It may seem like a semantic argument. Experts say it’s anything but.
“This is a huge change,” Peters said. “It erases entire groups of people who have different religious beliefs.”
Peters, who is ordained in the Presbyterian Church, is not just talking about Christians. When a zygote, embryo, or fetus becomes a human being it is far from an objective determination within or between any religion. There is no scientific indicator: doctors tend to focus on viability, which experts believe is about 23 weeks, although health outcomes improve the longer the gestation period. Various religions have been based on a number of points, such as fertilization, acceleration (when the mother feels the fetus move), when the embryo develops a heartbeat, animation, and birth.
The confusing issues are that, as in Christian sects, there are chasms of disagreement among other religions, not only with regard to the person, but also with the bodily autonomy of women, making sacred texts a barometer. problematic as to whether abortion should be banned. The worst thing, Peters said, is that by co-opting the term “unborn human being,” it indicates “which religious voices gain authority and power in our country.”
While opponents of legalized abortion often paint women undergoing abortion as pagan, a large majority, more than 6 in 10, identified themselves as women of faith in a 2014 survey, she said. say Peters, who is on sabbatical for a research project entitled “Abortion and Religion: Listening to Women.”
“There are many more who support bodily autonomy for mothers to make decisions about life and how many children they have and with whom they have them and how to shape their future with or without a partner,” Peters said. “We have allowed a minority religious belief to reduce the rights of most women in the country. I feel like I’m in the middle of a dystopian novel.”
More than 50 religious groups tried to clarify this in the high court last year, presenting a letter from friends of the court explaining that religious traditions have different opinions about when life begins, claiming the “moral right” of the woman to decide when to finish it. pregnancy and we call for “the importance of ensuring the reproductive choice of women from marginalized communities who are disproportionately harmed by the ban.”
“By prohibiting abortions beyond 15 weeks of gestation, the prohibition prevents women from making this choice in accordance with their own moral, spiritual, and religious beliefs, which this Court has recognized as a constitutional right,” she said. the writing.
The attitude a woman would have to justify her decision in front of others is “rooted in religion,” Peters said. It robs women of their autonomy and adopts a narrow, archaic view of Christianity that has long been misappropriated to dictate that “women must be subordinate and must be carriers of children,” she said.
Religions and religious people vary widely
A Gallup poll in May, ahead of Roe’s investment, found that 55% of Americans identified themselves as “pro-choice,” while 39% said they were “pro-life.” Only 13% of Americans said abortion should be banned at all levels, and 53% said abortions should be legal in most or all circumstances, Gallup reported. A breakdown of percentages by dogma shows that only a handful of groups count: Jehovah’s Witnesses (68%), Mormons (66%), white evangelical Protestants (65%), Hispanic Protestants (58%), and Hispanic Catholics. 52%). Most members opposed abortion, found in 2018 the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute.
Catholics have long spurred the debate over abortion – and five Catholics and a justice who grew up Catholic maintained a 15-week ban on Mississippi – although data from the institute suggest that the 52 % of white Catholics agree with legal abortion. (It is worth noting that Associate Judge Sonia Sotomayor broke up with her fellow Catholics in Dobbs.)
Below is support for legal abortion in most or all cases among other religions, according to the institute:
• Muslims: 51%
• Orthodox Christian: 54%
• Black Protestants: 56%
• White Protestants from the main line: 59%
• Hindus: 62%
• Buddhists: 69%
• Jewish people: 70%
And 87% of agnostics and 97% of atheists expressed support for abortion in all or most cases, the Pew Research Center reported this year.
These numbers are in black and white, of course, but religions and their followers are not, so putting attitudes like “for” or “against” removes the nuance of the equation. There are other factors to consider, experts say.
Islamic scholars, for example, took a more liberal stance in premodern times, said UCLA law professor Khaled Abou El Fadl, an Islamic jurist who holds a doctorate in Islamic law from Princeton University.
There was a time when women aborted so often during the first trimester that some jurists did not consider the fetus as a complete human being, while others debated when the soul enters the fetus, between 40 and 120 days, he said. the teacher. Still, there were some conservative-minded jurists who felt that the “potentiality of life” should always be protected, he said.
The conversation began to change during colonialism, with the influence of French law and the creation of state governments, Abou El Fadl said.
“It’s interesting because the medieval debate of Islamic law was about when the soul enters the body. We have no Islamic text about it, nothing in the Qur’an, nothing in the inherited traditions of the Prophet Muhammad answering the question.” , he said, explaining that once “the state became much bigger in everyone’s life and the whole idea arose (arises) that the state has the right to regulate and enforce morality,” most, if not all, Muslim nations banned abortion except to save the mother’s life. .
Judaism takes a similar position when it comes to allowing abortion to save the mother. “Judaism is a religion that is based on the law,” and there are no religious personalities, neither popes nor imams, who can allow something that Jewish law forbids, said Dr. Daniel Eisenberg, an expert in Jewish medical ethics and radiologist at Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia. The question of when life begins is not a Jewish concept, he said. The question is: when does Jewish law protect life? The general consensus is when it is necessary to protect a mother’s life. Outside of that, “the range of opinions goes from a form of biblical forbidden murder without being a capital crime to being a rabbinic prohibition that is very serious but not a murder.” Abortion is never a capital crime under Jewish law, he said.
“A fetus will become a full-fledged human being, but it is not considered a full-fledged human being until it is born. But not being a human being does not mean that it is nothing,” said Eisenberg, who has years studying and lecturing on the Talmud and Jewish law. “The concept is that the fetus is a person with a little less protection than a full-fledged human being, than the mother … When she is a threat to the mother, she is subordinate.”
There is no official position in Buddhism, and Buddhist scholars vary, some say the fetus is a human being at fertilization and others say the person begins weeks or even five months later, the author and teacher of secular dharma Sallie Jiko Tisdale wrote last year in the quarterly magazine. , Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.
“However, the conclusion of orthodox Buddhist scholars has long been that a human being appears at the time of conception. Because human birth is a rare and precious gift, depriving a being of the opportunity is a serious mistake, “he wrote.
According to experts, Hindu teachings elevate the life of the mother and support the prohibition of abortion, except to save her life.
“Abortion deliberately alters the process of reincarnation and kills an innocent human being … and imposes severe karmic charges on its agent,” Dr. Kiarash Aramesh, director of the James F. Drane Institute of Bioethics, wrote in 2019. the University of Edinboro. The perspective of Hinduism is very favorable to life, emphasizing Ahimsa (not causing harm to living creatures) and its intrinsic reverence for life. “
In all religions, scholars can diverge even more when there are problems with birth defects, rape, incest, and mental health of the mother. Older texts offer little guidance on the latter because sensitivity to mental health is a relatively new concentration in medicine, experts say.
Many Jewish scholars see that the law accepts abortion if the mother presents suicidal ideation, Eisenberg said. Some Islamic scholars consider suicide to be an option, Abou El Fadl said, but as a jurist, he understands that many who contemplate suicide feel they have no choice but to consider each case on its own merit.
As for rape and incest, Islamic scholars are divided, he said, but he points out that even in Egypt, where abortion is banned in cases of rape and incest, it is rarely prosecuted.
In Judaism, interpretations of the law are so varied about rape and incest, that Eisenberg suggested that a news article was justified. Abortion after the detection of birth defects, lethal or not, also divides rabbis, he said, but notes that while the U.S. debate focuses on rape, incest and birth defects, these reasons only cause a small part of abortion procedures.
More often than not, women seek abortion because a child would alter their lives or because they cannot afford a baby, reasons, Eisenberg said, that traditional Jewish law would never approve. As the survey suggests, certain groups and branches of the faith have different opinions. Elsewhere on the spectrum is politically progressive Reform Judaism – the nation’s largest denomination, which accounts for a third of American Jews – with a mother who maintains total autonomy in deciding if you terminate the pregnancy.
“They also believe that God forgives sins”
For Peters, the debate should revolve around women’s right to control their destiny, he said. As he wrote in a January column, “It often seems that religion is not even a relevant statistical data point for understanding who aborts. In fact, 62 …