Gomes, the minister in The Memorial Church as well as the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard College, is an engaging writer with a gift for persuasion. Time magazine named him one of the seven best preachers in America. A registered Republican with an evangelical background, Gomes gave the benediction at Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as well as the inaugural sermon for George Bush. But he is also a homosexual. Although The Good Book is not your typical liberal diatribe, the results of this treatise are familiar. We might call it a different road that leads to the same destination.

The Good Book’s first three chapters deal with the place of Scripture in American churches, the problem of biblical interpretation, and the Bible in America. These chapters set the tone for the rest of the book. Gomes suggests, among other things, that Christians ought to be careful when interpreting Scripture, for there are three dangerous temptations one can succumb to: (1) bibliolatry, (2) literalism, and (3) culturalism. Although this book discusses a number of topics — some of which are quite informative and helpful — I will focus in this review on some of the areas in which Gomes differs from conservative evangelicals. I will do this by covering the three supposedly dangerous temptations and some of the examples Gomes employs.

The first of his caveats, bibliolatry, Gomes defines as “the worship of the Bible, making of it an object of veneration and ascribing to it the glory due to God” (p. 36). It is unclear exactly how Gomes applies this in practice, since he does not cite any actual instance that seems to fit his definition. He does, however, give us some insight when he writes, “It was Martin Luther[’s] …reformation slogan, sola scriptura, ‘by scripture alone,’ [that] gave rise to the greatest temptation yet, which was to make of the Bible a domesticated substitute for the authority of God” (39). But if the Bible is the Word of God, as all Christian churches have taught until this century, then how can one say that Luther’s slogan gave rise to the Bible replacing God’s authority? After all, God’s Word by definition carries His authority. Since it is God who is the appropriate object of worship, how does Gomes gain information about this God in order to distinguish Him from inappropriate objects of worship, such as the Bible? Is Gomes’s source the Bible? If it is, which parts of it? If only some parts, on what basis and on what authority does he distinguish the divine parts from the less- than-divine parts? If it’s the whole Bible on which he relies, on what authority does Gomes trust it? God’s authority? It’s not clear from reading The Good Book how Gomes answers these questions.

Certainly Gomes is correct in saying that we should not worship the Bible, but that’s not the real issue. The real issue is whether the Bible is God’s Word. And given that, the real question is: How can we as Christians best understand and respond to what God has communicated to us?

Literalism is “the worship of the text, in which the letter is given an inappropriate superiority over the spirit” (36). If all Gomes were saying is that the Bible includes numerous literary styles written for assorted reasons to a diversity of persons in different historical contexts, and that a careful reader of the Bible should take all these factors into consideration, Gomes would be saying nothing that evangelicals could not embrace. But this is not what he is saying. A key to what he means is found in his comparison between those he calls biblical “literalists” and those who believe that we ought to interpret the U.S. Constitution by the intent of its framers:

The issue, framed in American constitutional discourse, is not what you and I might think the Constitution means; nor is it what the Supreme Court, at any given point, thinks it means. The only valid line of inquiry, according to the doctrine of original intent, is what the authors, the framers, had in their minds when they wrote what they wrote. It is the business of the courts to interpret the Constitution on that basis, and the business of the legislature to legislate with that intent in mind. It is no small point of cultural coincidence in contemporary America that those who find security in the authority of the text and its authors’ intent in scripture, will be equally anxious to submit themselves and others to the same authority in constitutional discourse. (43)

Assuming that Gomes is the author of this passage and that he intends to convey to his readers that he believes biblical conservatives and constitutional conservatives usually occupy the same pews in churches and synagogues throughout America, who am I, as a believer in original intent, to dispute such an accurate sociological observation? Even though he expects the reader of his book to espouse original intent when reading The Good Book, Gomes does not encourage the same courtesy to be extended to the authors of the Bible and the U.S. Constitution.

Although Gomes provides no philosophical argument against the positions espoused by either group of “original intenters,” he does provide one telling reason for his viewpoint: “Most of us would not want to reconform our country’s civilization to these original intents, even though we know what they are” (44). According to Gomes, therefore, the Bible, like the U.S. Constitution, is to be understood not by the intent of its authors (or Author), but by the wants of its readers. But if its readers happen to be the church (i.e., Christians generally), or in the case of the Constitution, the Supreme Court, on what basis can the church claim to be Christ’s body, or in the case of the Court, the Constitution’s authoritative interpreter? If Gomes answers by appealing to the authority of “the Bible” and “the Constitution,” he is either affirming the authority of those documents or he is affirming the authority of the readers. If the former, he should be applauded. But if the latter, he becomes trapped in an appalling loop in which “Constitution” and “Bible” simply mean “whatever the people who read it want it to mean.”

It is not evident, however, what Gomes believes. For instance, when it comes to conclusions that agree with social and theological conservatism (e.g., marriage should be between only one man and one woman; abortion is unjustified homicide), Gomes shows great respect for the author’s “original intent” and tries to demonstrate that the Bible, when properly interpreted, does not agree with these conclusions, but in fact supports more liberal views. On the other hand, he refers to those outside his African-American ethnic community who are concerned with the historical truth of biblical miracles as “fact-obsessed white Protestant Christians” (341).

Gomes provides an example of misguided literalism that tells us less about the perils of literalism and more about Gomes’s understanding of those with whom he disagrees. He writes:

The Bible is silent about abortion, but the religious zeal of the protesters at abortion clinics is based upon what they believe to be the plain and clear meaning of Exodus 20:13, where in many English translations the familiar commandment says, “Thou shalt not kill.” The moral energy of the anti-abortion movement is fueled in large part by this clear and unambiguous commandment, which it claims is violated with impunity every time an abortion is performed. One has only to listen to the chilling justification of his action by Paul Hill, the minister convicted of first-degree murder at a Pensacola abortion clinic, to sense the depth of the conviction based upon the moral force of this commandment. (44)

Gomes correctly points out that Exodus 20:13 should really be translated “Thou shalt not murder,” because there is a scriptural distinction between murder and killing. He proceeds to argue that abortion qualifies as killing, but not murder. But, Gomes does not understand the prolife movement and Paul Hill’s defense of his action.

First, many prolifers who are against abortion for preborn human beings support capital punishment for postnatal murderers, since they understand the difference between killing and murder and that Exodus 20:13 prohibits the latter but not the former. The literature by prolife scholars on this is enormous,¹ but Gomes does not appear at all familiar with it.

Second, the prolife position has never been based on one passage of Scripture (Exod. 20:13). In fact, I can’t think of one well-known activist in the history of the movement who has grounded the prolife position exclusively on the basis of that passage, even though Gomes claims, without one citation, that “the religious zeal of the protesters at abortion clinics is based upon what they believe to be the plain and clear meaning of Exodus 20:13.” (44)

Third, Gomes makes it appear as if Hill is representative of the prolife movement and that Hill’s position has widespread appeal among prolifers. This is false, as a recent symposium of leading prolife activists and intellectuals in the journal First Things makes abundantly clear.²

Fourth, although what Hill did was morally wrong, those who defend his actions do so by making the very distinction that Gomes suggests prolifers should make — namely, the difference between murder and killing.³ These extremists argue that killing an innocent unborn human being is murder while trying to prevent that murder by killing or impairing the murderer is justified, because not all killing or maiming is condemned in Scripture. They ridicule Christians who appeal to “Thou shalt not kill” as an argument against killing abortion doctors, making the exact point as Gomes does in order to justify what Gomes thinks is morally reprehensible.

Gomes’s third key term is culturalism, “the worship of the culture, in which the Bible is forced to conform to the norms of the prevailing culture” (36). If understood as merely a condemnation of cultural prejudice and imperialism, evangelicals can embrace Gomes’s warnings. In fact, Gomes accurately points out the injustices, such as anti-Semitism, slavery, and racism, that have been defended by falsely appealing to Scripture.

Yet it seems that Gomes is saying something much more. According to Gomes, it is “culturalism,” and not the teaching of Scripture, that has led to the belief that homosexuality is immoral and contrary to the Bible. Gomes defends his position by relying primarily on the work of John Boswell, whose writings on the history of homosexuality and the Christian church have been, in my judgment, refuted convincingly by numerous scholars, including Thomas Schmidt in his book Straight and Narrow? Compassion and Clarity in the Homosexuality Debate (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995). To his credit, Gomes acknowledges that Boswell’s position has come under severe criticism (368-72), though he thinks that the questions Boswell has raised are sufficient for the church not to rely on the traditional Christian opposition to homosexuality.

Although Gomes’s case for homosexuality is multifaceted, I have room to address only one aspect of it. According to Gomes, apparent scriptural condemnations of homosexuality are concerned with the debauchery of homosexual prostitution and heterosexuals who are practicing homosexuality. In other words, the Bible is not condemning those who are homosexual by nature and who are committed to loving relationships. There are several problems with this argument, but I will bring up only one: the same principle can be used to excuse nearly every behavior condemned in Scripture. For example, based on Gomes’s method of interpretation, one could argue that biblical prohibitions against stealing, child sacrifice, bestiality, and adultery are only speaking of those who are not thieves, child killers, zoophiles, and adulterers by nature and who are not engaging in these behaviors out of love. But this is absurd, since there is nothing in the text to warrant this interpretation. Gomes’s interpretation of Scripture, though politically correct, is completely unwarranted. It seems that Gomes is engaging in the “culturalism” he rightly condemns, when employed by racists and anti-Semites, as he forces the text of Scripture to conform to the culture of the liberal intellectual class.

This posture was evident in a speech he gave in Harvard Yard in which he “warned of the dangers of Christian absolutism,” and “dismissed the easy references to scripture and the rather glib social analysis as unworthy of thinking or charitable Christian debate” (165). Fair enough, but when a group of conservative Harvard students published a periodical dedicated to giving a theologically informed and intellectually respectful critique of homosexuality, Gomes said that the existence of the periodical on campus challenged the virtues of tolerance and diversity. He went on to assert: “What may have been a genuine desire on the part of the young authors to present their strongly argued positions as a way of opening a vigorous debate on an issue of enormous moral significance had the effect of most polemics. Fears and anxieties were raised where few had been before, discourse was inhibited rather than stimulated, and the moral climate of the community was poisoned. What was meant to be robust debate was perceived as theological thuggery, and the situation could not continue unaddressed” (164). So, instead of challenging the hysterical, unjustified, uncharitable, glib, and unthinking reactions of the diverse and tolerant community over which he pastors, Gomes blamed the young authors, implying that they should have kept their mouths shut.

Gomes’s assessment is an example of what I call “passive-aggressive tyranny.” The trick is to sound “passive” and accepting of “diversity” even though you are putting forth an aggressively partisan agenda, implying that those who disagree with you are not only stupid but also harmful. In fact, throughout his book Gomes presumes that one is either bigoted or ignorant if one thinks that homosexuality is immoral and that it is not possible to formulate a thoughtful, carefully wrought case against homosexuality.

Such hubris is astounding. It not only presumes that traditional Christians are wrong but also that they are stupid, irrational, and evil and should not even be allowed to make their case. They are, in a word, diseased, suffering from that made-up contagion, “homophobia” (166). At the end of the day, Gomes is as “narrow” and “intolerant” as he would have us believe the courageous young students were, who dared to challenge orthodox liberalism and who would not keep their mouths shut for the sake of “diversity.”

Although The Good Book raises many questions about Scripture and its interpretation to which evangelicals must be prepared to respond, Gomes’s case for a liberal interpretation of Scripture fails to convince.

Francis J. Beckwith, Ph.D., is associate professor of philosophy, culture, and law, and W. Howard Hoffman Scholar, Trinity Graduate School and Trinity Law School, Trinity International University (Deerfield, Illinois), California campus (Anaheim). email: beckwith@tiu.edu

NOTES

¹See, for example, Francis J. Beckwith, Politically Correct Death: Answering the Arguments for Abortion Rights (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1993); Harold O. J. Brown, Death Before Birth (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1975); John Jefferson Davis, Abortion and the Christian (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1984); and Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop, Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revel, 1979).²“Killing Abortionists: A Symposium,” First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life 48 (December 1994): 24-31. ³See Michael Bray, A Time to Kill (Bowie, MD: Reformation Press, 1994).

I will never forget my first experience with AIDS patients. I was participating in a seminar at the County U.S.C. Hospital in Los Angeles. Our class made the rounds with the attending physician in the AIDS ward on the seventh floor. Some of the patients reminded me of the horrible photographs of inmates in concentration camps: despite their youth, their bodies were emaciated shells, their faces pinched and gaunt. Today, these images of broken humanity are too often swept away by competing extremes of stridency and simplicity. Some say AIDS has little or nothing to do with promiscuity; it is simply a disease ignored by a “homophobic” public. Others claim AIDS is nothing less than a divine judgment against homosexuals — “They’re getting just what they deserve.” I believe Christians should strive for a more balanced approach. In this article I shall examine the current extent of the AIDS crisis and some of the ethical dilemmas that have arisen from it. I shall then conclude with a theological analysis and biblical prescription for a holistic sexual ethic.

WHERE DO WE STAND TODAY? What Is AIDS?

AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), like its name indicates, is not simply a single disease, but is a syndrome of one or more diseases brought on by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). The virus works by attaching to the victim’s immune system cells, replicating, and injecting its own genetic code into the cell.¹ Thus, the immune system is weakened, eventually to the point where simple infections and diseases become life-threatening. It was this pattern of infection that allowed researchers in 1981 to first identify the virus. Two diseases which are easily repelled by healthy immune systems — pneumocystis carinii and Kaposi’s sarcoma — were found in otherwise healthy, homosexual males. The epidemic had begun.

Numbers of Cases

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are currently 13 million people infected with the AIDS virus worldwide, with 611,589 actual AIDS cases. In the United States, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports that there are currently 1 million people infected, with 289,320 AIDS cases.² Although some leveling out has occurred, the cases are not distributed evenly throughout the world. By the year 2000, it is estimated that 90 percent of all cases will be in the third world.³ Africa has been particularly ravaged, with Uganda reporting a possible adult infection rate of 11 percent, and part of Zambia, a staggering 20 percent.⁴In the United States, AIDS is currently the third leading cause of death among men aged 25-44. In New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, it is the leading cause of death among young men.⁵ Since 1981, a total of 182,275 people in this country have died of AIDS. The CDC projects that through 1994, the cumulative death toll will reach approximately 350,000.⁶

Categories of Cases

Since AIDS is a disease transmitted by the exchange of blood and/or body fluids, critical modes of transmission involve practices such as sexual intercourse and the sharing of intravenous (IV) drug needles. In 1992, approximately 87 percent of all AIDS cases in the United States were a result of homosexual contact, IV drug use, or both.⁷ Currently, the figures show a slight decrease in the above categories of transmission to 84 percent.⁸In Asia and Africa, heterosexual cases predominate; there the disease is spread primarily by promiscuity, prostitution, and polygamy. In many areas prostitution, though technically illegal, is accepted socially. Some authorities in Thailand estimate there are over 800,000 child prostitutes there and a further 1.2 million adult ones.⁹ Since for Asian businessmen Thailand is a frequent destination for “sexual holidays,” the possibilities for further spread are alarming. In some areas of Africa, infection rates of prostitutes are staggering: some 80 percent of Nairobi’s, 90 percent of Rwanda’s, and 64 percent of Congo’s Pointe-Noire are carriers.¹⁰Polygamy and other cultural practices also contribute to the spread of the virus. In Tanzania, one man laughed when he read a poster explaining that safe sex meant having sex with only one faithful partner. “What am I going to do with my other wives?” he asked. In parts of Zambia, when a man dies his male relatives are obligated to have sex with his widow. Since it is not uncommon there for married men to die of AIDS, the potential for further spread is obviously enhanced.¹¹ Though it is too early to tell, AIDS has been so devastating to some African populations that population growth among young adults — those most sexually active and the most productive economically — may actually reverse itself. An entire generation may be at risk there.¹²An even more appalling statistic is that more and more babies are being born already infected with the AIDS virus. In the U.S. there are currently 3,605 children under age five who have full-blown AIDS, most of whom received the virus in utero from an infected mother.¹³ Most of the women who gave birth to these babies were either IV drug users or sexual partners of IV drug users. It is estimated that the infection rate from HIV-positive mothers to their fetuses is approximately 33 percent.¹⁴ Children with AIDS have a particularly difficult time when attacked by the virus. Opportunistic infections and diseases usually kill infants with AIDS in less than one year.¹⁵

The Political Face of AIDS

Ever since the disease made its appearance on the American medical scene, the entire issue of AIDS has been a political battleground. This fact, coupled with the medical facts of a long incubation period and uncertain infection rates, make it nearly impossible to get reliable and consistent data concerning infection and spread. Additionally, some of the highest rates of infection are located in areas of the third world which have little in the way of advanced medical technology or research. All these factors have combined to result in projections of infection and death that vary widely. Some writers invoke the spectre of the “Black Death” which killed one quarter of the population of Europe; others are quick to point out that heart disease and cancer kill far more people in one year than AIDS has in the entire course of the disease.¹⁶The fact remains that AIDS stands out as one of the more gruesome reminders of the complete and utter failure of the sexual revolution of the 1960s.¹⁷ “Free love” turned out to have a terrible cost; groups that now reap the whirlwind are often quick to seek any possible answer to AIDS other than leaving their promiscuous lifestyles.¹⁸ Despite medical proof early in the crisis that AIDS is spread primarily by sexual promiscuity, homosexual activists in many urban areas lobbied hard to keep their bathhouses (places where numerous and anonymous sexual encounters take place) open.¹⁹ Promiscuity had become a right — no matter what the cost to themselves or others. It was in this climate that some leaders of the gay rights movement downplayed the seriousness of AIDS, especially in the early years of the epidemic. Some thought the disease was primarily a media creation; others went so far as to accuse the government of poisoning part of the homosexual population.²⁰ These attitudes in the face of the medical evidence were nothing less than betrayals of the people most at risk. Certainly, one of the more revealing political facets to AIDS concerns how one answers the question, Are we all at risk from AIDS? From the very beginning of the epidemic, homosexual groups lobbied hard to erase the stigma of AIDS as a so-called “gay plague.” Homosexual activists in Europe and America knew their lifestyle was unpopular with the general public. There would be little attention or funded research for AIDS if the disease was perceived as only affecting homosexuals. Many in the media accepted the notion that AIDS was a threat to everyone. Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report all jumped on the bandwagon, proclaiming that AIDS was a universal threat. On its cover, Life blared, “Now No One Is Safe from AIDS.”²¹ More scholarly publications were not exempt either. In AIDS and the Third World, published in association with the Norwegian Red Cross, Renee Sabatier hints darkly that AIDS may be even more dangerous than the plague.²² On the CDC AIDS/HIV phone line, listeners hear that “our nation is facing the most critical and devastating epidemic in recent history.” Are such apocalyptic assertions true? Obviously, the truth of such claims hinges on whether or not AIDS can be casually or easily transmitted, as were smallpox and the plague. If it can, then the possibility for spread is truly terrifying; everyone is indeed at risk. All medical authorities agree, however, that AIDS is not spread casually through touch, coughs, or sneezes.²³ Instead, the virus can be spread only through practices that allow infected blood or body fluids to enter the body. Thus, “the spread of HIV is limited to sex, transfusions, sharing needles, and pregnancy, since these are the times people come in contact with blood, semen, and vaginal fluids.”²⁴ Especially dangerous is male homosexual intercourse, with the accompanying tears and fissures in the lining of the anus, which “maximizes the spread of the virus.”²⁵Ironically, many homosexual activists seem to want it both ways regarding AIDS. They protest loudly that the public has nothing to fear from contact with homosexuals. But in the same breath they warn that AIDS is a menace to all. Such a combination is really a contradiction. If one follows biblical guidelines for sex by abstaining, or engaging in intercourse only with one’s spouse in the bonds of heterosexual marriage, and if one does not abuse his or her body with illegal drugs, then the chances of getting AIDS are quite small indeed.

ETHICAL ISSUES What About Testing?

Since AIDS is a terminal disease with no cure yet discovered, and since there have been speculations that the entire human race may be in danger, there have been calls for different levels of HIV testing. This has given rise to a number of pressing ethical questions. For example, should everyone be tested, or only those in high-risk lifestyles? How about health care workers? Are there ethical differences between mandatory and voluntary testing? Also, if testing is allowed, who should know the results? Several factors argue against universal mandatory testing. First and foremost, since infection from AIDS can be traced to several definable behaviors, and since the disease is not casually spread, there is no need to do so. Most people are simply not at risk for the disease. Also, such a testing plan would likely deal a financial deathblow to an already strained health care budget. Third, since there is no cure for AIDS, the question arises: What would we do with all those who tested positive? Since AIDS is not casually spread, quarantining them would violate their civil rights; place their jobs, homes, insurance, and families in jeopardy; and do little good to society in general. ²⁶There are also problems in mandating tests for those in high-risk groups such as homosexuals, IV drug users, and hemophiliacs (persons with a blood coagulation disorder). Such testing would almost certainly drive people underground, away from the health care they need.²⁷ Thus such testing would be counterproductive and ethically questionable. Voluntary testing with confidential reporting of results avoids the above problems and helps to funnel AIDS victims into proper health care environments. There is simply no good reason to violate the medical canon of physician-patient confidentiality to openly report test results. It will not affect the spread of the disease, and it will only imperil the trust and cooperation that should be the hallmarks of the physician-patient relationship.²⁸There should be one exception to this rule. If there is imminent danger of an HIV positive patient infecting another (e.g., the spouse of the patient), then the physician has a duty to warn that person.²⁹I also think there should be two exceptions to the voluntary testing rule. If a person has a pattern of criminal behavior as a sex offender (e.g., a rapist or child molester), then society’s right to self-protection outweighs the individual offender’s right not to be tested.³⁰ This also is in line with a more biblically based ethic of personal responsibility.³¹The second exception concerns certain members of the health profession. Although there have been few HIV/AIDS cases directly linked to infected health care personnel,³² physicians who routinely perform invasive procedures should be regularly tested for the following reasons. First, the medical doctrine of “informed consent” requires a physician to provide “all information that a reasonable patient would find relevant to make an informed decision on whether to undergo a medical procedure.”³³ Although the risks of contracting HIV from a surgeon in a single operation have been calculated to be very small,³⁴ the potential harm is severe since HIV infection always progresses to AIDS, a terminal disease. Part of the doctrine of informed consent demands that “as the severity of a potential harm becomes greater the need to disclose improbable risk grows.”³⁵ Another part of my argument rests on the number of operations an HIV-infected surgeon might perform. After an infected surgeon performs 500 operations the cumulative risk of infection grows to 1 in 126.³⁶ Finally, such routine testing of surgeons will, in turn, help to foster confidence and trust in the medical profession, both by the individual patient and by the general public.

May Physicians Refuse to Treat?

Most physicians today treat AIDS patients with the same standard of care accorded their other patients, but some are refusing to care for them. Do physicians have a moral duty to treat AIDS patients? Physicians know that when they enter the profession they have an elevated risk of serious infection — even from new or antibiotic-resistant diseases.³⁷ That fact, plus the noncasual ways in which HIV is spread, clearly places the burden of proof on whether or not the particular duty of the physician goes significantly beyond the normal, acceptable level of risk.³⁸ The vast majority of medical duties do not meet this criterion. Only if the physician is a surgeon, operating in a high-HIV-incidence area, performing invasive surgeries, might the operation be “above and beyond the call of duty.” In these types of surgeries, the surgeon must weigh the risks involved to all parties — himself (or herself), his family, and other medical personnel — before deciding to operate. Such an altruistic act reflects on the character of the surgeon. When a Christian surgeon exhibits such compassion, courage, and care, it can often be a powerful witness of Christ to the AIDS patient.

COMPETING ANSWERS TO THE CRISIS

For years, our society has been in the process of reclassifying behaviors — what once was moral (sin) has become medical (disease). The moral model assumes that activities such as homosexuality, adultery, and promiscuity are willful behaviors, and are consequently moral problems. The medical model, on the other hand, assumes that such activities have a medical cause beyond the person’s control. For example, an adulterer may be no more at fault for adultery than he or she would be for catching the flu. Today, many physicians and clinics promise people that these habits are not their fault, and they need only to seek a medical solution to their problem. The side effects from such a paradigm shift are vast and troubling. But one such effect bears on the entire issue of AIDS and promiscuity. Under the auspices of the medical model, humans are seen as mere sexual animals whose current sexual habits must be accepted as a given.

Safe Sex?

The medical model’s answer to AIDS — whether given by secular physicians, sports heroes, or movie stars — concerns education and “safe sex” techniques (primarily the use of a condom). The underlying message is: “Well, they’re going to do it anyway, so we might as well protect them.”³⁹ There are three fatal flaws to such reasoning. First, there is disturbing new evidence which confirms that the basic weapon of the medical model against AIDS — the condom — may be a weak and inefficient tool at best. According to a new study just released by the San Francisco Department of Public Health, a third of young male homosexuals had engaged in “unprotected anal sex” within the last six months.⁴⁰ Among some ethnic groups, the percentage is even higher.⁴¹ Since this age group (17-22 years old) is traditionally the most promiscuous, and, at the same time, the most “educated” regarding “safe sex” practices, it indicates a major weakness of the condom message. Additionally, even when condoms are used, there is a significant failure rate. In cases where married couples utilized condoms to prevent one infected partner from infecting the other, 10 percent of the healthy became infected within two years. As Glenn Wood and John Dietrich remind us, this was a “best case scenario” in which the couples were presumably better educated, more committed, and more mature than those who engage in anonymous sex.⁴²Some of the failure rate of condoms is due to breakage. According to one Australian study reported in the American Journal of Public Health, “27 percent of homosexuals using condoms reported ‘a few’ or ‘many breaks’ during sexual intercourse.”⁴³ The failure rate is also due to the need to follow a strict set of guidelines each time a condom is used in order for it to be effective. As Wood and Dietrich put it, “For both partners during a time of passion to do all these tasks every time is extremely difficult.”⁴⁴The second major flaw in the medical model’s fight against AIDS concerns its low view of humanity. Men and women are not as driven by sexual urges as it assumes. Despite what the media or others may say, not everybody is having sex. Nearly three-quarters of fifteen-year-old girls are still virgins, and fifty percent are still virgins at age seventeen.⁴⁵ Those figures are not beacons of chaste behavior, but they do indicate that promiscuous sex is not a universal phenomenon. Making condoms available to high school kids sends the wrong signal; such a policy is “despair-based,” and “assumes that adolescents and teenagers — especially blacks and Hispanics — are rutting animals, and the only thing to be done is to encourage them to rut more safely.”⁴⁶ Xavier Flores, an AIDS-prevention counselor in East Chicago, says flatly that “the safe-sex message is also racist….The safe-sex people come into our Hispanic and black neighborhoods and tell us that since we don’t have it in us to say no to unhealthy sex, they might as well give us condoms.”⁴⁷ Such a policy will actually encourage promiscuity, ensuring that the AIDS virus will continue to spread.⁴⁸ The medical model’s view of humanity is far from the biblical view which states that humanity — even fallen humanity — is created in God’s image (Gen. 1:26; James 3:9), and is created with the capability for reason, responsibility, and self-control. The third major flaw of the medical model is that it ignores biblical injunctions against sinful behaviors. Nobody should be surprised that ignoring God’s Word has such serious consequences. The rest of this article will be devoted to examining some biblical insights, and to suggesting ways a holistic Christian ethic can be developed.

God Is Not Mocked

The best and only sure way to stop AIDS is foolproof: If people were to have sex only with a faithful partner within the bonds of heterosexual marriage, and to stop abusing drugs, the epidemic would die out.⁴⁹ “As far as preventing the spread of AIDS, science and traditional Christian morality stand in agreement: sexual behavior should be either abstinence or monogamy” (emphasis in original).⁵⁰Scripture is clear on the sinfulness of homosexuality. From the Old Testament to the New, the writers of Scripture speak with one voice when they condemn it (Gen. 18:20-22; Lev. 18:22; 20:13; Rom. 1:26, 27; 1 Cor. 6:9; 1 Tim. 1:10).⁵¹ Significantly, it is only recently that some modern theologians have attempted to force Scripture into accepting homosexuality as licit.⁵² The biblical evidence is so overwhelming that most modern theological liberals are at least honest enough to admit that the Bible does indeed condemn homosexuality — they just think the Bible is wrong.⁵³Likewise, Scripture is clear that marriage is the only proper place for heterosexual relations. The “joining together” Jesus spoke of in the Gospel of Matthew (19:6) takes us back to God’s original plan in Genesis 2:24 where sexual intercourse is described as “becoming one flesh” within the marriage covenant. The commands against adultery (Exod. 20:14; Matt. 19:18) are reaffirmations of God’s plan in creation to join man and woman together in exclusive union. In the New Testament, writers commonly use forms of the Greek word porneia to describe extramarital sexual sin (e.g., Acts 15:29; 1 Cor. 6:9, 18; Heb. 13:4).⁵⁴

The Judgment of God?

Some Christian writers have postulated that AIDS is a divine judgment aimed specifically against homosexuality.⁵⁵ There are some rather obvious problems with this view, however. For example, why is it that most AIDS victims in the world were infected through heterosexual transmission? Why do lesbians almost never get AIDS? Finally, there are many victims of AIDS (hemophiliacs, infants and children, and those who received infected transfusions) who were infected through no specific actions of their own. I believe it is better to see AIDS, not as a specific divine judgment against one type of sin, but as a broad judgment against sexual sin in general (e.g., promiscuity, polygamy, homosexuality). This view is labeled by Wood and Dietrich as a “cause and effect” judgment.⁵⁶ Such a judgment is portrayed in Scripture as “reaping and sowing,” or “sinning against one’s own body.” In the Book of Proverbs (6:27-28), the author speaks of the inevitable consequences of adultery: “Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? Or, can a man walk on hot coals, and his feet not be scorched?” The author answers his own rhetorical question by assuring his audience that the adulterer “will not go unpunished” (v. 29). Paul elucidates this same scriptural principle by stating that “whatever a man sows, this he will also reap” (Gal. 6:7). Ronald Sider puts it in modern terms: “There is a moral order to the universe and…wrong choices have consequences.”⁵⁷Sexual immorality is also spoken of as sinning against, and having dire consequences for, one’s own body. Paul urges the Corinthians to “flee immorality” (porneia), and states that the “immoral man sins against his own body” (1 Cor. 6:18). The word clearly indicates sexual intercourse outside the proper biblical bounds.⁵⁸ The context spells out that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit; to desecrate one’s body by sexual immorality is therefore to desecrate God’s temple.⁵⁹ Likewise, Paul tells us that those who were given over to “degrading passions” and lusted after homosexual intercourse “received in their own persons the due penalty of their error” (Rom. 1:26-27). The message is clear: sexual immorality produces grim results for the person(s) involved.

Unless You Repent

Few things are as clear in Scripture as the many dire warnings against smugness and arrogance in the Christian. The attitude, “I thank God I am not like that homosexual,” has no place in the believer’s life. We should all keep in mind the admonition of Jesus when He refuted the common belief that those who suffered in this life were automatically worse sinners than others. Christ’s message was that all must repent (Luke 13:1-5). In fact, the very foundations of Christianity cut against the notion of any sort of worthiness in the believer. Clearly, we should be imitators of Christ in His humbleness and meekness (Phil. 2:5-8). His entire ministry was one filled with compassion and mercy: He touched the untouchable; He loved the unlovable. In many ways, AIDS victims are like modern-day lepers: despised by many, they are relegated to the fringes of society where they all too often die alone. Thus, even in the midst of disease and death, we must be ready to “give an account for the hope” that exists in Christ, “yet with gentleness and reverence” (1 Pet. 3:15).

Toward the Future

Historically, there is a rich Christian tradition of responding in love during times of crisis such as wars, famines, and diseases. In that vein, Christians should look at the AIDS epidemic as a call to compassionate action.⁶⁰ Part of such compassion must be an imperative to spread the gospel — in wisdom — to those facing eternity. Second, Christians should not dilute the message that all forms of promiscuity are sinful. Third, it is time to proclaim the positive message of the spiritual and physical joys of a godly marriage. Fourth, Christians should be active in promoting sex education programs that highlight abstinence. Abstinence and monogamy represent the junction of Christian morality and the best medical advice on avoiding AIDS.⁶¹It is clear that the AIDS epidemic is greatly affecting Christians. But the real question — and the one for which we are all responsible — is how, and to what extent, will Christians affect the AIDS epidemic? Michael McKenzie received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California and is an Assistant Professor of Ethics and Apologetics at Faith Seminary in Tacoma, Washington.

NOTES

¹ Such a virus is known as a retrovirus. See Glenn G. Wood and John E. Dietrich, The AIDS Epidemic: Balancing Compassion and Justice (Portland, OR: Multnomah Press, 1990), 116. ² These figures, current as of March 31, 1993, are from the CDC Quarterly AIDS/HIV Surveillance Report, available through the CDC Headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. “HIV infected” refers to testing positive for the AIDS antibody. “AIDS cases” refers to people who have developed the opportunistic diseases or indications of full-blown AIDS. ³ “Poor Man’s Plague” (Editorial), The Economist, 21 September 1991, 21. ⁴ Ken Sidey, “AIDS Reshapes Africa’s Future,” Christianity Today, 22 October 1990, 47. ⁵ CDC Surveillance Report. ⁶ Ibid. ⁷ Mary Ellen Hombs, AIDS Crisis in America (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1992), 89. ⁸ CDC Surveillance Report. ⁹ “Poor Man’s Plague,” 21. ¹⁰ Sharon E. Mumper, “AIDS in Africa: Death Is the Only Certainty,” Christianity Today, 8 April 1988, 37. See also Renee Sabatier, AIDS and the Third World (Santa Cruz, CA: New Society Publishers, 1989), 64. ¹¹ Sabatier, 59. ¹² See Sidey, 47. ¹³ From the CDC Surveillance Report. ¹⁴ See Wood and Dietrich, 127, 170. This is an excellent book which, as its title implies, stresses compassion — but not at the expense of the normative teachings of Scripture. ¹⁵ Ibid., 151. ¹⁶ Compare, for example, Sabatier (ii) with Michael Fumento, “Are We Spending Too Much on AIDS?” Commentary 90, October, 1990, 51. Wood and Dietrich are correct when they plead for a balance between complacency and apocalypse (25). ¹⁷ See Wood and Dietrich, 52, 254. ¹⁸ As Wood and Dietrich point out (123), it is not uncommon for homosexual men to have sex with fifty to a hundred men each year. ¹⁹ Wood and Dietrich state that 28 percent of homosexual men had over 1,000 sexual partners (245). Sadly, New York City is seeing a reemergence of “sex clubs,” places that provide nearly every sexual perversity imaginable. One such club actually advertises “HIV Positive Night,” a night reserved for men who are HIV positive or, incredibly, want to become infected. See Richard John Neuhaus, “A Chapter Closing, Maybe,” First Things, June/July 1993, 62. ²⁰ Ibid., 90. ²¹ See Michael Fumento, “AIDS: Are Heterosexuals at Risk?” Commentary, November 1987, 21. ²² Sabatier, ii. ²³ As Wood and Dietrich put it, “We [the medical community] know beyond a reasonable doubt that AIDS is not a casually spread disease” (187). ²⁴ Ibid., 122. ²⁵ Ibid., 123. ²⁶ See C. Everett Koop and Timothy Johnson, Let’s Talk: An Honest Conversation on Critical Issues (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992), 72. ²⁷ Ibid., 72. Cf. Wood and Dietrich, 172ff. ²⁸ See Raanan Gillon, “AIDS and Medical Confidentiality,” found in Tom L. Beauchamp and LeRoy Walters, Contemporary Issues in Bioethics (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1989), 411. ²⁹ Leonard Fleck, “Commentary,” Hastings Center Report, November-December 1991, 39. Also see Wood and Dietrich, 174. ³⁰ Ibid., 173. ³¹ Ibid., 327ff. ³² Six HIV infections and one death have been linked to David Acer, a homosexual dentist who died in 1990. This is out of a total of 19,000 exposed patients who were tested nationwide. See Kim Painter’s “6th HIV Case Linked to Dentist,” USA Today, 7-9 May 1993, 1A. ³³ Lawrence Gostin, “HIV-Infected Physicians and the Practice of Seriously Invasive Procedures,” Hastings Center Report, January/February 1989, 33. ³⁴ From 1/4,500 to 1/130,000. See Gostin, 33. ³⁵ Ibid. ³⁶ At the time Gostin wrote his article, there were no instances of patients contracting HIV from a physician or dentist (33); now, as mentioned above, there have been six. ³⁷ Lawrence A. Pottenger, Homer U. Ashby, and Carolyn R. Thompson, “Altruism in Surgery of AIDS Patients,” Journal of Religion and Health 31 (Spring 1993): 10. ³⁸ Norman Daniels, “Duty to Treat or Right to Refuse?” Hastings Center Report, March-April 1991, 36-46. ³⁹ Such is the basic message of Sabatier’s AIDS and the Third World. For an excellent treatment of the competing models of sex education, see Andres Tapia’s “Abstinence: The Radical Choice for Sex Ed,” Christianity Today, 8 February 1993, 25-29. ⁴⁰ George Lemp, et al., “HIV-1 Seroprevalence and Risk Behaviors among Young Men Who Have Sex with Men,” San Francisco Department of Public Health, San Francisco, CA, 1992-93, 11. ⁴¹ Forty percent of Latino men and 38.5 percent of African-American men admitted to engaging in “unprotected sex” within the last six months (Lemp, 12). ⁴² Wood and Dietrich, 165. ⁴³ Fumento, 23. ⁴⁴ Wood and Dietrich, 167. Also see Tapia, 27. ⁴⁵ Editorial, “AIDS: Deadly Confusions Compounded,” First Things, February 1992, 7-8. ⁴⁶ Ibid., 7. ⁴⁷ Tapia, 27. ⁴⁸ See Ronald J. Sider, “AIDS: An Evangelical Perspective,” The Christian Century, 6-13 January 1988, 14. ⁴⁹ Of course, there are many people who are now infected but are asymptomatic. Those people will develop AIDS. However, without promiscuous sex and IV drug use the epidemic would have nowhere to go. ⁵⁰ Koop and Johnson, 66. Cf. Wood and Dietrich, 17. ⁵¹ As Michael Ukleja says, “only towering cynicism can pretend that there is any doubt about what the Scriptures say about homosexuality.” (Quoted in John Jefferson Davis’s Evangelical Ethics [Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1985], 114.) ⁵² See Wood and Dietrich, 236. ⁵³ This is the approach of Episcopalian bishop John Shelby Spong. ⁵⁴ See Colin Brown, ed., The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975), 497-501. ⁵⁵ See Wood and Dietrich, 272ff. ⁵⁶ Wood and Dietrich, 270. ⁵⁷ Sider, 11. ⁵⁸ See Brown, 497. ⁵⁹ See R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s First and Second Epistles to the Corinthians (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1963), 268. ⁶⁰ “The Judgment Mentality” (Editorial), Christianity Today, 20 March 1987, 16. ⁶¹ See Tapia, 25-29, for programs that promote abstinence.

Pro-Life Arguments- SYNOPSIS

The past few years have witnessed a stunning development in the pro-life movement. Many pro-life leaders now think we can make abortion rare by downplaying the moral question, “Does abortion take the life of a defenseless human being?” They favor a new strategy that appeals to the self-interests of women rather than moral truth. One leader asserts that an emphasis on unborn babies will only drive women of childbearing age away from the pro-life movement. But this new strategy is dangerous because it leaves the pro-abortion culture largely unchallenged. At the same time, it unilaterally strips the pro-life movement of its most powerful tools of persuasion. If pro-life advocates are to make abortion unthinkable, they must speak frankly about the nature of abortion.

For the past 26 years, pro-life apologists have argued that elective abortion unjustly takes the life of a defenseless human being. The rationale for their argument is clear-cut and can be expressed in the following syllogism:

1. Intentionally killing an innocent person is a moral wrong.

2. Elective abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent human person.

3. Hence, elective abortion is a moral wrong.

Despite the clarity and soundness of this argument, some pro-life leaders now question its ability to persuade. They contend that although abortion is an objective moral evil, pro-life advocates should reconsider their arguments or risk alienating women of childbearing age.

Pro-Life Arguments- THE CHANGING PRO-LIFE FOCUS

Paul Swope, for example, calls it a “failure to communicate” when pro-lifers focus primarily on the fetus rather than the felt needs of women. “The pro-life movement,” he writes, “must show that abortion is not in a woman’s own self-interest, and that the choice of life offers hope and a positive, expanded sense of self.”¹

Swope believes pro-life advocates have won the moral and philosophical debate over the status of the fetus, but have failed to address the needs of women. He cites research indicating that even “pro-choice” women agree that abortion is killing. “The women believe that abortion is wrong, an evil, and that God will punish a woman who makes that choice.” Yet, the choice of abortion becomes one of self-preservation (at least socially), and since the woman did not intend to get pregnant, she reasons that “God will ultimately forgive her.”²

Until recently, the pro-life response was to point out that hardship did not justify homicide, but Swope thinks that a focus on babies only makes matters worse. He writes, “The pro-life movement’s own self-chosen slogans and educational presentations have tended to exacerbate the problem, as they focus almost exclusively on the unborn child, not the mother.”³

Pro-life feminist Frederica Matthews-Green agrees, “Pro-Lifers will not be able to break through this deadlock by stressing the humanity of the unborn. [T]hat is a question nobody is asking. But there is a question they are asking. It is, ‘How can we live without it?’ The problem is not moral, but practical.”⁴

There is merit to what both say. Pro-lifers must do more than stress the humanity of the unborn, especially with those facing the terror of unplanned pregnancy. This is why crisis pregnancy centers are so important. It is also true that for some abortion-minded women, appeals to self-interest may dissuade them from killing their babies.

But Swope and Matthews-Green are not saying we should reframe the debate in the narrow context of crisis counseling. Rather, they are telling the pro-life movement in general to speak less of the fetus and more to the self- interested needs of women. Although both have made important contributions to our cause, I think they are mistaken for the following reasons.

1. It is simply not true that the pro-life movement has won the debate over the status of the fetus. Both authors rightly point out that a majority of Americans support legal abortion even though most say that it is morally wrong. They interpret these contradictory findings to mean that while pro-lifers have won the moral debate over the humanity of the fetus, practical considerations keep many Americans committed to abortion.

Swope and Matthews-Green are confusing what the public says with what it truly believes. People hold contradictory and incoherent views on abortion precisely because they don’t really believe that the unborn are filly human, despite their rhetoric to the contrary. As philosopher Francis Beckwith points out, why do women only kill their fetuses when confronted with practical difficulties, rather than their already born children, if they truly believe their fetuses are fully human?⁵

Put differently; is there any reasonable person in America today who would argue that while he personally opposed the enslavement of blacks, he wouldn’t oppose the legal right of his neighbor to won one if he so chose? In fact, when people tell me they personally oppose abortion but think it should be legal anyway, I ask a simple question to audit their core beliefs about the unborn. I ask why they personally oppose abortion. Nearly always, the response is, “I oppose it because it kills a baby,” at which point I merely repeat their own words. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight: You say you oppose abortion because it kills a baby, but you think it should be legal to kill babies?” Those who are intellectually honest respond with stunned silence before conceding, “Gee, I never thought of it like that.” But many others reply glibly, “Well, its not the same thing.”

People who talk like this cannot possibly have thought much about the status of the fetus, let alone have resolved the issue in our favor. When it comes to first trimester abortion, polling data suggests the public has indeed resolved the issue, but it hardly agrees with us. A whopping 62 percent support the practice precisely because they don’t think the unborn at that stage of development are human persons.⁶ This is not a practical problem, but a deeply moral and intellectual one.

2. A strategy centered primarily on the self-interest of the woman sets a dangerous precedent for the pro-life movement. As Dr. Beckwith points out, even if appeals to self-interest temporarily reduce the number of abortions, it does not follow that our culture is becoming pro-life.

Say, for example, that Planned Parenthood releases a study demonstrating that women who abort live on average 10 years longer than those who don’t. Or, take an exact case from Boston where the National Abortion Access Project is running ads (soon to be released nationally) depicting abortion as “the responsible choice” for women who don’t want to “pay the price and have the baby.”

What principled argument against abortion can Swope or Matthews-Green make in either case? Beckwith writes, “Nurturing an unprincipled, self-interested culture may have the unfortunate con­sequence of increasing the number of people who think that unless their needs are pacified they are perfectly justified in performing homicide on the most vulnerable of our population.”⁷

Swope replies that moral persuasion simply does not work with many women. Consequently, he produces pro-life television ads that speak to the self-interest of women rather than the morality of abortion. He claims to have data proving the ads not only save babies, but change public opinion as well. “A 30 second ad with the objective of reaching women of childbearing age is simply not the place to teach about abstract moral obligations,” he writes.⁸

Perhaps so, but we shouldn’t then claim that these ads genuinely convert people to the pro-life view. True conversion on any ethical issue requires moral and intellectual assent. How can there be moral and intellectual assent if nothing in the ads speaks to moral or intellectual issues? What you get in this case are not true converts to the pro-life position, but self-interested converts who may readily abandon their newly found pro-life views. As one abortion rights leader put it, “The overwhelming majority of Americans are against abortion except in cases of rape, incest, and their own personal circumstances.” That is the heart of the issue.

Data from the pregnancy care profession seems to confirm this. Pro-life crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) outnumber abortion clinics nearly two to one, but there are still 1.3 million abortions annually. In fact Care Net, the nation’s largest affiliate of CPCs, reports that 80 percent of clients seen by its centers are not abortion minded.¹⁰ That means the vast majority of women considering abortion blow right by the local CPC on their way to Planned Parenthood. This is true despite Care Net’s laudable 1993 goal of making pregnancy care centers “so accessible and so effective in serving women that we put abortionists virtually out of business by the end of the decade.”¹¹

Four years ago, I visited a well-funded midwestern CPC whose staff took me through comfortably furnished residential quarters that can house 40 pregnant women, most in their own private rooms. Residents enjoy impressive meals and round-the-clock medical care. The CPC also has a large, well-stocked library, classrooms in which clients pursue various courses of study, and an impressive list of services offered to women not in need of residency. The facility has the capacity to care for hundreds of nonresident clients as well. It’s hard to imagine a crisis pregnancy center that is more caring and more in tune with the self-interested needs of its clients.

Despite this CPC’s effective management and comprehensive services, it saved 80 babies that year in a metro area in which some ten thousand were killed! At times, the facility was less than half full. When pregnant women reject help from one of the best-run CPCs in the country, we don’t have practical problems; we have moral and philosophical problems. We struggle in the practical realm precisely because the culture does not agree with us that abortion is a serious moral wrong. But this center is hardly alone.

According to research presented by the Family Research Council (FRC) at a 1998 Focus on the Family conference for crisis pregnancy center staff the number of abortion-minded clients visiting CPCs is declining nationwide. For example, 10 CPCs, noted for their size and strong leadership, were asked to report their statistics for 1994 to 1996. The number of abortion-minded clients increased in four centers, but decreased in six. The number of “service on1y” clients (those coming in for diapers, clothing, etc., but not at risk for abortion) increased in seven, remained unchanged in one, and decreased in two. The FRC report warns that if these trends continue throughout the CPC movement, it could “threaten the primary mission of centers — to reach women at risk for abortion.”¹²

It’s not that women at risk are unaware that CPCs can help. According to a 1997 survey by the Wirthlin Group, 66 percent of American women were aware of crisis pregnancy centers and the services they provide, while 49 percent knew of their local center. Most important, 87 percent of those aware of CPCs believed they have a positive impact on the women they serve.¹³ Despite excellent services and high approval ratings, these centers are failing to reach the women most at risk.

Crisis pregnancy centers are vital to the pro-life movement, but even if there were one on every street corner in America, it would never “put abortionists virtually out of business,” much less by the end of the decade. “I’m glad that some women can be loved into loving their babies,” writes Gregg Cunningham of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform. “But I won’t let that fact blind me to the reality that there are many others who will kill their babies if they are not made more horrified of abortion than they are terrified of their own crisis pregnancies.”¹⁴

3. Downplaying the truth about abortion patronizes the very women we are trying to help. Speaking of pro-choice women facing a crisis pregnancy, Swope writes, an “emphasis on babies, whether dismembered fetuses or happy newborns, will tend to deepen the woman’s sense of denial, isolation, and despair, the very emotions that will lead her to choose abortion.”¹⁵

Swope is right that pro-lifers must address the woman’s emotional concerns but wrong to say that we must downplay the truth about abortion in order to do this. Are we to conclude that women can’t look at abortion objectively? As feminist author and abortion advocate, Naomi Wolf, points out, this view is condescending to women:

The pro-choice movement often treats with contempt the pro-lifers’ practice of holding up to our faces their disturbing graphics….[But] how can we charge that it is vile and repulsive for pro-lifers to brandish vile and repulsive images if the images are real? To insist that truth is in poor taste is the very height of hypocrisy. Besides, if these images are often the facts of the matter, and if we then claim that it is offensive for pro-choice women to be confronted by them, then we are making a judgment that women are too inherently weak to face a truth about which they have to make a grave decision. This view is unworthy offeminism.¹⁶

Some (though thankfully not all) CPCs have a policy forbidding the use of abortion pictures in counseling sessions, even when the client may consent to viewing them. As unpleasant as it seems, breaking people’s hearts over abortion is often an indispensable predicate to changing their minds. Pictures change the way they feel, and facts change the way they think. Both are vital. “I wish it weren’t so, but whatever might be a CPCs reasons for categorically rejecting the use of graphic depictions of abortion, those reasons had better be more important than the lives of the babies who will die because of that policy,” writes Cunningham.¹⁷

4. Downplaying the truth about abortion is totally unnecessary and strips the pro-life movement of its most powerful tools of persuasion. We can win if we force abortion advocates to defend killing babies. The national debate over partial-birth abortion (PBA) is a case in point. Though President Clinton has twice vetoed legislation banning the procedure, the debate has helped pro-lifers in at least five ways.

First, public opinion has shifted modestly in our favor. Although Swope disputes that this has anything to do with PBA, the evidence is compelling.¹⁸ Since the partial-birth issue was first raised in 1995, the percentage of those who think abortion should be legal under any circumstances has dropped on average from 33 percent to 22 percent.¹⁹ The trend among women 18 and over is also encouraging. According to a 1999 study by The Center for Gender Equity, more women oppose abortion than support it. Fifty-three percent now say abortion should be illegal altogether or allowed only in cases of rape, incest, or endangerment of the mother’s life.²⁰ That’s an eight-percent shift away from abortion rights compared to a poll taken two years prior.

Why the shift? For the first time in 25 years, the debate is about the abortion act itself and how it affects the unborn.²¹ “When someone holds up a model of a six-month-old fetus and a pair of surgical scissors, we say ‘choice’ and we lose,” writes Naomi Wolf.²²

At a National Abortion Federation meeting in 1996, Kathryn Kohlbert cautioned delegates that if the debate over partial-birth abortion focuses on what happens to the unborn, their side will get “creamed.” She urged focusing exclusively on the woman:

If the debate is whether or not the fetus feels pain, we lose. If the debate in the public arena is what’s the effect of anesthesia. [on the fetus], we’ll lose. If the debate is on whether or not women ought to be entitled to late abortion, we will probably lose. But if the debate is on the circumstances of individual women, and [how] the government shouldn’t be making those decisions, then I think we can win these fights.²³

We have yet to convince many of the inhumanity of abortion in the first trimester. But graphic depictions of abortion have put our opponents on the defensive.

Second, the shift in public opinion has led to legislative progress. Despite recent setbacks in the states of Washington and Colorado, where ballot initiatives banning PBA suffered narrow defeats, the trend has been remarkably positive for the pro-life movement. For instance, New Jersey legislators — including many liberal Democrats — are supporting limits on abortion. According to The New York Times, the New Jersey experience is typical of the national trend where 31 states have now passed measures restricting access to abortion. Pro-lifers are forcing liberals to defend the abortion act itself. In New Jersey; lawmakers were actually shown videos of abortion procedures prior to a committee vote on PBA.²⁴

Mary Balch, director of the National Right to Life State Legislative Department, explains her success with liberal lawmakers: “All we had done was to say to them, ‘Pro-abortionists support removing a large, living unborn baby almost entirely from her mother’s womb, stabbing her in the head with scissors, and sucking out her brains. Are you willing to support that?”²⁵

Swope replies that his strategy does not necessarily apply to legislative or political change, but only to reaching the general public. This misses the point entirely. Politicians will restrict abortion precisely because public opinion demands it. Most legislators, especially those who are pro-abortion, are not going to support pro-life legislation in the absence of intense pressure from constituents. What changed the minds of constituents in this case was not concern for the self-interest of women, but the brutal reality of abortion.

Third, both the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology have issued reports condemning partial-birth abortion.²⁶ The AMA has gone even further, stating that late-term abortions are rarely, if ever, needed to save the mother’s life or physical health.²⁷ Though abortion advocates within the AMA have protested that the reports were politically motivated, they’ve presented no evidence to challenge the fact that partial-birth abortion procedures are nearly always performed on healthy women carrying healthy babies. Both organizations have a history of supporting abortion-on-demand, yet the debate over PBA forced each to issue statements questioning the morality of some abortions.

Fourth, PBA legislation has raised the issue of fetal pain, further calling into question the morality of abortion. An editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association states, “It is beyond ironic that the pain management practiced for an intact D&X on a human fetus would not meet the federal standards for the humane care of animals used in medical research.”²⁸ Other medical journals have raised similar concerns.²⁹

Fifth, the PBA debate has undermined the credibility of abortion advocates in general. Simply put they were caught lying, and even their staunchest supporters in the media felt cheated. Pro-abortion columnist Richard Cohen writes, “I was led to believe that these late-term abortions were extremely rare and performed only when the life of the mother was in danger or the fetus irreparably deformed. I was wrong.”³⁰ A short time later, Ron Fitzimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, admitted that he and others intentionally lied to the public when they said only four-hundred of these grisly procedures were done each year. He confessed that thousands of these procedures are performed annually on perfectly healthy mothers carrying perfectly healthy babies.³¹

The partial birth debate damaged the pro-abortion side because it focused on what abortion does to the unborn. Pro-lifers did two things right. First, we forced abortion advocates to defend the indefensible. Second, we marshaled factual evidence to show that our opponents were lying. That’s the essence of effective pro-life apologetics as we approach the twenty-first century.

Pro-Life Arguments- CHANGING OUR BEHAVIOR, NOT OUR MESSAGE

The primary challenge confronting the pro-life movement is not persuading the public that our position is practical, but that our position is true. Public revulsion over partial-birth abortion has given us a rare opportunity to frame the debate in moral terms. But we are doing precious little to press our advantage.

This past January, I conducted a state-by-state survey of major pro-life events around the country. State pro-life groups were eager to send me their list of activities, as January is their most active month due to the anniversary of Roe. v. Wade. Listed were numerous banquets, rallies, Christian rock concerts, potluck suppers, golf tournaments, marches, candlelight vigils, prayer services, and religious events. Shocking was the fact that not one of the events I surveyed remotely related to impacting the culture at the idea level or equipping our people to think and defend their views persuasively.³²

The American public is confused and holds contradictory positions on abortion because people think the issue is morally complex. This confusion can be cleared up if pro-life apologists frame the debate around one question, as Gregory Koukl, president of Stand to Reason, explains: “Imagine that your child walks up when your back is turned and asks, ‘Daddy, can I kill this? What is the first thing you must find out before you can answer him? You can never answer the question “Can I kill this?” unless you’ve answered a prior question: What is it?”³³

The answer to the question “What is the unborn?” trumps all other considerations. It is key to answering virtually every objection to the pro-life view. The following dialogue illustrates why there is only one issue to resolve, not many:

Abortion Advocate: Abortion is a private choice between a woman and her doctor.

Pro-Lifer: Do we allow parents to mistreat their children if done in private?

Abortion Advocate: Of course not. Those children are human beings.

Pro-Lifer: Then the issue isn’t privacy. It’s “What is the unborn?”

Abortion Advocate: But many poor women cannot afford to raise another child.

Pro-Lifer: When human beings get expensive, may we kill them?

Abortion Advocate: Well, no, but aborting a fetus is not the same as killing a person.

Pro-Lifer: So, once again, the issue is “What is the unborn? Is the fetus a human person?”

Abortion Advocate: But you’re being too simplistic. This is a very complex issue involving women who must make agonizing decisions.

Pro-Lifer: The decision may be psychologically complex for the mother, but morally it is not complex at all. When blacks are mistreated in a certain society; do we spin a tale about com­plex, agonizing decisions for the whites in power or do we condemn the evil of racism?

Abortion Advocate: Aborting a fetus that is not a person is one thing, discriminating against black persons is quite another.

Pro-Lifer: So we’re agreed: If abortion kills a defenseless human being, then the issue wouldn’t be complex at all. The question is, “What is the unborn?”

Abortion Advocate: Enough with your abstract philosophy. Let’s talk about real life. Do you really think a woman should be forced to bring an unwanted child into the world?

Pro-Lifer: The homeless are unwanted, may we kill them?

Abortion Advocate: But it’s not the same.

Pro-Lifer: That’s the issue, isn’t it? Are they the same? If the unborn are human like the homeless, then we can’t kill them to get them out of the way. We’re back to my first question, “What is the unborn?”

Abortion Advocate: But you still shouldn’t force your morality on women.

Pro-Lifer: You don’t really believe what you just said. You’d feel very comfortable forcing your morality on a mother who was physically abusing her two-year-old, wouldn’t you?

Abortion Advocate: But the two cases are not the same.

Pro-Lifer: Oh? Why is that?

Abortion Advocate: Because you’re assuming the unborn are human, like the two-year-old.

Pro-Lifer: And you’re assuming they’re not. So the issue is quite simple, isn’t it? It’s not forcing morality; it’s not privacy; it’s not economic hardship; it’s not unwantedness; it’s “What is the unborn?”

What we must change is not our message, but our behavior. Babies are dying whose lives could be saved if pro-life advocates were equipped to argue their case persuasively. We can win if we force abortion advocates to defend killing babies. The battle over partial-birth abortion indicates this.

When the pro-life debate has faltered, it’s because the focus has been shifted from the real issue: What is the unborn? The reluctance of some pro-lifers to advance moral arguments is a tacit admission they either don’t have a moral case to offer or lack the courage to proclaim it. Either way, these pro-lifers have not merely failed to communicate, they’ve abandoned the fight altogether. This we cannot do.

notes

1. Paul Swope, “Abortion: A Failure to Communicate,” First Things, April 1998.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Frederica Matthews-Green, Real Choices (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1994), 32.

5. Francis J. Beckwith, letter to the editor, First Things (October, 1998).

6. Susan Yoachum, “California Pro-Choice — Early-on Poll Says Late-Term Abortions Opposed,” The San Francisco Chronicle, 10 March 1997, and The New York Times/CBS poll (January 1998).

7. Francis J. Beckwith, “Taking Abortion Seriously,” unpublished paper, 1999. This paper will be presented at the 51st Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Danvers, Massachusetts, 17-19 November 1999.

8. Reply to Francis J. Beckwith’s letter to the editor, First Things, October1998.

9. David Shaw, “Abortion Bias Seeps into News,” The Los Angeles Times, 1-4 July 1990.

10. Care Net Volunteer Training Manual, 1995, 24.

11. “Action Line” (the former newsletter of the Christian Action Council, the group now known as Care Net), January 1993; see also Kim Lawton, “20 Years after Roe, Christianity Today, 11 January 1993, 38.

12. Kurt Young, “Assessing Center Impact Increasing Center Effectiveness,” Family Outreach Council, February 1998. This paper was presented at a Focus on the Family conference specifically to address the decline in abortion-minded clients.

13. Poll cited in National Rights to Life News, 7 May 1998.

14. 12 April 1993 letter from Gregg Cunningham to Scott Klusendorf.

15. Swope.

16. Naomi Wolf, “Our Bodies, Our Souls,” The New Republic, 16 October 1996.

17. 12 April 1993 letter from Cunningham to Klusendorf. I have letters on file from CPCs that have responsibly used graphic visual aids to deter women from abortion.

18. Swope credits his ads (in states where they run) rather than PBA for the shift, but this flies in the face of nearly every opinion poll taken since 1997. Pollsters consistently cite PBA for the change in public attitudes. See also n. 21.

19. USA Today/CNN poll, 1997; cited in Ruth Padawer, “Partial Birth Battle Changing Public Views,” USA Today, 17 November 1997.

20. Study conducted by the Center for Gender Equality, January 1999. Cited in John Leo, “The Joy of Sexual Values,” U.S. News and World Report, 1 March 1999. Another sign of slippage in support for legal abortion is UCLA’s annual survey of college freshman, where in 1998 only 50.9 percent favored the practice, down front 65 percent in 1990.

21. Even pro-abortion feminists concede this. Faye Wattleton, Executive Director of the Center for Gender Equity said the debate over PBA has affected women’s overall views on abortion. “We’ve been seeing an erosion of support [for abortion], and that probably grows out of the late-term abortion debate.” (Cited in The Boston Herald, 4 February 1999.)

22. Naomi Wolf, “Pro-Choice and Pro-Life,” The New York Time’s, 3 April 1997.

23. Diane Gianelli, “Abortion Rights Leader Urges End to Half-Truths.” American Medical News, 3 March 1997.

24. Abby Goodnough, “Trenton Turning from Its longtime Support of Abortion Rights,” The New York Times, 22 February 1998.

25. “The Untold Story of Partial-Birth Abortion,” National Right to Life News, 15 March 1999.

26. On the AMA, see M. L. Sprang and M. G. Neerhof, “Rationale for Banning Abortions Late in Pregnancy,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 26 August 1998. On the ACOG, see Diane Gianelli, “AMA Report: Third Trimester Abortions Rarely Necessary” American Medical News, 26 May 1997.

27. Gianelli, “AMA Report.”

28. Sprang and Neerhof.

29. Xenophon Giannakoulopoulos, et al, “Fetal Plasma Cortisol and B-Endorphin Response to Intrauterine Needling,” The Lancet (July 9, 1994): See also Diane Gianelli, “Anesthesiologists Question Claims in Abortion Debate,” American Medical News, 1 January 1996.

30. Richard Cohen, “Late Abortions Can Transcend the Issue of Choice,” The New York Times, 26 September 1996.

31. David Stout, “An Abortion Advocate Says He Lied about Procedure,” The New York Times, 26 February 1997. See also Gianelli, “Abortion Rights Leader Urges End to Half-Truths.”

32. I am speaking here only of major events as advertised by pro-life groups. I do not mean to imply that local pro-life groups or individuals did nothing to persuade the public.

33. Gregory P. Koukl, Precious Human Unborn Persons (San Pedro, CA: Stand to Reason, 1997), 4-5.