As more state legislatures vote on banning abortion once embryonic cardiac activity is detected, the warfare between supporters and opponents of abortion rights is again escalating. And the stakes are high. To many opponents who consider abortion to be murder, every inching step toward criminalization is progress toward reducing the abortion rate and saving babies. (Other abortion critics disagree that outlawing it is the best strategy; many contend measures such as better health care, contraceptive access, and poverty reduction will do more to decrease abortions.) To supporters convinced that abortion is a common practice occurring throughout history and should be safely accessible rather than self-induced or otherwise perilous, banning it usurps the right to an autonomous medical choice and results in injury and death for many women. Failed efforts at dialogue to ease this clash have repeatedly shown the extreme dissonance between these positions.
Evangelical Protestants, though today some of the most fervent foes of abortion and supporters of criminalization, once leaned in other directions and permitted a more expansive range of views. Many observed that their source of divine authority, the Bible, did not speak explicitly about abortion and concluded that different Christian views were conceivable. In the late 1960s, various evangelical leaders argued that abortion was morally sinful in some circumstances but acceptable in others.
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