Choosing Life in All Its Fullness: The Nature of the Abundant Life and Its Relationship to Abortion Politics

Observations gained from living in an imperfect world

A book that was always in the background behind my desk during my early years of ordained ministry was titled, in giant letters that could be read from across the room, Rape in Marriage. The book was there as an invitation to speak in confidence: an invitation that I came to understand was desperately needed to break the many taboos that adhered to women’s understandings of sex, marriage, and their own bodily autonomy. For many women who read that title over my shoulder, those three words provoked their first realization that what they were experiencing in their sexual relationships with the men they were tied to (by marriage, cohabitation, romance, or love), was rape; coerced unwanted sex acts leading to unwanted physical and psychological consequences.

Before becoming a priest, I was a school social worker in a public school created to educate and support teenage mothers seeking to finish junior high and/or high school. Early in my ordained ministry, I served as the director of a rural Title X Family Planning Clinic, in addition to being a parish priest. In these settings, I came to understand that in far too many cases girls’ and women’s bodies were treated as if they did not belong to the girls and women who lived in them. Their bodies were possessed and controlled by others; others who demonstrated minimal concern for the girl’s (woman’s) well-being.

For those who have grown up in stable, protected family environments, it may be difficult to grasp the complex interrelationships and dynamics that can lead to an unwanted pregnancy. Rarely in my experience did girls and women find themselves pregnant because they simply decided not to use contraceptives. Sometimes the contraceptives failed. Often access to effective contraceptives was limited by economic constraints. Teenagers had difficulty accessing contraceptives if their families had no health insurance, but also if they were unable to confide in a parent in order to access the family’s health insurance. This was most poignantly true in cases of incest. Wives in dominated marriages who didn’t work outside the home, often because of raising small children, sometimes had limited access to their own health insurance if they were fortunate enough to have it. Many families could not afford regular medical care and relied upon emergency services for all their health care. Sometimes partners refused to use or allow contraceptives in the relationship. It became clear to me over time that power (physical, psychological, social, economic, and political) is a much more central issue in human sexual relationships than either our cultural or our religious mores submit. Life after Dobbs has made that all the clearer.

The level of vulnerability that serves as part of the dynamics of sexual politics plays a profound role in determining how much agency women and girls have in their sexual activity. This vulnerability can create situations in which women and girls are exploited, victimized, or are simply naïve actors with limited capacities and resources to problem solve a situation that can lead to an unwanted pregnancy. The end result can be that those who become pregnant also have limited access to resources that might allow them either to seek an immediate termination of the pregnancy or to find help in problem-solving the potential lifelong repercussions of carrying the pregnancy to full term.

Often the same dynamics that led to an unplanned pregnancy: lack of economic resources, lack of access to medical care, lack of emotional support, naivete, limited body awareness, limited access to transportation, substance abuse, poor self-esteem, shame, coercion, and denial led to late determinations of pregnancy—far beyond the six weeks or even fifteen weeks many current abortion statutes recognize. In the extreme, I’ve known teenage girls who were so disassociated from their own bodies that they did not know they were pregnant until after labor began. Michael Barilan writes,

Like sexual congress, pregnancy is a holistic experience, bodily as well as emotionally—and it is a known fact that, like each sexual act, each pregnancy is experienced differently, both physically and mentally. In both cases the line that separates pleasure and blessing from suffering and disgrace is as thin as a hair, and everything depends on the woman’s feelings. ¹

In our life after Dobbs world, those who suffer most as a result of unplanned pregnancies are those who live closest to the margins. Those in rural areas with inadequate medical resources and all those who suffer economic hardship can experience body and soul crushing consequences from being forced to continue a pregnancy they did not choose. Often those who have already been violated in the acts that led to pregnancy continue to be violated again and again and again as they face the physical and emotional pain, indignity, and trauma of having their bodies coercively treated as receptacles for others’ moral convictions or others’ needs to dominate and subjugate through compelled pregnancies.

Personhood is stripped away as they find themselves controlled by the state. Their names, their voices, their life stories, and identities cease to matter. They cease to have worth in their own right and become barely human incubators for an unborn fetus, a fetus that up until twenty-three weeks does not yet have the capacity to become a child or to exist outside of the uterus it is being housed in. ² All the while, this fetus is consuming disproportionate shares of the emotional and nutritional resources of the woman who has no agency, no say in what happens to her own body and her own physical and mental health.

Women who continue unwanted pregnancies deal with both the physical and psychological risks that can attend that pregnancy. They are more likely to suffer from maternal mortality. They and their other children are assured long term economic consequences from the pregnancy. They are sometimes subject to condemnation and judgment by those around them who, as their bellies grow, gain knowledge of the woman’s/girl’s private life circumstances. Her most personal and private experiences become the object of public interest and curiosity. These women may experience rejection by a partner, or find themselves in marriages or relationships which face the added emotional and economic strain of an additional child. The added costs of having and caring for another child can move a family from food security to food insecurity, barely eking by to falling into poverty.

When one is forced to face into all of these prospects that may lie ahead with no agency and no voice, it can push these women and girls toward depression, mental illness, chemical addiction and even suicide. It was a regular event in my conversations with those confronting an unplanned pregnancy to hear teens and women state their intention to kill themselves if they could not find a way to end the pregnancy. All of this trauma has long-term, often lifelong consequences for the pregnant person, her family, and the unwanted child.

When a woman unintentionally becomes pregnant and makes the independent decision to carry the child to full term and to give birth; this is rarely a decision of convenience or passivity. That decision can become a grounding moment in a woman’s life, empowering her to face life’s obstacles with a clearer sense of self and agency. Even during adolescence, she may find within herself reservoirs of strength and compassion never known before as she moves from an unplanned pregnancy (or even a planned one) to a conscious expansion of her own identity to include mother and caregiver. Such resilience may help her overcome numerous adversities; physical, emotional, and economic. But that resilience is found because she has a say in her own future. When society plays an assisting role in helping this woman flourish and successfully raise her child (and often it does not), then we may witness an example of abundant life, even in the midst of pain, hardship, and poverty. Both mother and child may find in their relationship with one another the seeds of abundant life. But when there is no agency, no voice, no freedom, then their relationship is truncated to nothing more than biological co-existence. Love is not possible without the choice to love and be loved.

Michael Barilan presents disturbing statistics on the plight of women and girls in the world. “An astounding one-third of women worldwide report their first sexual intercourse as being forced. Most of them were teenagers at the time and lived on less than one dollar a day, with no access to contraception or safe obstetric care.” ³ As part of the Anglican Communion, we must consider the lived reality of people of childbearing age across the globe and within every economic stratum. The ethical stances we promote must align, as Jesus’ did, with particular and intentional care for the freedom, dignity, health, and wellbeing of those who in modern capitalist societies are considered the last and the least.

In pursuit of a fuller Anglican perspective on abortion, we now turn both to scripture and to another tradition that holds a similar ethic to our own built around freedom, dignity, and mutuality. Indeed, Jewish abortion ethics over the millennia can offer significant insight into how a religious community that shares some of our deepest biblical roots can discuss abortion in a way that respects the preciousness of human life, human freedom, and human dignity. Psalm 23, beloved in Jewish and Anglican piety and liturgy, offers a bridge connecting the two traditions. After our discussion of Jewish ethics on abortion, we turn to the Gospel to see what light it might shed on how to approach discussions of abortion, and how John 10 might complement and broaden insights gained from Jewish ethics.

Jewish ethics on abortion

Within Judaism there is both a deep respect given to the potential life of an unborn child and the health and well-being of the pregnant woman carrying that life. Decisions regarding termination of a pregnancy are not to be taken lightly and are to be made by the pregnant woman with a deep respect for the prohibitions against destructive activity within Scripture. However, from a legal perspective, the fetus has no rights until birth. Until birth, its life is dependent upon the woman within whose womb it resides, and the wellbeing of the woman is paramount:

Independent biological existence is a precondition for definition of a neonate as a “soul,” nonetheless, its ethical and legal status is not a function of a physical or physiological condition, but of its inability to adversely affect its mother anymore. ⁴

A person is one to whom the duty of neighborly love applies. This means that a person cannot be treated as an object and used for others’ purposes. There is a sacred duty to offer them neighborly love. They cannot, morally, be treated like an instrument or a container, ⁵ including a container for the fetus. The mother’s pain (physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual) takes precedence over the life of the fetus up until birth. ⁶ To turn a woman into a container is to make her a slave by taking away her corporal integrity. “The inability to maintain corporal integrity . . . characterizes the condition of a slave.” ⁷ The Babylonian Talmud insists that the enslaved person’s bodily integrity is subject to legislation and debate but not the free person’s. ⁸

Jewish ethics refute a legalistic approach to abortion that presumes to know what the costs of continuing an unwanted or a dangerous pregnancy can be. As a result there are ethical codes not only that allow for abortion but that outline the circumstances under which it is not just an allowable act, but a virtuous one. “Abortion is permitted for the sake of an important purpose, such as neighborly love for the mother or the fetus itself, if it is foredoomed to a life of suffering. ⁹

Barilan also helps Christians understand the continuity between a Jewish pastoral, individualized approach to the question of abortion and current Christian ethics:

The Patriarchs of the Church distinguished between laws as “commandments” (such as the Pharisaic “laws of Moses”) and laws as “counsels,” as lived and preached by Jesus and the Church. Contemporary “virtue ethics” follow this old pathway, particularly in the writings of authors such as Nussbaum and Lovibond who maintain that ethical conduct cannot be exhausted by verbal formulations (the non-codifiability thesis) and must be lived through experience and exchange of narratives. ¹⁰

The nature of the abundant life

John 10:7b-10 (New Revised Standard Version) says,

Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

In discussing John 10, Raymond Brown writes,

We have heard previously that Jesus supplies the living water and the bread of life; now he offers the pasture of life, for verse ten makes it clear that in speaking of pasture, he is really speaking of fullness of life. ¹¹

This passage echoes the 23rd Psalm prompting imagery that speaks of fulfillment, peace, restoration, and well-being even in times of fragility. John invites us to perceive a God who cares so deeply for God’s people that life must mean more than just subsistence. Jesus is indeed concerned with basic life necessities like bread and water, but there is much more to be concerned with as well. The life (zoë) spoken of by John is a rich, full, blessed life; not a life built on material abundance, but a life nourished by Shalom. Before his ascension, John’s Jesus offers his disciples his peace, his Shalom. He does not just promise them rescue from natural death; he invites them into a way of living that is saturated with meaning, with blessing, with justice, with communion, and fullness. It is to this vision of salvation that we will return as we examine the issue of abortion from an Anglican perspective.

John 10 follows immediately upon the pericope of the healing of the man who was blind from birth. This story juxtaposes Jesus’ compassion with the callousness of the religious/political leaders who interrogate the blind man. Jesus’ willingness to heal such an undeserving figure as the man who was blind from birth offends them. From the philosophical perspective of these elites of society, this man’s life circumstances prove God’s punitive nature with regards to sin and impurity. To heal this blind man is to ignore the sin that led to his condition. To heal him is to offer him full life, life beyond the confines of his God appointed station. From the perspective of the religious elite, there is no need to understand the circumstances surrounding the blind man’s healing, and yet they interrogate him to make their point. “In the final interrogation of the man, all interest in seeing where the truth lies has disappeared; they seek to trap the man by having him repeat the details of the miracle.” ¹² But their judgments cannot trap him, because Christ has freed him.

This uneducated beggar recognizes the shepherd and the gate to everlasting life, even when the most privileged of Judaean society did not. We can see a parallel between the actions of the religious elite and the thief in John 10, but in Johannine thought we are to look beyond the individual antagonists in this story to see the thief as a more general figure of evil, evil experienced on a worldwide scale. ¹³

The contrast is stark. The forces of evil are concerned with the here and now; looking to steal, slaughter, and destroy, to usurp earthly goods, including the natural life (psyche) of the sheep. Jesus, however, is committed to an understanding of zoë, life received in the present but including all of life that will follow, even after natural life (psyche) has ended. This abundant life (zoë) is available to all who choose to enter through the gate. The gate leads to the pasture of life, a place of human flourishing, flourishing that grows from mutuality of relationship. Mutuality is “neither a folding of identities that loses their difference, nor a sharpening of difference that leads to hostility, but an enjoyment of the other evokes cherishing and relishing.” ¹⁴ Jesus cherishes the sheep and offers them pasture.

This pasture is a place of salvation, of healing and wholeness, of Shalom, of affirmation and belonging. “In John, salvation is found in and through the flesh, not apart from the flesh . . . God is made known in the enfleshed life of the Word in the world, and that life is one of fullness and grace.” ¹⁵ This can be contrasted to the focus on sacrifice and emptying that is central to other New Testament passages. “For John the incarnation is not an emptying, rather. . .the incarnation is a moment of fullness.” ¹⁶ The Word made flesh is the only begotten, which can also be translated as the only birthed one. ¹⁷ Jesus as the first born of all creation is the one whose being, whose zoë, springs from the blend of his begotten-ness and his birthed-ness.

This intimates that the choice to become pregnant and to choose to love the fetus within one’s womb (or one’s partner’s womb) is central to the work of creating a child. Just as God and Mary begot/birthed Jesus, humans can choose to engage in this holy act. But it is absolutely clear from scripture, the holiness comes in the choosing, and the humanity of the child comes in the birthing. Until a fetus reaches viability, there is no one outside of the mother who can give this child life (psyche). Until viability, the fetus’ life comes from the woman, and the fetus does not have a life (psyche) all its own. Even at the advanced stages of pregnancy, the fetus is still entirely dependent on the body in which it dwells. Only a willing act on the part of the mother (or a horrendous violation of the woman’s body) can lead to birth and independence before labor and delivery. It is the loving commitment to the life within a woman’s womb that can lead her to love the potential child within her even prior to its birth—and to grieve the loss of this unborn child in situations of miscarriage and stillbirth. Fullness of life is found when communion with another in a relationship of mutuality, of cherishing and relishing, occurs; echoing the focus on mutuality we saw in Jewish abortion ethics.

Christ calls us to more than existence. Christ calls us to zoë, to abundant life, everlasting life, life lived in fullness and hope. When the state (or the church) prioritizes preservation of a fetus above all else, they take life (zoë) away from both the pregnant woman and the unborn child. Each deserves better. Each deserves zoë and not just psyche. In Christ all are summoned to lives of freedom, of love, of wholeness. When both a pregnant woman and the fetus have been compelled by external powers to exist in relationship with one another, both are redefined as objects with no voice and no choice, objects of another’s ego-centered moral certitudes. In this coercive oppressive environment, both the mother’s and the child’s hope for life (zoë) is jeopardized. The mutuality of shared human love is eroded. Psyche eclipses zoë. While society can force a woman to carry a pregnancy to term, it cannot force her to love or claim the child that she bears.

Building a lived Anglican ethics on abortion

There is no more powerful and compelling statement of Anglican ethics than the baptismal covenant. This call to love one’s neighbor as oneself, to strive for justice and peace on the earth, to seek and serve Christ in all persons and respect the dignity of every human being offers us the kind of living framework for ethical decision-making promoted by Nussbaum and Lovibond. ¹⁸ Virtue ethics must be lived through experience and exchange of narratives. This is a personal process, one that cannot be mandated or legislated.

Our Anglican commitment to recognizing the dignity of every human being demands that we allow the woman whose life will be most deeply, personally, and profoundly impacted by a decision to keep or abort a fetus to maintain agency in that decision-making process. Any process that would take this freedom and voice away from a woman makes her nothing more than a container for a fetus. When her corporal integrity is taken from her by the state in pursuit of some dispassionate abstract ethic, she has become a slave with no autonomy over her own life, her own future, her own destiny. The choice to end or continue a pregnancy is a sacred choice, and legal restraints placed on that choice by coercive external forces desecrate that choice.

The prohibition against abortion takes away one of the most sacred choices a woman can make—the choice to have and love a child. Every child deserves to be loved and wanted. When the state intervenes to require that all pregnancies continue, they harm not only those who do not choose to have a child. They also erode the sacred choice of all mothers who choose to bring the fetuses within them to full term and to claim them as their own children—whether that is to raise them as part of their family or to offer them for adoption to a family that may be able to better care for the child. Laws prohibiting abortion have the power to erode the sacred bond between parent and child, to disrupt the fabric of family life within society, and to leave all children with questions and uncertainty about whether they were truly wanted from in utero—or have simply been forced by society to live lives that may be enveloped in poverty, ill health, abuse, emotional deprivation, powerlessness, and hopelessness.

The Episcopal Church has long had its struggles with the ethics of domination. Like the Anglican Communion, our history is littered with tragedies that have come from asserting superior intelligence, moral strength, and privilege over other human beings. At present, there are tremendous efforts being made by some within the church to name the wrongs we have done to others through domination, subjugation, enslavement, genocide, and exploitation. In this era of life after Dobbs, let us not be tempted to fall back on simplistic legal prescriptions designed to govern life’s deepest and most personal moral dilemmas. May we embrace the soul of every girl and woman facing this difficult life choice and as a church do all in our power to uphold and respect her freedom and dignity, allowing her to decide what’s best for her life and the nascent life within her. May we champion her right to abundant life, just as Jesus promised the pasture of life to all his sheep.