Now it is time to return to the two cases regarding abortion; the woman implanted with two fetuses and the young family receiving terrible news about their unborn child. What values did the two families hold dear, values to which they turned to help them make their decision?
The woman, impregnated with two foetuses believed that she was entitled to say thank you, but I only want one;like one chocolate or one pair of pants. Or, I want the boy, not the girl. The fetuses she was carrying had no intrinsic value to her. Her moral values were based on Utilitarianism, quality-of-life, self-directed ethics of entitlement enabled her to see the fetus as a thing, an obstacle to her happiness, an inconvenience, a burden, like a hang nail, and turn to the medical profession and expect, as her unrestricted, absolute human right, a selective abortion. There is no sense of guilt and shame in selecting one fetus to abort because the entitlement ethic does not require that one choose between two opposing needs; there is only one need-hers.
What of the young couple? They have been given terrible news that I can’t imagine receiving. If they believe in the ethics of Utilitarianism, the decision is easy. The fetus will be a burden, taking away from their entitlement of happiness. If they view the fetus in a nonpersonal way, abortion is not ending potential human life. It’s more like removing a tumour. But what if they believe that each life is sacred? They know this fetus is imperfect, perhaps fatally so and that it may suffer. What if they cannot bear the idea of their child suffering? In the ethics of entitlement, this young couple would have no problem with an abortion. There would be no moral dilemma, no conflict of rights or responsibilities. Is there room in ethical monotheism for a woman to know in her heart that abortion is morally wrong but for her it is the right choice?
In a perfect world I think the vast majority of us would prefer to live without abortion. But, this is not a perfect world. I doubt we can end abortion by proclamation. In the fourth century C.E. John Chrysostom (which means golden mouth) preached the importance of persuasion. One “cannot be dragged back by force, nor restrained by fear, but must be led by persuasion.
Ethical monotheism makes it possible for us to have a discussion that balances the rights of the mother with the rights of the potential life. “Do not stand by while your neighbour’s blood is shed” (Leviticus 19:16) is a commandment that speaks to a moral obligation, not a legal one. You are not legally bound to save another person’s life. Legally, you can stand by and watch one human being hurt another. Morally, that response is reprehensible. This commandment to not stand by while blood is shed can speak to both the potential mother and the potential human life.
Pregnancy, for all of our modern medicine, can endanger a woman’s life. To demand that a woman continue to bear a child, to deny her the right to a legal abortion, could push her to a backroom butcher and the possibility of two deaths-hers and the fetus. As a society we would be morally guilty of standing by while her blood is shed. Forcing a woman to carry to term can also conflict with the commandment to “choose life; for you and your seed” (Deuteronomy)if this pregnancy negatively affects her health to the point that her death is possible.
This commandment “Do not stand by while your neighbour’s blood is shed,” also speaks to the potential human life of a fetus. If one believes that a fetus is potential human life, whether life begins at conception or later, then approving abortion puts everyone involved in a position of standing by while blood (potential human life) is shed. This moral commandment also makes room for the rights of others to come to the table. It will make room for the rights of the father.
By law, a woman can enforce child support once paternity is proven. So, a man, a potential father, has obligations to pay for a child he might not have known he had fathered. Yet, if he learns that a woman has become pregnant with his child, he has no right to have that child. This moral law gives him rights. He has the right to prevent the shedding of blood by taking full responsibility for the child at birth. Yes, the woman must carry the fetus. But she, too, has moral responsibilities. She participated in the conception of this fetus. And then there are the rights of the grandparents-to-be; the fruit of the womb of the fruit of the womb. In a compassionate world, grandparents would have a place at the table regarding the continuation of a pregnancy.
These conflicting rights and responsibilities, based just on this one moral commandment, makes abortion a moral dilemma that requires living in the grey zone, between absolute right and absolute wrong. It is an uncomfortable place to be. We all prefer the calm of absolute knowledge of right and wrong. We want to return to the Garden before Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, before we were given free-will with moral responsibility. But we can’t. We have as our light the ethics we choose and that choice directly affects the society we become.
Ethical monotheism ascribes to us a sacredness that is not afforded to us in the other ethical systems except Kantian. I believe that it is better to start with an absolute definition of human that carries an inherent intrinsic value and then fall from grace than to start at a place where the definition of human is a moving target. It prevents us from denigrating the human being in an attempt to justify a difficult decision because it certainly is easier to abort some thing rather than acknowledge the aborting of potential life. At the same time, attempting to take away the sanctity of life to make it easier to justify abortion, we take away the family’s need for mourning the loss because there is a loss. And the same ethic will then apply to our questions about the end of life. Do we as a society care for the weakest as we do the strongest? Do we accord the weakest the same rights and dignity that we do the strongest? Or, do we think of the elderly through the lens of quality-of -life ethics and decide that they are as much a burden as would be an “imperfect” child and so we help them out of this life?
Many decades ago, there was a television programme, The Twilight Zone, by Rod Serling. On this one particular episode, we are brought into an operating room where we see the back of the heads of the staff bent over the surgical table. We hear the voice of a female patient beg the doctors to do whatever they can to fix her. We listen to the dialogue amongst the medical staff as they try to repair her. We hear their sense of frustration. We watch as the nurses blot the sweat off the surgeon’s brow. The doctors sadly inform the patient that the procedure is a failure. She begs them to try again. But, they tell her there is nothing more that can be done. She is defective. She will have to go to the special towns, cities of refuge, set aside for those defective, like her. We hear her crying and begging as the credits roll over the screen and then we finally see the woman. She would be described today as a supermodel with beautifully chiselled features. Big wide eyes. Long wavy hair. And we wonder, what is so wrong with her that she needs to be hidden away? She appears to be the definition of beautiful. Then we see the surgeons and the nurses in the operatory as they remove their masks and commiserate about the poor woman. And then we understand. They all look alike. They each have a very pink face; the face of a pig, the epitome of perfection.
We lose compassion when we try to hide from the truth by lying to ourselves. We lose the ability to ask for forgiveness, be it from ourselves or others or God, Who is forgiving of His children. We need to have ethics that push us beyond our own expectations, up to the Seraphim, so that we can be our most compassionate and if we fail we are still able to repent and find atonement again.
The stories in the Bible provide the path to personal liberation and a nourished soul as well as the infrastructure upon which to build an ethical, compassionate, free and hopeful society. They are classics because they can speak to every generation. They speak to all of our emotions, our behaviours, our yearnings and to our existential angst. They lead us to question our choices, our humanity, our values, accomplishments and failures. The Bible teaches us about family relations, community living, and interactions with strangers. It is a story about love and hate, sorrow and joy, murder and deceit, honour, guilt and shame, forgiveness, atonement and redemption. Just as the Bible is the story of the human journey, the search for what it means to be human; it is also the story of God’s quest for righteousness in humankind. God reaches out to us, beseeching us, to listen and act. It is up to each and every one of us to decide if we will heed the call or choose to be deaf.
We need to remember the meaning of ethical monotheism and its ethical teachings so that we do not fall prey to a vast array of self-serving self-help books and self-proclaimed gurus who try to fill the space with their own certitudes in order to speak to our deep-seated nostalgia for the absolute. It is not necessary to look elsewhere for meaning and purpose. The Bible is the greatest ethical and spiritual story ever to unfold.
