If All Life Is Sacred, So Is Each Life : Abortion: Activists who fight against war and other evils can’t ignore the rights of the human being forming in the womb.

AN EXCHANGE OF LETTERS ON ABORTION * William Sloane Coffin and Thomas J. Gumbleton are both active in disarmament and social justice organizations and are friends. But they disagree, as do their respective organizations, on th1696625257ton. Gumbleton, a Roman Catholic bishop in Detroit, is president of Pax Christi U.S.A., the National Catholic Peace Movement, based in Erie, Pa.

Dear Bill,

It is always a pleasure to hear from you and I welcome this exchange of views on abortion. I am mindful that as two male leaders of peace organizations, we will never have to struggle with it in the same way that many women do. Nevertheless, we might begin a respectful, open discussion of our disagreement.

Pax Christi, as you know, rejects “the claim of any individual, any group or organization, any nation, to the ‘right’ to destroy human life, whether singly or as entire populations.” It saddens me that this separates us from our partners on other justice issues. It is no less distressing that so many of our “allies” on abortion do not share Pax Christi’s position on war, nuclear deterrence, capital punishment and feminism. Although you don’t mention it in your letter, the distortion introduced by labels is a major problem in this controversy.

However, some who say that they are pro-choice don’t really use that rationale for other moral problems. Certainly they would never support a racist choice or someone’s choice to rape. An added irony is that some pro-choice advocates do not even defend the pro-lifers’ choice to protest. So, to call themselves pro-choice is neither correct nor logical. They are only “pro” one particular (and we think morally dubious) choice, that of abortion.

We differ somewhat on questions relating to human life. Genetics makes it quite definite, to me, that once fertilization is complete, the living entity is certainly human. The fertilized egg is living; no one would dispute that. Furthermore, it is genetically human. No one can dispute that. Your question, therefore, of when it becomes human confuses the issue. The question that divides us is: When does nascent human life deserve protection? Why? Or why not? Those who are morally pro-choice deny basic protection to the fetus in utero. I would assert that the fetus in utero deserves protection.

Indeed, in my ministry, I have found that “spontaneous abortion” causes serious grief, which is often downplayed or ignored. I have learned the importance of conducting funeral or memorial services after a miscarriage or stillbirth. Much is known about the intense psychological trauma suffered by women who have undergone intentional or therapeutic abortions.

On criminalization, we are in substantial agreement, but on somewhat different grounds. If Roe vs. Wade were reversed and abortion not considered a constitutional right, I still would not want legislation to jail women who obtain an abortion. Strident condemnation of desperate women who often are already scared and unhappy, and subjecting them to jail besides, almost certainly will do more harm than good. Nothing should be done to add to the psychological burden of those women who have already suffered greatly in making their choice.

Yet I can understand why people promote laws against abortion. If abortion were illegal, women could not be pressured to obtain one as the solution to an inconvenient or very troubling pregnancy. Furthermore, legalized abortion allows our society to escape its responsibility to offer concrete help to poor women. Indeed, by offering legalized abortion, society betrays its lack of commitment to the value of life and loses an opportunity to use public law as a guide to people who want to lead moral lives.

But, as much as I wish that laws against abortion would solve all our problems, I do not believe they would. We need above all to change the hearts and minds of people. This is really the root of the whole problem. To some extent we have put so much effort into getting laws on the books that we have failed to persuade people of the basis for our moral stance. Changing hearts and minds is always the most difficult task; it is also the most essential. I would like us to spend a lot more time and effort on it. If we did, we might come to more agreement on the profound moral questions involved. Then the development of the legal structure would follow quite quickly.

Pax Christi’s position on nuclear weapons is very similar. We teach and persuade about the evils of nuclear weapons, but we do not work for legislation that would criminalize those who build them. We explain why we believe it wrong to target whole cities, but do not seek to jail those willing to push the nuclear button.

Rhetoric plays an increasingly influential role in this issue. Much of the argumentation in support of the “pro-choice” position minimizes the value of the destroyed life. To ignore the potential person whose life process is “terminated,” to use demeaning terms like “products of conception” or even “fetus” as something alive but not important, can build attitudes that too easily dismiss the spark of human life already present as nothing more than, as one pro-abortion spokesperson put it, “an inch of tissue.”

We must be consistent. If the peace movement argues that wholesale destruction of life in war is made easier by using terms like “enemy,” “gook,” “Jap,” etc., then writing off the “termination” of not-yet-born human beings in similar dehumanizing terms can ultimately diminish respect for human dignity itself. Similarly, labels and terms such as “murderer” and “baby-killer” used by some anti-abortionists are judgmental, demeaning and destructive.

One tragic effect of the controversy is the waste of time and effort that ought to be devoted to social programs that would provide alternatives to abortion. We need to change structures that cut health-care and food programs, that force women and children to live in poverty. This is our common ground and our common work. Our groups, and all who value life, need to align our efforts with greater determination in these areas.

I know you to be a courageous and compassionate defender of those who are denied basic human rights, Bill, and I know that your stance on this issue is the result of an honest search for truth. As the Chinese say, “There is my truth. There is your truth. And there is the truth.” May we continue our search together.