Imposing mercy:
Garvey, John
"A BORTION ITSELF WAS COndoned as late as the nineteenth century by the Catholic church, using a time clock of the "ensoulment' of the fetus." Linda Bird Francke makes this statement in her...
...all of us suffer in some way, and all of us will die...
...How can there be more - or less - mystery in a woman conceiving a child than in a cow conceiving a calf?'' That is an argument for either vegetarianism or cannibalism...
...If society or parents reject any human being who might suffer, or whose suffering might impose a burden on others, the problem is not with the victim but with the hardness of heart which the victim encounters...
...Explicit papal condemnations of abortion are late, but so is an absolutely centralized and authoritarian papacy...
...She is opposed to abortion...
...The notion that until the nineteenth century the Catholic church condoned abortion is simply false...
...Francke's argument as Catholic teaching was to mine, but it is nevertheless an interesting example of how fast the moral terrain can shift...
...such an interpretation was explicitly ruled out, and the distinction between the time before and after ensoulment was dismissed by many theologians as beside the point, since what began at conception was in any case in the process of becoming human, and was therefore sacred...
...it is an argument between those who believe that meaning is built into the universe, and those who believe that the only meaning is that which we impose...
...For the fetus in the womb is not an animal...
...Prostitution and the most vile forms of pornography should, it can be argued, be legal, if only because the social costs of making them illegal would be too high...
...It would join Catholic defenses of dueling, the castration of gifted choir boys, and slavery...
...I didn't...
...A society which can accept the killing of humanity at its most vulnerable stage is not compassionate...
...Francke as well...
...Linda Bird Francke makes this statement in her letter to Commonweal [see page 482 ]; she said much the same thing in her book, and so have a number of other supporters of abortion...
...But people do matter more to me than cattle, and I am sure they do to Ms...
...JOHN GARVEY...
...Jews and Christians were considered odd for their opposition to the use of abortifa-cients...
...Infanticide was most commonly used then to get rid of female children...
...Francke calls her pro-choice position a defense of "the quality of life'' and says that it is "not a crime...
...But Rome - which saw so many of its people as property, to be used in whatever way the owner desired - is certainly not a model we want to imitate...
...Francke brought up Catholic teaching here...
...Now it is seen - insensitively, it could be argued - as a fail-safe method of contraception...
...Abortion and infanticide were considered acceptable in ancient Rome...
...This clear departure from Planned Parenthood's earlier stance is as irrelevant to Ms...
...I have, in fact, more basic disagreements with Ms...
...I pointed out in my column the way law has of confusing the issue...
...So is the mentality which makes abortion seem desirable to women who are desperate...
...And of course our society is not...
...I do not agree with her apparent definition of life's quality, but to introduce the issue of crime is to ignore the fact that crime is a legal and not a moral problem...
...Something can be legal, and wrong...
...Abortion was not condoned by the Catholic church...
...The point I set out to make was that this argument is between those who believe that life's value is a given and absolute thing, and those who believe that the value of life is something we confer on one another...
...There was a distinction (based on bad biology) made between the time of conception and the time of "quickening" or "ensoulment," at which time some theologians believed that the fetus received a human soul...
...This opposition to abortion is the consistent Catholic teaching, and was made most pointedly by Clement of Alexandria, who associated the destruction of the child in the womb with the loss of love for humanity.* The official teaching of the church, however, was not the point of my column...
...But her life has involved marriage, divorce, childbirth, motherhood, political and religious struggles, intellectual and moral growth, unhappiness, and joy...
...she does not regard her life as an unhappiness to be prevented...
...At one level they are of course#the same sort of thing: sperm and ovum connect, cell division begins...
...It would have burdened them to witness her struggle...
...As long as she is trailing red herrings, I might as well bring up Planned Parenthood's early opposition to abortion, which at one point it did not hesitate to call the killing of babies in the womb...
...abortion isn't the only sign of our lack of compassion...
...So does a wanted child, eventually...
...Old and retarded people are also not wanted, but I dread the thought that we might put into practice the idea that there is anything merciful or loving about making their lives easier by getting rid of them...
...Would it be better if they had not been born...
...I am glad that they were not able to impose their brand of mercy...
...Francke's letter demonstrates that better than my column did...
...It is true that an unwanted child suffers...
...it might even have caused them pain...
...I find the triumph of her life infinitely more important than their interpretation of what her life should have been like to be worth living...
...Abortion was explicitly condemned in the first century Didache, in Tertullian, in Basil, in the Epistle of Barnabas, and in the response of a second-century convert to Christianity who replied to the pagan charge that Christians were guilty of human sacrifice by asking, "How can we kill a man when we are those who say that all who use abortificients are homicides, and will account to God for their abortions as for the killing of men...
...I do not agree that abortion is more civilized than infanticide...
...It is tragic that there are six thousand legally adoptable children in New York City, but even if "nobody wants them" (which may be an oversimplification), should they be killed...
...Francke, but it is important first to address what is a serious error of fact...
...Abortion is not new, but the common acceptance of it as a decent option is relatively new...
...But this distinction was not interpreted as a permission to abort up until the time of ensoulment...
...It is true that there is nothing new about abortion, and that infanticide used to be the common "solution" to the "problem of unwanted children...
...John Chrysostom says of men who encourage their mistresses to abort that they encourage them to be murderers as well as prostitutes...
...She knows that if this condition could have been predicted she might have been aborted...
...But what if it were...
...That seems safe enough to say...
...A friend of mine has cerebral palsy...
...many oi the pro-choice arguments could be used to defend infanticide as well as abortion...
...She has suffered...
...Someone with good intentions could have prevented all that...
...There are people who would have saved her from her life...
...it has not been easy for her to get through life...
Vol. 108 • September 1981 • No. 16
