Abortion: Babies, Mothers, and Fathers - Considering Johannesburg Episode 3

Considering Johannesburg, Episode 3. Watch the full episode above. The free discussion guide is here: [GUIDE LINK]. Episode 2, on sex and gender identity, is here: [EP02 LINK].

On the last afternoon of the General Conference in Johannesburg, two women went to the same microphone about a minute apart. The first was Megan Alamo, a pastor from the Great Lakes Conference. The second was Mandy White, a laywoman from West Plains who sat on the committee that wrote the text they were arguing over.

Neither of them thinks abortion is a good thing. Neither of them wants a church that shrugs at it. What they disagreed about was a single clause, and what that clause says, or refuses to say, to women trying to navigate righteousness in modern medicine and family.

That argument got about eleven minutes on the floor. What came out the other end is now the Global Methodist Church’s witness on the unborn and their mothers.

This topic isn’t abstract for a lot of you. Some of you have sat with a daughter in a doctor’s office and heard news nobody wants to hear. Some of you have carried a child you were told would not live. And some of you have had an abortion and you’ve never told your pastor. We live in a world in which there are roughly 73 million induced abortions per year, more than a quarter of all pregnancies. I’m going to be plain about what the church decided and what I believe, and I’m going to call sin what it is. But I’m not going to act as though God’s grace doesn’t apply in these situations. It does.

One Soft Word

Our Social Witness, ¶302, is what Chappell Temple, this year’s committee chair, called fourteen simple statements. They don’t set penalties. They say what we believe God wants of his people, and they say it to the world. The statement right before the abortion paragraph lays the foundation: it is “the particular duty of believers to protect those who may be powerless to protect themselves, including the unborn, those with disabilities or serious illness, and the aged.”

So the question was never whether the church opposes abortion. It was how we say it, and what we say about the hardest cases.

Here is how the 2024 General Conference left ¶302.3:

“The sacredness of all life compels us to resist the practice of abortion except in the cases of tragic conflicts of life against life when the well-being of the mother and the child are at stake. We do not accept abortion as a means of birth control or gender selection, and we call upon all Christians as disciples of the Lord of Life to prayerfully consider how we can support those women facing unintended pregnancies without adequate care, counsel, or resources.”

If that exception sounds familiar, it should. The United Methodist Social Principles spoke of “tragic conflicts of life with life” that may justify abortion. Our 2024 language kept the bones of that inheritance. That’s no scandal. We started from what we had.

But look at one word: “well-being.” It can mean the mother’s life. It can mean her health. Some would stretch it to mean her circumstances. Several petitioners this year said that word opened the door wider than the church meant to.

Seven Petitions, One Direction

Petition 1111 came from one person, Shelley Van Antwerp of Avon Bartlett Chapel in the Great Lakes Conference. She put the mother in the title: “Supplying language to further protect the unborn and the mother.” She struck two words, “except in,” and gave the hard case a different ending: “premature delivery may be necessary with the baby cared for as a separate patient.” In 2024 the answer to the hardest case was, in effect, abortion. In her petition it was: deliver the baby early, and treat that baby as a patient too.

Hers was one of seven. Shreve Community in Allegheny West wanted to say that all human life is “sacred and divinely deserving of equal protection under the law.” That’s an abolitionist assertion that many pro-lifers find untenable. John Lomperis called “well-being” very loaded language and wanted pregnancy clinics affirmed by name. Virginia wanted to name disability; the Upper Midwest, eugenics. Michael Cooper’s petition would have said abortion “is always an immoral act that we oppose in all situations,” and it called the church to support those who chose abortion in the past.

Not one of these petitions asked the church to be softer, and that’s good. They disagreed about how far to go, and about whether we make provision for things like ectopic pregnancy, molar pregnancy, or a couple of other rare conditions in which it might be necessary to remove a baby from the womb prematurely.

What the Committee Built

The Social Witness committee, with four doctors in the room, voted 38 to nothing. It didn’t just pass Van Antwerp’s petition. It rebuilt the paragraph: a new opening sentence borrowed from Shreve Community, minus the equal-protection line. The first sentence now ends at the word “abortion.” Period. No “except.” “Well-being” became “mortality.” The birth control and gender selection sentence was struck. Fathers were named. And “consider how we can support” became “support.”

Then, on Thursday, from the platform, Temple made a correction before anybody had pulled anything: “with the baby and the mother cared for as separate patients.” It’s small, and it may be the most important edit in the whole story. Without it the sentence leaves the mother out. With it, the text names two patients, and a doctor owes care to both.

Eleven Minutes

Megan Alamo pulled the petition off the consent agenda on Thursday, and then it sat until Saturday, when the conference was nearing its end and a good deal of business was still undone.

Here I need to say a brief “I was right.” When I saw the breadth of material before the conference, and knew the priority that would be placed on worship, I knew some topics would get short shrift and that there would be a good deal of interest in shoving things through under omnibus packages. By Saturday afternoon Bishop Jones believed the Social Witness items were finished: “We’re not gonna vote on any more social issues.” It took a question from Isaac Salgado of South Georgia, and another from Chris Gadlage of Great Lakes, to get the petition back in front of the body with about nineteen minutes left. If someone hadn’t done their due diligence in the moment, none of the substantial conversation would have happened. Much more could likely have been done with more time. As we’ll see, care for mothers who have chosen abortion got dropped and forgotten. Rushing things through has a cost.

Alamo offered a substitute that restored the exception, narrowed to “mortality.” She agreed with “the heart and intent” of the petition. Her concern was a gap:

“It does not address what a woman, what a mother who is facing a life threatening medical emergency should do in something like the event of an ectopic pregnancy where a premature birth is impossible.”

Mandy White answered for the committee. The doctors had presented premature delivery as an option, and the committee wanted to say so: “If you leave it vague, then they will come to their own conclusion.” Her objection landed on both of the old phrases. “Except in the cases of” says there are cases where abortion is acceptable. So does “we do not accept abortion as a means of birth control,” because it implies we might accept it as a means of something else. Her summary: “We do not like abortion, except sometimes we do.”

One speech for and one against. The substitute failed on a show of hands. Then the petition itself, by electronic ballot, three-quarters required: 300 to 49. Temple, still standing at the microphone, said, “Now Lord, let thy servant depart in peace.” That’s Simeon in the temple, holding the child.

Here is ¶302.3 now:

“We believe that all human life, regardless of level of development or ability, is sacred. The sacredness of all life compels us to resist the practice of abortion. In the cases of tragic conflict of life against life when the mortality of the mother or the child is at stake, premature delivery may be necessary with the baby and the mother cared for as separate patients. We call upon all Christians, as disciples of the Lord of Life, to prayerfully support mothers and fathers facing unintended or unwanted pregnancies by prayerfully providing them with care, counsel, and resources.”

What It Leaves Open

This paragraph was written to last. Whatever it says or fails to say, we’ll be teaching from it for a long time. So what does it leave open?

First, the ectopic pregnancy, which is the case in between 1% and 2% of all pregnancies. That was Megan Alamo’s question, and nobody answered it on the floor. An embryo implanted in a fallopian tube cannot be carried to delivery, and the mother’s life is at risk. In roughly half of those cases a woman’s body is able to resolve this on its own. What about the other half? Does “premature delivery may be necessary” speak to that case?

Second, birth control and gender selection. I read “all human life, regardless of level of development or ability, is sacred” as covering those cases and more, but the paragraph no longer names them. Will we apply these words powerfully and broadly, or will our lack of specificity leave us ambivalent where we would otherwise be clear?

Third, what does “resist” ask of us? Prayer? Preaching it plainly from the pulpit? Backing the pregnancy center down the road? Speaking to our legislators?

I think abortion is the primary moral issue of our day. When you look at the absolute and relative numbers of children being killed in the womb, it’s hard to see anything else as nearly as important. I find myself increasingly sympathetic to the abolitionist position, although I confess discomfort with Russell Hunter’s recommendations around ectopic pregnancy. The moral standing of a people is based on its care of its most vulnerable, and who is more vulnerable than those in the womb? We have been failing that test for a long time. I would love for Global Methodists to play a large role in waking our nation up to the moral travesty we have overseen relatively quietly.

Fourth, the women who have already had abortions. The paragraph says nothing to them. I’ll come back to that.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

I’m glad of what the conference did. I believe the child in the womb is a human being made in the image of God. Taking that life on purpose is sin, and the church should say so without a clause or exception that people can take advantage of to justify themselves. The Bible doesn’t have to be a medical textbook in order to tell us how to live in a world that often gives us medical complications. The Scriptures have God’s own testimony about who that child is.

“For You formed my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are Your works, and I know this very well. My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in secret, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all my days were written in Your book and ordained for me before one of them came to be.” —Psalm 139:13–16

“Your eyes saw my unformed body.” Before the psalmist had a shape anyone could recognize, God saw him and was writing in a book about him. That’s what “regardless of level of development” means. The church didn’t invent that conviction in Johannesburg. It’s as old as the Didache, which tells believers flatly not to murder a child by abortion. That’s the sixth commandment applied to the smallest of us: “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13).

So I’m glad the exception is gone as it was worded. “Well-being” was a soft word in a critical place, and the delegates who disagreed on Saturday agreed on that much. The committee said “mortality.” Alamo’s substitute said “mortality.” Nobody at a microphone defended “well-being.” That gives me some hope that the GMC will not readily fall into soft compromise with a world bent on death.

There’s a difference between acting to end a child’s life and acting to save a mother’s life when you know the child can’t be saved. What is meant by the word “abortion”? If it means intentionally murdering the child in the womb and removing it afterward, then this is all quite clear. If it means removing a baby gently and lovingly, treating him or her with dignity, because the pregnancy cannot continue without killing the mother, then I do not see this as the same thing. We practice medicine in a fallen world, and there’s grief in it, but that isn’t the thing ¶302.3 resists.

Two patients means the doctor may not abandon either one. If one of them expires, you fight for the one who can still live. Both matter; we refuse to pit mother against baby. Even in extreme situations, there is no medical condition that necessitates extinguishing a life while it is in the womb. A gentle and caring extraction can take place, after which a non-viable child can be kept comfortable until he or she dies naturally, while the mother is also tended to. Global Methodist pastors should be able to urge, in no uncertain terms, that all women carrying babies insist on procedures that do not intentionally and violently end the lives of their babies.

The Assignment

Some might think this is an unfair burden for women and doctors. When we are clear that abortion is murder, that also makes clear that medical expediency is not the ultimate value. One doesn’t bless women and doctors by participating in the delusion that abortion is something less than murder. One who follows Christ speaks clearly and kindly, inviting all who have sinned to repentance. This is what Russell Hunter of Abolitionists Rising does well: he highlights the clear sin of abortion while urging repentance and forgiveness. Christians used to be better at this, and it’s part of our heritage that we should reclaim.

And look: the last sentence of the paragraph isn’t a slogan. It’s an assignment. We shouldn’t be leaving mothers on their own. Women and men are tough when they have support. Isn’t that what the church is supposed to be? The Scriptures that close the paragraph are about exactly that assignment.

“You must not mistreat any widow or orphan. If you do mistreat them, and they cry out to Me in distress, I will surely hear their cry.” —Exodus 22:22–23

“Pure and undefiled religion before our God and Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” —James 1:27

A woman facing a pregnancy she didn’t plan, without a husband, without money, maybe without a supportive family, stands very near the widow and the orphan. God says he hears her cry. The question for every Global Methodist congregation is whether she can hear us coming.

Our General Rules begin with “doing no harm” and go straight on to “doing good.” Resisting abortion is the do-no-harm half. Caring for the mother, and the father too, is the do-good half. A church that refuses the second half is failing. So: somebody who’ll drive an expecting mother to an appointment. A crib and a car seat. A family who’ll take her in for a season. A youth group where a pregnant teenager is still welcome. Men who treat a young father as a man with a duty and help him carry it. Families willing to foster and adopt. A consistent resourcing relationship with the local pregnancy resource center; my interview with Joel Webb of the Spero Center shows what those ministries do. Most of our congregations could do more of this tomorrow.

What the Paragraph Didn’t Say

The paragraph says nothing to women who have already had abortions. Cooper’s petition would have, and it was set aside. I think that’s regrettable.

Local churches need to feel responsible for the care of the families in our midst. We don’t help them by only telling them what they can’t do. We have to help them feel rightly about sin, repent of it, and walk in righteousness. That’s true of abortion, which is heinous, and of every other sin. People show up to our churches with hearts calloused from years of pretending and posturing. The church needs to be a place where we appropriately dismantle the defenses of people who need to repent. All people need to repent, especially women whose hearts have been hardened by radical feminism, which has made abortion one of its sacraments. Our society needs to be lovingly exorcised of this demonic disposition, because it is only on the other side of repentance that we find this:

“He has not dealt with us according to our sins or repaid us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His loving devotion for those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” —Psalm 103:10–12

“And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” —1 Corinthians 6:11

That’s the church. It isn’t a room full of people who never did anything wrong. It’s a room full of people who have repented and been washed. And that isn’t only a promise for the resurrection. The Holy Spirit changes people now. He can take the guilt off you today, and the shame doesn’t get to rule you anymore.

Two Lives in the Room

I’d rather be in a church where two pro-life delegates argue over one clause than in the one many of us left, where the argument was whether to say anything clear at all. We got a clear paragraph. Now we have to live up to it, in emergency rooms and church nurseries, with frightened mothers and fathers who would rather run, and with women who come to us years later carrying something they’ve never set down.

The committee’s best phrase was its smallest correction: “the baby and the mother cared for as separate patients.” That isn’t only good medicine. It’s a good description of the church’s job. There are two lives in that room, and Christ died for both of them. We don’t get to choose between them. We care for both. Satan wants us to create situations in which one life needs to be extinguished for the sake of another. The abundant love of Christ and a right fear of the Lord require all believers to insist that the Lord of Life doesn’t engage in the calculus of death.

May the Lord raise up a new generation of believers in our churches who rejoice in life rather than negotiating with death.

Scripture quotations are from the Berean Standard Bible. A lot of the connective tissue of this series, the overlays, the diagrams and the structure of these segments, is the work of Claude AI under my oversight; it wouldn’t be right to give the impression I did this alone. The discussion guide for this episode has the 2024 and 2026 texts side by side, the other petitions, the arguments from both microphones, and questions for a class or small group: [GUIDE LINK].

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