Unwanted pregnancies cause poverty and release unprepared children into a world that increasingly refuses to sustain them. But that “practical” argument is not why women can have morally good abortions. We can have morally good abortions because we are human beings, with God-given rights to human agency, just like men.
Women are moral agents. Women are capable of making soulful, moral decisions about their own bodies. Assuming that a woman cannot decide for herself if and when to bear a child demeans women. Mandatory childbearing makes the woman a hostage to the will of others — those unfamiliar with her story, her life experience and her needs, and may have disastrous consequences for the children. Medical choices, like terminating a pregnancy, are medically available. Other life sustaining medical procedures are not considered immoral. Why the complaint against abortion?
Our faith tradition teaches soul competency, a Baptist principle that is violated in restricting the right to choose an abortion. Our forebears suffered greatly, even to the point of death, to express their conviction that no one stands between the individual and God. ...
Our faith tradition teaches freedom for religion and freedom from religion. As powerful as the U.S. Constitution must have seemed at its inception, Baptists were not satisfied that it would protect their most deeply held principles. “We, as a society,” they wrote President Washington, “feared that the liberty of conscience, dearer to us than property or life, was not sufficiently secured.” The pressure they brought helped in the adoption of the Bill of Rights, in which the very first amendment defines two critical tenets of our society: the separation of church and state and the free exercise of religion. To privilege one spiritual belief over another violates religious freedom. Theocratic legislation is neither Baptist nor, fundamentally, American.
Our foundation of Baptist principles and our Christian call to advocate for justice provide a powerful theological grounding for our unwavering support for a woman’s individual freedom to choose whether and how to bear children. ...
Consenting adults are free to have sex that is not procreative. The state should not dictate reproductive decisions, either in favor of or in opposition to carrying a child to term.
As Christians, as Baptists, we wearily say, the right to choose a medical procedure is also a woman’s right. It has to do fundamentally with the freedom of our souls to practice our religion and morality in our own ways.
