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Humanism challenges religious anti-abortion claims
Humanism aligns the heart and mind around reducing harm and maximizing well-being, challenging religiously driven anti-abortion beliefs and defending bodily autonomy.
By Janet Marugg | FāVS News Columnist
The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News.
Nobody told me how surprising my aging heart can be. Or how an old heart can change because it cannot accept what a mind rejects. Or how a life spent aligning a heart and a mind is a pretty good one. This is where humanism works best for me.
The Humanist Ten Commitments (altruism, critical thinking, empathy, environmentalism, ethical development, global awareness, humility, peace and social justice, service and participation, and responsibility) are not a one-and-done kind of thing. They are ongoing, developing and quite pushy toward benefiting humanity without waiting for a supernatural or divine intervention.
This Humanist Creed really comes down to two things: 1) reducing human harm; and 2) maximizing human well-being. Secularity is my way, but most, if not all, religious people are humanists, evidenced by their care for humanity. Pews are full of harm reducers who sing the hymns, pray the prayers and help their neighbors. Good people.
That said, some things in the framework of reducing human harm and maximizing human well-being do not sit well in a pew these days. The Bible-based religion of my origin, for instance, cannot stop talking about abortion even though the Bible does not forbid it. The number of times the Bible demands punishment for terminating a pregnancy: zero.
Roots of anti-abortion beliefs
In his book, “Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleeding Frauds,” John Fugelsang exposes the history of Christianity’s greatest bait and switch.
The anti-abortion sentiment came first from Catholicism, which waited until 1869 for Pope Pius IX to unscientifically declare fetal personhood. And it was more recently (1978) that Jerry Falwell used his platform to do Protestants the same and people, as they do, just sort of went along, forgetful that just five years before, Wallie Amos Criswell, president of the Southern Baptist Church said, “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from his mother that it became an individual person.” The Bible agrees with Wallie. Even God had to breathe life into Adam.
Fugelsang’s book has a chapter on what people think the Bible says about abortion and what it actually says about abortion. He goes through every Bible citation and argument used by necrolaters (those holding the superstitious worship, excessive reverence or devotion of the unalive) and anti-abortion zealots. He offers worthwhile considerations to cherry-picked and misinterpreted Scripture being used as a religious fraud (appropriate term) on people who don’t know any better.
Controlling the narrative on consent
It is unconscionable to take advantage of ignorance, especially biblical ignorance, but in this case the wound is also self-inflicted. Thinking about abortion for myself as a humanist, I cannot in good conscience give privilege to uterine contents to a 19th-century pope or a later money-changer starting up a religiously-driven, state-run child trafficking operation for a religious empire.
I believe that managing uterine contents to force childbirths is child trafficking. There’s probably some entrapment in there, too, but that’s not all.
I believe that forcing a uterus to hold the effects of sexual intercourse without consent is a form of rape — a forced extension of a sexual act. Pregnancy and childbirth are a form of sexual violence to a woman’s body, and that kind of kink demands consent. It just does.
Along with the rape culture of forced pregnancy and childbirth, I cannot, in good conscience, go along with the dark and underworldly necrolatry of fetus devotion.
Even a dead person must give consent to allow the use of their organs to keep another alive. That’s why we must give consent for organ donation when we get a driver’s license. The idea that an unalive, nonbreathing person has more rights to their organ usage than a living, breathing, uterus-owning person is a clear example of necrolatry.
It is not possible, by definition, to “murder” a nonbreathing (and therefore unalive even by biblical standards) human being. We “pull plugs” based on scientific viability and personhood for those who have, in fact, once breathed. If the nonviable once-breathing person was put back into a uterus (somehow), then we are not allowed the same standards?
The case for abortion care
Under-considered in post-Pope Pius IX’s and Jerry Falwell’s Christianity (Judaism does not forbid abortion) is that one in four women in the United States seeks abortion care and that maths out to Christian women, too.
What sense does it make to shame women in the pews at a time when women are leaving churches, because I have it on good authority that women do the majority of the volunteering it takes to run a church community. Shame is bad business.
If Jews believe that the Old Testament God does not forbid abortion, Christians can believe this as well because in the New Testament’s Gospel of John we are told that Jesus and God are the same — that Jesus is God with a new covenant that does not mention abortion at all. You’d think if it were a serious offense it would be there. Jesus/God, as a first-century Jew, certainly knew of the permissible abortions being performed in his day, but said nothing.
Fugelsang reminds us, “One of the unpleasant truths of biblical misinterpretation conducted by conservative religious movements is that they can’t actually stop abortions — they can only end the safe, legal, regulated kind.” This mind and heart is convinced this is not, by definition, “pro-life.”
Nowhere in the Bible (or National and State constitutions) does it say we must do what Pope Pius IX and Jerry Falwell made up. My mind and heart will not accept a fabricated religious offense by men who have no privilege to uterine contents, and I feel pretty good about that.
I believe I am a better person for not coveting uterine contents, for not hinging my morality to necrolatry, rape culture and child trafficking. I find more peace comes from unfollowing a fabricated focus that turns the beauty of a religious practice into something it is not.
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