Abortion: 2 Views, A conversation on the Bible, Policy, and Christian Community
⭐ This Theology Lab episode looks at what the Bible says about abortion. This theology and faith conversation with Mako Nagasawa and Elizabeth Grady-Harper explores two views on Scripture applies to the abortion discussions, posing key questions about the Bible and abortion and while seeking to move beyond polarization towards faithful, compassionate dialogue. Subscribe to the channel if you enjoy theology, learning about different persepctives, and reflecting on reading Scripture and interpreting the Bible.
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Description
💬 This Theology Lab video looks at what the Bible says about abortion. This theology and faith conversation with Mako Nagasawa and Elizabeth Grady-Harper explores two views on Scripture applies to the abortion discussions, posing key questions about the Bible and abortion and while seeking to move beyond polarization towards faithful, compassionate dialogue. Subscribe to the channel if you enjoy theology, learning about different persepctives, and reflecting on reading Scripture and interpreting the Bible.
Resources
📚 Mako Nagasawa, Abortion Policy and Christian Social Ethics in the United States - https://wipfandstock.com/9781725271890/abortion-policy-and-christian-social-ethics-in-the-united-states/
Elizabeth is the executive direction of the Boston Faith & Justice Network: https://www.bostonfaithjustice.org/
Generated Transcript
So with Elizabeth, I invited you thinking here about a little bit more of a leaning pro-life side. Mako, with you leaning a little more on the pro-choice side, there was enough agreement to at least say, hey, yes, I will join the theology lab program. But I think the best thing to do now would be to stop and say, Elizabeth, Mako, is there anything you'd want to do to kind of nuance that label I just put on you?
speaker-1 (00:20.142)
Love nuance. Yeah, so coming from a pro-life perspective, that's definitely how I identify myself. But sort of as you named, it might not be how people, other people who consider themselves pro-life, we might not align on items one through 10. I'm sort of on a journey as I think and hope all of us are. I come from a very vocally pro-life church community. It was sort of raised in that, that any of us who are
in our 40s and above and beyond, maybe that's what we experienced. In the evangelical world, there was a certain activity and learning and teaching around what it meant to be pro-life. I was in all of that. And so it's not as if I've jettisoned that, but I like to think that as I've moved through education, as I've moved through different communities, as I've engaged with people across maybe more difference than I was exposed to in my growing up church life.
My views have become more nuanced and less strictly in line with sort of the tablet I was given from on high, you know, in our high school youth group when we're told to go hold this sign and wear this pin and do these things. So again, I do consider myself pro-life, but I'm sure as we'll tease out a little bit, it might not mean the same thing to everyone.
speaker-0 (01:32.939)
Thank you.
speaker-2 (01:35.534)
That's right. And pro-choice, I guess I am okay as a starting point because that's probably how many people would think of it. I feel like the binary between pro-life and pro-choice, at least rhetorically, is not helpful. We're all interested in the exceptions or what do you think about enforcement and things like that.
I think the, you know, Scott, one of the questions I know you'll tease out, but you wanted me to answer here is, can I articulate my policy position, which is different? And I actually think the policy position is actually simpler to come to than being a minister in a church, because I think that's actually more complicated, but the policy would be.
Yeah, I believe abortion should be legal for the mother, legal for the doctor, and illegal for the father, punishable with a fine, scaled to his income and wealth, except after the 40-day mark. And I'm happy to talk about all of those details. So does that map easily into the pro-life or pro-choice position? I don't think so. I actually think what's more important is whether we're pursuing a
goal of bringing down the abortion rate, in which case there's more of a, at least some practical area of agreement, or whether we are Christian nationalists who believe that God will judge the nation based on the laws on the books, regardless of whether that actually brings down the abortion rate, which I would argue it does not. But I think that's a fundamental
Parting of the way is right off the bat.
speaker-0 (03:34.862)
Okay, lots in there for us to discuss if macos position on the legality of abortion entices you hang tight for about 15 minutes and we will be coming back exactly to that topic I want to go first to the question of of the Bible as two Christians who have commitments to scripture Can you give us a sense here about how does I mean at a broad level here? How does scripture inform your view of abortion? What do you think? What is like? What's a what's a passage or two you hold to that really helps?
shape how you understand and approach abortion.
speaker-1 (04:07.15)
Sure. So for me, again, kind of in the movement I grew up in, we were very much the verse that introduced me to abortion was the Psalm 139, you knit me together in my mother's womb. And it actually goes on and is a beautiful verse about how God is there from the very beginning, creating us. And so that speaks to kind of where I come from. But then also the, you know, back in Genesis, Genesis one, two, he made them male and female in his image. God made them in the Imago day.
And so for me, those inform how I view abortion, not because they're these unique scriptures that I can pull out and tag onto this issue, but because I think they represent what God talks about from Genesis to Revelation, right? That he has a plan for humanity. He created humanity. He loves humanity. And so those verses in particular get to that. And I think, foundationally, they speak not only to how I understand life in the womb, but how I understand women and children. And again, if...
We won't leak into policy now, but like that it's incredibly important that we hold on to that understanding of a mago day and apply it to all human beings who are involved in and around the issues of abortion, maternity health, childcare, and all of those things. So I think those are the verses that are foundational to me as I enter into a discussion like this.
speaker-0 (05:27.47)
Michael, how about you?
speaker-2 (05:29.582)
I would say while those are obviously important Exodus 21 verses 22 to 25 is first and numbers 5 is second and Exodus 21 there's a I think the most direct and most impactful most studied most discussed text in scripture regarded regarding abortion It is complicated because it exists in two different manuscripts Hebrew and Greek. There's a difference
The Jewish and Christian communities have gone in different ways on this. Some rely on one manuscript and not the other. Some ignore the manuscripts altogether. It is incredible that this happens. But it is the case study of when a pregnant woman is struck by a brawl. And whether she's in the fight, whether she's a bystander, that's not even clear. And she has a miscarriage.
Although ever since John Calvin people have wanted to say that that was not a miscarriage. So that gets complicated too and It is amazing how deep this goes in numbers chapter five It is phrased in the case of the jealous husband a husband suspects that his wife has Is pregnant by another man?
And so he brings her and by the way, understand. I just wanted to say that Jewish tradition and Christian tradition view this as able to go the other way as well. So if a husband has been suspected by his wife of cheating, this would happen. They take a water test. there's a it's a truth test and something something related to if it's a woman, she would miscarry.
If she has been unfaithful then she would miscarry and be barren afterwards and if she was faithful and and she's being wrongfully accused then Nothing would happen to her so the reason why that's important number one is within the context of Old Testament ethics and and Jewish ethics to this day it shows that
speaker-2 (07:48.216)
parentage, legitimate parentage is a moral value that at times can trump the moral value of the life of the fetus. So that's really significant and and then it highlights a difference between Jewish and Christian ethics that I think it behooves us as Christians to pay attention to because we often behave or talk think and act as if there are no other religious considerations from other groups.
or as if it's just Christian versus atheist. It's not that. And I think it's really important to point these out.
speaker-0 (08:26.862)
What do you think is a helpful question that you'd want to pose to the other person? If they come in and they're leading with passages in Scripture that are more poetic in nature Around, know knitting being knit together in in the mother's Versus passages and say like that are really leading with passages in legal code within the Old Testament legal case theory so
What's the question you would pose to the other person that you'd want them to consider in hopes of continuing the conversation.
speaker-2 (09:01.326)
So in Psalm 139, verse 16 says, unformed substance. And in verse 13, it says, you formed me. Is that significant? Because the Greek Septuagint translation of exes 21 believes it is. It takes that formed versus unformed distinction and says, that's how you judge a miscarriage and then the consequences that follow.
a forced miscarriage and the consequences that follow. And so it is fascinating. Irenaeus of Leon in the second century associated the image of God with the formed body, but not the unformed. So I think we take for granted that the image of God is located in human DNA. Right. So it's there from the moment of conception. Interestingly enough,
That is not how the Jewish and early Christian tradition took it from the time of the early church. So I would say, do you think that's significant? That distinction between unformed and formed?
speaker-0 (10:17.068)
Elizabeth, don't respond to that. The temptation here is for us to be, to get into a distinction, to get into the responses here for time sake. So the question that's been put up there, right, is thinking about the difference between being formed and unformed and how that's used in Psalm 139. Elizabeth, let me ask you to begin and to say, how would you then reflect on someone who really leads with a passage that has, that's in legal case theory?
speaker-1 (10:41.486)
Yeah, so I think, well, first of all, in any conversation, I mean, especially in a conversation with Mako, I'm going to be like, my first thing would be tell me more about that. Because you obviously have a wealth of knowledge and a perspective that I don't have. So I think I would, hopefully, again, going back to genuine curiosity. And I think connected to that is how can we, how does your view, again, coming at it from that practical side and my view coming at it more from this like.
hey, image of God and creation and all these things, where is there common ground? Like, where can those two interpretations lead us to something that's the same? And they won't lead us probably to all the same things, but maybe trying to find that common ground first. And then I think just on a more practical level, like, and this is a question I have no doubt Mako could answer, but we're not gonna let him, would just be like, I am always, I don't wanna say concerned, but like when we...
when we look to the Old Testament, particularly to like the Levitical and Numbers, there's always a concern about what was applicable then and what's applicable now in terms of like, a lot of those laws especially do not go well for women. And so it's like, obviously we're not taking those and applying them wholesale, but how do we determine what does come forward and what's more rooted in who God is and his relationship with mankind versus kind of some laws that were set down for that moment in that.
context? So that would definitely be a question, but again, it hopefully just a lot of curiosity and finding common ground.
speaker-0 (12:10.862)
think both very valid and legitimate questions. And I think what you said there, like leading with curiosity, Elizabeth demonstrating, Like tell me more. I mean, how much does that just open up a conversation to continue going ahead? let's go on to the topic of faith and science now. I, Mako, you start, you start us this time. so either like historically or more recently, how have you seen science and faith, interact in the way that the church has thought about abortion?
Have they been more like foes or friends? Share some of your views on that.
speaker-2 (12:46.414)
Well, in the early church, all the way until about 1869, the science was considered more of a friend, at least on this issue. After 1869, that is when the Catholic Church changed its understanding of its reliance on Aristotle and Aristotle's view of the fetus and said, we need to update that. And Protestant evangelicals
didn't actually care until about 1979, 1980. And that's when they also kind of came around on this. the general context was science is a foe. The time of Darwin, his theories, also some technological innovations. The condom was invented. The automobile was starting to be developed. Older people were really afraid of
young people having sex in cars and I mean that so so this is the the the context in in which the church says or catholics first and then evangelicals later says you know we we
want to be relevant and we think that we are developing now a position that is something science cannot touch that will ensure our relevance. My comparison point to substantiate that is the Catholic Church in 1870, just one year after shifting its position about the fetus, declared the doctrine of papal infallibility.
That was clearly a response to science, concerns about truth and epistemology. How do we know things? How do we know what we say is true? And then fundamentalists declared the doctrine of biblical infallibility with the pamphlet called The Fundamentals. And I think that was in the early 1900s, 1902. It was funded by an
speaker-2 (15:04.0)
a Presbyterian involved in the oil industry. So these things really do matter. And I think the question emotionally that we have to ask, I think as we enter in is, do I think science is a friend or a foe or should be a friend or should be a foe on this issue?
speaker-0 (15:29.856)
Elizabeth.
speaker-1 (15:31.982)
Yeah, so let me just say on the outset, I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate the oppositional posture that the church, the evangelical church in particular seems to have taken around science. I appreciate Mako sort of articulating some of the genesis of that. So that really frustrates me because I think if we believe in an omniscient sovereign God, then we need not fear science. It will just give us a deeper understanding of creator God, right? But I will also say my history with
understanding the issue of abortion, again, having come out of sort of this deeply pro-life evangelical community, science, medical science in particular, was in my view, sort of used as a bludgeon. Well, now we understand, as we understand more and more about how life forms, and again, I don't know if you guys, anyone grew up in this, the little feet pins that we wore, because this is what the baby looked like, this is what a baby can feel. And I'm not saying these things were bad, but I'm saying they were offered as proof.
outside of any sort of theological ethical discussion. was like, it was like, now medical science can tell us this, and therefore we must believe as opposed to, you know, when environmental science tells us something than we. And so I just, for me, just thinking that's more like an emotional response, I think, okay, I really want to frame this. as a Christian, I really want to understand it in the context of my faith, not rejecting science, medical, environmental, biotechnical, whatever, but
but not just letting that be the answer, I guess, if that, I don't know if that makes sense, but that's sort of my posture around as we look into faith and science and how we inform one another.
speaker-0 (17:12.695)
Hey, it's Scott here. Thanks for watching this Theology Lab video. If you're enjoying it, you can subscribe to the channel below and you'll get more Theology Lab videos as soon as they're released.
speaker-2 (17:27.726)
I think I do have to go a little bit into the history of Christians interacting with body and soul as opposed to just body because the the issue that I think Elizabeth is Illustrating is there came a point in time where Christians dropped Considerations of ensoulement all the way up to 1869 there there were questions not just of the body
but the soul, when does God in soul the fetus? And until 1869, the Western Church, both Catholic and Protestant, generally believed that it was at quickening when mom felt the baby kick in the womb, because life is associated with motion. so that was generally around halfway through the pregnancy. The Puritans believed that. That was the understanding.
of Christians in the US at the time of the writing of the Constitution. So when we think about these things and say, well, how did we get here to this point where we're now only talking about the body and just either assuming things about the soul or not even thinking about that at all, then that's when we have to ask, yeah, what role exactly is science playing here? Because
There are some who would say human DNA is enough right once we establish that the at the moment of conception there is human DNA there that is human life and human personhood and there must be a soul or It just doesn't make sense to talk about it anywhere else in reality there are lots of considerations like twinning and recombination of
of fertilized eggs that traditionally like so in 19th that that would cause a problem for Christian thought on insolment because in and and it's illustrated by a really great article by Carol Tower who is a Roman Catholic bioethicist who wrote an article in 1984 which very few people engage with and she says the principle of the soul is the principle of individuality.
speaker-2 (19:51.606)
So that's why you can't have a soul splitting into two and you can't have souls recombining into one. So that's just one consideration, not the only one, but one consideration for how Christian theology and science can be friends and might work together to say maybe there is a narrow window of time
in which God would probably not in soul the infant, in soul the fetus. And that has implications then for contraception. Right? And what kinds of contraception do we think is appropriate in the very early fetus?
speaker-0 (20:39.974)
Elizabeth is there any way you would advise responding to the person who comes who is who is confused about the different appeals to science being made it for a pro-life cause or a pro-choice cause
speaker-1 (20:49.964)
Yeah, I mean, it's very difficult to improve on what Mako just went through because I think it's so helpful to contextualize it not only within kind scientific discovery, but also the church's interpretation. I think that's something that's lost a little bit for us in looking back to how our forefathers and our foremothers dealt with these issues and learning from them as opposed to just in the moment really being driven by political whims.
or the latest and greatest. that doesn't mean that we shouldn't pay attention to scientific innovation, shouldn't pay attention as we learn more about the human body and all of these things. But there's such value in looking back to the way in which this has been something that people from time and memoriam have wrestled with. And so I really appreciate the way Mako brings forward, like, hey, here's how our forefathers and our foremothers talked about this and wrestled with this. And also, I think that brings this humility to
this position that I've landed on that I'm 100 % certain of because my pastor told me so, or because XYZ, and that's the position. Recognizing that there's 2000 years of Christian history, and maybe that if that hasn't always been the position, there's very few the positions that have stayed for 2000 years. And so I hope that that would give us a humility to approach it with this understanding of like, I am part of a great company of hosts that are wrestling with this, really trying to understand the heart of God and how he's calling me to act.
it's it I'm part of it like it's it's not just me and it's not just this moment so
speaker-0 (22:21.966)
Elizabeth, can I put a follow up to you here? I think this is really important because you've shown an openness to the science, the scientific view that Mako has presented. It creates probably some tensions within, let's just say at least a traditional pro-life position. Can I just ask if you could share a bit about your thinking and how you're kind of identifying with a pro-life position, but also with this openness to what Mako shared?
speaker-1 (22:46.7)
Yeah, absolutely. And I will just say like, Mako's book was very, very informative for me as well. And I've learned so much from him. I think for me that the insolent question is one that is not asked enough within solidified pro-life communities and churches. And we don't talk about that enough. And I think the way Mako raises that question of like, when, what we should want to know, that should be a question that we're asking.
When does this being take on the Imago day? And recognizing some of the points that he brings up are so helpful to understand, you know, and what happens after, you know, after conception and what that looks like. it at least raises questions we should be asking. I'm not saying that I'm, you know, OK, I'm fully convinced and here's this is exactly what to do. But that in Solman, that that should be as Christians, I feel like that should be our guiding principle. That should be something we're trying to understand.
But I also think the flip side for me, and I know we'll get into this later, is like, I just don't think we're not practical enough when we talk about it. It's an important issue. These are all really important things philosophically, theologically, ethically, yes. But like the real life implications of pregnancy, of maternity, mortality, of children living in poverty, like all of these things should always be part of this discussion, in my opinion. Like we need to talk about a whole ethic of life.
I think again, as Christians, that's what we bring to the table. Not some policy where we're trying to restrict people and control women's bodies, which is, let's be honest, like a lot of what the anti-abortion movement is about. But the Christian pro-life movement should be about how do we best love women and children and men? How does the love of Jesus inform the way in which we wanna craft policies, wanna minister to our neighbors? And so I think that comes into it.
always for me. Like, what does this look like? How is this loving my neighbor?
speaker-0 (24:40.226)
Mako, you have made the case, you make the case, right? That abortion should be, legal for the mother. should be legal for medical professionals who are involved in procedures and it should be illegal, illegal for men. tell us, okay, I'm gonna ask you to keep this as brief as you can. Tell us kind of how you get there. And then, Elizabeth, I'm going give you a chance to respond.
speaker-2 (25:03.852)
Yes, and this is really important towards crafting a pro-woman type of posture, position, and policy considerations. So I would say scripture and early church history give examples to me of when women, in scripture, God gives women certain rights over men or certain benefits of the doubt.
when their gender is significant in relation to men. And so in Exodus 21 verse 10, that is the touch point and starting the launch point for the Jewish tradition to say that wives have a right to sexual fulfillment, but and husbands do not. It is fascinating or consider the benefit of that.
even rhetorically that Jesus, the benefit of the doubt that Jesus gives to divorced men and women, right? Jesus says, if he's speaking to men, if you divorce a woman and she commits, she marries again, then you have made her commit adultery. so the moral, so whatever we think of that, whether, you know, how much of that is rhetorical flourish on Jesus's part, is, what are the ethics of remarriage?
Whatever we think of that, we all have to acknowledge that Jesus is saying there is something that men bear more responsibility for than women. And in the early church, one really good example of that is sex trafficking or prostitution. Basically, how did the early church handle it? They said the prostitute is almost always a woman. I I understand there are young men sometimes involved.
But the cases that came before them are almost, to my knowledge, all women. They would say there are many reasons why a woman would be a prostitute that are not sinful. She was betrayed, she was blackmailed, she was sold into poverty, she was raised by a pimp. All these, there are reasons that are beyond her control. And so we're gonna call prostitution a social sin. Like we want her to leave it, but she's not personally responsible.
speaker-2 (27:26.4)
as matter of pastoral care. So we're not going to say she's guilty of a sin, but the man who buys sex from a prostitute, he's always guilty of personal sin. And because there's only one reason why men do that. this becomes the basis of the so-called Nordic model of confronting human trafficking today, which is proven to be the only model on a policy level.
to bring down instances of kidnapping and human trafficking. So point being there are cases in scripture and I've just named two but there are more in scripture and in early church history where God gives women certain rights, more rights relative to men in certain situations when their gender matters. And so when we ask does abortion
or unwanted pregnancy, is that that kind of situation? I would say yes. I would say because today we do the, we put the duty to discern on the woman. The woman is by our general culture and law, the one who's responsible to discern is this guy ready to be a father and or ready to be a husband.
Right? We do. Instead, we should put the responsibility on the man. The man should have the duty to discern. Is this woman ready to be a mother and or ready to be a wife? If we did it that way, I think we would see a lot more drastic reduction in the abortion rate.
speaker-0 (29:15.414)
Elizabeth, what is your general response here to the position that Mako has laid out here?
speaker-1 (29:23.064)
So I find it incredibly fascinating. And I think it highlights some really important ways in which our laws discriminate against women in contrast to maybe the way in which it was intended to be theologically and through the biblical narrative. So very much appreciate that. But my instinctual reaction to this is like, yes, I love it. It's not practical. It's not something that will happen. We cannot get, we are.
going backwards when it comes to patriarchy and misogyny. so I guess my so it's like, yes, I would love to talk about that more in sort of an esoteric philosophical conversation. But then can we also move on? Can we also have a conversation about like, what what practically do to make abortion? And I think this is maybe where Mako and I align more is, you know, it used to be safe, legal and rare was like kind of the mantra and how can we do that? And again, I think and I speak as someone who is
not only was raised in evangelical church, I still attend the church I was raised in and I love it and it is my family and it is my home and it's wonderful. So sometimes I feel like I only highlight critiques, but I do feel like as the evangelical church, the way we have approached abortion is one of several issues where I think we have harmed the reputation of Jesus because we have focused again on controlling women's bodies and what that looks like policy-wise as opposed to what does it look like to love the woman, to love an unborn child, to love a community.
that is under resourced and stretched thin and constantly demanded of to pull resource from what does it look like to do those things? And so I'm very interested in policies that will do that. I'm very interested in Christians who declare themselves to be pro-life and walk that walk through conception and birth and free preschool and maternity care and all of these things and wick and snap. And I want us to
be concerned about those things because to me, that's what it means to be pro-life. so, and I don't contrast myself with Mako as if he's not concerned with those things. But like when I talk about, when I think about abortion, it's just, it's so connected to so many things. I mean, you look at these, these draconian abortion laws that are being passed do not reduce the rate of abortions. And so if our goal is to protect life, having not concluded when insolvent happens, but knowing that it does happen at some point in utero.
speaker-1 (31:43.222)
If our goal is to protect life, then what does that look like? That looks like poverty reduction. That looks like empowering women. That looks like maternity leave. That looks like free preschool. There's proven policies that will reduce the abortion rate and also access to birth control. So those are things I'm very interested in Christians getting behind and being known for that. Instead of being known for standing outside an abortion clinic, declaring people murderers.
I want us to be known for seeking the well-being, the wholeness of women and children.
speaker-0 (32:19.222)
I don't know how productive of a question this follow-up is, but I want to try it out. I want you to switch gears here and think about being together in a small, tight-knit faith community that wants to get politically involved in some way around abortion. And you too are in a small group together or something like that. You come together and you at least want to lead with different policy proposals. You've just shared different.
two different positions. don't know if that actually, if you would have totally different policies in this, I don't, I don't know. But, but if you have different policies you want to put forward, this is the question stick to this. How would you want to begin talking about that in a way that could be productive? What would be helpful for getting that conversation going in this faith community?
speaker-2 (33:08.118)
Well, fundamentally I think it's scripture. I'm going to assume that the faith community we're envisioning is one that takes scripture very seriously. that the and so I would begin with with saying, why is it that the Jewish community, the majority view is that life begins at birth, birth and breath?
Right, and their reasoning out of Exodus 21, Numbers 5, and other things. How do we as Christians engage that? Have we superseded Judaism in terms of ethics, in terms of our knowledge of the fetus? That's a really dicey position to take up as Christians, and yet we do. And secondly, think the kind of the
the brief history of politics, how white evangelicals used abortion and some white Catholics. Paul Weirich and Richard Viguerre and Jerry Falwell formed the moral majority in order to enhance the Southern strategy. And they used abortion as a disgust reaction creator.
They used it as a wedge issue to peel off Southern evangelicals and Catholics from the Democratic Party into the Republican Party. And so the concern that I have is that unless we do both, unless we name these scriptures and also name the history of politics and policy on this issue, people will notionally assent to, well, yeah, sure, I guess I could be
for more contraceptive care and more economic supports or even economic justice, but I'm not gonna go there because I'm gonna be first hard on anti-abortion. And the positions didn't align that way until the Reagan coalition. In the 1930s, the Catholics carried the pro-life cause.
speaker-2 (35:23.662)
And they wedded it to economic justice, pro-labor, democracy of small businesses. Let's have strong social supports. Let's do a lot of infrastructure. Let's help people afford houses. Why? Because they saw the Great Depression kick the abortion rate sky high. And their conclusion was poverty drives the abortion rate. So in order to bring the abortion rate down, we need to attack poverty. Republicans have concluded the opposite.
They say poverty should be there as the stick motivation, the looming threat to people so that if they have a kid before they're ready, if they're having sex before they should, then they should face economic hardship. And we want the market to discipline them. You have to choose. Does poverty drive the abortion rate up or does it drive the abortion rate down? I think we have plenty of social scientific data.
not just in the US, but across other countries to say, it drives it up. But the issue is, will people choose to prioritize that set of policies if there is a strong kind of rigid anti-abortion position that is really trying to summon the emotion of disgust? They're just baby killers. How do you argue with that?
Right, so I think we need to start with both.
speaker-0 (36:55.758)
Thank you for that. Marco, Elizabeth, you know, when two people have two different views on policy and what's, what's, what's needed for this community to start having a good conversation. what do you think's the way forward?
speaker-1 (37:07.308)
Yeah, think Mako named some really important things, again, contextualizing ourselves in history and understanding the ways in which this hasn't always been what it is now, I think is really important. And also, yeah, understanding, I think, and I think Mako sort of got us there. And I know this is beyond the scope, probably, of what we want to do here. like how I think the way we respond to abortion and the policy sometimes that Christians are demanding says much more about our commitment to pure market capitalism than it does our commitment to the Bible.
Right. And Mako articulated a lot of why that is. And so I think in a conversation, and I would love to think I would do this with grace and kindness and patience. I don't know. But to introduce sort of this idea of like, OK, well, what's our goal? Is our goal to protect life? Which is what we say as people who call ourselves pro-life. And if it is to protect life, then what could that look like? What common ground, again, could we find where we're all protecting life and we're all in agreement? And I think there could be.
hundreds of policies that we could agree on if our goal truly is protecting life, whether it's housing justice or climate change or making fostering easier or adoption and all of these things that could really make a difference on a practical level. And that's not to say like, let's table and never have this discussion about when does life begin and in so many and what should abortion laws look like. But I think if you really want to affect the abortion rate, if you really are in pursuit of the shalom of your neighbor,
then the policies that you're gonna be looking to are around housing and poverty and climate and those things. So I would like to think that entering space as believers, we could come to an agreement around that. Like, this might not feel connected to abortion, but let's walk this path and see how if we pursue this policy, if we look at our local laws and see if there's affordable housing here and whatever, that we could actually create a...
shalom for people and that, again, there's a lot of data that tells us that reduces the abortion rate and also contributes to the thriving of human beings, which we should be for all the time.
speaker-0 (39:15.022)
I appreciate both your response there. There's just three things that I hear. One is finding what, number one, try to find some common ground. Two, there's gonna need to be a decent, a fair amount more of listening and learning that has to be done. And that would bring me to my third point, just given the range of things you were able to say in that short span of time, it's gonna be hard. That is just going to be a difficult thing, which actually leads me to my final question for both of you before we go to the Q and A.
I want to ask you this, what in the abortion conversation or as Christians approaching abortion just feels like it's a real tension and maybe just feels like it's at the moment kind of an unresolvable thing. And then what's one thing that gives you hope for ways forward?
speaker-1 (40:03.874)
Yeah, think for me, mean, one thing personally that's hard to go into this is I obviously, I really strong feelings about things that should happen and the ways we should be and what my faith particularly calls me to. So one thing that's hard for me sometimes entering into this conversation is is giving that grace and not coming in full throttle. So I think that's a good reminder for me and anyone here like, okay, we feel strongly about it. How can we have a posture of a learner and curiosity? I think the...
issue or the sticking point around abortion for me is just specifically abortion policies to be honest. It's this laser focus on controlling women's bodies and we can see the results all over the country now and what that looks like and that we can't agree that that's bad as Christians. I have a really hard time with that and a really hard time when people I'm in conversation with don't want to
enter into the conversation around all of these other things that will demonstrably reduce the abortion rates if we care about children, if we care about unborn lives, this is what we need to do. And being stuck on this policy that I think Marco sort of alluded to it before, is it this belief that we subconsciously adopted that God will judge us based on the laws on the books, not actually by how we are protecting the most vulnerable and marginalized among us. And I think scripture is very clear about what God cares about, but.
I think it's been really ingrained in certain segments of Christians in the way we've grown up and the way we've been discipled, that it's really hard to move past that. And I don't always have enough patience to have those conversations, which is one of the reasons I'm really grateful for this space to name that and talk about that and process that together.
speaker-0 (41:48.14)
I appreciate you naming that frustration. Thank you, Elizabeth. Mako, how about you?
speaker-2 (41:56.75)
Lots to agree with with what Elizabeth shared. think there's lots of room for commonalities. My understanding is that if we agreed that we want to bring down the abortion rate, then contraception and economic uplift are the two things that we could do to have that effect. Western Europe takes that approach.
and they have the lowest abortion rate out of any region in the country, in the world. And they do have some abortion restrictions in the second trimester, right? So people could look that up. that gets at a more, let's say, view of law. And a parallel is
you know, if we wanted to reduce instances of domestic violence, yeah, I mean, we could say, let's heighten the criminal punishment for domestic abusers, right? I mean, we could do that, or we could expand the supply of housing, which would go a surprisingly long way at accomplishing the very same thing, perhaps even further. So, so law as a strategy for outcomes is different than
the pure moralistic use of law that Christian nationalists argue for, because they think how laws are articulated on the books is how God will somehow judge the nation. If someone is operating in that framework, and Elizabeth has noticed this, I pointed it out also at the beginning of this discussion, then that actually needs to be laid on the table.
and in my view, dismantled. I will argue all the way down on that one with someone. And I hope I could do it politely and charitably, but I have very strong feelings about that because it makes policies actually self-defeating. And I do care about bringing down the abortion rate. My concern is
speaker-2 (44:20.012)
the policies actually adopted or promoted by some factions on the right, including people who call themselves pro-life, actually are so counterproductive they will cause the abortion rate to go up, which we actually are seeing today. I would say that is a, I think we're identifying that's a place where the conversation either stops or,
It needs to focus if the parties are willing to.
speaker-0 (44:56.014)
Appreciate both your responses to that question. I'm going to transition now to some questions that we've received from the audience The first one has to do with it goes back to our conversation earlier when we were talking about scriptural passages that inform views of a bird of abortion So any of the passages that we were talking about and as a reminder we talked about Exodus 21 Psalm 139 Genesis 1 to 2 sometimes John the Baptist leaping in the womb at the presence of Jesus and Luke 1 to 2 is referenced so
Do any of these state any sorry, do any of these talk definitively about abortion or are we really looking at various human interpretations? If it's human interpretations, then why are we so determined to make this divisive issue? Let me leave that open for either one of you to talk about.
speaker-2 (45:45.784)
Well, I would say exodus 21 and numbers five exactly talk about abortion. That is what's happening. So a forced miscarriage, if someone punches a pregnant woman, that punch could be unintentional in terms of causing the abortion or it could be intentional. The word used there is nagaf. And every time the word nagaf is used in Hebrew, in the Pentateuch and in...
the rest of the Old Testament, including three wisdom literature occurrences, it carries the intention of causing death or a death. That is really significant. Why would someone intentionally punch a pregnant woman in order to cause a miscarriage? Well, maybe they don't want a child to be born that they would have to share an inheritance with. We see that concern in the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38.
We see it in Ruth 4. That is a real live consideration. so in terms of the plausibility of that, yes, totally plausible. And it could happen accidentally, I suppose. And there's a procedure to discern that. the issue, and we compare also Jewish law with ancient Near Eastern law codes like the Code of Hammurabi. And it becomes pretty clear that yes,
intentionality is probably assumed or allowed for in the code. And then numbers five is there to cause a miscarriage. It is to cause an abortion. In numbers five, God causes the abortion. The husband initiates it, but God causes it. How do we make sense of that? That we have to talk about these things.
speaker-0 (47:35.822)
Mako, I, if it's okay, there's the end of that question I do, think is getting at something. If it's like, I kind of want to just kind of point it a little, put a point on it and put it back to you. Do you think the degree to which scripture talks about this, the extent to which scripture talks about that is proportional to how Christians have held their positions and views on abortion?
speaker-2 (47:59.854)
No, but that because I think abortion has been used for different other political purposes right to maintain relevance in the face of science when science felt threatening to use it as a divisive wedge issue in order to peel off conservatives Southern Democrats and a few Catholics, you know into the Republican fold so it has been used in in ways
to generate an emotional response that completely bypasses scripture and early church thinking. And that's exactly what we see. And if we had more time, I would tell you about the 1800s and how abortion policy was used to accomplish anti-immigrant policy in the North and anti-blackness in the South.
speaker-0 (49:00.014)
Could I Elizabeth, if you would like to respond to this, I feel free to jump in. do have, there's another question I would love to kind of direct right towards you. okay. So any thoughts on this? how do we engage with the economic pressures due to systematic injustice with respect to the issue of abortion? I can repeat that if it's, if it's helpful, is this something we can talk with something we can talk to without taking a stance of willingness to support families who are raising children in poverty or without financial and social supports?
speaker-1 (49:30.102)
No, we cannot do that. I don't think you can or should talk about abortion. Again, as a Christian, secular worlds welcome to do what they want to do because they have various and sundry morals and ethics that inform them. But I think if we are informed by the biblical narrative, by the story of Jesus, then we cannot talk about, I mean, almost anything without talking about how do we protect vulnerable and marginalized people. I mean, that was Jesus's message.
You know, it wasn't just spiritual salvation. It was you were my plan. You were my people that I'm sending into the world and I'm equipping you and calling you to care for the vulnerable and the marginalized from Genesis to Revelation. This is our call. So I don't think we can talk about abortion or we can talk about anything without talking about how to combat economic inequality, how to how to house people, how to how to feed people, how to clothe people, know, sheeps and goats stuff. So I think that, again, we would be so much more effective.
as pro-life advocates if we recognize the value of all life and we pursued the well-being of all life the way some vehement far-right pro-life Christians pursue the well-being of children in the womb.
speaker-0 (50:36.822)
Let me put this as the last question and then try to get brief responses from both of you. Okay. so in quotes, shout your abortion and quote, coming from the left and then quote, baby killers and quote, coming from the right seem to be intended to rile up the other side and prevent any dialogue. Where would you start with dialogue with those who are at least open to listening, but far on the other, on either side.
speaker-2 (51:04.192)
I would start with Scripture and Church history.
speaker-1 (51:07.446)
Yeah, I mean, I think I would start just where it said before. I mean, every time I go to scripture, I'm like, yes, right. We should start with scripture. Absolutely true. So yes. But also just trying to find that common ground, because I really agree with that articulation of those far positions that like, yeah, abortion is great. Let's celebrate. Let's celebrate it, because recognizing that that is a position held on the far left. And then also the far right has its own stuff that which we've articulated. So I think.
Okay, where is the common ground? You might be far one side or the other, like not being that extreme end, what's that piece? What's that thread that we can pull at and maybe find ourselves again, being able to align and become allies in pursuit of policies that promote the wellbeing of our neighbors.
speaker-0 (51:53.23)
Mako and Elizabeth I just want to personally thank you and folks from the audience if you'd mind just kind of showing some support for being guests at theology lab willing to talk about a very important topic a very weighty topic a very personal topic with both grace and Conviction thanks for being guests at theology lab
speaker-1 (52:14.031)
Thank you so much for having us. I enjoyed the discussion and again, just really appreciate the space that you've created in order to cultivate these conversations.
speaker-2 (52:22.476)
Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Scott. And thanks again, Elizabeth. And I want everyone to know I love Elizabeth. We partner together in other ways. We are friends. And I hope that that came across. And thank you, everyone, for tuning in. And if you're watching the recording, I hope this does communicate the goals, Scott, of Theology Lab, of constructive dialogue. And I'm looking forward to
many more topics that you're organizing here.
speaker-0 (52:55.394)
Well, thank you both and folks we featured Macos book abortion policy and Christian social ethics in the United States Check that book out highly recommended and then see Maco and Elizabeth's work see Maco what Maco is doing with the Anastasia Center You can find that if you google that put a Maco's name and then what Elizabeth is doing at Boston's faith and justice Network and all the wonderful opportunities that are for serving and learning Thank you both
