This is how the church best ministers to those who continue to feel the burden of the sin of abortion, by again and again pointing them to the cross of their Lord Jesus Christ and assuring them of the full and free forgiveness He won for them there, for all sins, for each and every one. Private confession and absolution with their pastor is another powerful means by which God gives His grace, pardon and peace to a person feeling guilty over the sin of abortion.
The grace and love of God is stronger than any human weakness and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin 1 John This is truly good news and the good news that can and must be shared with those feeling guilty. There are many worthwhile resources available. Our church has a commission on the sanctity of life that has produced a number of helpful materials. Both of these documents are available from Concordia Publishing House by calling There is a video aimed directly at young people that helps them think about life issues.
You may obtain a copy of this video by calling Lutheran Visuals at Lutherans For Life is an organization that also provides numerous resources to help Christians understand better a wide range of life issues. View statement online Abortion is one of the most significant moral issues of our day.
If abortion is legal in the United States, how can the church oppose it? Why is the church involving itself in a personal decision? Has the Christian church always been opposed to abortion?
Why do some churches take a weak position on abortion? What can we do for people considering abortion? How can the church minister to those who have had an abortion?
What resources are available? The study was conducted in a county with relatively higher rates of abortion, lower access to sexual and reproductive health services, higher religiosity, and greater denominational diversity compared to other counties in the state. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed by thematic analysis. However, most participants expressed attitudes in the middle of this spectrum and described more nuanced, complex, and sometimes contradictory views.
Differences in abortion attitudes stemmed from varying beliefs on when life begins and circumstances in which abortion may be morally acceptable. However, many religious leaders described a lack of preparation and training to have these conversations.
Leaders emphasized not condoning abortion, yet being willing to emotionally support women because spiritual leaders are compelled to love and provide pastoral care.
Additionally, many leaders offer misinformation about abortion when offering pastoral care. These findings contribute to limited empirical evidence on pastoral care for abortion. We found religious leaders hold diverse attitudes and beliefs about abortion, rooted in Christian scripture and doctrine that inform advice and recommendations to congregants.
While religious leaders may have formal training on pastoral care in general or theological education on the ethical issues related to abortion, they struggle to integrate their knowledge and training across these two areas.
Still, leaders could be potentially important resources for empathy, compassion, and affirmation of agency in abortion decision-making, particularly in the Southern United States. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: Our data are comprised of transcripts from qualitative interviews with Protestant religious leaders in Georgia surrounding abortion attitudes and pastoral care. These data cannot be shared publicly, as the qualitative data presents potential risks and harms beyond those agreed to by study participants in the consent process and approved by the Emory University Institutional Review Board.
However, data access requests may be sent to IRB emory. In order to facilitate research transparency, we provide the study interview guide and codebook as Supporting Information files. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Abortion is a common experience for U.
In the United States, While national and regional abortion rates have been declining, rates in the state of Georgia have increased in recent years [ 2 ]. The rate of abortion in Georgia was Despite abortion being common, most people in Georgia face systemic and socio-cultural barriers limiting access to abortion services.
Attitudes that condemn abortion emerge in policy, systems, and at the community-level [ 3 ]. Restrictive state legislation threatens to impose additional barriers to abortion access.
For example, in , Georgia legislators introduced HB , a bill that sought to outlaw abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected [ 10 ]. This bill aimed to restrict abortion as early as 6 weeks gestation, before many people know they are pregnant [ 11 ]—one of the strictest abortion bans in the nation [ 12 ].
A federal judge granted an injunction in early October , which blocked the law while it is argued in court [ 13 ]. More restrictive policies leave the most vulnerable, economically disadvantaged, and socially isolated people with few choices but to carry pregnancies they feel they are unable to support to term; however, those who carry pregnancies also face systemic barriers including limited access to perinatal care.
Religious leaders are pivotal in their faith communities [ 17 ] and may be influential in shaping attitudes towards sexual and reproductive health SRH , norms, and behaviors at the individual, family and community levels [ 8 , 17 , 18 ]; however, religious doctrine and beliefs may come in direct conflict with public health recommendations regarding abortion and contraception [ 19 ].
Conversely, Mainline Protestant religious leaders have historically played a role in shaping SRH policy, specifically with advocacy efforts for increased access to contraception and abortion during the twentieth century [ 17 ]. This percentage is higher than that found in the American population as a whole; in , Mainline Protestants only represented 7. Still, little is known about the pastoral care practices of religious leaders as they relate to abortion, especially in the southern states of the United States and there are few resources in pastoral theology that address abortion.
In fact, a review of publications from Mainline Protestant publishing houses over the last two decades identified only two books published on pastoral care and abortion [ 24 , 25 ]. A keyword review of the American Theological Library Association ATLA database identified no peer-reviewed articles exploring abortion published in pastoral theology journals over the last twenty years. Participants were recruited from two religious traditions based on categorization developed by Steensland and colleagues [ 28 ].
Mainline Protestantism is a branch of Protestantism that consists of denominations that are generally considered theologically liberal and moderate e.
According to the Association of Religious Data Archives, Black Protestant denominations are generally economically liberal and socially conservative [ 29 ]. For this study, 20 semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with religious leaders serving in Mainline and Black Protestant churches in a county with urban and rural areas outside of Atlanta, Georgia.
The study site was selected due to its higher abortion rates, lower SRH service access, a higher religious adherence, greater denominational diversity, and an abundance of Mainline Protestant and Black Protestant churches as compared to other similar counties in Georgia. Religious leaders were eligible to participate if they were currently serving in a Mainline Protestant or Black Protestant church as a clergy member or lay leader i.
Purposive sampling was used to recruit a sample of religious leaders diverse in denomination and sociodemographic characteristics. Churches were identified using a publicly available list of churches by county published by The Association of Religious Data Archives. Names and contact information for the primary religious leader of these churches were obtained from church websites and social media.
Lay leaders were recruited by social media messages and snowball sampling because their contact information was often not publicly available on church websites. Religious leaders were contacted up to five times by email, phone, and social media message using standard Institutional Review Board IRB -approved scripts. Leaders were also approached in person and recruited at centers of commerce e. Socio-demographic characteristics of study participants are presented in Table 1.
Other religious titles reported included: pastor, associate pastor, first lady, minister, regional minister, youth minister, and lay leader.
Age ranged from 28 to 72 years, with a mean age of Sixty-five percent of participants had a graduate degree—most commonly a Masters of Divinity. Church membership size ranged from less than 50 to over people. In-depth interviews were conducted between October and September using a semi-structured interview guide See S1 Appendix. The interview guide was pilot-tested in four interviews with clergy members serving in Mainline and Black Protestant churches in metro-Atlanta and then refined for clarity.
Iterative changes were made to the interview guide and to participant recruitment throughout the data collection period to explore new topics raised and to include participants with differing perspectives, as is usual in qualitative data collection.
Participants were consented verbally. They were read an IRB-approved consent script, invited to ask follow-up questions, and asked if they agreed to take part in the study. A short demographic survey was administered after the informed consent process. Five researchers collected the data. They were trained on qualitative research methods, the study protocol, and research ethics.
All researchers were cisgender women of reproductive age: four multi-ethnic women and one white woman. They had varying religious backgrounds and level of experience within Christian churches. They also noted potential biases that may have influenced data collected.
Researchers shared these reflexive notes in team debriefing sessions and discussed ways to minimize researcher influence on the data collection process. For example, reflexivity revealed emerging data on race and religion, whereby the team felt that matching the race of researchers and participants may provide a more enabling environment for a deeper, more nuanced data on participants views on race and abortion.
Interviews were transcribed verbatim by a professional transcription company and de-identified by the research team. Data were managed and organized using Dedoose version 8. Saturation was reached at 20 interviews when a diversity of views and denominations was achieved and no new themes were observed. Data were read in detail and memoed in order to develop a codebook See S2 Appendix. Codes were developed through inductive emerging from the data and deductive pre-determined topics from the interview guide strategies.
An inter-coder agreement exercise was conducted prior to coding all data to ensure consistency in the coding process. Weekly team meetings were held to refine code definitions, resolve discrepancies in coding, and discuss reflexivity in data interpretation during the coding process.
For example, researchers discussed how our underlying epistemologies, public health training, and differing views on scripture and doctrine, might influence interpretation of data during analysis. Researchers explored data by codes e. Patterns in the data were examined and sub-themes within codes were identified.
Illustrative quotes were then selected for each sub-theme. Results were organized around 1 abortion attitudes; 2 moral and religious beliefs; and 3 pastoral care. When asked about their views on abortion, most participants noted affiliation with sociopolitical attitudes regarding abortion e. All participants identified at least one circumstance in which abortion may be the best decision for a pregnant person.
Illustrative quotes of the range of common attitudes are presented in Table 2. They expressed perceptions that abortion is too often thought of as a first option and explained that they would encourage congregants to make well-informed, carefully considered decisions when faced with an unplanned pregnancy. These participants emphasized the importance of sharing religious beliefs of life and scared worth when providing pastoral care for someone considering abortion.
Some participants were less decided about the moral acceptability of abortion in cases of rape, stating tensions between the belief that something good might come out of the pregnancy and concerns for the mental health of the mother. Participants cited tension between belief in the sanctity of life and respect for individual autonomy. One participant described this tension:.
And so I have no right to say to someone who's carrying a child that you can or cannot do this or that or the other because that child is your body and you have the right to see your body. But at the same time , there is also the potential for a life being carried inside of that body.
Abortion is a case of direct killing of an innocent human being — a violation of the rights of the youngest members of our society and the human family.
All human beings are called to respect, protect and nurture human life at all stages. Evidence was given to us by eminent scientists from all over the world. None of them suggested that human life begins at any time other than conception. In the twentieth century, the debate over the morality of abortion became one of several issues which divided and continue to divide Protestantism. Even among Protestants who believe that abortion should be a legal option, there are those who believe that it should nonetheless be morally unacceptable in most instances.
However some Protestants support freedom of choice and assert that abortion should not only be legal but even morally acceptable in certain circumstances.
In Judaism, views on abortion draw primarily upon the legal and ethical teachings of the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, the case-by-case decisions of responsa, and other rabbinic literature. In the modern period, moreover, Jewish thinking on abortion has responded both to liberal understandings of personal autonomy as well as Christian opposition to abortion.
Generally speaking, orthodox Jews oppose abortion, with few health-related exceptions, and reform and conservative Jews tend to allow greater latitude. There are rulings that often appear conflicting on the matter. The Talmud states that a fetus is not legally a person until it is delivered. Abortion is only permitted for serious reasons. Judaism expects every case [related to abortion] to be considered on its own merits and the decision to be taken after consultation with a rabbi competent to give advice on such matters.
Buddhists believe that life should not be destroyed, but they regard causing death as morally wrong only if the death is caused deliberately or by negligence. Traditional Buddhism rejects abortion because it involves the deliberate destroying of a life. Buddhists regard life as starting at conception. The new being, bearing the karmic identity of a recently deceased individual, is therefore as entitled to the same moral respect as an adult human being.
Modern Buddhists, however, are more divided about the morality of abortion. Buddhists are expected to take full personal responsibility for everything they do and for the consequences that follow. The decision to abort is therefore a highly personal one, and one that requires careful and compassionate exploration of the ethical issues involved, and a willingness to carry the burden of whatever happens as a result of the decision.
The ethical consequences of the decision will also depend on the motive and intention behind the decision, and the level of mindfulness with which it was taken. Buddhism and killing. According to the teachings of Buddha, five conditions must be present to constitute an act of killing.
The Hindu Text the Rig Veda 7.
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