Jonathan Merritt, Founder of the Southern Baptist Environment & Climate Initiative and student at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, has joined the team of bloggers at the Huffington Post.
His first entry over at the Huffington Post is titled Is Availability of Contraception a Pro-Life Issue?
Here is a snippet:
One does not have to compromise his or her beliefs in order to support increased access to contraception. Pro-choicers can still support a woman’s “right to choose” and pro-lifers can still support an “unborn child’s right to life.” If the Guttmacher numbers stick and a direct relationship between access to contraception and declining abortions is established, the two sides of this debate may finally have found some common ground. In the midst of highly-polarized debate, contraception may be one of the few things people can agree on.
Merritt has a good point and seems to be optimistic that common ground can be found between the pro-choice and pro-life camps. However, Merritt fails to note one central fact that hurts his thesis which I put in bold above.
And that is that a number of Merritt’s fellow Southern Baptists – particularly those in visible leadership roles – are strongly opposed to popular forms of birth control which they believe to have abortifacient qualities. Al Mohler himself has said that some popular forms of birth control are not in fact “contraception” and “involve nothing less than an abortion itself.” A year ago, Thomas White, a Vice-President at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, announced that using birth-control pills is “wrong” and in some cases “murder of a life.”
I’m no expert of the broader pro-life movement. But these type views espoused by Mohler and other Southern Baptist leaders do not seem to be uncommon among pro-lifers. This is definitely another hurdle for the kind of common ground on abortion-reduction that Merritt and others (myself included) desire. For those who believe that certain popular forms of birth control are the moral equivalent of having an abortion, then support for increased access to contraception does indeed involve a compromise – a compromise that pro-lifers like Mohler & Company are not willing to make.
Indeed, products like “Plan B” suggest that the onward march of medical technology may come to blur the lines between contraception and abortion all the more.
But the pro-lifers oppose all birth control pills, because they believe that they sometimes prevent implantation of a fertilized egg. Hence their suggestion that an abortion sometimes occurs as a result. Of course, no one knows in any specific case that a fertilized egg did not implant or whether the egg was actually fertilized. And the evidence is that, even without the use of birth control pills, many fertilized eggs fail to implant.
Of course, some, including the Catholic Church, oppose all forms of birth control except the rhythm method or related temporary abstinence methods. To them, sex without sin requires the possibility of pregnancy.
I think he’s also missing another issue some pro-lifer’s might have…it’s the issue of sex before marriage. Quite a few in my congregation are against contraception even being talked about in health class, because of a perceived condoning of the behavior. They aren’t against handing condoms out due to any sense of Pro-Life/Pro-Choice idealogy, as much as they don’t want to make sex seem as any kind of option to the kids.
To be honest, I find myself feeling the exact same way. If we truly desire to lessen abortions, then we have to move beyond arguments about laws and delve deeply into teen/unwanted pregnancies.
Tim