Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Question of Rape & Incest (1): Brown University 1989
As the question of rape & incest has arisen in the 2010 U.S. Senate races in Colorado and Nevada, here is a series of looking at the question with truth and, especially, mercy for women so victimized.
At a debate in April 1989, at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, I spontaneously articulated some elements of the image of God. I was questioned about the issue of rape and incest. A young woman believed that the right to have an abortion should be available to those who became pregnant by such a violent act.
I began to frame my response by looking directly at her and saying: “In your life, are you like me, seeking the qualities of peace, order, stability and hope?” As I spoke these words, I had her eyeball-to-eyeball attention, and the hundreds of students and faculty in the Sayles auditorium came to a hush. The century old seats, bolted to the floor, always creaking at the slightest movement, also ceased their chatter, producing a moment of intense focus. She said, “Yes.”
I then said, “Is it also fair for me to assume, that like me, you also seek to live, to love, to laugh and to learn?” Again, the same focus of intensity defined the audience, the seats unmoving, and again she said, “Yes.”
So I continued, “Then there is far more that unites us than divides us – we are seeking the same qualities. The question is, in the face of the hell of rape and incest: Does abortion unrape the woman and restore to her the lost qualities of peace, order, stability and hope? Or does the abortion only add further brokenness?”
The room continued its quiet, and I could have left the issue there. I knew that the resonation with the image of God, as represented by these qualities, was so complete in that moment that most students and faculty could answer the question themselves and deduce from there the reality I was addressing.
When I spontaneously defined these qualities of God’s image – peace, order, stability and hope, to live, to love, to laugh and to learn – they were immediately imprinted in my soul. They sum up well the theological realities of the image of God, and they make an easy acronym, the POSH Ls. I have identified and defined the POSH Ls ever since.
In my next blog post, I will detail briefly how a woman "pro-choice" physician responded to this story two decades later.
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5 comments:
Not allowing abortion in case of rape and incest is an unreasonable extreme. The criminal penalties for rape are severe, the Old Testament penalty was to put the malefactor to death. In the case of Shechem's rape of Dinah, the penalty was particularly severe, there is no Biblical mention of Dinah subsequently. In the case of rape, an example is given of Amnon and Tamar. Once again, angry family members took justice into their own hands and Amnon was killed.
Marriage is until death, one man and one woman faithful throughout. It is unreasonable to expect someone forcibly inseminated to also be forced to bear the baby to term. There is no Biblical example of a woman having to do this.
Tom -- thank you. As I further address this topic, perhaps you will see my concerns -- for the equal humanity of both mother and unborn child. The Lord redeems from the greatest evil. In the case of Judah and Tamar, and the "forced prostitution" on her by Judah, one of her twin boys was Perez, a forefather to David and Jesus. In terms of Amnon and (a different) Tamar, his murder happened due to David's cowardice in the face of different wives and the matter of Absalom...
I love the way you look at and present this. It's Biblical and it's common sense. Sometimes we forget that they are not mutually exclusive.
There IS more that unites us than divides in so many areas that we choose to quibble over. The love of God and His mercy must come first, and right beliefs are a result of that; not the other way around. I'm a little tired of the whole WWJD quip, but I have to say that I cannot imagine Jesus responding to a woman (or man) who has been raped with anything other than mercy and love. It's much harder to imagine that mercy and love also applying to the rapist; but he obviously needs it as well.
Of course abortion is neither loving nor merciful to the woman or the infant. Perhaps abortion can also be understood as an attempt to wipe out the evidence of the rape in the hope of avoiding the pain of it? Wearing the evidence (pregnancy) of rape on your body for all to see for 40 weeks seems unbearable -- I'm not at all sure I could do it -- with out the infinite love and mercy of God.
In the case of Judah and Tamar, you have two equally shrewd people who worked God's will unwittingly. After Er and Onan had died in supernatural judgment by being unwilling to procreatively make a commitment to Tamar, my guess is that she was unattractive, she put herself in a position, dressed with the attire of a harlot, to fulfill God's will, as Judah was returning from sheep-shearing. Judah gave her proof of the union, and though he tried to have her burned as the legal penalty for being a harlot, she fought back by bringing proof that he was the father of the child. I know of no Scriptural examples of rape when children come forth by it. David's taking of Bathsheba could be seen as rape, and he tried to disguise the fact by having Uriah later sleep with his wife, but he refused and the baby died soon after birth. The Hippocratic Oath warns against harmful medical practices and forbids drugs inducing abortion. But
in the hierarchy of cases where physical relationships between the sexes lead to problems, surely this issue pales in comparison to most others and makes the most strict Christians look extreme even to the most strict groups in Judaism and Islam.
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