Chelsea Clinton, Methodism & Abortion

on September 18, 2018

Last Friday I briefly spoke to the Religion Newswriters Association annual meeting, as a cosponsor among many others, including the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, whose spokesperson preceded me on the podium.

IRD has for decades been a critic of RCRC, having successfully encouraged the United Methodist Church to withdraw from it in 2016. One journalist in the audience tweeted the irony.

RCRC was founded in 1973 mostly by Mainline Protestant groups to counter pro-life advocacy by Roman Catholics and others in the aftermath of Roe versus Wade. As Mainline Protestantism receded in influence so too has RCRC.

In the 1970s and 1980s liberal Protestant prelates often made explicitly pro-abortion arguments in sync with RCRC. Such statements are now rare to nonexistent. Liberal church officials still support abortion rights but are reluctant specifically to defend abortion. It’s hard to do so after 60 million USA abortions since Roe. Instead, when they speak at all, they might portray abortion as a sometimes necessary tragedy.

So last week’s defense of Roe and abortion rights by Chelsea Clinton was notable. Citing “how many women died and how many more women were maimed because of unsafe abortion practices” before Roe, she denounced any move to overturn it:

“That’s unconscionable to me, and also — and I’m sure that this will unleash another wave of hate in my direction — but as a deeply religious person, it’s also un-Christian to me.”

In response writer Matt Walsh called Clinton a “Satanist” because “she proclaims a ‘Christianity’ that endorses the murder of babies. That’s not Christianity. It’s the worship of self, which is satanism.”

Clinton tweeted back to Walsh: “I am a confirmed Methodist, thank you again for (not) asking. I support a women’s right to determine what is reproductively right for herself & her family, especially on #ConstitutionDay.”

Like her mother, Chelsea is a lifelong Methodist. United Methodism officially endorsed legalized abortion in 1970 and three years later helped found RCRC. But this stance was always contested within the church, and gradually the denomination added language qualifying its support for abortion rights. In 2000 the denomination stated opposition to partial birth abortion after the church’s lobby office had backed President Clinton’s veto of legislation to ban it. Two years ago the church voted to withdraw from RCRC and revoke its 40 year support of Roe.

But Hillary and Chelsea Clinton with millions of others were shaped by a Mainline Protestant ethos from the mid 20th century that stressed individual autonomy over traditional Christian anthropology. The loss of that sense of anthropology contributed to Mainline Protestantism’s demise. Today’s growing number of religious “nones” include many former or children of Mainline Protestants who transitioned out altogether from churches that abandoned meaningfully distinct theological and ethical beliefs.

RCRC has long embodied the 20th century theological and ethical emasculation of American Protestantism. Its “success” also ensured its own demise. This story hopefully will be instructive for liberalizing Evangelicals and others tempted to follow this same tragic path.

The good news is that USA Christianity is today far more ecumenically united behind traditional teachings about the sanctity of unborn human life than it was 40 years ago. But a larger percentage of the population is religiously unaffiliated and outside the church’s direct influence.

Explaining the sacredness of all human life is one of today’s most urgent duties for the church, which is called to teach its own adherents and to persuade non adherents through a witness of sacrifice and love. RCRC’s religious advocacy for abortion, echoed by Chelsea Clinton, has become mostly irrelevant. The Christian pro-life alternative can fill the void if persistent and faithful.

  1. Comment by William on September 18, 2018 at 7:24 am

    It is long overdue for the UMC General Conference to have the General Board of Church and Society to cut all ties with and rebuke Planned Parenthood. On second thought, it is past time for the UMC General Conference to abolish the General Board of Church and Society.

  2. Comment by Rebecca on September 18, 2018 at 5:59 pm

    Amen to the second thought!!

  3. Comment by John Smith on September 25, 2018 at 6:49 am

    Why cut ties to PP? As long as the UMC supports abortion does it matter which providers it has ties with?

  4. Comment by Brian on September 25, 2018 at 3:11 pm

    I think it’s time to do away with the Board of Church and Society. It’s agenda from the beginning was that society would shape the church, not the other way around. Therefore, if I’m correct, it runs diametrically opposed to our

  5. Comment by Donnie on September 19, 2018 at 11:14 am

    It always amazes me that liberals would have us believe we need more gun laws in order to save lives. Which are so precious to liberals. But the slaughter of millions of babies is a matter of reproductive rights.

  6. Comment by David on September 19, 2018 at 5:34 pm

    As one commentator or put it, to the right, guns=liberty and abortion= murder, while to the left, guns=murder and abortion=freedom.

    Remember that 75% of conceptions fail to reach term for purely natural reasons. Abortion accounts for a negligible number.

  7. Comment by Loren Golden on September 19, 2018 at 7:14 pm

    There have been sixty million children who have died at the hands of the abortionist’s scalpel in the United States alone since Roe v. Wade became law in 1973.  This is not “a negligible number.”

    A miscarriage is always a tragedy; my wife and I suffered two before the birth of our first daughter in 2011.  However, an abortion is an even greater tragedy, in that it is a deliberate, and therefore preventable, act, and the woman who procures one has to carry the guilt and shame for that decision for the rest of her life.

  8. Comment by John on September 19, 2018 at 8:05 pm

    There’s just no correlation between guns and abortion. A gun might or not cause injury or death, but when it does it’s usually from the intent to do so. Elective abortion is always intended to result in death and is therefore almost 100% effective. There’s thus no freedom for the child in the womb whatsoever.

  9. Comment by Loren Golden on September 20, 2018 at 12:28 am

    Indeed.  True liberty can be found only in the Cross of Christ alone, who thereby freed us from bondage to sin and death.  Not “guns”, as David infers.

  10. Comment by The answer is in the Book on September 19, 2018 at 9:42 pm

    Methodists have always supported the weak and defenseless, so I am at a loss to understand why so many of them think killing an unborn baby, and no one is weaker or more defenseless than an unborn baby, is not an immoral act.

  11. Comment by Wayne Worsham on September 20, 2018 at 6:41 am

    Agree on the General Board of Church and Socii. It is a WICKED organization and should be abolished from the UMC.

  12. Comment by John Smith on September 25, 2018 at 6:52 am

    Why? Because they support abortion just the General Conference does?

  13. Comment by Wayne Worsham on September 20, 2018 at 6:43 am

    Agree on the General Board of Church and Society. It is a WICKED organization and should be abolished from the UMC.

  14. Comment by David on September 20, 2018 at 8:06 am

    Anyone who thinks the medical procedure involves an “abortionist’s scalpel” needs to do some reading. The human reproductive system is extremely wasteful as previously mentioned. If we assume this is due to divine design, then God clearly favors the death of fetuses. We should all try to follow His example. And what happened to aborted fetuses, or “unborn babies” as you will? Do they go straight to heaven unlike many who have lives on earth? If so, 60 million souls have been saved.

  15. Comment by Loren Golden on September 21, 2018 at 12:36 am

    Miscarriages occur, sir, because we live in a fallen, broken, sinful world that is in rebellion against God.  God does not, as you accuse, “favor the death of fetuses.”  Among the blessings He promised to the Israelites, if they were to “pay careful attention to (the angel He would send before them) and obey his voice, (and) not rebel against him,” (Ex. 23.21) was that, “None shall miscarry or be barren in your land.” (Ex. 23.26)  And again, “Children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb is a reward.” (Ps. 127.3)
     
    With respect to the eternal destiny of children who die before reaching a supposed “age of accountability”, the Scriptures are silent.  We are conceived in sin, and we are sinners from our mothers’ wombs (Ps. 51.9).  Christ died to pay the penalty for our sins (Is. 53.4-6, Rom. 5.8-9, I Cor. 15.3-4), but our unrighteousness is imputed to Him, and His righteousness is imputed to us, thus saving us from sin and its penalty, death, only when appropriated by faith in Him (Rom. 3.28, Gal. 2.16, Eph. 2.8-9) and only in Him (Jn. 14.6, Acts 4.12).  “But how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed?  And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?” (Rom. 10.14)  From the womb, the Lord loved Jacob and hated Esau, not because of anything they had done, but because of His purposes in election (Rom. 9.10-13).  And yet, “Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise.” (Mt. 21.16)  So then, it might be that children who die in the womb or in infancy can never be saved from sin and death, because they cannot express faith in Christ; it might be that some who die in the womb or in infancy are saved, while others are not, because of God’s purposes in election; or it might be that all children who die in the womb or in infancy are saved from sin and death, because He regards their “praise” (in the context of Mt. 21.16) as an expression of faith.  Even if we suppose that the sixty million children who have died in the womb at the hands of the abortionist are saved from sin and death and will rise with Christ when He returns on the Last Day, this no more justifies taking the lives of children while they are in the womb, than does the possibility that all members of a particular church are saved by faith in Christ from sin and death justify the actions of a lone gunman who enters that church and murders them all.
     
    All human life is precious to God, because human beings are all made His image (Gen. 1.26-27, 5.1, Jas. 3.9), and it is for this reason that the death penalty was prescribed for murder under the Noahic Covenant (Gen. 9.5-6).  Under the Judicial Law (which is passed away under the New Covenant), the Lord prescribed penalties against men who strive against one another, when one of them strikes a pregnant woman, thus inducing her into labor: If “there is no harm (to the mother or the child), the one who hit her shall surely be fined. … But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life,” etc. (Ex. 21.22-25)  In the Psalms, David praised God for how he was “fearfully and wonderfully made,” how God “formed (his) inward parts (and) knitted (him) together in (his) mother’s womb” (Ps. 139.13-16).  In the second of the four Servant Songs in the Book of Isaiah pointing to Christ, the Servant said, “The LORD called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. … The LORD…formed me from the womb to be his servant.” (Is. 49.1,5)  And the Lord told Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (Jer. 1.5)
     
    Human fetuses, like those who have been born, are human beings made by God in His image.  To deliberately take the life of one (except in the rare case when the pregnancy threatens the very life of the mother) is tantamount to murder, tantamount to murdering God in effigy.  So then, it does not matter whether the abortionist uses a scalpel, saline solution, dismemberment, a vacuum, or scissors to the brain, his work is anathema to God.  And unless he repents of it and turns in faith to Jesus Christ for forgiveness and salvation from sin and death, he will be eternally condemned for it.

  16. Comment by Rebecca on September 25, 2018 at 12:13 am

    The procedure often involves more than an “abortionist’s scalpel.” You might do some reading. There are sucking machines for example. And, although I’ve heard about aborted fetuses going to heaven before, I don’t think there is any Biblical basis for that belief… and it is a sad reason to be pro-abortion, even if true.

  17. Comment by Thomas on September 20, 2018 at 6:03 pm

    Interestingly, pro-abortion “Christians” like Chelsea Clinton don`t seem to bother at all with all the women who are forced to abort by their parents, husbands, boyfriends, poverty. Even worse, they don`t seem to even care anymore to reduce the number of abortions. Look at the “Shout your abortion” movement and how it doesn`t seem to bother them at all. About the nonsense that its to claim that to be anti-abortion is un-Christian I suppose she doesn`t know all the Christian tradition, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant, which is strongly pro-life.

  18. Comment by S. McCown on September 23, 2018 at 8:40 pm

    Liberals like the word “abortion” instead of “murder”. This lets them continue to be irresponsible. Abortion takes the life of one God’s miracles at the hands of abortion butchers. What would Jesus say??

  19. Comment by Julie A. Arms Meeks on September 25, 2018 at 12:19 am

    Yes, we cut our ties to the RCRC but we maintain abortion is sometimes the answer. In our current Social Principles and in the working draft being circulated. Look it up.

  20. Comment by John Smith on September 25, 2018 at 6:46 am

    You may not like it but she is right. As long as the UMC supports abortion*, Chelsea Clinton is justified in using her status as a Methodist to support and justify abortion.

    *Please see the relevant sections of the BoD, this ” …added language qualifying its support for abortion rights…” doesn’t change the bottom line of “we support the legal option of abortion under proper medical procedures by certified medical providers”.

  21. Comment by Thomas on September 27, 2018 at 1:32 pm

    The UMC stance on abortion is not totally pro-life but its not totally pro-choice either. It seems to indicate that abortion is only acceptable for some extreme cases. I agree that the language should be changed to be more pro-life but its not true to label the UMC as fully pro-choice, because it has opposed late-term abortions and it definetely would support more restrictions. Unfortunately liberals and revisionists at UMC tend to be very pro-abortion.

  22. Comment by Lester Hemphill on September 25, 2018 at 2:19 pm

    As pro-choice as I am, personally I am against abortion; however whatever any woman decides about that is none of my business.

  23. Comment by Loren Golden on September 25, 2018 at 3:32 pm

    And what she has done to the body of another human being is none of your business either, I suppose…

  24. Comment by John Smith on September 26, 2018 at 6:59 am

    Why are you against abortion?

  25. Comment by Thomas on September 27, 2018 at 1:29 pm

    Pilate said exactly the same thing, you hypocrite. “I am personally against Jesus crucifixion but I will not interfere in the Jews right to do so.” If Jesus life started like any of us at conception, Christianity only can be a pro-life religion. “Whatever you do to the lesser of you, you are doing it to me”, said Jesus.

  26. Comment by Ron on September 25, 2018 at 8:31 pm

    When are people going to wake up to the clear and obvious fact that there is no such thing as a pro-abortion Christian?

  27. Comment by Dolores on September 28, 2018 at 6:22 pm

    It is murder! Called abortion.
    What is the difference.

  28. Comment by John on October 16, 2018 at 6:50 pm

    I have always maintained that President Clinton vetoed legislation to prevent partial birth abortions. But I’ve never found documentation to back that claim. Can anyone cite documentation to support Mark’s claim in this article?

  29. Comment by Thomas on November 5, 2018 at 8:09 pm

    You can do a Google search and you will find it.

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