Lutherans Reject Strong Anti-Abortion Stand

The nation’s largest Lutheran denomination Monday rejected a move to condemn all abortions except to save the mother’s life. Some delegates chafed over a Catholic cardinal’s letter aimed at swaying their vote.

Members of the 5.2-million-member body refused to declare that life begins at conception, and they kept working to shape a less stringent anti-abortion policy.

In floor debate, the assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America gave scant attention to New York Roman Catholic Cardinal John O’Connor’s missive urging them to take a bold stand to protect “the unborn.”

But, in interviews, some delegates objected to the letter’s timing and called it unprecedented for a Catholic plea to be interjected into debate among Lutherans, named for 16th-Century Protestant reformer Martin Luther, who led the break from the Catholic Church.

O’Connor made his appeal in a letter to one of a group of Minnesota clergy and lay people who had offered the amendment to condemn abortion except to save a mother’s life.

Their proposal was pushed as a substitute for one developed through churchwide hearings that calls abortion an “option of last resort” and would condone it only in limited circumstances.

Those circumstances include when the mother’s life is threatened, when a fetus is so deformed that it would live only a short time and in cases of rape or incest.

“Beyond these circumstances, we as a church disagree on what conditions, if any, make abortion a morally responsible act,” the statement said.

Delegate Patricia Dunlop of St. Paul pleaded for the failed amendment, saying the church should “take a stand for life.”

After lengthy debate, the assembly rejected also an amendment declaring that “human life begins at conception.”

Several delegates contended that to say life begins at conception would be to use a controversial phrase often used in the public abortion debate.

O’Connor’s letter cited “heightened ecumenical awareness” and “interdependence of the entire Christian community.”

“I pray that the (Lutheran assembly), in the spirit of that tradition and guided by the Holy Spirit, will make unmistakably clear that respect for human life in all stages and all conditions is made imperative by the Christian truth to which we are pledged in common,” O’Connor said.