman had a C-section for her last baby, they could do it easily without charting, and everyone was happy.
A couple thought that can further muddy the water on when the soul enters the body. In Luke 1:41, when Mary greeted Elisabeth, “the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost”. How far along was she when carrying John at that point? Was it the reaction merely of one body being in the presence of another, or did his spirit detect the presence of the Savior (whether He was in Mary’s womb or not)?
Also, as you quoted on 3 Nephi, He told Nephi that “tomorrow come I into the world”. So if Jesus’s soul was in Mary’s womb at the time I mention above, maybe the soul isn’t firmly “anchored” to the body until birth, but has a transitory relationship where the soul can come and go as needed up until birth, and there to stay until the death of the body?
Of course, we know that the Savior is special in several ways, maybe this is another, that He and He alone, could be be able to be in His body in the womb and then go and visit Nephi or whomever else He might have a need to, and then return to the womb. If so, Him being able to visit Nephi would be something that no other child of the Father could do. Or maybe it was a conversation carried out by a means of the Holy Ghost that we don’t understand. In 3 Nephi 1:12, it merely states, “the voice of the Lord came unto him”, not that the Lord Himself came unto him; this can be a huge distinction.
Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter when this occurs, just that it does. Maybe the Lord intentionally doesn’t tells us this so that people can’t say up until this point an abortion is OK, but not after. Since we don’t know, it leaves it up to us to have frank discussions with our church leaders and care-givers alongside much prayer to decide if an abortion is needed.
My thoughts are this:
If a mother chooses to abort her fetus and there is no tie between that fetus and a spirit , then the spirit goes to a different fetus and likely gets born into a better situation. One of the worse situations for a child to be raised in is growing up with a mother who doesn’t want it. These kids turn out to have some of the worst problems possible (I’ve read several articles on this regarding forced fertility (in Eastern Europe somewhere…)). Which, I’d imagine, effects their eternal salvation.
If a mother chooses to abort her fetus and there is already a spirit attached to that fetus, then she kills it. But since the spirit died before the age of eight, it goes straight to the Celestial Kingdom.
It’s a win-win for the spirit in terms of increasing its chances of Celestialhood. The sin therefore rests on the mother alone. And free agency says she should be allowed to make that decision herself.
@retx
“The sin therefore rests on the mother alone.”
A woman having an abortion for *any* reason isn’t doing anything sinful. For one thing, *spontaneous* abortions happen all the time. Also, the idea that there’s a “spirit attached” to a fetus (or not attached) and that state somehow affects a fetus’s “Celestialhood” is ridiculous on the face of it. Calling abortion sinful is yet another male invention used to make women feel guilty and powerless. The situation is painful enough without men heaping guilt and shame on top.
Good review hawkgrrrl. To answer questions 1-3. I’ve been in healthcare for about 14 years now both as an RN and now as a ARNP. I find that most members I interact with are aware the church doesn’t consider abortion a sin in some situations. I’ve also counseled with members before and after a planned abortion. All of them were aware of the church policy prior to talking with me.
The problem is the disconnect between the law and having an abortion. Most members I’ve interacted with agree with the church’s take on abortion. But they don’t want anyone to have an abortion for social convenience or as a form of birth control. They believe it’s possible to write laws that both allow abortion according to the church’s guidelines but prevents convenience abortions. This is were I disagree with them. I don’t think it’s possible for the law to do both.
anon – Did you really just call me a man? Should I be flattered or offended by that?
I’d argue that most Mormons see a woman having an abortion (outside of the reasons stated in the op) as sinning. To be honest, that’s not an argument I’m particularly interested in defending as I see ‘sinning’ as being between and individual and God and thus my judgment of it is irrelevant. Of course, most Mormons would disagree with t hat as there’s a whole ton of ‘worthiness’ issues when it comes to being a member of the church in good standing.
But if it helps, my post is somewhat tongue-in-cheek… And while it may be absurd, under Mormon doctrine, is it wrong?
Mormon doctrine is clearly (as the original post states) anti-abortion and pro-choice. In my experience that stance is either not well understood or is simply not adopted by church members, who I have found to be often stridently anti-choice (and anti-sex ed, and sometimes anti-contraception too).
I find it all very contradictory. If you oppose abortion (and who doesn’t? No one I know who is pro-choice thinks abortion is actually a good thing, just an essential part of medical care) then why oppose sex ed and contraception? If you want to legislate morality, why not starting to lobbying for bills to make cheating on your spouse or premarital sex illegal? Or bring back prohibition? If you think every abortion is a murder, and therefore a crime rightfully outlawed, do you also think every miscarriage should be investigated for negligent homicide? They are in other countries (see El Salvador). If you believe fetus’s have rights that should be covered by the government, why not push for pre-birth certificates to safeguard those rights? If your stance is truly pro-life, how do you come to terms with the preventable deaths of mothers, such as the death of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland? Do you also work to keep prenatal care and delivery covered by insurance, to further protect the unborn? If you want to overturn Roe v. Wade, do you acknowledge the inevitability and dire risk of back-alley abortions?
Everyone has common ground here. Everyone wants healthy children to be born to loving homes. We could work on making that happen together, instead of shouting “abortion is murder” and “conservatives hate women” at each other.
The handbook quoted in the OP ended with, “As far as has been revealed, a person may repent and be forgiven for the sin of abortion.” The question being, is abortion a sin *only* when it isn’t justified per the reasons stated? I was talking awhile back with one member whose husband had been a bishop, so she was familiar with the handbook description surrounding abortion. In her view, abortion was a grave sin, no matter what. It’s just the repentance/forgiveness aspect was relative to the justification of the abortion (as specified in the handbook). This view more closely aligns with the pro-life camp.
The abortion issue is closely related to miscarriage and stillbirth theological issues. Stillborn children are widely viewed as having individual spirits that are sealed to the parents. Miscarriages (and abortions) fall into a gray area. Brigham Young had the viewpoint that when a mother feels movement, the spirit has entered the body. That was something I heard a lot growing up, which is why I think a lot of people could dismiss first trimester miscarriages as natural masses of cells that misformed and not as individual children with spirits dying. With that viewpoint, though, early abortion can’t pack as strong of a punch (since no spirit is involved).
Very good questions posed in the OP. In church and seminary I have only heard men talk about abortion, as far as I can remember, and the feeling I have gotten from them is that the law should be pretty much the same as the church policy. Also, even in the cases where church policy permits abortion, many mormons would say it is not the right way to go.
(Side note: One thing that bothers me about this policy is the notion that one should consult with a bishop before having an abortion. It irks me that a woman would need to consult a man who has no training in medicine or health. I doubt that bishops are adequately prepared to deal with this issue)
I had a seminary teacher that claimed that different apostles had unofficially made conflicting statements about when the spirit enters the body. Presumably one apostle said spirit is in the body when the baby makes its first kick, while another said at conception. For myself, I do not attribute either statement to a general authority; rather, I attribute both statements to my seminary teacher. Both theories seem to be contradicted by the 3 Nephi passage cited in the OP.
The point being that in my experience mormons decide their positions on this issue based on conjecture and are much more opposed to abortion than the church policy would suggest. In my view, the Democratic Party platform aligns closer to the church policy than the Republicans. But I know many mormons who won’t vote democrat primarily because of abortion.
As to the queston of whether Roe v. Wade will be overturned, it has in one sense already been overturned. The original decision was that women had a right to choose an abortion until the third trimester. In 1992 the Supreme Court ruled in Planned Parenthood v Casey that the right to an abortion only held until fetal viability. I do not think this decision can last the test of time even if it is never overruled. As technology advances and fetal viability moves earlier into the gestation, the Roe decision becomes weaker, protecting the right to an abortion for less and less time. So either a new ruling will have to be made to preserve or expand the right to an abortion in the status quo, or the time window for that right will gradually shrink to some unknown lower limit.
I will add to my statement on Roe v. Wade that I have no legal training, so take what I see with a dash of salt. The main source for my info is Wikipedia,
Also, it looks like other sites say the original Roe decision protected abortion rights only through the end of the first trimester, contrary to what I said earlier.
Keep in mind also that Roe v. Wade actually references something about the absence of scientific information about the fetus…I had an ultrasound in 1974 and the images were mostly black and scratchy and not very human-looking at all. Nothing like those magnificent 3D pictures that parents can see nowadays.
Also, the age at which a premature baby can survive has dropped remarkably if a NICU is available. Lots of line-blurring there.
Right, viability is currently considered 22 weeks.
Related to the morality of abortion: should a physician willing to perform an abortion in one circumstance have the right to refuse to perform an abortion in another? I think your answer would depend on what grounds you consider abortion immoral (if you consider immoral at all).
While on the one hand, we don’t feel people should be forced to act contrary to their morals, it’s popular to say that if you’re offering a commercial service to the public, it’s discriminatory to say you’ll offer it to some and not to others. For example, if you sell wedding cakes to the public, they’d say you shouldn’t be able to withhold selling to a gay couple simply because you’re morally opposed to their marriage. Since you’re just selling cakes (nothing immoral about that), you shouldn’t get to discriminate against groups of people you don’t like. Their choice to marry, regardless of whether or not you consider it immoral, is not relevant to you, because you’re not the one doing it. Of course, you may argue that by selling the cake, you’re somehow participating in the event and therefore complicit, but generally I don’t think that argument gets much traction.
Abortion may be a different story, depending on what grounds it’s considered immoral. One might argue that all the physician is doing is causing tissue to be expelled (nothing immoral about that), and that whether the woman asking for the procedure is making an immoral choice is irrelevant to you, because you’re not the one making the choice. But it makes a big difference whether or not you consider the tissue to be human or tantamount to being human, since the doctor IS the one destroying that human. If you’re that doctor, it may matter a great deal to you.
The reason I brought that up was that if my wife needed an abortion to preserve her life, I think I would tend to gravitate toward a LDS physician over a non-LDS if they were equally qualified.
Martin: I don’t think I follow your logic. Your first post is more of a religious freedom question – are doctors free to refuse to provide services like cake bakers seem to think they are, on religious grounds. Doctors are bound by their own ethical codes, and I don’t feel qualified to opine about whether they can refuse certain services. Given the specialization involved in medicine, I have a hard time imagining a scenario in which a doctor is asked to perform an abortion against his or her will. A proctologist wouldn’t be asked to perform one, for example. There are some kinds of doctors who will routinely deal with pregnancy.
As to your second comment, I’m completely confused. 1) why would you be selecting your wife’s doctor? Isn’t that up to her?, 2) why do you assume an LDS doctor would care more about your wife’s well being? (you didn’t really explain that), and 3) my own view has always been (and many women agree) a woman doctor is preferable for OB/GYN. There aren’t many of them who are LDS, so in stating that preference, you are likely ensuring she has a male doctor.
The difference in empathy and good advice for my well being that I have gotten from women doctors vs. men doctors is vast–when it comes to reproductive health. If we’re talking eczema, who cares? Everyone has skin. Not everyone has lady parts. And I can tell you for myself, the last doctor I would want is an LDS man! All lecture and no listen. No thanks. I’m sure there are also fantastic male LDS OB/GYNs out there who are empathetic and give good advice, but there are a bunch who just love to hear themselves talk and consider the woman’s health to be the realm of theory and opinion rather than lived experience.
Martin, why does the physician’s viewpoint matter for you if the procedure was the same? I have a lot of friends who prefer LDS physicians (even some female friends who specify *male* LDS physicians), but it’s never made much sense to me. Whenever I ask, they kind of waffle and say, “Well, *you* know.” Really, I don’t.
As far as abortions go, my understanding is that it is fairly easy right now for health professionals to opt out of participating in abortion procedures if they really struggle with the morality (like Hawk says, you have to undergo certain training). There are other medical practices that are less easy for docs to opt out of that make some of them uneasy, but that’s part of being a doc in evidence-based medicine. A doc’s personal religious viewpoint isn’t supposed to be part of determining the best healthcare for the patient.
Gee, Hawk, I must live in a different universe, making assumptions about things we share that we clearly don’t. 1) If my wife had a serious medical condition of any sort, I’m sure I’d be involved in selecting her doctor, just as she would be in selecting mine were situations reversed. 2) I’m not assuming an LDS doctor would care more about my wife’s well-being — I would simply assume we would have more in common with respect to spiritual things surrounding life and death, all other things being equal. 3) Why would the LDS OB/GYN not be female? If we’re selecting between OB/GYNs and one is male and the other is female, not all other things would be equal. (I have a daughter considering medical school and my personal general practitioner is a woman).
My question was posed based on the reasonable expectation that an LDS physician (specify OB/GYN) might want to be able to perform an abortion, that I could conceivably want such an LDS physician to exist, and that she OR he might not want to be forced to perform abortions in all cases. Yes, hypothetical.
“And I can tell you for myself, the last doctor I would want is an LDS man! All lecture and no listen.” And the last person I would want to pose a hypothetical question to would be a feminist LDS woman. All projection and fuming. Sheesh.
Mary Ann, my inclination toward an LDS physician makes as much sense as Hawk’s toward a female OB/GYN. The fact that she has lady parts makes her no more likely to handle lady-part medical conditions than a male OB/GYN (and since nothing can be assumed here, the same goes for a male physician wrt the prostate). It’s merely comfort. Which matters, imo, when one is ill.
Fewer than half of medical training programs even offer training in abortion methods, and of those that do, I would guess that LDS physicians would opt out on moral grounds, so you may not be able to find an LDS physician who would feel qualified to perform the procedure. Or have liability insurance to cover it.
Martin – I can only speak for Washington State. RCW 9.02.150 protects any healthcare employee from participating in an abortion in anyway if it violates their consciousness. It’s up to the healthcare person each time if they want to participate. When I’ve participated in abortions I was always told that I am protected by state law to decline. Once I found out it was because the woman’s life was in danger then I was more than happy to participate. I was the only nurse in that unit that did. The other nurses were not penalized for declining. I could have chosen to decline at anytime based on my conscious.
Martin: How you and your wife choose doctors is up to you. To each his own. I was simply confused why you would select a doctor based on a shared religion rather than just letting your wife choose her own based on her own comfort. In my family, we choose our own doctor always. I can’t even remember the name of my husband’s doctor. I can simply tell you that from my perspective, and I don’t think it’s a minority view at all, a woman doctor for a woman is going to be more empathetic and give a woman better advice when it comes to considering options and respecting her choices. That’s been my experience. I’ve even had male doctors who contradicted my own female doctor, just because they had an opinion about something that was none of their business.
For example, I had a life-threatening DVT in my first pregnancy. My female doctor said that some doctors would say not to risk having any more children, but she knew that was my choice to make, so she would simply tell me that I should have them before age 35 and I needed to take blood thinners and be monitored closely in future pregnancies. When I was pregnant with my second child, the male doctors lectured me on my reckless behavior for having more kids. They were citing statistics, but not respecting that it was my choice and that I was acting under my doctor’s advice.
I also had another OB/GYN (a woman) when we were done having kids who advised me against a tubal ligation because of the trauma that a woman’s body undergoes in delivery. Her male colleagues were keen to perform tubal ligations, but she advised that if you are monogamous, a vasectomy is far safer.
I’m not sure that my view is because I’m a feminist. I do have personal experience that tells me women doctors tend to think about options as a woman whereas male doctors tend to think about female solutions based on statistics and theory. I had a male OB/GYN for a while, and he was competent but business-like. I never felt like he knew who I was every time I came in.
“….a woman doctor for a woman is going to be more empathetic and give a woman better advice when it comes to considering options and respecting her choices.”
That has NOT been my experience. I’ve had women physicians be very judgmental toward me. They felt that the reason I suffered nausea and vomiting during pregnancy was due to being a neurotic housewife trying to get attention or not willing to accept my new responsibilities. This was the dominant view of the medical profession up until the 1980s when research from Scandinavia showed a strong correlation between women who suffer from hyperemesis gravidarum and intolerance of birth control pills, suggesting a hormonal basis but even afterward some female doctors continued to have that attitude.
And (non-LDS) female doctors are quick to lecture about why I should not have more children.
I got the best care from male doctors whose wives suffered from nausea/vomiting during pregnancy. They knew that the source was physical (not neurosis) for their wives and they understood first-hand the extent of possible debilitation and effect on the family and life of a woman.
I’ve had good and bad experiences with both genders. Unfortunately, how nice/sympathetic someone is doesn’t always correlate with how competent they are.
Thus we see the subjectivity of lived experience as a primary factor in choosing a doctor . . .
I don’t think it’s likely that an active LDS-physician could be trained to perform an abortion. I suspect there aren’t enough health-of-the-mother or rape/incest cases to train on.
However, if such a doctor did exist, I can’t believe the freedom of religion issues wouldn’t come up eventually, even if things everywhere are how Deborah described them in Washington right now. Sorting those out would undoubtedly involve *why* abortion was considered immoral. If the doctor couldn’t claim she felt she would be taking a human life, or something tantamount to it, I don’t think she’d be able to choose who she performed the procedure on — it would be discrimination. If she really didn’t believe there was a soul attached to the tissue to excise, then how could she claim a moral objection? She could only object to the choice of the person she’d be treating, and I’ll bet most wouldn’t consider that legal.
I personally think (without any real basis at all) that the attachment of a soul to a fetus in the womb is a gradual process, and may not even be complete at birth. I’m not convinced that a fertilized egg has any connection to a soul at all. And yet, abortion strikes me as morally wrong (except in certain circumstances) even in the first trimester, and if I were a physician, I’d want the latitude to decide whether I should perform it.
Anyway, that’s what I was trying to get at. It wasn’t about wanting an LDS physician or provoking Hawk’s antagonism toward male doctors or LDS men.
Martin, I don’t think the discrimination argument you are concerned about would ever actually come up. Now, this is an area where states make the rules, and I’m sure there are differences between different states, but it’s hard for me to imagine how a prohibition on the kind of discrimination you’re talking about would exist.
People providing public services discriminate all the time–think, no shirts, no shoes, no service. That’s discrimination against shirtless people. The religious freedom problem that you’re discussing only crops up when someone is discriminating against a protected class–i.e. race, religion, gender. Only some states extend those protections to sexual orientation, and that’s why there is currently disagreement about whether it’s ok for a baker to not make a cake for a gay couple; it’s legal in some states, but not others, based on whether those states have defined sexual orientation as a protected class (the federal government could also choose to define it as a protected class, but that hasn’t happened yet).
But it’s hard to imagine how refusing to perform abortions in some cases would be deemed discriminating against a protected class. All abortions are being performed on women, so you’re not discriminating based on sex when you selectively choose to not perform an abortion. If you said, “I’ll perform abortions, but not on black women, because abortion is rampant among the black community and that bothers me,” then you could be sued for racial discrimination. Or if you said, “I’ll perform abortions on LDS women, because I believe that if you’re LDS and getting an abortion, you must be doing so with the support of your partner/bishop/God, but never on any non-LDS women, because I can’t trust that God is ok with that abortion,” then maybe you could be discriminating based on religion. But if you’re a doctor who says “I’ll perform abortions when I deem them medically necessary, but I’ll send the women elsewhere if I feel she just wants an abortion for convenience,” it’s hard to argue you’re discriminating against a protected class.
Again, that’s not to say certain states couldn’t make their doctor opt-out rights broader or narrower; it just wouldn’t likely be couched in the language of public service discrimination.
I asked a male doctor about gradual vs. cold-turkey weaning. I had gone cold turkey with my first and found it a terrible experience, and I explained this to the doctor. I think I just wanted his blessing, to make sure there wasn’t anything negative to consider about the gradual approach. I expected him to tell me the pros and cons of each, but instead he launched into a sales pitch for cold turkey. (The only rationale I can remember him offering is that it was like “ripping off a Band-aid.” Not sure why that was a selling point.) He told me to “wrap them up like a sports injury.” I ignored him completely and had a pleasant, gradual experience. I felt he wouldn’t have so quickly dismissed the gradual approach if his lady parts had ever swelled into watermelons.
On the other hand, I had a female NP refuse to remove my new IUD. It was causing unprecedented mood swings in me. I had signed a release form before insertion informing that this was a possible side effect and of the 10-15% likelihood of it, but the nurse insisted the IUD couldn’t be the problem. She said I needed depression meds. I wore her down until she approved the removal. The mood swings stopped immediately.
Other than those two experiences, I’ve had great providers, both male and female. I could be persuaded to believe that the average female provider has an advantage in the OB-GYN field, but with so many factors going into what makes a good provider I’ve never felt okay using gender to affect my choice. But I know many people are more comfortable going to a doctor of the same gender.
OK, now abortion. I am somewhere in the middle of the two sides. I don’t understand how the Church’s stance on abortion would work with abortion being illegal. If only rape and health allow for abortions, wouldn’t that create a lot of false rape allegations (as in the history of Roe vs. Wade)? How would you prove rape? Many “legitimate rape” victims do not immediately come forward, so there is unlikely to be a police report. With something as time-sensitive as pregnancy, how would the abortion approval process in a DMV-like agency work? And theologically, if rape is a good enough reason for an abortion, doesn’t that suggest that either (1) “murder” is okay when you’ve been raped, or (2) aborting the unborn is not as serious as murdering a born person, in which case a hierarchy of personhood is implied?
On the other hand, I ache for these babies. When I’ve seen my babies move on ultra-sound, I don’t see potential life. I see life. I cringe when I hear, “It’s MY body!” No one said it wasn’t; it’s just that someone else’s body is involved, too. And I hate hearing that I feel this way just because I have been brainwashed by the patriarchy.
On the other-other hand (and this will totally offend many people, probably rightfully so), if I knew I was pregnant with a severely mentally disabled child (to the point that he or she could never form meaningful social connections), I would not want to keep him or her. (I would also not want to be kept around if I was in the late stages of Alzheimer’s.)
As for when life begins, I have my own weird idea that as soon as that cluster of cells LOOKS LIKE a human (maybe around 8 weeks) it IS one. I could get behind the morning-after pill and early-pregnancy abortions as a compromise. I interpret “On the morrow come I into the world” to be one of those Trinity-type verses, like “the Word was with God, and the Word was God…and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
I assume this is rare and that’s why it made the news, but it happens and it shouldn’t. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765560407/Abortion-creates-conflict-for-pro-life-medical-workers.html?pg=1
There is a saying that the love of man will wax cold in the last days.
At a NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) meeting, a doctor was describing how an aborted baby’s eyes popped out and rolled onto the floor. The audience roared with laughter.
Ronkonkoma: That’s “the love of many,” not the “love of man.” Matthew 24:12. As to your story about the NARAL, get real. There is zero chance that happened. Grow up.