On May 31, 2009, a man named George was serving as an usher inside Reformation Lutheran Church of Wichita, Kansas. It was Pentecost Sunday. As the service was about to begin, George took his place at the entrance, ready to greet any latecomer who might show up. As a middle-aged man approached, George smiled and prepared to offer the man a bulletin when the visitor drew a pistol. He fired the gun at the startled George, killing him instantly with a single bullet to the head. After threatening to shoot two people who tried to stop him, the gunman then fled the scene and escaped in a car.[1]
This, however, was not just any case of gun violence. George’s full name was Dr. George Tiller, the extremely controversial and polarizing abortionist whom both supporters and opponents called the “doctor of last resort” because of his willingness to perform post-viability abortions, which other doctors turned down. Tiller had, by his own admission, performed over 60,000 abortions in his career of thirty years. The assailant was Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion extremist who at one time had connections with David Leach—publisher of the Army of God manual, which advocated the killing of abortion providers and contained bomb-making instructions in its January 1996 issue. Before his death, Tiller’s clinic had been firebombed twice. He was wearing a bullet-proof vest at the time of his assassination, having survived a previous assassination attempt in 1993 when he was shot in both arms by another anti-abortion extremist, Shelley Shannon.
The reaction to George Tiller’s murder reflected the deep divisions among Americans over abortion.[2] Pro-abortionists hailed Tiller as a hero and martyr for their cause. The website of the National Abortion Federation, for example, featured Tiller’s portrait with the star-spangled banner in the background and the inscription, “Remembering an American hero—Dr. George Tiller.” And the president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice described him as a “humble, courageous man who dedicated his life to justice, liberty, and freedom” and “a true American hero.” Most pro-life advocates also condemned the killing. But they did so with mixed feelings Troy Newman, then president of the activist group Operation Rescue, stated that he deplored the murder and feared that it would inspire similar violence around the country. Referring to Tiller’s assailant, he lamented, “This idiot did more to damage the pro-life movement than you can imagine.” Describing the moment as “bittersweet,” he expressed gratitude that Tiller’s clinic would not reopen, and that Wichita was now “abortion free” but regretted that this objective had not been accomplished through more peaceful and legal means. Randall Terry, the former head of Operation Rescue, was less judicious. Though denouncing “vigilante justice,” he called Tiller “one of the most evil men on the planet, every bit as vile as the Nazi war criminals who were hunted down, tried, and sentenced after they participated in the ‘legal’ murder of the Jews that fell into their hands.” Even though they constitute a small minority within the pro-life movement, some anti-abortion advocates have defended the killing of abortionists as “justifiable homicide”—based upon the principle of using violence to defend those who cannot defend themselves.[3]
It is in this context of violence—or potential violence—that we begin to see the significance of the contemporary culture war. “Culture wars always precede shooting wars,” warns sociologist James Davison Hunter. “They don’t necessarily lead to a shooting war, but you never have a shooting war without a culture war prior to it, because culture provides the justification for violence.”[4] “Democracy,” Hunter continues, “is an agreement that we will not kill each other over our differences, but instead we’ll talk through these differences.”[5] But when cultural impulses become so deeply rooted that they dominate public life, conflict and perhaps even violence are inevitable. Even violence is viewed and evaluated through the lens of cultural bias. Thus, pro-choice advocates emphasize the following statistics marshalled by the National Abortion Federation of violence against abortion providers: 11 murders, 42 bombings, 196 arsons and 491 assaults since 1977. They point out that attacks on abortion providers surged in 2021, in anticipation of the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court. [6] On the other hand, pro-life advocates emphasize the killing of the unborn—totaling roughly 1 million abortions annually—and threats of violence by pro-choice extremists, including recent attempts on the life of Justice Kavanagh.
The growing polarization, animosity, and violence in our society prompts the sarcastic question once posed by actress Lily Tomlin: “Is there intelligent life in America?”[7] More to the point, what are the factors behind the extreme polarization in America? Furthermore, how does defining America’s "culture war" help us to better understand and respond to the bitter conflict over abortion? How has the culture war over abortion become so entrenched in American public life?
Defining America’s “Culture Wars”
In most cases, America’s culture war is itself viewed through a partisan lens. Those on the political right use the term “culture war” in the context of a call to arms against the forces of secularism which threaten Christianity. On the other hand, those on the political left raise the specter conservatives seeking to impose a Christian theocracy on the whole of American society.
However, Hunter is primarily using the term to simply describe a cultural and political phenomenon which currently dominates American public life. Over thirty years ago, he published Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (1991), which is still the standard textbook on America’s “culture wars.” The phrase that Hunter coined now resonates far beyond the classroom, as it reflects the cultural battles not only over abortion but also over LGBTQ rights, religion in the public schools, multiculturalism, and the like. In recent years, this war has intensified to the point where it has become a dangerous ”life-or-death” political struggle over the soul of our nation. What are the roots of this conflict?
Throughout much of American history, Hunter argues, cultural conflict has taken the form of tensions between the four major religious groups—Protestant, Catholic, Jew and Mormon. The contemporary culture war, however, is different in that the new divide also exists within religious groups. The contemporary culture war is therefore much larger and more complicated than what existed in the past. “At the heart of the new cultural realignment are the pragmatic alliances being formed across faith traditions.”[8] In the case of Dr. George Tiller, for example, this controversial figure had been previously excommunicated by a congregation of the strongly anti-abortion Missouri Synod-Lutheran Church (MSLC) but was welcomed with open arms by the Reformation Lutheran Church, which is a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Thus, conservative orthodox believers in one Protestant (Lutheran) congregation are in conflict with other more liberal progressive believers in another Protestant (Lutheran) congregation—exhibiting a sort of moral schizophrenia on the issue of abortion within the church itself.[9]
The present cultural conflict is thus a “political and social hostility rooted in different systems of moral understanding.”[10] These moral systems, moreover, have a character of ultimacy. They consist of basic commitments and beliefs which provide a source of identity, purpose, and togetherness for the people who live by them. The divisions which are of political and social consequence are, in other words, the result of differing worldviews.
Yet, Hunter also strongly qualifies his use of the term. “Though competing moral visions are at the heart of today’s culture war,” he says, “these do not always take form in coherent, clearly articulated, sharply differentiated world views. Rather, these moral visions take expression as polarizing impulses or tendencies within American culture . . . . In truth, most Americans occupy a vast middle ground between these polarizing impulses of American culture.”[11] Furthermore, these polarizing tendencies are often more ideological than religious in nature. And they tend to be sharpest in institutions and their spokespersons who wield tremendous power in the realm of public discourse.
According to Hunter, the two polarizing forces which vie for cultural dominance are what he terms “orthodoxy” and “progressivism.” The orthodox belief system or worldview is characterized by a commitment of its adherents to an “external, definable, and transcendent authority” which provides an unchangeable measure of value, purpose, goodness, and identity.[12] It defines justice in terms of Judeo-Christian standards of righteousness. We have a lawful and ordered society when people live by these standards.[13] By contrast, within the progressive worldview moral authority tends to be defined in terms of a spirit of rationalism and the subjectivism of personal experience. From this perspective, truth is a constantly unfolding reality. Although progressivism takes a variety of forms, what all progressivists share in common “is the tendency to resymbolize historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life.”[14] Within the progressivist vision, emphasis is placed on the political rights of individuals; social justice interpreted as social equality; and freedom in matters of personal morality from interference by others in one’s life—either by the state, church, or other individuals. They envision a society of autonomous individuals whose rights to “reproductive” and “identity” choice are protected by the state.[15]
For those who think that Hunter’s thesis might be overdrawn or outdated, recent studies suggest otherwise. For example, in One Faith No Longer: The Transformation of Christianity in Red and Blue America (2021) George Yancy and Ashlee Quosick argue that “the divide between theologically progressive and conservative Christians is so great that one can realistically think of them as completely different religious groups.”[16] The major reason for this division is that progressive Christians adhere to a “flexible theology that stresses a humanistic ethic of social justice as a goal in and of itself”[17] while for conservative Christians their primary concern is with preserving core theological beliefs and values derived from the Bible. Conservative Christians believe that individuals and society as a whole would be better off adopting their values and their particular version of Christianity while progressive Christians emphasize inclusivism, tolerance, and social justice.[18] America’s culture war, then, is not merely between religion and secularism; it is also a war between two separate religious expressions of Christianity.
Hunter emphasizes that at the heart of the culture war is a struggle to monopolize the symbols of legitimacy that undergird American public institutions. According to the sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, “legitimation not only tells an individual why he should perform one action and not another; it also tells him why things are what they are.”[19] Beneath the myriad of political controversies over the so-called cultural issues of abortion, racial conflict, LGBTQ rights, and so on, there is the yet deeper crises over the meaning and purpose of core institutions of American civilization. Behind the political war over abortion, for example, there is the contentious debate over core issues such as the meaning of motherhood, the nature of the family, appropriate sexuality, individual freedom, and our obligations to one another. Each side in the current culture war, then, seeks to portray itself as the defender of the traditions and institutions of American life and their opposition as the enemy.[20] To borrow another phrase from Berger, on either side of the cultural divide there are rival plausibility structures, or practices, institutions, and assumptions that encourage their adherents to consider certain beliefs as plausible and others as implausible.[21]
The Institutionalization of America’s Abortion Wars
Inconsistencies abound in America’s culture wars. For example, in his recent campaign for the U.S. Senate, the football legend and Republican nominee in Georgia Herschel Walker ran on a platform of a complete ban on abortion, likening it to murder and maintaining that there should be “no exception” for rape, incest, or the life of the mother. But the Republican candidate did advocate for one exception—himself. During his campaign, a woman revealed that she and Walker conceived a child while they were dating in 2009 and that he paid for her to get an abortion. To support her claims, she produced a $575 receipt from the abortion clinic, a “get well” card from Walker, and a bank deposit receipt that included an image of a signed $700 personal check from the candidate.[22] Despite the scandal, Walker continued to receive support from the Republican Party and key Republicans, including Senator Lindsay Graham. Taking a page out of the Democratic Party’s playbook, many Republicans justified their continued support for Walker on the grounds that his conduct was a “personal matter.” What counted was his public opposition to abortion. Yet, by his own moral logic and that of most of the Republican Party, if he paid for an abortion then he was guilty of murder—or murder for hire. The willingness of religious conservatives to give Walker a pass (or a “mulligan” as many have put it) for his past indiscretions may also reflect a tendency to hold males less accountable for unplanned pregnancies and subsequent abortions.
Of course, liberal progressives are not without their own inconsistencies. Many liberals assiduously avoid or deflect the moral question of embryonic or fetal personhood while also expressing respect for the personal belief that the fetus is a person. President Joe Biden, for example, claims to have “deep respect” for the view that the fetus is a person, while also maintaining that this view should not be imposed on everyone. Abortion, he, and other liberals maintain, is a purely “personal” decision based on “religious” convictions.
It is true that many moral questions can and should be left to individual discretion; but the question of the personhood of the unborn is of such a nature that it cannot be legally avoided by the state. Stephen Carter rightly observes that “assigning the decision of fetal personhood to the women says only that the same state declines to make it, and if the state declines to make it, the state is declining to treat the fetus as a person.”[23] In other words, the state (and the courts) cannot bracket the ultimate question of fetal personhood without implicitly answering it—thus making a religious decision which liberals say the state or Court are barred from making.
Liberals might object that it is impermissible, except to prevent harm, to impose one individual’s vision of morality on another. But society imposes moral judgments all of the time—notably the forced integration of facilities, the punishing of hate crimes, the prevention of discrimination, and the like. “A pro-life statute enforces a moral regime on pregnant women; a pro-choice statute enforces a moral regime on fetuses. True, one might want to argue that fetuses don’t matter, so that we need not care what is forced upon them, but that argument simply assumes what is to be proved.”[24]
These and other inconsistencies persist in the pro-life and pro-choice camps because the abortion controversy is never just about conflicting ideas and beliefs. In example after example, Hunter argues, “we find evidence that culture is in fact a much more complicated phenomenon than we normally imagine.”[25] The reason for this is that the “symbols of public culture are always mediated in the social world by a variety of social institutions. It is, therefore, in the context of institutional structures that cultural conflict becomes crystalized.” [26] The contemporary culture war rages in what Hunter calls the “symbolic fields” or territories of family, education, popular media, law, electoral politics, and the like. The false dichotomies of America’s culture wars over abortion and other socially divisive issues have become institutionalized through special interest organizations, denominations, political parties, and branches of government. These fundamental disagreements are further aggravated by the technology of public discourse (i.e., the media) such that rhetoric of the culture war becomes more and more heated and divisive. The culture war takes on a life of its own. In this way, the opposing moral visions and the rhetoric that sustains them become the defining forces of public life.[27]
My purpose in what follows is to further show how the current conflicts and opposing interests in our abortion wars are part and parcel of the institutionalization of America’s culture war which is being waged on three main fronts: 1) the media; 2) the family; and 3) electoral politics. In other words, I would suggest that part of the reason abortion has become such an intractable issue in our society is because it is bound up with three deeply polarizing forces in America today—a media culture of Us Versus Them; the battle over the family; and the politicization of nearly everything (including abortion).
Media: Us Versus Them
Much of the debate over abortion takes place in the realm dominated by the public media, which by its very nature is characterized by slogans, pithy sound bites, and a simplistic rhetoric of “us” versus “them.” The contemporary media creates distortions of public rhetoric, or overstatements of a point of view on both sides of the abortion controversy. The main purpose this rhetorical hyperbole is to appeal to the emotional predispositions of the listener, thus reinforcing group differences and inhibiting any search for a common ground.[28] There are multiple sources of these distortions of rhetoric—spiritual, social, and psychological.
The Bible is clear that there is one fundamental reality which profoundly affects the social order—we are all sinners. Human sin which is rooted in pride is the great equalizer. As the Apostle Paul puts it, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). The effects of sin reach into our thinking, our motives, and our understanding of the external world.[29] The prophet Jeremiah laments that “the heart”—the central locus of human decision-making—"is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9 ESV). And Paul similarly states in the first chapter of Romans that human beings, “by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Rom 1:18). This human capacity for self-deception has profound implications for understanding social conflict. The American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr observed that group pride or what he terms “collective egoism” is often more socially destructive than individual pride, for it leads to tribalism or attempts to draw a fault line between the ”we group,” which is morally responsible, and a “they group,” those who fall outside the pale of humanity or what is good.[30] But “biblically speaking the line between good and evil does not run between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (neither with ‘us’ as the good, nor with ‘us’ as the evil) but down the middle of both ’us’ and ‘them.’”[31]
Social psychologists note the persistence of binary bias—or the basic human tendency to seek clarity and closure in a controversial issue by simplifying a complex continuum into two categories.[32] The culture war thrives on such dualisms. Thus, on the question of abortion, depending on which interest group one listens to we have a clear “either/or” choice. From one perspective we must choose between life and death; from the other, it is either choice or oppression. These binary oppositions are part-and-parcel of the various social institutions that comprise American society.[33] Biblical social and cultural analysis causes us to resist the tendency to oversimplify complex moral and ethical issues. To be sure, this recognition of moral complexity does not entail a middle-of-the road moral compromise between two extremes; nor does it imply moral equivalence across a range of perspectives. It does not entail the adoption of a perspective of moral relativism that says one’s personal morality is purely subjective and is as good as any other. Certainly, there are cases where individuals (or groups) bear a disproportionate weight of moral culpability or responsibility on any given issue.
Rather, as Christopher Watkin suggests in his seminal work Biblical Critical Theory, the Bible often exposes and cuts across false cultural dichotomies: “Time and again we see that the Bible’s figures cut across the range of options presented to us, only to find on further inspections that those options were themselves distorted and dismembered versions of biblical ideas.”[34] Watkin calls this method of cultural analysis diagonalization. Though it can vary from case to case, usually it involves the following steps:[35]
Identify a complex of interrelated biblical truths (i.e., that God is both just and loving, both merciful and truthful).
Show how false cultural dichotomies splinter or pull apart this biblical reality and create mutually exclusive choices (i.e., loveless justice or justiceless love).
Avoid unsatisfying compromise (i.e., part justice; part love).
Based upon the complex truth of (1) identify a “positive and viable” third way in which the aspirations of both options are fulfilled, though not necessarily one that the proponents of those options would expect.
The value of this approach is that it transcends many of the entrenched rivalries that characterize much of today’s cultural and political discourse. “More precisely,” argues Watkin, “it undercuts the tendency of dichotomized opposites to define themselves as the negative image of their enemy. The danger of thinking in dichotomies and placing yourself on one side of them is that you become shaped by what you oppose and hate. . . . If your opponents are for something then you must be against it; if they reject it, you must embrace it. The relationship becomes symbiotic, and little by little, you become dependent on what you oppose.”[36]
The human tendency to create an “us” versus “them” fault line involves a destructive cycle of 1) individual/group pride; 2) self-justification/self-righteousness; 3) confirmation and desirability biases; and 4) condemnation. Again, we can benefit from the findings of social psychology. In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt describes the power of tribalism to shape our ideas about truth. Particularly in today’s hyper-partisan climate, political views are “badges of social membership.” Political divisions, in other words, reflect our natural tendency toward “groupish righteousness,” or the in-group’s sense of moral superiority and self-righteousness.[37] “Once people join a political team,” he states, “they get ensnared in its moral matrix. They see confirmation of their grand narrative everywhere, and it’s difficult—perhaps impossible—to convince them that they are wrong if you argue with them from outside the matrix.”[38] Many voters therefore use information to reinforce their relationship to the group or tribe. Information or data is used to justify the outcome we want. Alternatively, when we are confronted with uncomfortable or unwanted information, we look for reasons to deny or reject the argument or fact.
This phenomenon of partisan cherry-picking truths is reinforced by the tendency to seek out only those media outlets which echo what we want to hear. With the creation of media silos—or “echo chambers”—on both the left and the right, Americans have segregated themselves into what the Associated Press has called “intellectual ghettoes,” each with their own realities and narratives. “The silos are discrete universes that seldom talk to one another or seek to persuade or engage those of other viewpoints. As a result, the news media ecosystem rewards the loudest, most reckless voices, so the echo chamber gets louder and angrier and increasingly shrill.”[39]
In psychology there are at least two biases that drive conflict and prevent true discernment. One is confirmation bias—seeing what we expect to see. The other is desirability bias—seeing what we want to see. These biases are actually weapons against the truth. Adam Grant describes our natural tendency toward bias in this way: “We find reasons to preach our faith more deeply, prosecute our case more passionately, and ride the tidal wave of our political party. The tragedy is that we’re usually unaware of the resulting flaws in our thinking. My favorite bias is the ‘I’m not biased’ bias, in which people believe they’re more objective than others.”[40] Bias in turn leads to judgment as condemnation and self-validation—hypocritically denouncing another person or group as morally inferior and deserving of God’s judgment while ignoring or downplaying our own moral failings and intellectual blind spots.
The antidote to bias is to first recognize our own proclivity toward sin and self-deception. Even the Old Testament prophets recognized that God’s judgment applied to themselves as well as the people to whom they were speaking. We do not get any sense in their writings of the righteous sitting in judgment of the unrighteous for the simple reason that the prophet is intertwined with the people he ridicules.[41] For example, when the prophet Isaiah is confronted with the holiness and glory of God he can only exclaim: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Isa 6:5). Thus, he includes himself in his message of judgment and condemnation. In the well-known words of Pogo, “We have seen the enemy, and the enemy is us.” Or as the Catholic thinker G. K. Chesterton responded in a brief letter when asked “What is wrong with the world?” by a newspaper reporter: “Dear Sirs, I am. Sincerely Yours, G. K. Chesterton.” Yet, how often do we as believers reflect Ambrose Bierce’s definition of a Christian as “someone who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book, admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor”?[42] Adopting a posture of self-criticism and humbly recognizing our own shortcomings opens the door to re-examining our own biases and potential blind spots.
Abortion and the Battle Over the Family
In the 2016 presidential campaign, ardent supporters of women’s rights were exuberant over the prospect of Hillary Clinton becoming the first female president. Feminists were thrilled to see progress in the fight for gender equality and the breaking of the “glass ceiling” of barriers to women’s advancement. Like the rest of the world, they were stunned when Donald Trump won the election. For them, Trump represented the very opposite of their hopes and dreams. Not only did he advocate a repeal of Roe v. Wade, which granted women the right to abortion. His behavior exhibited the epitome of male misogyny and a violation of the Christian supposition that every woman’s body is her own and is to be respected as such by every man. Multiple women accused him of sexual assault—accusations supported by his own boasting on an Access Hollywood tape that he could easily seduce married women. He added:
I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. . . . Grab 'em by the [genitals]. You can do anything.
Commentators and lawyers have described such an action as sexual assault.
Many conservative Christians, on the other hand, celebrated the election of Donald Trump. After eight long years of liberal policies, hope was alive again. For all of his faults, the thrice married man at least opposed abortion and advocated for the traditional family. But it was a deep disdain for Hillary that drove many religious conservatives to Trump. What turned off conservative voters was her extreme views on abortion (including the argument that partial-birth abortion is an acceptable practice) and her support for same-sex marriage and LGBTQ rights—a stance which in their view undermined the sanctity of marriage and the traditional family.
The 2016 presidential election was thus unprecedented in its contradictions—in terms of both the character of the two candidates and the degree of ideological polarization between the two parties. The political right enthusiastically embraced (and continues to embrace) a man who at the very least has exhibited misogynistic tendencies while the political left supported a feminist who essentially endorsed abortion on demand. Both political parties claim to represent “family values” but operate with radically different definitions of what it means to be “pro-family.” The Bible calls for Christians to love and protect all of those who are vulnerable to abuse. But, as Watkin states, “It is as if the biblical categories of widows and orphans has been cleaved apart: the left has compassion for the widows, and the right wants to save the orphans, with the two tragically and needlessly set against each other. The full-orbed ethic of love can find rest in neither camp.”[43]
In part, these differing worldviews are historically rooted in a dramatic change in the religious and political composition of the pro-life movement that took place between the 1960s and 1980’s. You might be surprised to learn that many of the supporters of the original pro-life movement in the 1960s were not conservative evangelicals. Rather, they were Catholic feminist Democrats who viewed the campaign to save the unborn as a rights-based movement based on the principle of the “right to life” fully in keeping with the ideals of New Deal and Great Society liberalism. These New Deal Democrats viewed abortion as a form of male domination and control. But in addition to promoting anti-abortion policies, they also advocated for social welfare. In calling for anti-poverty measures they adopted a more holistic approach to social policy.[44] This movement gradually failed after the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade and was replaced by a feminist “pro-choice” cause within the Democratic party which stressed gender equality.
When the evangelicals joined the pro-life cause in the late 1970’s they reframed it as politically conservative campaign to restore moral order and promote “family values.” They linked abortion with other issues of sexual morality. The battle against abortion was therefore viewed as part of a battle they were waging against pornography, homosexuality, sexual permissiveness, and a general culture of moral relativism. It is vital that we understand this historical shift in the pro-life movement from Catholic Democrats to Evangelical Republicans. A few more progressive leaning evangelicals such as Jim Wallis and Ron Sider have advocated for a pro-life ideology which is grounded in a broader concern for all human life that includes issues such as capital punishment, woman’s rights, and poverty. But their calls for fellow evangelicals to adopt a more integrative approach that stresses the “seamless garment of life”—to use a phrase present in Catholic social teaching—has largely fallen on deaf ears.[45] Thus, especially beginning with the Reagan Presidency (1980-88), the pro-choice and pro-life movements have been increasingly dominated by the political left and political right respectively.
Over the past half-century, then, the issue of abortion has been tied to fundamental questions regarding the nature of the family and how respect for individual autonomy ought to be balanced against family responsibilities. There is therefore some truth in the observation of some sociologists that, ultimately, the struggle over abortion is rooted in differing conceptions of motherhood and the obligations that come with being a mother. For pro-life activists and those adopting an orthodox vision, motherhood is the most important and satisfying role a woman possesses. Moreover, motherhood entails the protection of children—both the born and unborn. Abortion thus represents an assault not only on the unborn but on the mother’s principal obligations and source of identity. For pro-choice activists and those adopting a liberal progressive vision, on the other hand, motherhood is simply one role among many. Abortion is viewed as a means of freeing women from the burdens of an unplanned pregnancy. “The legal right to an abortion is seen as ensuring that women maintain their individual autonomy from men who might compete with them in the workplace or husbands who wish to restrict wives’ freedom by keeping them in the realm of domestic travail.”[46]
Closely related to motherhood is the debate over childcare. What role, if any, should government play in helping parents meet their obligations to care for their children, particularly with increasing numbers of women with young children entering the workplace? Again, this is an issue that has become heavily politicized. Within the progressive vision, the government has a legitimate role in helping parents meet the growing economic requirements of raising children. They therefore advocate for policies such as government-sponsored childcare and paid leave for dual-career and single-parent households. The general consensus among cultural conservatives, however, has been that government should not interfere in matters of child-rearing that are the primary obligation of the parents. Too much government involvement in the family results in a secular socialist state that undermines the traditional family structure. In the words of one conservative “pro-family” advocate: “The education and upbringing of children is the primary responsibility of parents. Selfishly or ignorantly surrendering this role would be a grave disservice to our youth as well as our free society. The family must cling to its God-ordained roles or future generations will suffer the consequences.”[47]
These radically divergent viewpoints on childcare obviously have significant ramifications for abortion. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that around 60 percent of women getting abortions today are already mothers facing high poverty risk. And according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) about 14 percent of all abortions occur among married women. These statistics indicate that motherhood is hard—and it is exponentially harder for single parents. Women who procure abortions also overwhelmingly lack access to paid maternity leave or affordable childcare. It would appear, then, that there are valid reasons for addressing social conditions such as poverty and the cost of childcare as part of a “pro-life” and “pro-family” approach to abortion.[48] Policies which provide financial support to poor mothers may even reduce the perceived need for abortion. And, indeed, there is a growing number of pro-lifers who call for fellow conservatives to modify their anti-government and libertarian leanings and support public policies that are purposefully targeted to support disadvantaged parents and their children as part of a “pro-family” agenda.[49]
In the view of many if not most conservative pro-life advocates, however, the expansion of any social services for the poor actually promotes indolence, promiscuity, easy abortion, and the avoidance of parental obligations. White evangelicals in particularly have tended to blame economic hardship on people’s own “bad character” and “lack of effort.” They are critical of the “welfare state” for subsidizing an anti-family ethic and promoting abortion while creating a dependence on government handouts.[50] Liberal progressive “pro-choice” advocates, on the other hand, regard policies which help parents (particularly the poor single-parents) with the high cost of childcare—which in 2022 was between $15,400 and $17,300 per child annually—and give women the flexibility and opportunity to work outside the home as providing the means of self-sufficiency. They view the conservative opposition to such policies as further evidence of an unspoken agenda to recreate a patriarchal social order.[51]
Orthodox conservatives therefore tend to view economic hardship as the appropriate consequence of immoral behavior and character flaws. Abortion from this perspective is a matter of personal ethics and responsibility. However. liberal progressives view economic hardship as a main driver of immoral behavior (including abortion). From this perspective, abortion is primarily an issue of social ethics.[52] It is not possible at this point to get into the details of this debate—except to say that we must consider all possible angles and factors that contribute to the problem of abortion. In other words, abortion is a complex phenomenon which is not reducible to either social or personal ethics.
Conservative pro-lifers can find statistical support for their claim that the demand for abortion is at least partly the product of the sexual revolution and the separation of sex from marriage. Women who become pregnant out of wedlock are far more likely than married women to terminate their pregnancies. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, 83 percent of the 1.3 million abortions in the U.S. were obtained by unmarried women.[53] Some unmarried women procure abortions because having a child out of wedlock interferes with education or career aspirations. It is not uncommon, then, for anti-abortion proponents to portray women (particularly single women) who have abortions as morally callousness, selfishness, and irresponsible. The vast majority of abortions are, as one conservative state legislator put it, “abortions of convenience.”[54]
However, what both liberals and conservatives often miss is the power that men have in both unintended pregnancies and the decision to terminate a pregnancy. As Mako Nagasawa states: “Every person, especially ethicists, educators, and Christian ministers, should linger long over the fact that women who procure abortions consistently report that ‘partner related reasons’ are high, if not highest, among their reasons for aborting the fetus.”[55] Aborting an unintended pregnancy is never just a personal act divorced from its social and interpersonal context. Yet, unfortunately, the church has been slow to acknowledge the power imbalance between men and women and sufficiently recognize the need to hold men more accountable for their conduct. Religious conservatives especially tend to have a blind spot when it comes to the prevalence of sexual violence and intimate partner violence (IPV) and role this plays in prenatal deaths, including the decision some women make to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Sexual violence and IPV is more common in the church than we would like to admit.[56] Intimate partner violence is particularly a problem among low-income, predominantly single women with some studies finding a prevalence rate of IPV as high as 50 percent.[57] Other studies indicate that experiencing violence, especially from intimate partners, is common among women having an abortion. Some women who report violence as a reason for abortion believe that having the baby will tether them to an abusive partner.[58]
But IPV can take various forms, including emotional abuse. The advent of “reproductive rights” has created a situation in which a “pro-choice” male can coerce a woman to have an abortion simply by withholding his responsibility toward her or even abandoning her when she gets pregnant and “chooses” to carry the child to term. In the words of Daniel Callahan, “If legal abortion has given women more choice, it has given men more choice as well. They now have a potent new weapon in the old business of manipulating and abandoning women.”[59] Or as the feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon puts it: “Sexual liberation in this sense does not free women, it frees male sexual aggression. The availability of abortion thus removes the one remaining legitimized reason that women had for refusing sex beside the headache.”[60]
Abortion and the Politicization of Nearly Everything
One of the most persistent features of the conflict over abortion has been the propensity of all the parties involved (including major religious organizations) to frame the issue and operate via the language and tactics of power politics. The elevation of politics as the sphere through which religious institutions seek to influence American society is indicated by the number of religiously based lobbyists in Washington D.C. According to a study conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the number of organizations engaged in religious lobbying or religion-related advocacy in Washington, D.C., increased from fewer than 40 in 1970 to more than 200 in 2010. That is a roughly five-fold increase in just four decades.[61] As churches and Christian organizations confront each other and the secular world over abortion and other social issues, politics and the pursuit of political power are the reigning motif.[62]
In the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump received a whopping 81 percent of the vote among white evangelicals. That’s eight percentage points greater than what the devout Christian George W. Bush received against John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. Undoubtedly, one of the main reasons evangelicals voted for Trump in such overwhelming numbers was his promise to pack the courts (including the Supreme Court) with conservative pro-life justices. By the mid-point in Trump’s presidency, the war over abortion was in high gear, with Trump making two controversial appointments to the Supreme Court. As David French points out, in the first six months of 2019, the U.S. also experienced an unprecedented, geographically concentrated wave of legislation directly aimed at abortion. “First the state of Ohio and then the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgian, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Missouri all passed bills that either banned abortion outright, banned it after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, or banned it if the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.”[63] Simultaneously, competing abortion bills were proposed and passed in multiple northern states. Most notably, New York and Illinois passed laws which liberalized the right to abortion up to the point of labor and delivery. “By the end of 2019, contrasting American abortion laws began to roughly mirror the North/South divide at the start of the Civil War.”[64]
That is not to say that pro-lifers have been totally unform in their approach to the criminalization of abortion. For decades, the pro-life position has been that women who choose to terminate a pregnancy are abortion’s “second victims” and that there should be compassion and care for both pre-and-post abortion women. There is, however, a small but growing and influential group of pro-life Christians who identify as “abortion abolitionists.” This vocal minority strongly rejects the mainstream position. They are critical of the incrementalist view of David French and other moderate pro-lifers that 1) we should accept incremental and attainable changes in abortion laws; and 2) abortion bans alone without cultural change will not end abortions.[65] Because abortion at all stages is murder, abolitionists maintain, Christians should accept nothing less than a total ban with criminal penalties for all involved, including the mother. “The very foundation of the gospel is the law of God,” says Tom Ascol, the president of Founders Ministries, in a recent documentary from and abolitionist group End Abortion Now. “God defines what’s sin: You shall not murder. And that’s true from the moment of conception until the natural ending of life.”[66] A prevailing theme of the abolitionist movement is “equal justice”—meaning that the murder of preborn children is a crime which must be punished equally under the law. Most abolitionists will not allow for any exceptions, even to save the life of the mother. “To make this practical,” writes French, “the logic of the abolitionist movement would lead to criminalizing a woman who aborts an ectopic pregnancy, cruelly putting her in the position of choosing between prison and death. How is this position pro-life? How is it even remotely just?”[67]
French identifies two further problems with the Abortion Abolitionist movement. First, it does not consider the vitally important legal and moral distinction between act and intent. Most women who procure abortions do not have criminal intent. In his words, “The decision to prosecute women who obtain abortions could result in the prosecution of thousands upon thousands of young women who genuinely do not believe they are killing a child.”[68] Furthermore, as we have already noted, many women who seek abortions are poor women who are already under extreme emotional, physical, and financial distress and face intense pressure from friends and family or abuse from intimate partners.
Nonetheless, in the post-Roe era, abortion abolitionists are making their presence felt in state legislatures. In March 2023, a South Carolina legislator introduced a bill that would impose the death penalty as punishment for women who get abortions. South Carolina state law currently punishes self-managed abortions with up to two years in prison. The proposed new bill states that the fetus “should be equally protected from fertilization to natural death” and would therefore equate abortion to homicide.[69] Similar bills have been introduced or contemplated in other states, including Louisiana, Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Kansas. It is highly unlikely that these bills will be enacted into law. But their proliferation marks a distinct departure from the usual practice of exempting women seeking abortions from criminal prosecution.[70] As French remarks, “The mainstream pro-life movement rejects ’abolitionist’ extremism, but minority positions can still do immense harm.”[71] Compounding the problem, he continues, is that many red state legislatures are in a punitive mood; such bills may indicate the beginning of a larger and longer internal struggle for the heart and soul of the pro-life movement.
In some respects, the Abortion Abolitionist movement represents the end result of the cultural and political phenomenon that Hunter refers to as “the politicization of nearly everything.” He goes on to describe “politicization” as “the turn toward law and politics—the instrumentality of the state—to find solutions to public problems.”[72] Consequently, “The language of politics (and political economy) comes to frame progressively more of our understanding of our common life, our public purpose, and ourselves individually and collectively.”[73] All of public life is filtered through partisan beliefs, values, ideals, and attachments. “Each and every faction in society seeks the patronage of state power as a means of imposing its particular understanding of the good on the whole of society.”[74]
Hunter emphasizes that politicization is not unique to either side of the culture war. Both orthodox conservatives and liberal progressives tend to conflate the public with the political. Thus, instead of the political realm being just one part or aspect of public life, all of public life is reduced to politics and to the language of politics.[75] In a context of extreme political polarization, the so-called democratic discourse over contentious issues like abortion tends to be dominated by the dualism of extremes. For all practical purposes, the majority of voices tend to be drowned out by political rhetoric of extremist ideologues.[76] As we have noted, in the post-Roe era there are a significant number of states where legislators are drawn to either a punitive ethic of punishment (i.e., “all parties involved in an abortion should be prosecuted for murder”) or an ethic of personal autonomy (i.e. “women have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies”). Seeking a middle-ground is viewed as moral compromise and “caving in to the opposition.” Political extremism, not moderation, is increasingly becoming the norm.
Hunter distinguishes between shallow and substantive democracy. In a substantive democracy characterized by genuine pluralism there is true debate over substantive issues and a sincere search for some common ground. In a shallow or weak democracy “public speech becomes a language game that has the form of meaningful communication but is in fact merely another form of aggression. . . . In a shallow democracy, then, public speech becomes a device for increasing power—a weapon facilitating the coercion of consensus.”[77] In other words, “the final arbiter within most of social life is the coercive power of the state.”[78]
Presently, the struggle between illiberalism and democracy has become a central theme of American politics and a source of grave divisions in our society. Both sides accuse the other of authoritarian style leadership and the abandonment of consensus politics and the norms and customs of democracy. In reality, the threat of autocracy can come from both the right and the left.[79] On the right, there are the religious fundamentalists who seek to use the power of the state to impose their moral creed on the entire society. On the left, there are the equally radical postmodernists and pluralists who propagate an absolute (or near absolute) moral relativism of “anything goes” and believe that “choice” is the ultimate guarantee of freedom and autonomy. Both positions are held by “true believers” who demand conformity and are driven by fanaticism, hatred, and intolerance. As Eric Hoffer, said over seven decades ago, “The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and by antagonizing he is shaping the world in his image.”[80]
The ultimate irony of politicization is that values cannot be achieved politically since politics is ultimately about power. For politics to be about more than mere naked power it must be dependent on a realm that is divorced from the sphere of politics itself. However, what we see playing out before our very eyes is that politics and political power tend to trump everything else—even to the point where the impulse toward politicization extends to the politicization of values.[81] “In propaganda as in love, anything is permissible which is successful,” said Nazi minister Goebbels, who oversaw Hitler’s campaign of mass persuasion.[82] When values are politicized, the end result is a form of political propaganda.[83] Everything tends to be reduced to a utilitarian ethic that the ends justify the means. We as Christians would like to think that the church is immune to the dangers of pollicization. But the opposite is the case. Christians on both the political left and political right have insisted and continue to believe that the best hope for changing society lies in gaining and wielding political power. In their pursuit of political power, no group in American society has done more to politicize values than Christians. In effect, Hunter argues, many Christians have tended to reduce Christian faith to a political ideology.[84] The tragic irony is that in the name of opposing the dark forces of nihilism (such as abortion) of the modern age, Christians—in their will to power and the perceived grievances that fuel it—perpetuate that nihilism.[85]
Conclusion
I have suggested that current extreme polarization over abortion is best understood in the context of Americas’ culture war, which sociologist James Davison Hunter describes as a fundamental divide between two value systems—orthodoxy and progressivism. These two value systems have taken on the status of ultimacy such that they reflect two distinct worldviews or belief systems which vie for cultural dominance. Moreover, the conflict over abortion has become entrenched in American life largely because it has been institutionalized through three main polarizing forces: the public media which is characterized by “distortions of public rhetoric”; the battle over the family; and the politicization of American public life.
Hunter’s main thesis, which was first proposed in his book Culture Wars has been largely corroborated by more recent sociological investigations, most notably One Faith No Longer: The Transformation of Christianity in Red and Blue America by sociologists George Yancey and Ashlee Quosick. These authors argue that even within the Christian church, “while differences between progressive and conservative Christians play out in political struggles, the real conflict emerges more from a clash of core values and moral authorities than a Democrat versus Republican conflict.”[86] These differences within a polarized Christianity are so stark that “we should consider this division to represent two different religions because failure to do so will not account for important social and cultural dynamics.”[87]
However, there are two factors which indicate the need to qualify the above argument. First, there are Christian progressives who are critical of the pro-choice movement for being too dismissive of the humanity of the fetus or make too little effort to reduce the abortion rate just as there are conservative Christians who are critical of segments within the pro-life movement for not caring enough about the lives of poor single mothers who seek abortions. In other words, it would be wrong to characterize both conservative and progressive Christians as monolithic in their approach to abortion. There are those within both camps who call for a more “consistent life ethic”—which seeks a dramatic reduction in the abortion rate in America without overly criminalizing what is often a tragic choice. Yancey and Quosick recognize the potential for progressive and conservative Christians to work together, particularly in areas where the social justice concerns of progressive Christians align with biblical mandates for justice as interpreted by conservative Christians.[88]
Secondly, Yancey and Quosick acknowledge that there is a dearth of research into Christians who are neither progressive nor conservative—the so-called moderate Christians or Christians in the middle. “This deficiency creates an incomplete understanding of Christians in the United States.”[89] We have further observed that a large percentage of the American population does not identify with either extreme in the abortion debate. Many take a more moderate stance. This, again, creates the potential for more dialogue and the possibility of reaching some sort of consensus for the common good.
[1] Arner, Consistently Pro-Life,”3-4. [2] Ibid.,5-6. [3] Ibid., 18-19. [4] Hunter, Before the Shooting Begins, 4; Stanton, “How the ‘Culture War’ Could Break Democracy.” [5] Ibid. [6] Durkee, “Attacks on Abortion Providers Surged in 2021.” [7] Sine, Cease Fire, 1. [8] Hunter, Culture Wars, 47. [9] Arner, Consistently Pro-Life, 4. [10] Hunter, Culture Wars, 42. [11] Ibid., 43. [12] Ibid., 44. [13] Ibid., 112. [14] Ibid., 44-45. [15] Ibid., 114. [16] Yancey and Quosick, One Faith No Longer, 5. . [17] Ibid., 201. [18] Ibid., 191. [19] Berger and Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality, 92-94. [20] Pew Forum, “Is There A Culture War?”; Hunter, Culture Wars, 147. [21] The term plausibility structure is developed by Berger in The Sacred Canopy. [22] Sollenberger, “’Pro-Life’ Hershel Walker Paid for Girlfriend’s Abortion.” [23] Carter, The Culture of Disbelief, 254. [24] Ibid., 257. [25] Hunter, To Change the World, 22. [26] Hunter, Culture Wars, 173. [27] Ibid., 290-91. [28] Hunter, Before the Shooting Begins, 48. [29] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory, 119. [30] Niebuhr, Man’s Nature and His Communities, 84-85. [31] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory, 128. [32] Grant, Think Again, 165. [33] Hunter, To Change the World. 21. [34] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory, 15. [35] Ibid., 15-19. [36] Ibid., 20. [37] Haidt, The Righteous Mind, 100, 370. [38] Ibid., 365. [39] Sykes, How the Right Lost Its Mind, 82. [40] Grant, Think Again., 25. [41] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory, 305. [42] Quoted in Ibid., 306. [43] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory, 390-91. [44] Nagasawa, Abortion Policy and Christian Social Ethics in the United States, 7. [45] For the early history of the pro-life movement see Williams, Defenders of the Unborn. Also, Williams, “The Partisan Trajectory of the Pro-Life Movement.” [46] Hunter, Culture Wars, 187. [47] Ibid. [48] Ghilarducci, “59% of Women Seeking Abortions are Mothers Facing High Poverty Risk.” See also Nagasawa, Abortion Policy, xii [49] See Frost, et al., “Pro-Life, Pro-Family: The Challenge of a Just and Sustainable Post-Roe Future.” [50]Nagasawa, Abortion Policy, 145-46. [51] Hunter, Before the Shooting Begins, 70-71. [52] Nagasawa, Abortion Policy, 146. [53] Williams, Defenders of the Unborn, 257. [54] See Lambert et al., “Quantitative Analysis of Anti-Abortion Discourse Used in Arguments for a 6-Week Abortion Ban in South Carolina,” 10. Also, Hunter, Before the Shooting Begins, 71. [55] Nagasawa, Abortion Policy, 88. [56] See Gerhardt, The Cross and Gendercide, 59-81; Cannon, Beyond Hashtag Activism, 157-75. [57] Alhusen et al., “Intimate Partner Violence During Pregnancy,” 100. [58] See “Understanding Pregnancy Resulting from Rape in the United States” and Roberts et. al., “Risk of Violence From the Man Involved in the Pregnancy After Receiving or Being Denied an Abortion.” [59] Hunter, Before the Shooting Begins, 72. [60] Ibid. [61] Pew, “Lobbying for the Faithful.” [62] Hunter, Before the Shooting Begins 185-86. [63] French, Divided We Fall, 31. [64] Ibid., 32. [65] French, “For Abortion Abolition, Against Abortion ‘Abolitionists.’” [66] Andersen, “When ‘Pro-Life’ Isn’t Enough.” [67] French, “For Abortion Abolition, Against Abortion ‘Abolitionists.’” [68] Ibid. [69] Al-Arshani, “South Carolina Becomes the Latest GOP-Led State with a Bill to Make the Death Penalty a Punishment for Abortion.” [70] Noor, “Republicans Push Wave of Bills That Would Bring Homicide Charges for Abortion.” [71] French, “For Abortion Abolition, Against Abortion ‘Abolitionists’” [72] Hunter, To Change the World, 102. [73] Ibid., 103. [74] Ibid., 104. [75] Ibid., 105. [76] Hunter, Before the Shooting Begins, 10. [77] Ibid., 34-35. [78] Hunter, To Change the World, 106. [79] In her book Strongmen, Ruth Ben-Ghiat convincingly shows how Donald Trump exhibits the characteristics of a strongman (nationalism, propaganda, virility, corruption, and violence). In my estimation he represents the greatest threat to democracy. But we should not be blind to the potential for authoritarianism on the political left as well. [80] Berger, In Praise of Doubt, 127. [81] Hunter, To Change the World., 172. [82] Quoted in Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen, 92. [83] An example is the widespread belief among evangelical election deniers that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen.” Although there is not a shred of evidence of widespread election fraud, this QAnon election conspiracy theory fueled the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and various efforts by Donald Trump and his supporters to overturn the election. [84] Hunter, To Change the World, 172. [85] Ibid., 275. [86] Yancey and Quosick, One Faith No Longer, 208. [87] Ibid. [88] Ibid., 218. [89] Ibid., 226.