This essay follows from Part 1 and Part 2The Fundamental Attribution Error is a concept from informal logic (and psychology) which says we incorrectly credit other people's behavior entirely to choices. Our own behavior, especially behavior we admit it morally squishy, we attribute to circumstances beyond our control, but others’ actions we blame on personality and character. Especially actions we regard as immoral or blameworthy.
American journalist Jack Hitt quotes an abortion doctor claiming that women who protest abortions are no less likely to actually have an abortion, than the general public. This means women who don’t just ideologically oppose abortion, but actually stand outside clinics, waving placards and chanting slogans. Hitt’s evidence is anecdotal, but nevertheless tellin. Because women who have abortions, generally have reasons why they consider it necessary.
When women have abortions, they perceive themselves as individuals, as unique beings who travel in a world of constant pressures and uncontrollable circumstances. In my life I’ve had five women openly discuss with me the reasons why they opted for abortion, and three others discuss why they contemplated an abortion, but ultimately chose against it or didn’t need it. Chances are, I’ve known other women who had abortions, but didn’t discuss it.
These women all had extenuating circumstances. A woman might believe herself too young or too poor to responsibly raise a child. She might have suffered violence. One couldn’t bear the responsibility of raising her chronic abuser’s child. As noted in Part One, one woman had a procedure that legally qualified as late-term abortion, and therefore is often the subject of virulent protest, though calling it “abortion” is specious, because the fetus was already dead.
Of these eight women who’ve openly discussed their abortion procedures or options with me, three consider themselves anti-abortion. One said that people who cannot take responsibility for prophylactic birth control shouldn’t be having sex anyway, so she favored harsh abortion restrictions. This after admitting she’d already had an abortion. I didn’t say anything, but she must’ve read my face, because she spread her hands and said, “I was fifteen!”
Like that explains anything.
Referring back to Part One, the two women I considered in some detail there forced me to accept that rules are made for people as categories, and not for individuals. When my church taught me that abortion was wrong because it kills a living human, this prescriptive category overlooked that we don’t always consider killing wrong. What about self-defense? What about war? We always consider killing in the context where it takes place.
Except, somehow, with abortion. Perhaps abortion carries the added stigma of sex, and certain segments of Christianity use sex to delineate “us” and “them” in this world. Abortion, homosexuality, and promiscuity generally put people outside the fold, at least among lay Protestants in conservative traditions. Weirdly enough, this doesn’t seemingly apply to chronic infidelity or divorce, which are apparently forgivable sins.
(That last sentence, if you missed it, was sarcasm.)
I don’t know where this attitude originated. I don’t recall any minister in any congregation I’ve attended addressing abortion from the pulpit, though I’ve had two ministers get so agitated by divorce that they’ve sprayed spittle from the lectern. Yet Protestant culture sees divorce, which is directly addressed in the Bible, as minor and circumstantial, while regarding abortion, which, as I demonstrated in Part Two, is completely non-Biblical, as beyond the realm of forgiveness.
Essentially, abortion fills the same cultural role in White Protestantism that became vacant when Christians nominally abandoned segregation. It provides an entire category of people we can consider morally unclean, without muddying our consciences. Because honestly, people like us do get divorced. We do stray from our marriage vows. If we cracked down on these behaviors, we’d have to face ourselves squarely. And we can’t bear that scrutiny.
Rules provide security through categorical thinking. Those people, abortionists or homosexuals or whores, are outside righteousness, which provides me the security of knowing my sins are comparatively acceptable. Even if, occasionally, I indulge those exact sins. I commit the Fundamental Attribution Error of assuming others do bad things because they’re bad people, while I’m subject to life’s context.
But Christianity shouldn’t, fundamentally, be a rulebook. When confronted with categorical rules, I always revert to John 13:35—“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” It’s impossible to love somebody without knowing them, as individuals, not categories. All rules must pass this test: am I showing the person love? If not, then the rule is wrong.
TO BE CONCLUDED in Part 4
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