Introduction

Holy Cross Lutheran Church offers individuals the chance to ask questions about the Church, faith, theology, and the Bible by putting their queries into a Question Box. A question and answer appears in each month’s newsletter. This is the September 2010 installment.

Question

The ELCA has a provision in its employee health plan that pays for abortions. If a person believes that abortion is against God’s will (making it a sin), but he or she still supports the ELCA financially, will God hold us accountable for supporting that sin when employees choose to use that provision of the health care plan?

Answer

Few social issues over the last four decades so clearly polarize the American people as abortion. To give us a common foundation for looking at the issues this question raises, let’s outline a few basic items before we get to the deeper questions.

+ The ELCA Board of Pensions offers health insurance to pastors and other church employees.
+ The plan summary makes no specific mention of procedures involving abortion.
+ The plan pays for procedures deemed “medically necessary.”

In 1991, the ELCA Churchwide Assembly adopted a social statement, Abortion. It’s available on the ELCA’s Web site. In this document, two sections, in particular, are worth noting:

This church recognizes that there can be sound reasons for ending a pregnancy through induced abortion. The following provides guidance for those considering such a decision. We recognize that conscientious decisions need to be made in relation to difficult circumstances that vary greatly. What is determined to be a morally responsible decision in one situation may not be in another.

In reflecting ethically on what should be done in the case of an unintended pregnancy, consideration should be given to the status and condition of the life in the womb. We also need to consider the conditions under which the pregnancy occurred and the implications of the pregnancy for the woman’s life.

An abortion is morally responsible in those cases in which continuation of a pregnancy presents a clear threat to the physical life of the woman.

A woman should not be morally obligated to carry the resulting pregnancy to term if the pregnancy occurs when both parties do not participate willingly in sexual intercourse. This is especially true in cases of rape and incest. This can also be the case in some situations in which women are so dominated and oppressed that they have no choice regarding sexual intercourse and little access to contraceptives. Some conceptions occur under dehumanizing conditions that are contrary to God’s purposes.

There are circumstances of extreme fetal abnormality, which will result in severe suffering and very early death of an infant. In such cases, after competent medical consultations, the parent(s) may responsibly choose to terminate the pregnancy. Whether they choose to continue or to end such pregnancies, this church supports the parent(s) with compassion, recognizing the struggle involved in the decision.…

The position of this church is that, in cases where the life of the mother is threatened, where pregnancy results from rape or incest, or where the embryo or fetus has lethal abnormalities incompatible with life, abortion prior to viability should not be prohibited by law or by lack of public funding of abortions for low-income women. On the other hand, this church supports legislation that prohibits abortions that are performed after the fetus is determined to be viable, except when the mother’s life is threatened or when lethal abnormalities indicate the prospective newborn will die very soon.

Beyond these situations, this church neither supports nor opposes laws prohibiting abortion.

While this is the official position of the ELCA, the statement notes that ELCA members hold various positions. In addition, throughout the Church today and across history, many maintain that taking a life through abortion is a sin because every innocent human has received life as a gift from God.

So, when one asks whether one sins by supporting—even indirectly or financially—a practice one believes to be a sin, then the answer is “yes.” This has nothing to do with abortion, but everything to do with how we can commit sinful acts both as individuals and as a community. When one believes God’s Word says that one is committing a sin, he clearly calls us to stop.