Protestant Pro-Abortion Rights Groups Absent From Supreme Court Abortion Case

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(OPINION) The media are prepping for the U.S. Supreme Court's Dec. 1 hearing on the strict Mississippi abortion law and the subsequent ruling.

In a prior Guy Memo on religious "friend of the court" briefs filed on the pro-life side, I promised a second rundown when pro-abortion rights activists weighed in with their views. Now that second wave of religious arguments has landed — with a notable omission in those ranks that journalists will want to pursue.

To explain, we'll need some religion beat history on this issue.

In 1967 — two years before NARAL Pro-Choice America was founded — the 1,400-member Clergy Consultation Service formed to help women obtain abortions and fight legal barriers. After the Supreme Court legalized U.S. abortions in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision currently at issue, the related Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights was founded to campaign for moral acceptance. In 1994, it dropped the A-word and was renamed the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, or RCRC.

Founders included a significant chunk of mainline and liberal Protestantism, including the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Mission Agency, United Church of Christ and several independent Protestant caucuses. The United Methodists' General Board of Church and Society hosted the founding, and the Methodist women's division also joined, but both later backed away. The coalition also included major non-Orthodox Jewish organizations and the Unitarian Universalist Association.

In new court filings, the abortion-rights law gets continued support from RCRC, UUA and Jewish organizations. But no Protestant denomination that favors abortion choice has joined to support Roe v. Wade. Reporters should find out why they sidestepped this historic showdown. For example, have complex schism talks led to silence on the United Methodist left, as opposed to earlier — see YouTube video at the top of this post — debates?

The silence from mainline churches deprives the high court of in-depth moral thinking from pro-choice Christians that answers conservatives on issues that make abortion unusually difficult for public policy: Does a genetically unique and developing human embryo or fetus have value? Why, or why not? Does the perceived value change with different stages of pregnancy? When, and why? If value exists, how is that balanced against varied circumstances of a pregnant mother?

That leaves other sorts of religious arguments that are also worth coverage, offered in three briefs to the court. The RCRC filed alongside 53 groups that included UUA, the Rabbinical Assembly, communal Jewish groups and independent caucuses of liberal Protestants, Catholics and Muslims. They contend that Mississippi's law is an "encroachment on religious freedom" because it favors "certain religious traditions" over faiths that hold clashing views.

In particular, states this brief, while some religious groups may believe life begins at conception, "numerous religious traditions posit that life begins at some point during pregnancy or even after a child has been born." Also, "numerous religions teach" that abortion is "a woman's moral prerogative" and "morally permissible or even required under certain circumstances."

Mississippi's restriction is said to be "based on neither scientific research nor religious consensus." The brief cites pro-abortion rights thinking in polls of Catholics and stands by denominations named above plus the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America — with no mention of the American Baptist or African-American Baptist denominations.

That's pretty much the argument in a separate brief from Americans United for Separation of Church and State along with the American Humanist Association, Interfaith Alliance Foundation and Jewish activists in Bend the Arc. This grouping emphasizes the societal impact if the court scuttles Roe v. Wade and lets each state set its own policy.

For instance, overturning the decision would "threaten far greater religious strife, turmoil and rancor than already exists, by creating stronger incentives for religious groups to seek to impose their own beliefs through legislation." Left unexamined is whether it's also illegitimate for clergy to impose politically liberal ideas.

A third brief from 73 groups, including Reform Judaism, cites the Constitution's 14th Amendment as the basis for women's "full legal, economic, and social equality" and says proposed abortion limits would "devastate" their "liberty and equality interests."

Religion aside, Roe v. Wade is backed in briefs from an impressive bevy of heavy hitters — not just Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers but also the AFL-CIO, public school teachers' organizations, the American Bar Association and many law professors, the American Medical Association and other physicians' groups, the League of Women Voters, feminists, LGBTQ and civil rights advocates, 22 of the 50 states, the U.S. Department of Justice and 236 Democrats in Congress — but not Catholic Sens. Robert Casey and Joe Manchin.

Richard Ostling is a former religion reporter for the Associated Press and former correspondent for TIME Magazine. This piece first appeared at Get Religion.