[Dialogue] Spong on abortion and Bill O'reilly

[KroegerD@aol.com]

February 01, 2006 
Facing the Abortion  Issue as Mature Religious People

There were many issues raised at the confirmation hearings on the  nomination 
of Samuel Alito to serve on the Supreme Court. Yet only one of them,  the 
issue of abortion, exerted so much power that it seemed like the proverbial  ‘
elephant in the room.’ It was present from two different perspectives as  
senators from both parties questioned Judge Alito. Abortion politics is a major  game 
being played out at this moment in America’s national life. Can the courts  
of this country change their minds? Of course they can. One has only to look at 
 the Dred Scott case for proof of that. When that case was reversed it was to 
 expand the rights of a citizen that had been compromised by the court. Can 
the  courts, however, withdraw 33 years later a right they extended to the 
citizens  in 1973? That has never happened before in our national history. Perhaps 
that is  why this issue is so emotional. The battle lines are hard and the 
huge chasm  that divides the two sides apparently cannot be compromised. Indeed, 
one of the  reasons for this bitter stalemate is that too many people on both 
sides have a  vested interest in keeping the tensions alive. Organized 
religion is one of  those power hungry, vested interests.  
What neither side in the abortion conflict seems to me to recognize is that  
this debate is not about an idealistic moral issue. It is about real people,  
whose lives are deeply caught in the web of this conflict. Few abortions are  
casually undertaken. Almost all represent failure at some level, leaving 
lasting  scars. Yet what is clear is that most Americans want abortions to be 
legal, safe  and rare. No one, however, seems to know how to bring about this 
common goal,  probably because we do not know how to assess the influence of 
organized  religion that sees abortion as the final act separating morality from the 
power  that religion once exercised over all of life.  
Banning or criminalizing abortions, prosecuting either mothers or doctors is  
not the way to go, no matter what the ‘right to life’ people say. The 
evidence  supporting this conclusion is overwhelming. Abortions were performed long 
before  Roe v. Wade made them legal. There was a veritable abortion cottage 
industry in  this nation, doing about 200,000 abortions a year, staffed by 
opportunists, who  operated without standards, ready and willing to serve the needs 
of their  clientele. The number of botched jobs was abundant and the lives of 
many women  and fetuses were lost in the process. If the proposition to 
return to this were  put to the voters of this country, it would be overwhelmingly 
defeated. If one  really believes in ‘the right to life,’ that should include 
at a minimum ‘the  right to life’ for frightened pregnant women.  
Criminalizing abortion has been tried in other parts of the world with tragic 
 results. Throughout Latin America where abortion is almost universally a 
crime,  the abortion rates are far higher than they are in Western Europe or in 
the  United States. The New York Times reported recently that in Columbia, 
where  abortions are illegal even when a woman’s life is in danger, there is on 
the  average one abortion per woman during her fertile years. In Peru, the 
average is  nearly two abortions per woman over the course of her reproductive 
years. Up to  5000 women a year die from abortions in Latin America. If one really 
wants to  lower the number of abortions, indeed to make them rare, the 
attempt to  criminalize the procedure is not going to accomplish that goal. The 
policy of  the Bush administration in denying aid to family planning clinics that 
provide  abortion counseling may have served his agenda among his religious 
constituency  in the United States, but the facts reveal that the result was 
more illegal and  uninformed abortions and more women who died seeking illegal 
abortions.  
Many people in America, including some of the most passionate pro-lifers, are 
 deeply confused about what would happen if the Supreme Court actually 
overturned  Roe v. Wade. This nation would simply revert to where it was before that 
1973  ruling. Abortion was legal in some states, not in others. There would 
be a  patchwork pattern across this nation. In non-abortion states, abortions 
could  still be obtained legally but only by traveling to a state where the 
procedure  was legal. Those who could travel would do so. Those who could not 
travel would  avail themselves of the back alley clinics. I find it hard to 
imagine anyone on  either side of this debate believing that a desirable outcome. 
To make abortion  legally available in parts of the nation but only to those 
who can afford the  time and expense of travel, neither addresses the moral 
issue, nor is it “equal  protection under the law.”  
In the current political debate, people speak out of widely differing  
contexts. There are in affluent circles some who view abortion as the ultimate  form 
of birth control. This surely trivializes pregnancy and diminishes the  
sacredness of life. If that is the context in which moral judgment is being  made, 
it is easy to be condemnatory. There are, however, others living in  poverty 
and hopelessness, who see abortion as their only chance to survive their  
circumstances. How can one law legislate for all? We do not want to build a  
society in which the life of the unborn is not valued; yet we also do not want  to 
build a society where an unwanted pregnancy is a life sentence to poverty and  
degradation. Imagine yourself facing an abortion decision as a poor 12-13 year 
 old girl, living in the squalor of an inner city ghetto, the product of a  
dysfunctional family structure and pregnant by your own father, an uncle or  
whoever slept last night with your mother. Imagine the prospect of bringing yet  
another life into this environment and tipping the scale of this family unit  
more deeply into despair and hopele sness. It is a very different decision 
from  one made by those who see abortion as a convenient way to “rectify” a 
mistake.  
Have we reached the point in our own maturity as a society that we are able  
to separate our thoughts on birth control from the issue of abortion? While 
the  Roman Catholic Church condemns both, there is a great difference between 
the two  in the life of our society. No one is publicly debating birth control 
today.  Family planning has become a virtue in an overpopulated world. Polls 
reveal no  difference in the use of birth control among Catholics, Protestants, 
Jews,  Moslems and non-believers. If we can honestly face that issue, why can 
we not  have effective sex education in our public schools? Why are school 
officials  still being tyrannized by religious pressure groups, both Catholic and 
 Evangelical, who campaign relentlessly against sex education? There is no  
evidence that sex education encourages sexual activity. That is fear mongering  
on the part of religious groups who think that sexual activity can be stopped 
 with pious campaigns that emphasize abstinence. “Just say no!” doesn’t work 
with  swirling hormones. It never has, not even in those Middle Ages that 
religious  people think of as their ‘golden age.’  
In the high Middle Ages, so admired by ‘traditionalists,’ the gap between  
stated moral values and observable sexual practices was still enormous. A clear 
 double standard existed. The time between puberty and marriage was no more 
than  one to two years among the gentle-born young ladies who were the only 
people  whose ‘virtue’ anyone seemed anxious to protect. These future brides of 
the  well-to-do were chaperoned scrupulously in that brief period of time 
until they  were safely married and under the protection of their husbands. Young 
males in  this era were never discouraged from “sowing their wild oats.” 
Since one cannot  engage in sex without a partner, sexually active males had to 
find sexually  active females to serve their needs. Who did they find in this 
age of public  sexual repression? There were prostitutes but they also availed 
themselves of  lower class girls, both white and black, who had little power to 
resist. That  was always known but never ‘noticed’ or morally condemned. 
Revelations through  DNA evidence that Thomas Jefferson fathered children by his 
slave Sally Hemings  and that Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina 
fathered a child, Elsie  Washington, by a 15-year-old black servant are only the tip 
of an iceberg of the  sexual activity that was rampant through the ages.  
Has not the time come for sexual honesty? Our children today enter puberty at 
 eleven, twelve and thirteen. Because of educational opportunities many of 
them  do not get married for 10-15 years after puberty. There is no realistic  
chaperone system during those years between puberty and marriage and the double 
 standard has disappeared. How can anyone seriously argue against the 
necessity  of publicly funded sex education in the schools of this nation? How long 
will we  as a society allow the voice of a deeply-compromised religious system 
to  continue to dictate our laws that result primarily in expanded welfare 
payments  to unwed mothers and half orphan infants and that allow the family life 
of some  20-25% of our population to remain under impossible pressure? When 
will we  demand that there be public responsibility through our publicly 
financed  educational system to mandate competent sex education for all of our 
children?  It is time to act. It is time to throw off hysterical religious systems! 
The  present abortion debate is little more than a smokescreen designed to 
cover  these realities.  
I truly hope that we will get to a place where abortion will be rare in our  
whole world. I believe it does cheapen the sacredness of life. Some 
therapeutic  abortions of malformed fetuses or the products of rape and incest will 
always  need to be protected for the sake of the living. Convenience abortions, 
however,  should never occur in an educated society where they can be so easily 
prevented.  We are, however, not yet at that point so abortion must be kept 
safe and legal.  Not to do so cheapens life even more. My goal is to make 
abortions legal, safe  and rare. I do this because I worship a God who promises life 
in all its  fullness to both the mother and the unborn child and who calls us 
all to live,  to love and to be as responsible adults. The time has come to 
stop playing  ‘religious games’ with the vulnerable people in our society.  
President Bush, members of Congress and Justices of the Supreme Court, I hope 
 you are listening.  
— John Shelby Spong  
_Note from  the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at 
bookstores everywhere  and by clicking here!_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060762055/agoramedia-20)   
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Douglas from Texas writes:  
I’m 56 years old. My mother and I are at opposite political poles. The only  
thing I can say in her favor is that she is not a fundamentalist “Christian” 
but  she espouses nearly all the hate rhetoric of neo-con/neo fascists. When 
she told  me that her favorite Fox “newscaster” was Bill O’Reilly, I told her 
that that  was more than I ever wanted to know about her. I am ashamed of her, 
I don’t like  her, and I don’t like talking with her. We have nothing in 
common by way of  beliefs or even taste. In short, I don’t know how I could be 
related to her and,  in fact, wish I weren’t! On the other hand, I’m sure that 
somewhere inside I  must have some love for her since this whole thing bothers 
me so. My godfather,  a wonderful retired Episcopal priest, keeps saying, “
She is your mother,” and  that resonates but honestly, I just can’t bring 
myself to talk to her. She lives  in Kansas, I’m in Texas and the most I can do is 
to send a card on Mother’s Day  and on her birthday. I even find the cards 
difficult to sign, “Love, Doug.” Do  you have any suggestions? I love my 
godfather and my godmother but I have my  obvious limitations. Can you help?  
Dear Doug,  
Parent-child relationships are fraught with peril and pain and especially  
when adolescent rebellion stretches, as it appears to have done into your case,  
into the sixth decade of life. Your letter reminded me of a person I once 
knew,  who had plastic surgery done over his navel to remove the last vestige of 
his  relationship with his mother. Or, of a statement a therapist once made to 
me  that “psychotherapy is the process through which one goes to enable one 
to say,  “son of a b----“ in front of his M-o-t-h-e-r. So the first thing I 
urge you to  do is to get some professional help to assist you in separating 
delayed  adolescent rebellion from the content of the issues that now separate 
you from  your mother. They are two different things.  
Mature people can and do live together in mutual respect without agreeing on  
lots of things. You refer to Bill O’Reilly of Fox News Television, for 
example.  I do not know of a single major issue that Bill O’Reilly and I agree on, 
yet I  not only like him, but also have been on his program about eight times. 
Of  course, he is a right-wing opinionated ideologue. That is why people watch 
him.  He articulates their anger and validates their prejudices, and he does 
it with  style and the kind of cocksure authority that people assume he cannot 
possibly  be wrong. Of course, Bill also does not believe that he can ever be 
wrong. When  I am a guest on his program I have no need to try to convert him 
to anything. I  do not think leopards can change their spots. I only seek to 
establish the  credibility of a contrasting point of view and to assert that 
he does not speak  for me or for many in this country. He clearly does speak 
for some. Bill  O’Reilly will roll over his guests if his guests allow him to do 
so. When his  guest holds his own and articulates a counter argument well I 
find that Bill  will listen. When he interrupts as he frequently does, I think 
he needs to be  called on it. I have never felt abused by him but I have 
always felt I have been  in a battle.  
Despite this kind of relationship, Bill O’Reilly actually endorsed my last  
book, even though I told him that his endorsement would hurt his reputation and 
 mine! He also asked my publisher for the chance to have my book introduced 
on  television first on his national Fox program. One can be civil and even 
enjoy  the company of one with whom you are in total disagreement. It does help,  
however to realize that no human mind can ever embrace all truth. That is  
terribly complicated when the person with whom your disagreement is so intense  
is your parent. It is not easy to be a parent. The role of a parent is to 
raise  your children to be free of their parents, to grow into being independent  
thinking people. The separation is frequently not easy for either parent or  
child, no matter how old the child might be.  
My best,
John Shelby Spong         
 


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