One religion’s views on abortion cannot be prioritized over any other
As a Jew living in a country in which church and state are constitutionally separated, I’m stunned by how that wall is being breached by recent legislation and court decisions.
My fear stems from personal experience. I have had a varied and fulfilling career in which I think I’ve made meaningful contributions to the world. With access to contraception, I was able to determine when to become a parent. It wasn’t until my mid-40s that I felt ready to have a child. But, by then, I had scarring in my fallopian tubes and was able to conceive only through in vitro fertilization.
Due to my age, the hyper-ovulation induced by hormone injections produced only six eggs, of which half weren’t viable after fertilization. In 1991, neither I nor my doctor were considered murderers or sinners when those three nonviable eggs were destroyed.
Of the three eggs implanted, only one survived. My husband — a prominent rabbi and leader in fostering interreligious understanding — died seven weeks before the birth of the boy that came from that egg. That great testament to our love is now 31 years old and making his own contributions to the world — including my 1-year-old granddaughter. As a child of the Holocaust, my three-generation family is deeply meaningful to me. IVF — unencumbered by government interference — made that possible.
And so did my religion. Professionally, I’ve devoted the past 32 years to advancing interreligious understanding. I honor the right of some Christian denominations to limit sex to reproduction and define abortion as infanticide. However, those views are inconsistent with the precepts of my religion and others that don’t disassociate pleasure and sex, or view abortion in such stark terms.
Each religion houses variations in belief and practice — including more open views on sexual pleasure and abortion.
Judaism’s greatest contribution to civilization is the idea that every person is made in the sacred image of God. But Judaism does not consider the fetus a person until it emerges from the womb and breathes on its own. Before limbs form, the fetus is considered liquid, incurring no injury if a pregnancy is terminated. Judaism prioritizes the existing life of the mother over the potential life of the fetus.
Judaism also has a different attitude toward sex than some other religions. It’s not just sex for reproduction that is sanctified, but also sex for pleasure.
Islam is similar to Judaism in this respect. Sex for pleasure within the context of marriage is condoned and need not be focused solely on reproduction. When it comes to abortion, different Islamic schools of thought have different perspectives. But the functional consensus is that abortion is forbidden after the ensoulment that occurs at 120 days. Even then, exceptions are made for the life of the mother or if the fetus is severely deformed or puts the family in dire straits.
Hinduism and Buddhism align more closely with some Christian denominations on ensoulment, which is thought to occur at conception. Abortion is viewed as contradictory to the precept of nonviolence, but practices vary. In Buddhism, the decision to abort requires a mindful balancing of comparative harms and full acceptance of responsibility for the karmic consequences. In Hinduism, life is without beginning or end and the soul moves from embodiment to embodiment. Abortion interrupts the course of reincarnation and is condemned (although in practice, many American Hindus are less conservative on this and other doctrines). But if the fetus causes the mother’s death, that can be considered a greater harm than abortion.
Prevalent views on sexuality and abortion are rooted in Judeo-Christian scripture, citing Adam and Eve’s disobedience as the theological justification for punitive control of women’s bodies. In Genesis 3:16, God decrees to Eve: “I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy travail. In pain thou shalt bring forth children and thy desire shall be to thy husband.”
There’s another scripture to justify today’s current war on reproductive rights, but the modern antiabortion movement didn’t begin in the Bible. It started in 1968 with the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. In fact, the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament are silent on abortion, and related Roman Catholic teaching has changed dramatically over the centuries.
The separation of church and state enshrined in the U.S. Constitution prohibits the imposition of a governmentsponsored set of religious beliefs. The
First Amendment prohibits a state from writing into its laws any particular religious view of when life begins, ends or has meaning. Yet, that is exactly what we’re witnessing in recent court decisions and state legislation. In the Alabama IVF decision, that state’s chief justice cited religious doctrine to justify the result.
We need a nuanced approach that respects the full spectrum of sincerely held religious beliefs. Religious pluralism, after all, is a core principle upon which our nation was founded. The constraints now being imposed by the government violate the First Amendment because they impose a particular set of Christian beliefs on the country. As such, they discriminate against those of us who subscribe to other beliefs.
Georgette F. Bennett is the founder and president of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding and founder and chair of the Multifaith Alliance. She is the author of “Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By: How One Woman Confronted the Greatest Humanitarian Crisis of Our Time,” and the co-author with Jerry White of “Religicide: Confronting the Roots of Anti-Religious Violence.”