Abortion​—A World Divided

HOW many abortions​—legal and illegal—​are performed worldwide every year? The book Abortion says that the number may be “at least equal to the number of adult deaths”​—about 45 million. But the International Planned Parent Federation has estimated the number to be as high as 55 million!

The U.S.S.R. was the first country to legalize the practice, in the year 1920. A recent unconfirmed report listed about five million a year. According to health ministry officials in China, abortions there approach nine million​—a third of the number of pregnancies. Japan has over two million, and the United States reports over one and a half million. Britain has close to a quarter million.

In Roman Catholic Spain and Ireland abortion is not legalized. Yet women by the tens of thousands still manage to have abortions every year. How? There are, of course, clinics that operate illegally. But the ploy many women use is simply to travel to a country where the practice is legal, Britain being a favorite choice.

Obviously, not all these abortions are performed because babies may be born with some defect, either physical or mental, or because pregnancies are a result of rape or incest. British figures indicate that barely 2 percent of abortions are on these counts. Why, then, are there so many? There are two basic reasons.

The Basic Issues

Population control in ancient times was not a problem. Tribes and nations welcomed numerical increase, and women seldom had reason to limit the size of their families. Any abortions were usually illegal and a consequence of adultery or fornication.

In contrast, today a policy of abortion may be government sponsored. By this means the birthrate can be kept in check in countries where there is danger of a population explosion.

Although such a danger does not exist in many Western nations, the number of abortions is still rising. Why? “If we believe in women’s freedom,” stresses a spokeswoman of the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights in New York City, “we have to believe that women have the right to make their own moral choices.”

But once a woman has conceived, does she have an incontestable right to choose to reject the role of mother, to abort her baby? Is such a course acceptable? This is the focal point of today’s debate for and against abortion. What is the answer?

So much hinges on definitions. What is life? When does it begin? Does an unborn child have any legal rights?

When Does Life Begin?

When the male sperm unites its 23 chromosomes with a like number in the female ovum, a new human life is conceived. From this time of conception, the sex and other personal details are immutably established. The only change will be in growth during the nine-month term of pregnancy. “It is a statement of biologic fact to say that you once were a single cell,” writes Dr. John C. Willke. So does life begin at the moment of conception? Many simply answer yes. For those who think this way, abortion at any time is tantamount to murder.

Others maintain that ‘life begins about 20 weeks after the initial conception.’ Why do they view the matter this way? Because it is at about this time that the mother will begin to feel the fetus move. This period is sometimes referred to as the “quickening.” Live births can take place from the 20th week, and abortions are usually performed any time up to the 24th week of pregnancy, a time factor generally accepted. Is this, then, the time when a baby is legally considered to be alive?

In Britain the law does not recognize an unborn child as a human being. Under such circumstances no abortion can legally be termed murder. But once a child has left its mother’s body, even if the umbilical cord remains intact, to kill that child is a criminal offense. At that time the child has legal rights. Legally, then, from this standpoint, life begins at birth.

The Jewish view, as expressed by Britain’s Chief Rabbi, agrees. Life does not “begin until the moment of birth,” he says, adding: “We do not regard destruction of the unborn child as murder.” What then of the fetus, the baby growing in the womb? In Marital Relations, Birth Control and Abortion in Jewish Law, Rabbi David M. Feldman of New York stated: “The fetus is unknown, future, potential, part of ‘the secrets of God.’”

Conflict in Thinking

From this it is easy to reason that abortion is religiously acceptable. But not all religions think the same way. Consider the official Roman Catholic viewpoint.

Pope Pius IX in 1869 extended punishment of excommunication for the abortion of an embryo at any age. In 1951, Pius XII restated the principle, saying: “Every human being, even the child in the mother’s womb, receives its right to life directly from God, not from its parents.” Speaking in Kenya in 1985, John Paul II bluntly declared: “Actions such as contraception and abortion are wrong.”

Many Catholics today, however, maintain that such an attitude is out of date and must be revised. As a result, Roman Catholics are divided over the issue. Here are some facts.

The Roman Catholic Dilemma

Cardinal Bernardin, chairman of the American bishops’ Committee for Pro-Life Activities, asserts that abortion is a moral wrong and that the official stand of the church is binding on all Roman Catholics. Again, Roman Catholic professor of moral theology at Notre Dame University in the United States, James T. Burtchaell, wrote in 1982: “My argument is straightforward. Abortion is homicide: the destruction of a child.” Yet, four years later, priest Richard P. McBrien, chairman of the theology department of the same university, took pains to explain that abortion is not a defined doctrine of his church.a According to this view, Catholics who subscribe to abortion cannot be excommunicated, even though they may be viewed as being disloyal.

On account of this ambiguity of church authority, many prominent Catholics are outspokenly pro-abortion. Included among them in the United States are some priests. Also a number of nuns, some of whom endorsed a controversial abortion newspaper advertisement for which they were threatened with expulsion from their orders.

Additionally, lay Catholics now form an active pro-abortion lobby. “I am in the mainstream of Catholic lay thought,” asserted Mrs. Eleanor C. Smeal, president of NOW, the National Organization for Women, at an abortion rally in Washington, D.C., U.S.A. At the same time, according to The New York Times, she mocked the suggestion that her support for the right to abortion could lead to her excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church.

The Church of Rome is finding it increasingly difficult to resolve such conflicting views within its ranks.

Dangers of Illegal Abortions

To pass laws and edicts is one thing. Yet, even with the best of motives, for any authority to try to enforce a ruling on abortion is quite another matter. People are involved, intimately and personally. Under pressure, people can be unpredictable.

If an antiabortion lobby succeeds, either in preventing a government from legalizing abortion or in repealing existing legislation, what then? Does that solve any problems? “A woman will find a way [to have an abortion], sometimes at the expense of her own life,” commented Marilyn Waring, a pro-abortion Member of Parliament in New Zealand, “and there is nothing politicians, or laws, can do to stop her.” And therein lies a powerful argument. ‘Which is preferable?’ ask those who advocate abortion.

Where abortion is legalized, even though there are still some deaths, the practice is under strict medical supervision. Illegal, “back street” abortions, on the other hand, have a shocking mortality rate, as they are often performed by unqualified personnel under unsanitary conditions. In Bangladesh, for example, it is estimated that every year 12,000 women die as a result of such abortions.

But in all of this, there is another human factor to be considered. How do doctors and nurses feel about handling abortions on an assembly-line basis? What kind of physical, mental, and emotional toll does having an abortion exact from the prospective mother​—and father? These are questions we will next consider.

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Alternative Designations

Supporters of abortion often prefer to be referred to as pro-choice campaigners, just as those who oppose the practice often call themselves pro-life workers. In these articles, simply for the sake of clarity, the expressions pro-abortion and antiabortion are consistently used.

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“We have to believe that women have the right to make their own moral choices,” many state

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H. Armstrong Roberts

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Many women are outspokenly antiabortion

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H. Armstrong Roberts