Thinking About Abortion

I have enormous affection for my fellow Oklahomans, even when we disagree about the basics. It’s one of the many reasons I live in this state. I don’t want to suffocate in any kind of bubble, least of all a religious or social monoculture. It’s better for all of us when we rub shoulders with one another and learn to speak across the barrier of upbringing. That’s right at the center of the American Dream.

I’ll admit that it sometimes overloads the circuits. I have never handled a gun in my life. It’s alien to my suburban Jewish experience and—while not expressly prohibited—runs against the grain of my tradition. But I have tried to understand its attraction for others, especially people who hunt for sustenance. Putting the carcass of the animal aside, I could imagine traipsing across the field at dawn and feeling somehow enlivened by the season. I can especially imagine feeding my family each winter, the satisfaction I might take from my skill and effort. I don’t want to take that away from anyone.

The same on issues that are still more complicated. If you’re an Oklahoman deeply opposed to abortion, you have my respect for the strength of your views. I understand the appeal of principled commitments, in this case the sanctity of a human pregnancy. It’s what Albert Schweitzer called reverence for life, in all it’s forms, in all contexts and circumstances. I am not opposed to the teachings of a church that urges its adherents to carry every pregnancy to term. It would be arrogant for me to claim superior knowledge and to denounce the teachings of any sage or clergyperson. The God who created us at the beginning of human time may indeed speak that message to many communities of faith.

What’s clear to me is that message is nuanced and that some of us will hear something else in God’s voice. The very first code of Jewish law, compiled in the Land of Israel after the destruction of the Second Temple, plainly and specifically requires abortion when the life of a mother is made vulnerable by her pregnancy. The case in question is the physical health of the mother, but later codes expanded the scope of the permission to her sanity, her fundamental well-being.

It's no small matter that this is not a modern teaching, informed by the tenets of American liberalism. However much I may be influenced by those tenets and subscribe to a politics of multiculturalism and mutuality, the teachings of the Mishna—the ancient code in question—are now nearly two thousand years old. They were known to the Jews of ancient Palestine and in wide circulation in the first centuries of the Common Era. The fact that faith communities have since diverged is one of the common occurrences in the history of religion. Revelation is a multivocal, evolving phenomenon. It requires that we listen with empathy and understanding, even and especially in matters of great consequence.

I know that I will try my best in the complicated and challenging days ahead. I will agree with some, disagree with others, but that’s what it means to live with love, and make room in society for different points of view. We can do this—and create policies that accommodate us all—if we put aside our sense of certainty and acknowledge that others may have different ideas and viewpoints. It’s the very least I own my neighbors and friends, and I hope they will treat me with the same deference and respect.

This post was originally written for the Opinion Page of the Tulsa World. Please feel free to share it with anyone you know.