Other Essays

8. Abortion

The stance of the Religious Right on abortion is clear. "While people on one side of the issue stress a woman's right to choose whether or not to give birth, people of the other side stress the right of the unborn child to be born," says the Billy Graham Christian Worker's Handbook (p. 15). Yet, surprisingly enough, that has not been always the case. Originally, the Religious Right had no official position on the issue, and it was only through the work of several dedicated pro-lifers that the larger evangelical community turned its sights on abortion. This Paper will describe the change in the position of the Religious Right on this issue, and will show how far some Religious Right pro-lifers will go for their cause.

In the United Stars, the history of the abortion struggle was a long, and often violent one. The first anti-abortion laws began appearing in the United States by the mid 19th century. By the early 1900s, abortion has been outlawed in the United States , which led to many illegal abortions. Most early feminists opposed it, claiming that by eliminating the inequality between the genders will eliminate the need for abortions (Lewis, "Abortion History"). Then, most feminists began defending safe and effective contraceptives as they became available.

By 1965, all fifty states have banned abortion. However, in 1973, the Supreme Court, in the case of Roe v. Wade, declared most existing state abortion laws unconstitutional. This decision ruled out any legislative interference in the first trimester of pregnancy and put limits on what restrictions could be passed on abortions in later stages of pregnancy (Lewis, "Abortion History").

Surprisingly enough, the fundamentalist community took almost no notice of the issue until much later. Jerry Falwell, for example, did not preach a sermon on abortion until 1978, five years after the Supreme Court decision (Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, p. 193). In fact, many Protestants were for abortion because Catholics were opposed to it (Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, p. 193). However, due to the efforts of Harold O.J Brown and C. Everett Koop, a prominent pediatric surgeon who later became Surgeon General under the Reagan administration, this started to change. Initially, the conservative Christian community proved unresponsive to their efforts. "Many people," said Brown, "would like to see abortion as a trivial sort of issue—one among many" (Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, p. 194). However, Brown and Koop soon found themselves a powerful ally. Francis Schaeffer held the same views on abortion, and when the three men met, the result was a five-segment film and a companion book, both titled Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, p. 194). The central theme of the film and the book was that abortion is both the cause and the result of the loss of appreciation for the sanctity of human life, and that widespread acceptance of abortion would eventually lead to widespread acceptance of infanticide and euthanasia (Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, p. 194). As the film started to circulate widely in evangelical circles, its impact was tremendous. It caused most evangelicals to develop a revulsion for abortion, but also caused them to feel a desire for social action (Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, p. 194). Thus, the Religious Right joined the abortion struggle.

Today, most evangelicals hold a pro-life position. Powerful organizations like the Family Research Council, which, in addition to holding a strong pro-life position, believes that American society was founded on Judeo-Christian principles ("FRC Mission Statement") hold massive lobbying campaigns to ban abortion.

The FRC's views on abortion are clear from this article, which appeared in the Washington Times on January 26, 2003. The article begins with the following paragraph:

In the three decades since the U.S. Supreme Court hijacked the Constitution and legalized abortion in all stages of pregnancy, for any reason whatsoever, 42 million unborn babies have been slaughtered. Whatever one's position on the so-called "right to choose" is, this death toll is something to mourn, not celebrate. Even Bill Clinton said he wanted to keep abortion legal, safe and rare although he did nothing to make it so. At least Mr. Clinton paid lip service to the moral reservations so many Americans harbor about the availability of abortion-on-demand (Connor, "NARAL's Godless Religion").

And then proceeds to blast the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League for celebrating the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Rather than marking the bloody anniversary of Roe with somber and sober observances suitable to the fact that every abortion stops a beating heart, NARAL and the Democratic hopefuls eager to pander to the pro-abortion extremists, whooped it up at a gala banquet, as though 42 million dead babies were a mere trifle. In the 30 years since Roe, abortion has been transmogrified from a lamentable evil to a positive good, something to be toasted and cheered….But it is literally true that, for NARAL and its pandering politicians, abortion has become a godless religion, in which free sex unimpeded by consequences is the chief sacrament (Connor, "NARAL's Godless Religion").

In addition to that, the FRC claims that the International Women's Day, celebrated on March 8, is "nothing more than a radical feminist celebration of abortion" (Family Research Council. "'International Women's Day,' A Pro-Abortion Agenda In Disguise"). The position of the FRC is clear. It also has the means to carry out its agenda. With more than 450,000 members, it is one of the largest pro-life organizations in the country. The voices of its lobbyists are heeded in Washington, and even the largest newspapers are ready to publish their articles, (see Ken Connor's article, which was published by the Washington Post).

Not all members of the Religious Right, however, choose to use peaceful means to achieve their goals. Randy C. Alcorn, the founder of the Eternal Perspective Ministries, writes in his book, Is Rescuing Right? (1990):

Beliefs have no credibility when unaccompanied by sacrifice. We must stubbornly refuse to remain silent in the face of the holocaust of God's unborn children. Not all of us in the church will be called upon by our Lord to do the same thing in the same way. All of us can, however, be supportive of sacrificial intervention that gives credibility to our words. This must involve much more than peaceful civil disobedience at abortion clinics to save the lives of unborn children. But surely, it can include it (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right:…, p. 95).

Many members of the Religious Right have embraced those words and began doing "more than peaceful civil disobedience." But nothing illustrates this more than the story of Randall Terry and his Operation Rescue.

Randall Terry was born in upstate New York and was reared in a nominally Christian home, but he didn't take his religion until his mid-teens when exposure to students from a fundamentalist Bible Institute led him to a born-again conversion experience (Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, p. 320). At first, Terry thought that it was necessary to spread the gospel, not become involved in controversial social issues. However, when he was a junior in a Bible college, he had watched the film Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, and began to believe that God chose him to fight abortion (Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, p. 321).

In 1987, Randall Terry founded Operation Rescue (OR), which was based in Binghamton, NY. Its premise was simple: "Babies are being murdered. We have a duty to save them" (Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, p. 321). In a typical "rescue," usually carried out against a well-known abortion clinic, demonstrators divided themselves into three groups. The first group consisted of the actual "rescuers," who tried to limit access to the clinic by blocking driveways and doors. The second group of "sidewalk counselors" tried to dissuade women from having an abortion. Finally, the third group prayed, sang, and quoted Scripture to support their colleagues and bear witness to women seeking abortions (Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, pp. 321-322)

Operation Rescue had support from most of the fundamentalist community. Jerry Falwell compared Terry to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., intending it as a compliment, and had Terry as a guest on their programs. Terry also received endorsements from Pat Robertson. D. James Kennedy, and New York Catholic prelate John Cardinal O'Connor (Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, p. 322).

The most important campaign of Operation was the "Summer of Mercy," which the media called the "War in Wichita." OR targeted Wichita, Kansas for a week-long siege against abortion clinics (Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, p. 322). The siege, however, lasted forty-six days. OR members chained themselves to clinic doors, blocking cars trying to enter clinic grounds, harassing abortion doctors, and singing:

Be a hero, save a whale;
Save a baby, go to jail.
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on.

(Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, p. 323)

The campaign gained nationwide attention as hundreds of protesters were arrested, and thrown in jail. The people of Wichita, who grew tired of the protesters, held rallies of their own, chanting: "Born-again bigots, go away! Racist, sexist, anti-gay!" (Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, p. 323). Finally, the War in Wichita ended with a huge rally at which Pat Robertson gave a stirring speech about the moral imperative to rescue the innocent who are being led to slaughter (Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, p. 324).

Randall Terry's fight against abortion did not end with the end of the War in Wichita, however. In 1992, Terry tried to embarrass President Clinton by attempting to hand him a fetus during the Democratic National Convention in New York. Later, he distributed materials to 27,000 pastors asseritng that "to vote for Bill Clinton is to sin against God" (Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, pp. 324-325).

However, as time passed, Terry started to be more and more militant, and moderate pro-lifers began to distance themselves from Operation Rescue. In January 1993, Operation Rescue began holding twelve-week training sessions which they called the Institute of Mobilized Prophetic Activated Christian Training (IMPACT). In addition to that, Terry began using increasingly inflammatory rhetoric. Terry called the pro-choice Supreme Court justices "enemies of Christ" and had compared them to Hitler and Stalin. At an IMPACT training session, he said, "Intolerance is a beautiful thing. We're going to make [abortionists'] lives a living hell" (Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, p. 355).

Then, on March 10, 1993, Michael Griffin, who had participated in several OR rallies assassinated Dr. David Gunn outside the Pensacola clinic where Gunn performed abortions. He was sentenced to life imprisonment(Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, p. 355). Terry, however, became even more violent. At a July rally in Denver, he urged Christians to become "intolerant zealots [regarding] baby killers, sodomites, condom-pushers and that pluralism nonsense." Two weeks, he told an Indiana congregation, "I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good" (Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, p. 355). Another OR activist went even further. "It isn't always wrong to kill," he said. "Violence doesn't always beget violence. Sometimes it solves violence" (Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, p. 356).

While most Religious Right leaders have distanced themselves from Randall Terry and Operation Rescue, it is clear that most of them believe that abortion is murder, and must be stopped.

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