The Moral Relativism of Abortion

There is a reason why abortion in America is such an inflammatory issue when compared to many other cultures around the world. The controversy has its roots, in my view, in the conflict between progressive modernism and Judeo-Christian traditions. These traditions have been fueled by, among other things, taboo and guilt in the way that they look at sex, death, life and the sacredness of life. When these old world traditions are coupled with the prosperity and excesses of secular modernism and a capitalistic "free society" you get a sort of schizophrenic culture that is in denial of death and obsessed with sex. Or could that be, in denial of sex and obsessed with death? And do we need to ask what these two things have to do with abortion? They are intimately tied.

In other cultures more ancient than our own, death has always been a more accepted part of life to begin with. In our culture, secular modernism doesn't even want to acknowledge death except in movies and TV shows where it can be fictionalized and kept at a distance. Death, especially as a result of violence, is even glorified, as it has always been, as long as it remains within that context of our over indulgent, consumer society where we long to be entertained and satiated instantaneously, as long as we are insulated from the reality of it in our daily lives.

Christianity deals with death in requiems mostly only as a last resort, after the fact. Religions like Hinduism and Buddhism as well as the primitive animistic religions of old world countries and the pantheistic, earth centered beliefs of Australia's Aborigines and our own Native Americans all have a place for the unfolding of death as a natural and accepted rite of passage. Death is as sacred for them as birth and life, as natural a rite of passage as puberty and marriage. Death is not always viewed as such a terrible ultimate end with the fear of hell and eternal damnation waiting, but merely a passage to a new and better world or another life. Moreover, death in many of these old world cultures has always been more frequent, and more visible because of the lack of prosperity, the poverty that is ubiquitous, and therefore people are simply more used to it, they have no choice but to accept it as a natural part of their existence. When I lived in India in 1965 I witnessed death's long arms on an almost daily basis.

The point of all this is also to say that in our culture's efforts to deny death in general, which I believe is the result of old world religion combining with modernism, we all become, as individuals, less healthy spiritually; for in order to grow and fully appreciate the life we have it is necessary to become a friend of your own death, to have death as an ally, as a Shaman would say, to always have death on your left shoulder to guide your life and make it sweeter. Without the easy acceptance and the respect of death as sacred, and the worship of mystery itself, we will always be caught in the endless quagmire of sin and confusion, with demons of fear, guilt and punishment always lurking around the corner.

Old age itself is viewed as an inconvenience within our American culture, great fear surrounds the very thought of aging, a horrible eventuality that is ignored until the very end when we have no choice but to face it as relatives reluctantly store parents away in old folks' homes to convalesce alone. In less "civilized" cultures the village serves as a support group where old age is revered and honored, the elders in a village being respected for their wisdom and long life. Our own country used to be more in touch with this natural support group but modernism has reduced us to nuclear families isolated in single housing units, as our culture has gotten away from the clan, the village. With advances in technology giving us modern conveniences, medicine, and a TV in every household we have been conditioned to rely upon the quick fix, prescription drugs to postpone death and discomfort, and delay as long as possible the inconvenience of it all to the rest of us.

Sex also is accepted as a more natural part of life in other cultures. Since it is more natural there is less obsession. It is not uncommon to see bare breasted women and bare butted men in public view in most third world countries as we know from growing up with National Geographic; there is no embarrassment and no giggles. Nude beaches in Europe are not such a shocking thing as they are here. When sexuality is accepted there is less perversion. There may be plenty of indulgence but it is not perceived as abhorrent, communication between partners is more open and honest.

Now of course sexuality has presented problems everywhere since the beginnings of humanity. Sexuality is like a balloon; if you squeeze it shut in one place it will only pop out in another, so to speak. It can't be suppressed. It is life force, élan vital. We should face it head on with compassion and love.

But Judeo-Christian thinking has made it sinful and taboo. (The word sex itself comes from the Latin sexus which, etymologically, refers to the number six and, in the Catholic denomination, to the sixth commandment which is the one about adultery and lust in the heart. So the word itself inherently implies sin by the origin of its root.) We see what happens when we try to suppress sex when priests take their vows of celibacy, as one example, or catholic school girls grow into adulthood, as another. Sexual repression within the institutions of the nuclear family and schools combined with the perceived permissiveness of the society at large can create confusion and frustration in maladjusted individuals and can eventually manifest in degrees of misogyny, lack of respect and abuse of women that lead to unwanted pregnancies. And when modern excess in its hedonism glorifies it on one hand and religious prudishness suppresses it and tries to demonize it on the other it creates the market for underground pornography and licentious behavior among a repressed populace. Our society has become perverted and schizophrenic because of the puritan influence clashing with permissiveness. As a result of a perceived repressed society there is a backlash, an "in your face" attitude by the more sexually rebellious among us. What is needed is a balanced, integrated and mature acceptance of our sexuality influenced by neither extreme; the fearful religious suppression nor the childish, over-indulgence of secular modernism.

Christianity is not the only religion to struggle with moral questions like these. Lord knows the religious world of Islam has its own edicts of prudish repression when it comes to women, temptation and desire. What they mostly don't have though, in those Islamic countries, is modernism and enlightened progressivism to challenge those strict religious edicts so as a result there really is no conflict or public debate about things like abortion. The Islamic world is what our country might look like if we became a Christian theocracy. (OK, maybe we wouldn't put someone to death for adultery like they do, but we did used to burn witches.) Moral absolutes. Strictly forbidden and that's that.

But in this "free" country we are allowed to explore, think for ourselves, have sex and get pregnant. That's where the conflict starts when the voices of Puritanism start preaching to us and the collective conscience of a nation is torn by guilt and transgression of taboo. Thereby, abortion becomes a complex arena of sin, not just because it is taking a life, but also because it represents a sinful promiscuity in the first place.

Now some Christians and other conservatives in this country herald the need for moral absolute terms as they always decry moral relativism. A monotheistic world view will tend to do that to you. In that view god is in control of our bodies. Coming from the top, only god, as the creator of all life, has the power to breathe life into us and only god should be able to take it away. It is god's will. But this is a Theo centric way to look at things, if the extreme right Christians among us could bear to be open-minded for a moment.

It is interesting to note that many whom hold this "pro-life" philosophy are men. In very ancient civilizations, before the patriarchal pantheons of gods, before the invading hordes from the north, thousands of years before the monotheistic Father, Son and Holy Ghosts or Abraham or Mohammed, matriarchy was prominent and the earth mother goddess was a primary focal point of worship. People saw in woman a very primitive truth of nature; that death, "man's" greatest enemy, is overcome by woman's mysterious power of reproduction. Life expectancy was short, the death rate high, so great homage was paid to fertility, and the symbol of the pregnant woman was deified as the mother earth goddess, the source of all life including plants and animals. Deep down there may still be that primal sense of helplessness among certain men, a jealousy of the fertility goddess. They may, on the primal, subliminal level, resent the power a woman holds over the life of a fetus. Of course this does not preclude the women of the pro-life movement who can also exhibit misogynistic tendencies of their own; they too adhere to the patrifocal traditions that keep them in their place, barefoot and pregnant.

In those early goddess centered cultures, sex itself was celebrated and practiced as a way to god, a religious ritual to attain spiritual enlightenment. Sex was seen as life force; the phallus lingam and yoni flower conspiring together to travel the pathway to god through bliss and transcendentalism. This belief is still practiced today in the Hindu tantric rituals of India. In this view, our bodies are not only a gift from god but are themselves god, the temples we worship in. So for a woman, if the body is her temple, it must be her domain to rule over.

The lesson of all this history or her-story if you will is that; guess what, morality is indeed relative depending on which culture one has been born into. (And what kind of parents and childhood you have within that culture.) To further illustrate, let us examine another curious phenomenon: It seems that if you were to ask many of the people, though surely not all, who say they are "pro-life" when it comes to abortion if they are in favor of the death penalty they would say yes. Or if you asked them if they were in favor of going to war they might also say yes. It is also true that if you were to ask many of the people who say they are pro-choice the same questions they would say the opposite. Now regardless if this is an indication or not of simple political affiliation on the left or right it still points to one thing; moral relativism, on either side of the issue. Killing is immoral but relatively so, depending on the cause or the justification. Even the Bible says this in the Ten Commandments. It is spelled out in the Catholic Church's Catechisms of the fifth commandment of thou shall not kill that there are exceptions regarding a justified defense and the punishment of criminals for the common good of society.

Those on the religious right would argue that killing an unborn fetus is not the same as killing a criminal, since the first is innocent and the latter guilty. And in war they might argue that killing innocent men, women and children is just collateral damage, an unfortunate necessity in a just war. If the war is just, like it was against Hitler, or against the dark lords of Middle Earth, where the enemy is pure evil then we must do what we must to win. But even Gandhi, the ultimate pacifist, recognized the possibility that the moral question of killing is relative depending on how just the cause is. The Old Testament ruthlessly proclaimed it in Deuteronomy: "Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife-except abroad. Then you should put all males to the sword, and the women you shall take as booty to yourself." This is the Hebrew tradition, where love and compassion are reserved for the in group, but not the enemy. Moral relativism.

The patriarchal traditions of Islam and Judeo-Christianity are full of moral contradictions, as are all the religions of the world. History is full of examples of plundering armies killing men and raping women in the name of their god. So for modern day Christians to summon the Bible to support their views of love and compassion for the unborn is nothing short of hypocritical. If you are going to be an absolute moralist, thou shalt not kill means thou shalt not kill; fetuses, murderers or victims of war. If you can say thou shalt not kill-except for whatever, that is moral relativism.

But the central issue surrounding abortion has to do with the question of; at what point life begins. The extreme religious right will argue that it begins with conception. The elaborations of the Catholic Church's catechism on the fifth commandment do indeed proclaim that life begins with conception and that the fetus is an innocent. Once the sperm fertilizes the egg it is a human being and is in god's hands. Others less extreme might say it begins as soon as the shape of a human begins to form. This thinking says the question is morally absolute.

For those on the left, the champions of moral relativity and secular ethics, the "pro-choice liberals" among us, there really is not much of an argument in defense of this, so they just have to say things like; well, its only a fetus and we don't think there is much feeling going on, it hasn't had a chance to develop any human emotions, since it hasn't been exposed to the real world yet it doesn't know what joy or suffering is, it has no parameters of experience to compare with so it really doesn't suffer much and besides this is where a woman's prerogative comes in, where she can justifiably weigh her own physical and mental health against that of the future life of her fetus. She is balancing the relative moralities. Within the context of the Judeo-Christian vs. progressive modernism clash this argument has no end.

But if we step outside this myopic environment we can discover different ways to think about the problem. The concept of reincarnation puts a whole new light on the subject: Christians may scoff at the suggestion but some religions believe that when an earthly body dies the soul goes to a place in the spirit world, a place of many names, where the soul waits for a new incarnation, a new body to inhabit, and is born again. In some primitive traditional societies they believe that when the body dies it slowly returns to the earth while the soul is released and splinters into its many aspects and joins the other spirits in the spirit world where it remains until the aspects recombine and get reborn into another body. As a child grows within its mother's womb it does not gain a spirit until it moves for the first time. This is the spirit's first visit to the body to investigate its potential host.

Thereafter this first piece of soul comes and goes until it finally settles permanently in the new child's body, in the last trimester of pregnancy. When the child is born an additional spirit aspect enters its body when it first breathes the spirit of the air which is life force. And a final spirit joins the others to complete its soul in a reunion of its aspects when the parents name the child. As you can see, this belief system offers plenty of opportunity to see the body of the fetus as just a physical shell, not fully alive and certainly not fully human until imbued with spirit.

This scenario is but one manifestation of the reincarnation principle also understood in the Buddhist and Hindu traditions and first introduced in the west by Pythagoras and the ancient Greeks as metempsychosis, a passing of the immortal soul from one physical body to the next. If we follow this world view it is possible to envision what happens during an abortion: A soul from a long line of previous incarnations, one which has inhabited a series of ancestral bodies, is contemplating the occupation of a new body tucked into the womb of a woman when suddenly a force beyond its control interrupts the physical growth of the body and the soul has no choice but to return to the spirit world and wait for another body to inhabit. The flesh of the infant is now spiritless and returns to the earth to contribute to the cycle of life and death. But the soul that once occupied the infant never died and will eventually be reborn into another body. This view separates biology and flesh from spirit, and brings to question, what exactly is a complete human life?

If we look at the cycles of physical and spiritual life and death this way the process of abortion does not seem as tragic, especially if we see the pregnancy as a period of trial and error for the soul that joins the body. In this view, how do we know that the millions of souls who got intercepted by abortion in this country alone have not been born and reborn already in other infant bodies around the world? They were not deaths at all but merely reassignments. Indeed all death is not as tragic within the belief system of reincarnation.

Now does this mean that we should not feel grief for the loss of a potential incarnation of a beautiful soul manifested in the likeness of our own genes and chromosomes? Of course not. But it does say that morality in regards to abortion is relative to what we believe about the afterlife and relative to what we believe constitutes life. Does this view encourage the proliferation of abortion by somehow lessening the value of life? Not at all. Buddhism still sees conception as a sacred, mysterious event that should not be interfered with. Conception is god's work, divine. If the entire country converted to Hinduism there would not necessarily be an increase in abortions. Even in an atheistic world view there is a natural respect for the biological process. If anything it is the insidious forces of modernism and the secular seven deadly sins that lead to the cheapening of life.

But life, like democracy, is messy. Mistakes happen. There is incest, rape, deformity and poverty that make carrying a fetus to full term a horror or impractical and begs the question about quality of life versus quantity: would it not be better for a soul to wait until it finds an incarnation more suitable to its mission of self actualization than to have to suffer a short, meaningless life mired in misery and injustice? Christianity separates Man from the rest of nature, gives him "dominion" over it as a steward. But in the natural world there is often abundance of excess conception of life that then gets destroyed. Adult male lions sometimes eat their newborn cubs; superfluous life gets killed off all the time in nature. And yet we think we are exempt from this messiness, that every single human life is a precious gift from god, not to be interfered with.

I am not trying to lessen the value of life or put all the power to take it away in our hands. Life is indeed sacred. But we do not have to worry that a different world view other than the Christian one or a law like Roe vs. Wade will lead us down the slippery slope to an endless acceleration of death. There are built in dissuasions to abortion. The motherly instinct and life's own instinct to survive has served us well for millennia. Secular ethics says there is a natural morality built in to life to protect it and nurture it. Women as a whole do not relish having an abortion. It is never the first method of birth control to be thought of. Women often go through prolonged periods of depression and guilt all on their own without having society, religion or the government to reinforce that guilt.

It seems the main gripe that "pro-lifers" have is that legalized abortion is dictated from the top, the supreme court of the land, and that is insulting to their sense of theocratic universal order, one nation under god and all that. But if we take away that constitutional right and ban abortions everywhere, women will still seek them at great risk and life will still be messy whether god is officially at the helm or not. (As if we need "in god we trust" and "one nation under god" to validate the existence of god.) As it is there are plenty of restrictions and conditions based on things like viability, exceptions to rape and incest and the mother's life being in danger, all varying from state to state. If the situation were reversed there would likely still be conditions coming down to the states. Either way abortion would be discouraged, as it is now, as a last resort.

It will never be a black and white issue. Abortion can be and should be discouraged and life in the flesh should always be held sacred as the abode of the spirit in this world. But the state should not be allowed to legislate for morality when there are gray areas. In a modern, enlightened society we should be more tolerant on the gray issues and allow for god to come up from the bottom, from the grass roots and trust and give credit to the individual and her liberty to make moral decisions that affect her own life and the life or death of her fetus. It is certainly that way with the death penalty, another gray area. The state does not permit it blindly across the board but only in the extreme cases, the most heinous crimes where there is premeditation and gruesome intent to murder.

The Roe vs. Wade ruling merely states that a woman should not be punished for having to make a very difficult decision regarding her own body and the life of her fetus and her own moral dilemma in the privacy of her own home. If Roe vs. Wade gets overturned and abortion outlawed altogether then we are one step closer to a theocracy, a devolution going backwards, because it will be as a result of Christian fundamentalist pressure. In an enlightened republic reasonable people should be allowed to compromise and agree to disagree when issues of morality are anything but absolute.

The ironic thing is that as we come full circle, there will be less and less need for abortions as unwanted pregnancy rates will continue to drop as they are now. And they will drop because our societal attitudes are slowly, finally becoming more enlightened about sex. The clash between the forces of modernism and religious conservatism is becoming more acute but is at the same time diminishing, as we appear to be in an era of catharsis and growing pains. Most young women are no longer as embarrassed about seeking guidance for birth control; they are becoming more empowered, more forthright in taking control of their bodies. Young men can start to feel more involved in the process and more responsible for their part in it as we are more apt to educate our children about the risks of diseases etc. and they are becoming more apt to listen. When sexuality is brought out of the dark ages and into the light Planned Parenthood will be performing less abortions, not more. In the meantime, compassion and love should be shared among men, women, children, and the unborn while allowing flexibility and reason for the realities of a messy, unpredictable life.

I believe this is the optimistic view of our culture's future. The worst case scenario is that, succumbing to the moral absolutists of religious fundamentalism rather than moving forward towards enlightenment in our thinking we become paralyzed by polarization and head down a path toward civil war and dystopia.
Melodramatic? We'll see.