By Jim Forest

“She is unmarried and pregnant, appears to be in her mid – teens, and is nearly penniless. Religiously obsessed, she suffers acute delusions. Her pregnancy, she claims, was caused by God. She asserts that she is still a virgin. Given her age and psychological conditions, an abortion is clearly indicated, yet her religious scruples deter her from accepting one. Further counseling is urgently required.”

But there were no social workers at the time, abortion didn’t I occur to anyone in her family or neighborhood. In the impoverished culture of northern Galilee twenty centuries ago, social engineering had chiefly to do with maintaining the wells. Mary Child managed to be born. She named him Jesus.

In terms of material wealth, Mary lived in a much poorer world than we do but in many ways our culture is poorer than her’s. So impoverished is our world that abortion has become something normal. Even people other wise devoted to peace, social justice, human rights, care of the environment, the protection of endangered creatures and the development of a nonviolent way of life often turn out to be supporters of abortion.

What explains the indifference, even enmity, toward the unborn?

One part of the answer must be the ice-cold ‘mercy’ of the modern world. We are told that it is a kind of mercy in this over-crowded planet to kill the very youngest before they claim a place at the world’s table. After all, some of them may later starve to death, or they might become criminals, or they might be casualties of a future war, or they might not like this world with its many problems.

At least among Christian, one would expect universal rejection of abortion, after all, salvation begins not with Jesus’ baptism, not with his preaching, not with the miracles, not even with his death and resurrection. Salvation begins in Mary’s womb. St, Luke’s account of Jesus’ conception is followed by the story of Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist. Unborn John – John the Fetus – leaps for joy within his mother, while Elizabeth exclaims, “Why should I be honored with a visit from the mother of my Lord?” And Mary responded out of the immense silence of the child she carries, “Yes, from this day all generations will call me blessed, for the Almighty has done great things for me. Holy is his name.”

But Christians too are among those who favor abortion.

Whether religious or non-religious, supporters, of abortion offer both rational and moral defenses for their position. There has never been a social evil for which justifications weren’t provided – for slavery, torture, the burning of heretics, the fighting of Holy Wars for concentration camps and the Holocaust.

We are clever enough to know that certain words must be avoided if we are to live in peace with abortion. Thus it is not a “he” or a “she” who is the object of abortion, but “it”. And it is not an unborn child, but an embryo or a fetus – not much more than an item in an unabridged dictionary, a “product of conception” – best described in a dead language. A kind of virus. Anything but a child.

And what we do to that Latinized matter is not to kill it. The verb “to kill” is to definite and too morally – charged. The “it” isn’t killed, it’s aborted. Again the dictionary intervenes. Abortion is turning the page in the dictionary in search of dehumanizing words. But what we are talking about is the intentional killing of innocent life.

How effectively death by abortion is sold! When I was in England to promote a new book, I did a fair amount of riding in what Londoners call “Underground,” Going down he escalators to the subterranean trains, I saw nearly as many advertisement for abortions ad for sexy underwear.
One glass- caged poster said in huge letters, “If you’re happy being pregnant, fine. If not, call us.” The telephone number followed.

If I were pregnant, I wondered, how happy would I be? I might in the third week of morning sickness, I might nave a husband or boyfriend who was furious that the playing g house stage of life was threatened, who preferred changing TV stations to changing diapers. I might be facing parents or social workers who cry only at the movies. I might be in debt up to my chin, living in an apartment the size of a cigarette box, and with my hopes for the future ambitions collapsing into the ash can.

Yet her I am being told over and over again that happiness is precondition to motherhood, that pregnancy should only be tolerated in the events the mother is enjoying it otherwise – call this number.

No Elizabeth to rejoice with Mary. No one to celebrate the fresh evidence of God’s patience with the human race. No one to help me figure out how to keep the child or give it to those who could offer a welcome. No one to help me with my fears. No one to help me nurture and give birth to and protect this new life. But many offering death.

Jim Forest is co-secretary of the orthodox Peace Fellowship.