Religious leaders and practitioners have long been the most vociferous advocates of abortion prevention. The Roman Catholic Church, however, which also champions celibacy among priests. Has been one of the biggest offenders in terminating unwanted pregnancies prematurely. Especially when the perpetrators were priests who sexually abused nuns. “Nuns around the world have suffered sexual abuse by priests, sometimes resulting in pregnancy and abortion, but church leaders have “fail[ed] … to discipline” the clerics involved, the New York Times reports. According to five reports written by senior members of women’s religious orders and a priest, cases of sexual abuse against nuns have been reported in at least 23 countries. (PEACE FM ONLINE: Diocesan Priest Impregnates 30 Nuns, 10 August 2020). These developments are nothing new. Even during my childhood years, there were whispered rumors circulating, about the many skeletal remains, of aborted infants. Washed up on the nearby rocks beneath the nunnery poised upon the cliff overlooking The Caribbean Sea.
This double standard is also prevalent in protestant churches. Since many under-shepherds of Christ have fallen into sin and tried to cover up their moral failings by resorting to abortion. “In 1820, Ammi Rogers, a middle-aged Yale graduate and Episcopal clergyman in Connecticut. Seduced Asenath Smith, the 21-year-old granddaughter of a dying church member, and then had her drink a potion that would purportedly cause an abortion—but it did not. The next step was his use of a “tool” of some kind, which caused bleeding, intense pain, and then the delivery of a dead child. That led to Rogers’s arrest and a trial that displayed, according to The Norwich Courier, the clergyman’s ‘baseness and cold calculating depravity of heart.'”
Such occurrences were certainly not remote or unusual. In fact, they were quite common. In 1865 Illinois pastor James Jaquess, 46 and married with two children, hired a doctor to perform an abortion on his young mistress in Kentucky, Louisa Williams. Officials arrested and arraigned Jaquess for “procuring the death” of Williams and “procuring the death of the child” within her. Newspapers across the United States reported his arrest because Jaquess had been a friend of Abraham Lincoln and the organizer of the Union Army’s “preachers’ regiment,” one made up largely of ministers. (CHRISTIANITY TODAY: These Pastors Fell Into Sin. Pro-Life Laws Emerged From It By Marvin Olasky, June 23, 2022).
These attempts to end an unwanted pregnancy were all occasioned by feelings of guilt, shame, and remorse. The fragile egos of all the bad actors could not endure the bright glare of exposure and publicity. However, their acts of intervention were so crude that they were nevertheless discovered and prosecuted. Israel’s most celebrated Monarch, King David, was caught up in a similar scandal. When he arranged for the death of Uriah The Hittite. Following his adulterous affair and impregnation of Uriah’s fatally beautiful wife, Bathsheba. By that time Uriah’s widow was already living in the king’s house. However, someone else far more powerful than any earthly ruler intervened to put an end to the newborn’s life. “So David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’ And Nathan said to David, ‘The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. However, because by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also who is born to you shall surely die’… And the Lord struck the child that Uriah’s wife bore to David, and it became ill…Then on the seventh day, it came to pass that the child died.” 2 Samuel 12:13-14,15, 18. (NKJV).
Although this pregnancy was permitted to come to term. The child died shortly after it was born. Because The Almighty ‘feared the blasphemy of His enemies.’ Therefore, shouldn’t we as humans who’ve been ‘made in the image of God.’ Exercise compassion, mercy, and tolerance, toward people who find themselves in the unenviable dilemma of wrestling with an unwanted pregnancy? I’m not by any means advocating the Practice of Abortion. All I’m saying is that we should not be so rash as to rush into legislation that criminalizes such a personal and often traumatizing decision. There are legitimate considerations when contemplating any such decision. Such as the circumstances under which such a pregnancy was conceived. Was the mother the victim of rape or incest? Moreover, does the unborn child pose a serious threat to the health and well-being of the mother? All of these factors should be taken into consideration in any decision to terminate a pregnancy.
(TO BE CONTINUED)
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