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Religious views on abortion are more diverse than they appear in American political debate. • South Dakota Searchlight

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Lawmakers who oppose abortion often invoke their faith — many identify as Christian — as they debate policy.

The anti-abortion movement’s use of Christianity in arguments could give the impression that large segments of religious Americans do not support abortion rights. But a recent report shows that Americans of various faiths and denominations believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

According to a Public Religion Research Institute survey of some 22,000 American adults released last week, 93% of Unitarian Universalists, 81% of Jews, 79% of Buddhists and 60% of Muslims share the same view committed.

The group is filing ballot measures for abortion rights, while opponents are promising a legal battle

Researchers also found that most people who adhere to the two main branches of Christianity — Catholicism and Protestantism — also believe abortion should be largely legal, with the exception of three groups: white evangelical Protestants, Latter-day Saints and Jehovah’s Witnesses .

Historically, the Catholic Church has been against abortion. But the poll found that 73% of Catholics of color — PRRI defines this group as Black, Asian, Native American and multiracial Americans — support abortion rights, followed by 62% of white Catholics and 57% of Hispanics Catholics.

The findings show that interfaith views on abortion may not be as straightforward as they seem during the political debate, where the voices of white evangelical lawmakers and advocates can be the loudest.

States Newsroom spoke with Abrahamic religious scholars – specifically experts on Catholicism, Islam and Judaism – and reproductive rights advocates about different perspectives on abortion and their history.

Abortion views in America before Roe v. Wade

The Moral Majority — a voting bloc of white, conservative evangelicals that rose to prominence after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 — is often associated with spearheading legislation to restrict abortion.

Gillian Frank is a historian specializing in religion, gender and sexuality and teaches at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. Frank said evangelical views on abortion were actually more ambivalent before the Roe decision in the early 1970s established the federal right to terminate a pregnancy. (The Supreme Court overturned that precedent about two years ago.)

“What we need to understand is that evangelicals, in addition to mainline Protestants and Jews of various denominations, supported what was called therapeutic abortion, that is, abortion for certain exceptional reasons,” Frank said, including saving life or health from the mother. fetal abnormalities, rape, incest and the pregnancy of a minor. Religious organizations such as the Southern Baptist Convention and the National Association of Evangelicals say abortion is OK under certain circumstances, he added.

Protestants before Roe did not support “elective abortions,” Frank said, or what they called “abortion on demand,” a phrase used today by opponents of abortion rights that he said entered the American lexicon around 1962.

The 1973 ruling was seismic and caused anti-abortion organizations such as the National Right to Life Committee — formed by the Conference of Catholic Bishops — to spring up across the country, according to an article published four years later in Southern Exposure published. Catholic leaders often lobbied other religious groups – evangelicals, Mormons, Orthodox Jews – to join their movement, comparing abortion to murder in their newspapers.

After Roe, “abortion has become increasingly associated with women’s liberation in popular rhetoric, because of the activism of the women’s movement, but also because of the ways in which the anti-abortion movement associates abortion with familial decline,” Frank said. Those sentiments, he said, were spread by conservative figures like Phyllis Schlafly, a Catholic opposed to feminism and abortion who campaigned against and blocked the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s.

Polls show that the views of Catholic clergy and laity differ

Catholicism is generally synonymous with opposition to abortion. According to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the church has been against abortion since the first century. The conference refers to Jeremiah 1:5 in the Bible to support the arguments that termination of pregnancy is ‘contrary to the moral law’.

But nearly six in 10 American Catholics believe abortion should be largely legal, according to a Pew Research Center report released last month.

Catholics for Choice spokesperson Ashley Wilson said there is a disconnect between the church as an institution and its laity. “We recognize that part of the problem is that the Catholic clergy and the people who write the official teaching of the church are all or mostly white men — my boss likes to say apparently celibate men — who don’t have wives,” Wilson said. “They have no daughters. They have no impact on the lives of lay people.”

Her group plans to go to Vatican City in Rome this fall to collect stories about Catholics who have had abortions. The organization is also actively involved this year in efforts to restore access to abortion — 14 states have near-total bans — through direct ballot measures in Colorado, Florida and Missouri.

Catholic dioceses and brotherhoods often support countermeasures to proposed ballot questions. They invested millions in campaigns in Kansas and Kentucky in 2022 to pass anti-abortion amendments, and also in Ohio last year to defeat a reproductive rights ballot measure, but in every state they failed.

Inspiration and mercy in Islam

The teachings of Islam – the world’s second largest faith – often refer to how far along a person’s pregnancy is and whether there are any complications. University of Colorado law professor Rabea Benhalim, an expert on Islamic and Jewish law, said there is a common belief that the embryo after 40 days of gestation resembles a drop of liquid. After 120 days, the fetus acquires a soul, she said.

Although the Quran does not specifically mention abortion, Benhalim said chapter 23:12-14 is considered a description of a fetus in a womb. The verses are of great “importance in the development of abortion jurisprudence within Islamic law, because it is understood that life is something that comes into being in a period of stages.”

In some restrictive interpretations of Islam, there is a limit on abortion after 40 days, or seven weeks after implantation, Benhalim said. Other interpretations hold that abortion is widely permitted in some Muslim communities for various reasons because ensoulment only occurs after 120 days of pregnancy, she said. According to religious doctrine, post-implantation abortion is permitted if the mother’s life is in danger.

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Sahar Pirzada, the director of movement building at HEART, a reproductive justice organization focused on sexual health and education in Muslim American communities, confirmed that some Muslims believe in the 40-day limit, while others adhere to the 120-day limit when weighing of abortion. .

“How can you make a black-and-white statement about something that will be applied across the board when everyone’s situation is different?” she asked. “There is a lot of compassion and mercy in how we should approach matters of the womb.”

The issue is personal for Pirzada, who had an abortion in 2018 after her fetus was fatally diagnosed with trisomy 18 when she was 12 weeks pregnant. “I wanted to cancel within the 120-day deadline, which gave me a few more weeks,” she said.

She consulted scholars and Islamic teachings before making the decision to terminate her pregnancy, she said, citing the importance of rahma (mercy) in Islam. “I tried to embody that spirit of compassion for myself,” she said.

Pirzada, who is now a mother of two, underwent the procedure exactly 14 weeks ago, on a day six years ago that was both Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day. She said she felt loved and surrounded by people of faith at the hospital, where some health workers had crosses with ashes on their foreheads. “I was very grateful that they offered me care on a day that was spiritual for them,” she said.

Seeing the stories of people with pregnancy complications in the time since the Supreme Court struck down the federal right to abortion has saddened her. For example, Kate Cox, a Texas woman whose fetus had the same diagnosis as Pirzada’s, was denied an abortion by the state Supreme Court in December. Cox had to travel elsewhere for care, Texas Tribune reported.

Benhalim, the University of Colorado expert, said the teachings in Islam and Judaism provide comfort to followers considering abortion because they can provide guidance on difficult decisions.

No fetal personality in Judaism

According to the National Council of Jewish Women, in Jewish texts the embryo is called water before 40 days of pregnancy. Exodus: 21:22-23 in the Torah mentions a hypothetical situation in which two men fight and injure a pregnant woman. If she miscarries, the men will only be fined. But if she is seriously injured and dies, “the punishment will be a life for a life.”

This part of the Torah is interpreted to mean that a fetus has no personality and that the men did not commit murder, the council said. But this may not be an all-encompassing belief; Benhalim noted that denominations of Judaism have different opinions on abortion.

Today, Jewish Americans are at the forefront of legal challenges to religious liberty abortion bans in Florida, Indiana and Kentucky. Many of the lawsuits have interfaith groups of plaintiffs claiming that restrictions on dismissal infringe on their religion.

The legal challenge in Indiana was the most successful. Hoosier Jews for Choice and five anonymous plaintiffs sued members of the state medical licensing board in the summer of 2022, when Indiana’s near-total abortion ban initially went into effect.

Plaintiffs argued that the ban violated the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the court later granted the claim class-action status. Several Jewish Hoosiers said they believe life begins after a baby’s first breath and that abortion is necessary to protect the health and life of the mother, court documents show.

Last month, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled that the plaintiffs have the right to sue the state, but sent the request for a temporary halt to the ban back to a lower court.

Although the decision was unanimous, Justice Mark Bailey issued a separate concurring opinion explaining his reasoning and criticizing lawmakers — “an overwhelming majority of whom have not experienced childbirth” — who claim they are protectors of life from the moment of conception.

“In my opinion, this is an acceptance of a religious position held by some, but certainly not all, Hoosiers,” he wrote. “The least that can be expected is that the remaining Hoosiers who may have children will be given the opportunity to act in accordance with their own conscience and religious beliefs.”

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