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"Mommy killers! Mommy killers!"
I'm not surprised that protesters are not yelling that at the Supreme Court after today's ruling gutting Roe v. Wade.
Anti-abortion people have been crying "Baby killers!" for years. But this new ruling has the effect of forcing women who cannot afford to go to another state to end a pregnancy to do desperate things. In the early years of my ministry, when abortions were illegal, the death rate from efforts to get abortions were high, especially among minority women. Why the pro-life folks felt that was okay is a mystery to me, even when white women also died.
In the old days, it was Roman Catholic belief that abortion was bad because if you had to choose who should live, baby or mommy, baby was chosen because its pure soul trumped the bad things the woman may have done and must have done during her life.
That is not usually heard in any arguments nowadays. The focus is on the simpler issue: these are babies, even if they have not been born yet. The well-being of the mother is not even considered, AT ALL, by the politics of anti-abortion.
Jewish faith requires abortion if the mother's life could be otherwise harmed. In fact, the Bible. acknowledges life exists when the fetus first breathes.
We United Methodists passed a resolution that urged medical care in any circumstance where abortion was needed though we did not identify when that might be.
Maybe this will become a matter of religious freedom. And the issue of the right to privacy may no longer be the linchpin.
My friends who are against abortion may choose not to have them. What would happen if I somehow got legislatures and Congress to prohibit gambling because it is against my firmly help religious belief? Gambling along with alcohol are destructive of families that leave them impoverished.
You've probably stopped reading by now. Maybe I need to shout something so offensive that I get your attention back but which describes what will happen. No, I will only ask this:
What about the mothers?
