News leaked earlier this month that the US Supreme Court plans to overturn its most famous decision, that in Roe vs Wade (1973) which protects a pregnant woman's freedom to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. The decision has attracted much criticism both in the past and now on account of its dubious legal reasoning – in particular, its attempt to link the right to abort to a right to privacy which itself was notional and not specified in the US Constitution.
Critics of Roe vs Wade argue that it is undemocratic, removing the majority’s right to reach its own consensus on the moment that life begins and a new human, with his or her own rights, comes into being.
Defenders point to the moral wrongheadedness of denying the individual the right to determine her own answer to that fundamental question about our existence. They also point to the obvious inequalities that flow from allowing some women easier access to abortion than others. The poor will almost certainly suffer disproportionately in states that ban abortion or restrict it significantly (and they may suffer elsewhere, even beyond the US).
Such are the arguments in the secular public sphere. But what about the ecclesiastical one? We all know that the Catholic Church now opposes abortion absolutely. Pius XI set out the current position in his encyclical Casti connubii (1930) and Paul VI affirmed it in Humanae vitae (1968).
Current papal policy has not, of course, always been the Church’s settled position. Medieval theologians, for instance, developed a somewhat more nuanced ethics of abortion which used Aristotle to distinguish between ‘animated’ and ‘unanimated’ foetuses (i.e. those in which the soul was present or not).
Sixtus V was the first pope to define all abortions unequivocally as homicide, but his bull Effraenatam (1588) was overturned by Gregory XIV just a couple of years later. Gregory reasserted the older view that aborting a pre-animate foetus was not true homicide because no foetus should be considered a human being before ensoulment.
'If Roe vs Wade is overturned it will be fascinating to watch how the Church negotiates abortion’s return as a live issue in one of Catholicism’s most important spaces — and one of its frontlines in on-going conflicts between religion and secularism.'
The Church’s view on abortion ethics has thus always been subject to debate and evolution. Indeed, the current moment is in some ways an anomaly facilitated by a curious, but not totally disadvantageous, circumstance which applies to its leadership not only in the US but world over.
Catholic leaders are free to advocate for a morally absolute position without bearing any of the costs of doing so because abortion is now widely permitted by law in most Western countries. Popular majorities support abortion rights and neither the pope nor his bishops have meaningful avenues for campaigning to overturn current legal regimes.
For around the last thirty to fifty years (depending on the place), the Church’s local leaderships have faced a choice: stick to Pius XI and Paul VI’s proscriptive position or enter the live debates which still run in many societies about what limits to abortion rights might be justified (or realistically imposed) and what safeguards can be constructed to protect the rights of both potential parents and potential infants.
Church leaders might have something useful to say about such matters but they have not done so in general. Perhaps they fear that taking a stance one way or the other could alienate that portion of their flocks who disagree with them. Far better to stay clear of the fray.
Of course, that is also a risk with the current absolutist position – but, here, as in other areas of the Church’s teaching on sexuality, the position is so out of kilter with societal norms that it is easy for even faithful Catholics to dismiss it as a sort of quaint ideological anachronism.
On the other hand, Church leaders may also enjoy the self-righteousness that comes from knowing they possess moral clarity. In that case they are akin to the other sorts of activist groups who have proliferated across the Western world but who hide something important from themselves.
The British columnist Matthew Parris wrote a column last December which excoriated such activists who all too often fail to recognise their freedom to fantasise a purer and more just future arises precisely because they know deep down that it will never come true. No government will ever contemplate implementing their vision and that gives them licence to avoid all hard questions.
This position is self-righteous, Parris contends, but it is not moral. Indeed, it is immoral because it outsources the difficult questions with which society has to grapple — and the guilt which follows from making morally compromising choices — to others.
The Catholic Church’s position on abortion can sometimes feel a little like the one Parris describes: it is so irrelevant to public debate that it has become little more than a branding exercise.
But a repeal of Roe vs Wade potentially changes all that. It would lead to actual debate in fifty states, most of which contain large numbers of Catholics and all of which contain different ranges of opinion about abortion ethics. How will Pope Francis and his bishops play that? Where there are realistic prospects of limiting abortion rights, but only partially, what will they do?
It’s easy to suppose the bishops should simply support every restriction and claim it as a win for their moral code — but that approach could end up undermining consensus if moderates become suspicious that their agenda is simply to keep tightening abortion laws via a ratchet effect.
If Roe vs Wade is overturned it will be fascinating to watch how the Church negotiates abortion’s return as a live issue in one of Catholicism’s most important spaces — and one of its frontlines in on-going conflicts between religion and secularism.
Whether there are lessons for Australia remains to be seen, for our politics are very different to those of America. But what happens in America still tends to influence the rest of the Western world. And an organisation like the Catholic Church, which aspires to universal global leadership, cannot afford to ignore such potentially momentous developments.
Dr Miles Pattenden is Senior Research Fellow in Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Australian Catholic University. His books include Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450-1700 (Oxford University Press, 2017) and he is and Co-Editor of The Journal of Religious History (2022–).
Main image: Man holds a cross during a prayer outside the U.S. Supreme Court on May 5, 2022 in Washington, DC (Tom Brenner / Stringer).