Posted on 02/21/2006 5:58:36 AM PST by Neville72
My Choice
Minister's abortion two decades ago was a difficult decision that still resonates with a sense of loss - but it was a mature choice and the right one
By The Rev. Donna Schaper
I am a 58-year-old white woman. I had an abortion 19 years ago. I am not bragging, nor am I apologizing.
I am a mother of three children in their 20s, and I am an ordained Christian minister. I had one child and then twins. Having twins the second time caused me my great good fortune of having three children in diapers. While nursing the twins, I did not think I needed birth control. I was wrong.
When I got pregnant with the child I call "Alma," which means soul, I was not interested in a fourth child. I chose, with some searching, to exercise my constitutional right and ended her birth.
Why do I tell my story now? Because I fear that abortion rights may become even more restricted than they already are. I also find the very intimidation that I experience in telling my story to be the reason I must speak. Why would I be afraid? Because anti-abortion people like to punish people into their version of morality. Plus my editor warned me to expect a lot of heat. Should that fear replace free speech? I think not.
I did what was right for me, for my family, for my work, for my husband and for my three children. I happen to agree that abortion is a form of murder. I think the quarrel about when life begins is disrespectful to the fetus. I know I murdered the life within me. I could have loved that life but chose not to.
I did what I think men do all the time when they take us to war: They choose violence because, although they believe it is bad, it is still better than the alternatives. The "just war" theory assumes that human beings get caught in terrible choices all the time. This freedom is not just for men; it is for women also.
When I made my choice to end one life on behalf of other life, I was terribly troubled. I was in a double bind. I prayed and anguished. Then I made a choice. Adults make choices.
I have long thought that the drama of the abortion battle was not about unborn babies at all. Instead, it is about women and sex and about women and maturity. We are considered babies, sub-adults, in need of supervision over our sexuality. Otherwise we are dangerous. The virgin/whore debates come to mind.
When I made my choice to end life, I was behaving as an adult. I did not shrink from the responsibility of making a choice. I did not ask someone else to make it for me. And I certainly did not request my government's help in my bedroom. Instead, I behaved as an adult who is also a sexual being. Things happen sexually between people that are not always controllable. The unprotected sex I had with my husband while nursing our twins had a consequence that neither of us desired. It was a human life. That's why we named her, wept for her, wanted her but also knew we did not want her enough.
Because women are mature sexual beings who make choices, birth control and abortion are positive moral forces in history. They allow sex to be both procreational and recreational, for men and for women. That is good news, even though most of the world doesn't know it yet. In Africa, for example, too many men assume the freedom to have unprotected sex with women, giving them AIDS and heartbreak. What does our so-called pro-life government recommend? Abstinence! Such a recommendation is immoral to its core.
Obviously, protected sex is the most moral thing of all. Unprotected sex is adolescent, immature, sometimes life-threatening and always stupid. Women are mature enough to handle that. We are not babies. Sometimes, in the battle over killing our babies, I hear the echo of people wanting to kill women's maturity and sexuality. I don't like it. That's why I am breaking my silence about who I am.
I am a 58-year-old sexual, mature woman. That's who I am. I had an abortion. I am not bragging and I am not apologizing.
Abortion that is legal, safe and rare is the best policy conceivable for men and women and for mature, moral sexuality.
The Rev. Donna Schaper is senior minister of Judson Memorial Church in Manhattan.
Ummmm... right. Tell that to the Big Guy.
So what was the terrible threat to her family, her work her husband and her three children that she had to "murder" an innocent child? I would hate to be crossing the street in front of this woman's car if she were late for work!
I did what I think men do all the time when they take us to war: They choose violence because, although they believe it is bad, it is still better than the alternatives. The "just war" theory assumes that human beings get caught in terrible choices all the time. This freedom is not just for men; it is for women also.
This woman really needs to re-read her Aquinas, if she ever read him at all. Just War is justified to prevent a greater evil. She is advocating what she describes as "murder" for what appears to be convenience and about the most shallow utilitarian argument one could imagine. Just War leads to the defeat of evil. Utilitarian arguments about life has lead to the greatest horrors in the history of humanity which occurred over the last 100 years. To equate them is obscene.
It is regrettable when a women blithely exercises her right of "choice" without a second thought. But that problem can be largely addressed through education. It is downright evil when someone makes a calculated and knowing decision that murder of their own child is justified because changing 15 diapers a day is marginally acceptable, but changing 20 a day is cannot be endured.
This is what evil looks like.
You said it, Brother!
Titus 1:6 (KJ) If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly. Or NIV: An elder must be blameless, the husband of but one wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient.
I'm not sure what this has to do with this situation, but thanks anyway.
I believe it's referring to her qualification (or lack thereof) to be a minister.
Well, thank (something), man-made law supercedes God's law for this woman.
Maybe we'll see her reaction when she meets her murdered offspring at the Great White Throne Judgement.
Methinks she just might not be quite so arrogant and beligerant when that time comes.
(Of Satan...)
Yes, I suspect that that was the intent. These passages just don't work for this purpose.
Well, for 98% of us, our eyes just glaze over when somebody cites a Biblical passage. We never check, and unless it's a really famous one, we have no idea whether or not it's appropriate.
I think some people count on that, and just throw references into an argument without enough thought as to their relevance.
Sorry - I usually try to avoid the eye-glazing stuff!
Yeah, I should probably check the citations myself. It certainly wouldn't hurt me at all to crack open the Bible from time to time...
There is a verse (I haven't looked it up) that says that in the last days people would be brutish and "without natural affection."
Thanks for the ping!
In fairness, they just hired her in January - they may not have known just what an apostate they were getting (they're still loons, though):
http://www.judson.org/searchindex.html
Nah, I spent a little time on the Sermons page. The last one sounded looney-tooney as well.
The church does have a radical history, and it is in the Village, and I don't know why this stuff still surprises me-- but it does.
Notice how they're getting some repairs done? Shoring up the roof, just in case?
Exactly. Men go to war to do what must be done. She did what was convenient.
They knew exactly what they were getting. I went through their entire website, they have been doing this for a long time. They have a lecture coming up about "Christian socialism", there is a counter at the bottom of the page of how many have died in Iraq, they seem to think that too many jihadists have died.
The intentional targeting of innocent persons is a war crime, a damnable ware crime, even in the midst of an otherwise just war.
This woman is right when she equates what she did with murder. It's hellish. Simply hellish.
You're quite right when you say a soul does not "divide," but I am convinced that, upon twinning, a new soul is created as soon as there are two somatically separate beings.
The "soul" means the principle of being a unified, living organism. Plants and animals have souls of a sort inasmuch as they are alive (vegetative and animative souls); but human beings have souls of a higher order, souls which are spirit, because we have capacities which go beyond the physical.
In any case, the identifying characteristic is life: if a given plant, animal or human, at any age or stage, is alive, a soul is by definition present; if it is dead, then a soul is not present. If there are two indentifiably separate beings, there are two souls.
The Bible sometimes uses the word "life" as a synonym for soul, and sometimes uses the word "self." It is incorrect to say that a fertilized egg is only the potential for a child. Actually, every child was a fertilized egg at his or her earlist stage. You were once a fertilized egg; and whose child were you then? Your parents', of course. You were at day one of your life, and so you were at day one of being a child--- not a potential child, but a child WITH POTENTIAL!
A sperm, a speck of skin or a bit of brain may be both human and alive, but it is not a "person" because it is not a unified living organism, and so it does not possess a soul. The earliest embryo of only one cell has the capacity, under the normal circumstances, to develop its own cells, tissues, organs, and systems as an integrated living whole--- sometimes "multiplying," so to speak, to become twins or triplets; but those souls are created, not "split off," even as a mother's soul is not "split off" when she conceives a child.
That inward, dynamic capacity to develop its own organs and systems is how we know that an embryo is ensouled and a sperm or a skin cell is not.
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