8 - Representing Religious Claims

Summary

Every human being is a precious child of God, a brother or sister, of every other human being. … In this human family, the strong have a greater obligation to protect and defend the lives and rights of vulnerable persons who cannot defend themselves.

(Pamphlet, National Right to Life Committee)

Abortion can be a moral, ethical, and religiously responsible decision. … As religious people, we yearn for a just society – one that celebrates and honors the whole realm of human experience; one in which faith is not a rigid structure of ideas to be imposed and protected, but an active trust – in God, and in women and their families to make wise decisions according to their conscience.

(Pamphlet, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, formerly Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights)

For Christian reasons, we want to protect life and accompany the woman, support the woman, in her decision-making, for or against the child, as much the one as the other. We want to be her conversational partner in the situation and through the decision-making process, help her come to a decision that even when she looks back on it is something she can bear.

(Ana-Maria Mathé, Diakonisches Werk, Interview, April 1996)

That the state has an obligation to protect human life is neither a question for a political coalition nor the object of a compromise. Party political considerations should have no place here. What counts here is the voice of God, saying “thou shalt not kill!”

(Friedrich Wetter, German Catholic Church spokesman, SZ, 9/17/1990)

Numerous citizens in many countries understand many political and social issues through the prism of a larger, transcendental belief system that is rooted in religion or spirituality.