Yeah so that whole “one post a day” thing crashed and burned. Here we are folx, around two weeks after the Supreme Court made a ruling overturning the federal consensus on Roe v. Wade. As a woman in the United States, I have many thoughts. As a reader of the Bible and believer in God, I also have many thoughts. As a novice sociological thinker, my brain is about to explode. Buckle up, comrades. We’re going to go through all of my thoughts on abortion, the recent ruling, and then we’re going to bring it back to Durkheim’s “The Functions of Crime” (See my post “Functionalism and Intersectionality” for more from that text). I’m fueled, so this may be a long one.
Developing my perspective and opinion on abortion, let alone abortion rights, has taken a while, and has evolved with my theological thinking. What I’d like to do is bring you to a very vivid memory. I can’t remember which surgery it was (I have twelve to choose from…) but it was one of the most recent ones. I woke up in the PACU, in a bay between two other women. Now, I have this bizarre ability to remember a lot from my surgical experiences, despite the anesthesia. I remember this one particularly well. I laid in my bed, unable to really connect with my extremities or lift my head, and just listened to what was going on around me. The woman in the bay to my left was being read the discharge instructions following the abortion she just had. She made half-comedic remarks about already having three at home and not being ready for another as the nurse instructed her to refrain from sex for a period of time. She made quieter, more subdued remarks accepting the counseling services offered to her to cope with what she had just endured. I can still hear her voice when she said, “I just had to get it out of me. I couldn’t do it.” I don’t know this woman’s story, I don’t know how that pregnancy came to be, hell, I don’t even know her name, but I know there were plenty of emotions running through her that day.
The woman to my right was experiencing something else. She had just experienced her third pregnancy loss, a stillbirth. I heard her tears as she waited for the hospital chaplain to arrive, this woman was sitting alone, grieving. The chaplain came and comforted her. He asked this woman what her baby’s name was, and her answer made me start to sob. The name she had picked for her daughter is one of the top names on my list for my children. (Yes, I have a list…) It’s an incredibly uncommon name in the U.S., so hearing it caught me off guard. This chaplain sat next to this grieving mother and told her, “We may not have been able to baptize [her], but her soul has returned home to God.” My heart broke for both of these women, and my tears flowed openly. Thinking I was in pain, a nurse administered some medication through my IV, and I fell back asleep listening to the relentless tears of a bereaved mother and the exhausted moans of another mother as she worked through her pain to get up and go home.
This experience showed me a lot about what abortion consists of, beyond the medical side of things. The woman to my left tried her hardest to keep her spirits high, making sarcastic and comedic comments. At first, I will honestly say I was appalled at her irreverence for what she had just done. Now, looking at the situation reflectively, I think about how hard it must have been to face the raw, painful emotions that come with an abortion. I then think about her somberness as she vulnerably accepted mental health services, admitting to the hardship that came with her situation. When you look at the entirety of the situation, which I really only got a glimpse of, there was so much more happening than just the medical procedure of an abortion.
And just as my heart breaks for her, my heart breaks for the mother who lost her third pregnancy. According to her theological beliefs, her third child. I think about that baby, whose name holds great personal meaning to me, and I think about the hardship that comes with that family’s situation. I think about the husband that finally got to be at his wife’s side as a chaplain said a blessing over her, and I think about the woman who had to go to an empty home that should be filled with the sounds of three young children. I also think of the mother who went home to her three children and had to keep them afloat while perhaps drowning herself.
I live in a state that still has laws protecting the right to choose, yet I cannot help but think about the women who now will not have access to the safe abortion that one mother got, or the mental health treatment she was offered after. My fear is that the Supreme Court only overturned the right to safe abortions, to legal abortions. I don’t want to think about the risks that are going to be taken, both physically and legally, for women who live in states that have banned abortion. So what do I think as someone who is decently versed in the Bible?
I think the first gift God gave us is our ability to choose.
The doctrinal term for this is “agency”. God said to Adam and Eve that they could eat from almost any tree in the Garden of Eden. God instructed them not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, but did not revoke their ability to do so. He gave them a choice. They chose, and they endured the consequences. The woman that chose abortion endured the consequences, both physical and mental, that came with her decision. Where religious individuals take this a step further is with interpretation.
If biblical break-downs aren’t your thing, feel free to scroll on down a bit. For those of you that are sticking with me, we’re going to take a look into the text. Book: Genesis. Chapters: 2 & 3. Let’s go.
So here’s what we know: God made man and made the Garden of Eden. Because man should not be alone, God also made woman (Genesis 2:19). Woman was made from the side of man, and upon marriage, Adam and Eve became one flesh. God told them that they could eat of any tree in the Garden except the Tree of Knowledge. So Adam and Eve could choose. (word of the day: choice, and all of its variations)
Where interpretation goes a little farther than I would is when people say Adam and Eve could choose between good and evil. THAT’S NOT TRUE! In order to choose between good and evil, they would have to have already eaten from the tree. In Genesis 3:5, the serpent explains that by eating from the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Eve would gain the understanding of good and bad. A very commonly heard pro-life argument is that yes, God gave us the gift of choice, and the first humans chose evil. Not quite, dear theologians. To know the difference between good and bad, one must eat from the Tree of Knowledge, but until then, one would have no clue what the difference was. Therefore, Adam and Eve had no way of differentiating between good and evil prior to their choice. Let’s stick with Genesis 3:5 for a little while longer. This verse also talks about how gaining the knowledge and differentiation between good and bad would make Adam and Eve like “divine beings”, or like God. The typical inference here is that this would somehow be bad… I disagree. A common teaching, at least between Judaism and Christianity, is that we are all made in the image of God. We are all like God, and we should all strive every day to be more like God (Christians run a little harder with that latter part). So why, then, would it be wrong to become like divine beings? Why would gaining this knowledge be a bad thing? Dare I say it was part of God’s plan all along? Before I go any further, I will say this: Before you rush to use Genesis as your defense for a pro-life argument, consider this interpretation of things.
So now that they’ve eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Eve know the difference between good and evil. What happens now is, especially as time has gone on, devout religious people have classified abortion as evil. Ok, let’s consider that perspective. Abortion = bad, evil, no bueno, murder. Did God revoke our ability to choose? God gave us the ability to choose regardless of what the consequences were. Adam and Eve were told that they would die if they ate from the Tree of Knowledge (Genesis 2:18, 3:3), and they still ate. So even if we choose evil, God lets us choose. We could split so many hairs in addition to this, but I will digress (mainly because I’m itching to get to Durkheim).
There are plenty of verses that either directly or indirectly (so based on interpretation) discuss abortion. Here are a few:
- Jeremiah 1:5
- Numbers 5:27-28
- Psalms 139: 13-16
A few of these verses are the “I knew you when/before I formed you in the womb” verses. Many Christians uses this as their defense for the belief that life begins at conception. If that’s your take, ok. If that’s my take, ok. This isn’t about changing minds. I could sit here and direct all of these verses, but I won’t. Why? That’s threefold. One, I just spend a few paragraphs doing biblical analysis, you should know my thoughts on the topic. Two, I really want to get to Durkheim. Three, regardless of what biblical interpretation I spew, there are always going to be multiple opinions on the topic. There are always going to be people who oppose abortion and there are always going to be people who support it. I’m not here to change minds. Pro-Roe, Anti-Roe, I can’t control you.
What I find incredibly interesting is that the same individuals who fought to federally overturn Roe v. Wade also identify themselves as not only conservative, but Christian. They defend their right to choose Jesus every day, but is choice limited to only that? I’m seeing Democratic heads roll at the sight of Amy Coney Barrett being a woman in support of the ruling. ACB is very Catholic, we shouldn’t be surprised. But she does open the door for the next segment of this post, which is on the legality and sociology of this ruling. Now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for (ok, maybe just me)… Enter Emile Durkheim.
I’ll be borrowing many quotes that I used in my “Functionalism & Intersectionality” post, so if you’ve read that, these words may sound familiar. What I’ve been trying to do since the Roe ruling is track the steps our society took to reach this point of overturning. It’s complicated, to say the least, but I think Durkheim says it best. Durkheim taught and believed that “crime consists of an act that offends certain very strong collective sentiments.” Side note, as we explore Durkheim, remember that as a functionalist, he believed that crime had a specific, unremovable role in society. Ok, back to the quote. There are few different things I want to discuss here, a few key words. I want to focus on the tail end of this sentence: “offends certain very strong collective sentiments”. There are three words that are in focus here. Let’s break it down:
- Offends
- Strong
- Collective
Offends. Fun word, don’t you think? I’m of the opinion that there will always be someone that is offended by whatever topic is on hand. What I’d like to do is use Durkheim’s words in the scope of abortion rights. Can abortion offend someone? In short, yes, but I’m going to play devil’s advocate (pun not-so intended). Who exactly is offended by abortion? Many pro-life defenders will say that they are personally offended when an abortion takes place. It may sadden them, but I would hesitate to use the word “offend”. Let’s think about who is genuinely offended in the process of an abortion. Who undergoes terrible thoughts, external judgement, and invasive procedures? That would be the individual receiving the abortion. Many pro-life defenders also claim that the baby is offended by an abortion. This all would stem back to the age-old question of when life begins. A very popular pro-choice argument is that what one person does with their body has no impact on anyone else, therefore it does not offend anyone. I think this argument is interesting considering the reality that abortion does go against various theological ideologies. What I’d love to ask Durkheim is what his definition of “offend” means. Is it physical, emotional, both? Does a crime need to physically offend someone? Emotionally or verbally offend someone? Or does it need to be both in order to be considered a crime?
Strong. Oh how strong the debate is over abortion rights. I worry about the classification of abortion as a crime on the basis of being offended, but on the basis of strong opinions and beliefs, abortion is a blazing fire. I mean this on both sides of the spectrum. Pro-life defenders are firm in their belief that life begins at conception and that a fetus is a living baby. Likewise, pro-choice defenders are firm in their belief that a woman should have autonomy over her body and that life begins after birth. Both are incredibly strong in their convictions. That is part of what has made Roe v. Wade so controversial, there is no give or take, either there is allowance for abortion or complete rejection of it.
Collective. I find Durkheim’s use of this word here very interesting. What exactly makes a belief (“sentiment”, in Durkheim’s wording) collective? Does five Supreme Court Justices make a collective population? is the 70(ish) percent of America that identifies as Christian representative of this collective pro-life decision? This is another case where I would want nothing more than to pick the Father of Sociology’s brain on definitions. I also find this part of his diction interesting considering his earlier use of the word “certain”. It almost juxtaposes “collective”… Now I’m not trying to pick a fight with my beloved Emile Durkheim, but I am trying to establish whether or not his definition of crime can classify abortion as one.
Let’s play devil’s advocate again. I should clarify… When I say “devil’s advocate”, I mean let’s look at things from both sides. I don’t mean to imply one side is evil and one side is good. Ok, so “certain” here can be synonymous with “specific”. That would line up with this idea of “collective” sentiments. The collective sentiment towards the certain act of abortion is what American society would call the conservative pro-life movement. Individuals who are a part of that movement would claim that they are offended by the act, as it violates their theological (and consequently moral) beliefs. If we follow that methodology, abortion is a crime. In fact, one can argue that Durkheim recognized the reality that federal rulings like Roe v. Wade could be overturned. Let’s look at that quote next.
When discussing the basis of changing laws or the classification of various acts as crimes, Durkheim wrote that, “in order that these transformations may be possible, the collective sentiments at the basis of morality must not be hostile to change, and consequently must have but moderate energy.” Now this is what I find incredibly fascinating. This quote essentially calls for the ebbing and flowing, the changing, of the classification of crime. What is even more fascinating is that it can be used by both sides of the right to choose debate. Pro-life defenders will argue that the change made was necessary because crime evolves. Pro-choice defenders will argue that the correct change already took place when Roe was established and abortion rights were federally approved. But let’s look at the end of this quote. Personally, I wouldn’t consider pro-life or pro-choice sentiments to be “moderate” in energy. According to Durkheim, that is what is necessary in order for transformative changes to be made. So how on earth have federal abortion laws changed?! If abortion is a crime, and crime is meant to evolve, but the United States lacks moderate energy in its sentiments, how are we making these changes? Any of the following may explain it:
- We don’t have a “collective” consensus on abortion rights (therefore abortion isn’t a crime under Durkheimian standards) and the issue is corruption in our legal system.
- Social media is presenting dramatized information and our sentiments are in fact moderate in energy (somehow I find this one both believable and absurd)
- Our religious ideology and identity(ies) have strayed farther and farther from the separation between church and state, with particular emphasis on conservative Christianity (but wouldn’t this be considered a collective sentiment?)
OR
- My brain is too confused by all of it, and my sociological understanding too minimal, to understand it sufficiently… This one is pretty likely.
Here is what I know: There are countless ways to interpret biblical ideologies and the literal text. There are also countless ways to interpret sociological teachings based on subjective definitions. And lastly, this is complicated. This is really, really complicated. What it has shown me is that there are so many religious identities. We are looking at a situation fueled by religious doctrine and ideology, yet even more identities are rising out of the shadows. We have built the stereotype that most Christians are conservative and most (America-based) Jews are progressive, but I’m finding that there is no “this or that” when it comes to the meshing of political affiliation and religious practice. It’s all messy, nonlinear, and blurry. Whether you believe Genesis 3:5 is about the right to choose or the right to life, whether you believe we are collective in our abortion stances or scattered across the political spectrum, there is no denying that the recent Roe decision has made a mess.
As always, I fully recognize that I may have completely missed the mark on my biblical interpretations and sociological understanding with this one. Remember, these are thoughts, not scholarly reports. I just gotta get the word vomit out of my brain. 🙂
Humble Chutzpah 