The Choice That Mary Had
That American Women Don't Have
My mom is Catholic. That’s present tense, not even lapsed, goes to Mass and everything. I am pretty sure she used to be “pro-life” in the way that the Catholic Church means that: anti-abortion and anti-death penalty. Over the years, her views on abortion have evolved and I think they are much more in line with the mainstream view that decisions about abortion, a medical procedure, should be made by a woman and her family in consultation with her doctor. At the same time, she has lived in North Carolina and Virginia in recent years and is much closer to people who still view abortion as “murder.”
People who believe that abortion is murder, regardless of the science behind the medical procedure, are not willing to be dissuaded that Trump is their best option this November, regardless of how they feel about other issues, and even regardless of the experiences of women in their lives who have turned to abortion, IVF, and birth control as necessary measures for family planning and even saving lives.
Most of the people who believe this are Christians who have the strictest view of what constitutes murder. It’s hard to understand where this belief comes from. The Ten Commandments? Well, no, because the vast majority of Jewish people do not believe abortion is murder. The National Council of Jewish Women say: “Our Jewish values compel us to support full access to safe and legal abortion care as basic health care.” Muslim scholars seem to differ on whether abortion is permissible but seem to start the clock at 120 days, and have exceptions for the life of the mother. In neither religion is abortion considered murder, although it might be a crime.
Okay, so what about Christians? Jesus was completely silent on the matter (along with so much else). But you know who would have had an interest in the question of whether abortion was permissible? His mother Mary. Recall that Mary was a very unwed Jewish young woman who found herself pregnant.
Induced abortion did exist in antiquity. There is evidence of abortion in ancient Egypt and the Roman Empire in which Mary lived. Abortion would have been an available option for Mary. There’s evidence that abortion was only illegal at the time if it impaired a husband’s right, and since Mary didn’t have a husband, there was no one to assert that right.
As the father, God could have asserted that right. Notably, He did not do so. God actually sent Gabriel to explain that she was pregnant and effectively talk her into keeping the baby. Gabriel would not have needed to do that if Mary had no choice but to keep the child.
Mary did have a choice to stay pregnant.
Mary went on to marry Joseph and have Jesus. There is no reason to believe that Mary and Joseph didn’t have a normal marriage that involved sex, and yet we have heard very little about whether there were other children in that marriage. Some scholars think there were. It does not seem likely, however, that Mary had lots and lots of children, nor did she die in childbirth like so many other women in antiquity. Without birth control, that means it’s also possible that Mary had an abortion at some other time in her life.
Mary had that choice. Given the methods of abortion available at the time, it may have been a difficult choice, but it was a choice she had. That’s more than can be said for the millions of women who live under abortion bans in the United States. Whatever justification may exist for those bans (I don’t think there are any but . . .), the idea that Jesus Christ or Mary would support them is not based in anything we know about them or the world they lived in.
