Church focus on choice
The motions passed by a majority of the 700 delegates to its synod on September 27 make the NSW Uniting Church the first traditional church in Australia to support a woman's right to choose abortion. The motions collectively form a policy which possesses a clarity seldom seen in mainstream discussions of the abortion issue. The formulators of the policy (the church's Committee for Social Responsibility) have left the emotional issues surrounding abortion, and the ultimate choice, where they belong: with the woman and the people to whom she turns for support.
In the rationale for the policy motions, the committee says, "Every decision about the appropriateness of abortion must grapple with the human circumstances surrounding that decision.
"... It is impossible to lay down in a resolution either the circumstances or the method by which this decision is taken. It should be taken by the woman after she has searched her own heart, and after she has consulted with her best advisors, her family, friends ... In the end there is no alternative for the woman making the final judgment. The decision should not ultimately be in the hands of doctors, lawyers, judges, clergy ..."
The motions specifically refute those arguments regularly trotted out by the anti-choice lobby as further "moral" pressure to restrict choice.
"While all would agree as to the potential for a child from the moment of fertilisation, it is not appropriate nor sensitive to speak of abortion as murder, and it does not accurately convey the real situation. Indeed, some forms of contraception (IUD for example) would be so described if such literal interpretation is used."
The policy also specifically supports the legalisation of the medical procedure, stating that abortion is a social issue, not a criminal one. It links the question of sex education and the availability of contraception to the issue of abortion, thereby placing it in context as a question of women's health and control of our fertility.
Naturally, the so-called "pro-lifers", especially within the Catholic church, have slammed the Uniting Church's stand. In the September 30 Catholic Weekly, the president of the NSW Right to Life Association said, "The Uniting Church's support for women's right to have an abortion demonstrates the corruptive effect of abortion on our society ... Either it is an attempt to attract trendy new age people who choose not to follow orthodox Christian teachings or it demonstrates how pro-abortion bureaucrats in the church are manipulating the church and its members."
Using flowery rhetoric, with mysterious allusions to "sacredness", "corruption" and "God's word", Right to Life guts of the anti-choice stance: that women's bodies are rightly the province of the church and the state.
The newly adopted policy of the Uniting Church has recognised the blatantly obvious: that women can and should control their own bodies and make their own decisions. If you strip away centuries of sexist ideology, that's what it comes down to — the decision is a private matter. The passing of the policy, after two years of campaigning and consultation in all parishes of the NSW Uniting Church, is an important victory for women and supporters of women's rights and should be supported by Christians and non-Christians alike.
By Karen Fredericks