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Thinking Through the Ethics of Abortion
By Kathy Rudy

I didn't talk to one person who felt supported by her church when it came to dealing with unwanted pregnancy.
Ann Perkins ¹

CASES AND DECISIONS

Sometime, let us say, in the middle of the eighth century, perhaps in Ireland, a young woman went to speak to a local priest because her conscience was heavy with sin. She told the priest she had committed adultery. Although this would have happened long before the practice of confession was formally adopted as a sacrament, this woman had come to the priest for help and guidance in obtaining forgiveness for her sin. The priest, of course, knew the young woman and knew, also, that she was not a prostitute. She was known to be an upstanding mother and wife and, apparently, loved her husband deeply. He asked her why, then, she had committed this sin. There was a debt to pay, she answered. The flooding had made both food and money short; her child was hungry. Her husband had made the arrangement with the creditor. It all seemed so simple a way to take care of the mounting problems that accompany hunger and poverty that she didn't resist. Except, now, her own conscience haunted her. The priest, moved with compassion, told the woman to say a rosary and told her that God had forgiven her. The woman left exhilarated. This burden had been lifted.

For this sin of adultery, the priest could have suggested a much greater penance, including one to three years of sexual abstinence or ostracism

Kathy Rudy has been serving as a visiting research fellow at the Center for the Study of American Religion at Princeton University. She has written and lectured widely in the area of Christian ethics and is the author of the article "Abortion" in The Oxford Companion to Women's Literature (forthcoming).
¹ Ann Perkins, Bitter Fruit: Women's Experiences of Unplanned Pregnancy, Abortion and Adoption (Alameda, California: Hunter House, 1991), p. 7.

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from the worshipping community. Moreover, if the woman had been a nun or a virgin, or the man a cleric, the penance could have been even greater. If a child had resulted from this sexual intercourse, monetary restitution could have been demanded for the husband from the offending male party (even though the husband had arranged the exchange). ² Indeed, the primary reason this woman received such a light penance was that the priest knew her and knew enough to inquire about the circumstances that had caused her sin. The method he employed in his thinking is known as casuistry, that is, a case-by-case analysis for determining the moral nature of an action. I maintain that such case analysis could be helpful in the development of a more consistent and faithful Christian response to the contemporary moral issue of abortion.

"Much of the current abortion debate has been carried on," according to Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, "in terms that appeal to certain supposedly universal principles, from which the participants deduce

". . . rather than stating a priori and for every circumstance that abortion is wrong (or right), casuistry recommends that we take each case separately. . . "

practical imperatives that they regard as applying invariably and without exception." ³ In their influential The Abuse of Casuistry, Jonsen and Toulmin suggest a methodological alternative to the polarized, abstract pro-choice versus pro-life debate, namely, the method of casuistry. As they define it, casuistry is,

… the analysis of moral issues, using procedures of reasoning based on paradigms and analogies, leading to the formulation of expert opinions about the existence and stringency of particular moral obligations, framed in terms of rules or maxims that are general but not universal or invariable, since they hold good with certainty only in the typical conditions of the agent and circumstances of the action. ⁴

That is, rather than stating a priori and for every circumstance that abortion is wrong (or right), casuistry recommends that we take each case separately and analyze the morality of the intervention by employing analogies as moral guideposts. Principles and maxims are set aside in the casuistic model in favor of solving the case on the basis of its closest ethical analogy as determined by the concrete circumstances of the case. As Jonsen and Toulmin argue:

The heart of moral experience does not lie in a mastery of general rules and theoretical principles, however sound and well reasoned those principles

² See, for example, Pierre Payer, Sex and the Penitentials (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), p. 22.
³ Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 2.
⁴ Ibid., p. 257.

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may appear. It is located, rather, in the wisdom that comes from seeing how the ideas behind those rules work out in the course of people's lives: in particular, seeing more exactly what is involved in insisting on (or waiving) this or that rule in one or another set of circumstances. Only experience of this kind will give individual agents the practical priorities that they need in weighing moral considerations of different kinds and resolving conflicts between those different considerations. ⁵

In using the wisdom of life as a marker for decision-making, casuistry offers an approach that relies on the context of an act for its moral evaluation. In the opening situation, for example, the arrangement made by this woman's husband, the hardship of paying the debt, the flood, indeed, even the child's hunger, were not factors to be extracted from the adulterous act but, rather, constituted the morality of the act itself. As Jonsen and Toulmin write, "[C]ircumstances . .. are the integers to be added up in the description of an action; add or subtract one relevant circumstance, and the act may have to be described, named, and evaluated in quite a different way from before." ⁶

A casuist today may deliberate on the morality of any particular abortion not by appealing to principles such as "pro-life" or "pro-choice" but, rather, by inquiring about the concrete conditions of the case. These conditions, when considered alongside the map of moral intuitions that we inherit as part of our membership in the Christian tradition, can help us to think better about concrete cases of abortion in our churches today. We should not start our moral inquiry by arguing that abortion in every case and regardless of circumstances is either wrong or right; rather, the moral nature of each abortion can be understood as dependent not on abstractions but on a system or web of concrete, real circumstances.

I do not mean to suggest that Protestants should take up the practice of confession or that such exacted penance is a good or natural part of the Christian life. Rather, the ethical methodology encoded in casuistry is precisely what churches today-and especially those women with unwanted pregnancies who belong to our churches-long for and deserve. Casuistry can be a useful method for resolving the contemporary abortion debate precisely because it attends to the context of an act, without jettisoning the ability to make concrete claims about morality. When circumstances are considered, a sin can often be redescribed in order to give a penalty (if necessary) that is more in keeping with the spirit of the act than with the letter of the law.

THE ORIGINS OF CASUISTRY

Casuistry had its origins in the Roman Catholic practice of penance, which began roughly in the fifth century. Before this period, Christians

⁵ Ibid., p. 314.
⁶ Ibid., p. 136.

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held very rigid convictions about the conditions for granting forgiveness. As Pierre Payer notes:

[Public penance] was a severe practice which could only be undertaken once III a- lifetime and which carried heavy disabilities. Those who underwent public penance could not marry afterwards if they were single, could not engage in sexual relations during and after public penance if they were already married, could not enter military service, and were barred from decision not to be made lightly. ⁷

In response to these harsh strictures, many early Christians waited until the end of their live to make  this public confession. In the meantime, many needed to discuss the state of their souls with someone in ecclesial authority. Indeed, because penance was available only once, such "private soul-guidance," as John McNeill notes, "was recommended." ⁸ These guidance sessions, some scholars argue, began as a practice primarily in monasteries, where superiors of monastic communities would listen to and comment upon the sins of community members. The practice quickly spread, and lay people from surrounding areas made their way to these monasteries, offering to trade much needed material goods for the priests

". . . the ethical methodology encoded in casuistry is precisely what churches today-and especially those women with unwanted pregnancies who belong to our churches-long for and deserve. "

to "hear" their sins. The priest in this transaction functioned as a proxy for the entire community, and a penitent's private confession worked to set the penitent right with that community (without the harsh penalties of public penance). By the sixth century, private confession had become the norm for most lay Christians, and eventually the harsh practice of non-repeatable public penance died away.

In an effort to help the clergy assign appropriate penances for these confessions, case books called "penitentials" were written. These Penitentials did not include maxims or moral platitudes but, instead, suggested practical taxonomic categories regarding particular circumstances of the case. The goal of these books, and of the practice of casuistry itself, was not rooted in legalistic formulations intended to exact a just measure of penance for the sin (as it was assumed, at least early on, that this aspect would be accomplished in the one-time public penance). Rather, the point in these activities was pastoral; the confessor's task in these early

⁷ Payer, Sex and the Penitentials, p. 7.
⁸ John McNeill and Helen Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938), p. 9.

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confessionals was to help the penitent to understand the breadth and depth of his or her wrongdoing. To do so, the priest would inquire about the context and circumstances of the action. He was instructed, as Jonsen and Toulmin recount, "to note how long the sinner persisted in the sin, what understanding he has, by what passions he was assailed, how great was his strength and by what oppressions he was driven to his sin." ⁹ When all of these circumstances were taken into consideration, the priest attempted to match this particular case, analogically and paradigmatically, to others in his penitential and, subsequently, to assign a proper penance.

For example, in the preface to a Penitential attributed to the Venerable Bede (d. 735), one casuist wrote the following:

Not all persons are to be weighed in one and the same balance, although they be associated in one fault, but there shall be discrimination for each of these, rich or poor; freeman or slave; small child, boy, youth, young man or old man; stupid or intelligent; layman, cleric or monk; bishop, presbyter, deacon, subdeacon or reader, ordained or unordained; married-or unmarried; pilgrim, virgin, canoness, or nuns; the weak, the sick or the well.

The priest shall make a distinction for the character of the sins or of the men-a continent person or one who is incontinent; for acts performed willfully or by accident; in public or in secret; with what compunction a penitent makes amends; under compulsion or voluntarily; the time and place of the fault, and so on. ¹⁰

". . . in the hands of law-loving Jesuits, casuistry took on almost mathematical precision and certainty."

Such attention to details, I suggest, functioned to help the confessor keep rules, principles, and maxims in balance with the particularities of each case. While the priest was not at liberty to disregard the moral framework he had inherited, he was free to interpret it in relation to a wide circle of circumstances and events surrounding the case. He was free, as one casuist articulated it, to "grasp the equity of the case from the circumstances."¹¹ In casuistic practice, universal and invariable principles were held in check by the consideration of circumstances.

While the earliest penitential books "rarely went beyond the citing of a scriptural or patristic text to justify the penitential verdict," ¹² by the twelfth century, casuistry had become a full blown scholarly endeavor entailing attention not only to the sin committed but to the way the sin was described, the conditions of the commission, and the character and

⁹ Jonsen and Touimin The Abuse of Casuistry, p. 99.
¹⁰ "Penitential of Bede" in John McNeill and Helen Garner, Medieval Handbooks of Penance, p. 223.
¹¹ Institutionum 1, xviii, 43-44, as quoted in Jonsen and Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry, p. 259.
¹² Ibid., p. 255.

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position of the agent. The later manuals reflected the complexities that arose when differing circumstances surrounded what had previously appeared to be the same sin. However, by about 1000 C.E., casuistry had become so infused with Roman and canon law that more attention was paid to the intricacies of each abstract case than to the circumstances and spiritual condition of the penitent. That is, while the details of the cases got more and more specific, the penitential books themselves became more and more lawlike. Indeed, in the hands of law-loving Jesuits, casuistry took on almost mathematical precision and certainty. What was originally intended to perform the tasks of alleviating the Christian's conscience and standing in for the entire worshipping community in the enactment of the Christian promise of forgiveness became, by the high Middle Ages, little more than a legalistic exacting of penance. In this shift, significant aspects of the earlier confessional practices were lost.

BETWEEN CARE AND JUSTICE

Quite recently, however, a moral theory similar to casuistry has been identified by Carol Gilligan in her comparative study of the ethical responses and judgments of young men and women. In her groundbreaking and influential In a Different Voice, Gilligan argued that every moral problem can be construed from either a justice or care orientation. These orientations are not themselves moral principles or rational guidelines but rather constitute "different ways of viewing the world that organize both thinking and feeling." ¹³ Gilligan demonstrated these differences by using Lawrence Kohlberg's prominent case where a man named Heinz is considering whether to steal a drug he cannot afford in order to save the life of his wife. In Gilligan's research, the justice orientation was represented by the male response that suggested that Heinz should steal the drug. According to Gilligan, the dilemma was constructed by young men as a conflict between the values of property and life. Allegiance to life should win out, as one eleven year-old boy claimed, because "a human life is worth more than money, and, if the druggist only makes $1,000, he is still going to live, but if Heinz doesn't steal the drug, his wife is going to die." ¹⁴ In this justice-oriented response, Gilligan suggests that morality is evaluated with "mathematical precision." ¹⁵

In contrast, the response of young girls of the same age, according to Gilligan, "considers neither property nor law but rather the effect that theft could have on the relationship between Heinz and his wife." ¹⁶ As the eleven year old girl states it,

If he stole the drug, he might save his wife then, but if he did, he might have to go to jail, and then his wife might get sicker again, and he couldn't get

¹³ Owen Flanagan and Kathryn Jackson, "Justice, Care, and Gender: The Kohlberg- Gilligan Debate Revisited" in An Ethic of Care, edited by Mary Jeanne Larrabee (New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 71.
¹⁴ Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 26.
¹⁵ Ibid.
¹⁶ Ibid., p. 28.

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more of the drug, and it might not be good. So, they really should just talk it out and find some other way to make the money. ¹⁷

Gilligan argues that this female response "sees in the dilemma not a math problem with humans but a narrative of relationships that extends over time." The young girl, Gilligan suggests, "sees the [case] as a mistake, believing that the world should just share things more and then people wouldn't have to steal." ¹⁸ Gilligan's conclusions and the interpretations that others draw from her conclusions can help us construct more adequate modes of problem solving in the church today regarding the issue of abortion.

In her attempt to construct a feminist ethic out of these different voices, Gilligan demonstrated that both care and justice are necessary. That is, those women who relied only on the ethic of care in their decision making most often found themselves in limited and unfulfilled roles. They often functioned, Gilligan notes, as little more than caretakers, having no "selves" of their own. Women need to care for others, but they also need, Gilligan argued, to develop firmer ideas about their own rights and limitations. Gilligan, therefore, advocated a third stage of moral development in which both men and women see the importance and interconnection of both rights and responsibilities. As one commentator sees it, "Gilligan imagines that this third stage of development will be based

"I suggest that… a balance between care and justice had been achieve by one… form of moral inquiry: the early confessionals. "

upon the synthesis of male and female voices-those of rights and responsibilities. The discourse is no longer either simply about justice or simply about caring; rather, it is about bringing them together to transform the domain." ¹⁹

Indeed, several theorists following Gilligan have persuasively argued that the two ethical orientations are not only not mutually exclusive, but can be viewed as complementary. Just as an ethic of justice must be checked by care to avoid legalism, an ethic of care, these critics suggest, must also be checked by codes of justice to avoid consequentialism, emotivism, and, as Gilligan puts it, "the moral problem of inclusion that hinges on the capacity to assume responsibility for care." ²⁰ One writer

¹⁷ Ibid.
¹⁸ Ibid., p. 29.
¹⁹ Elizabeth Schneider, "The Dialectic of Rights and Politics: Perspectives from the Women's Movement" in Women, the State, and Welfare, edited by Linda Gordon (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), p. 235.
²⁰ Carol Gilligan, "Do the Social Sciences Have an Adequate Theory of Moral Development?" in Social Science as Moral Inquiry, edited by N. Haan, R. Bellah, P. Rabinow, and W. Sullivan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), p. 44. 1 take this concern of Gilligan's to be not dissimilar from the problems invoked by emotivism.

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who advocates an ethic that combines both justice and care is Joan Tronto, who argues that those feminists who have interpreted Gilligan's work (either positively or negatively) as describing or prescribing a moral code that is particular to women have in fact missed the mark of Gilligan's study. Gilligan's work is interesting, according to Tronto, not because it contributes to our knowledge or understanding of women, but, rather, because both aspects of Gilligan's theory could be used to make a significant contribution to contemporary moral theory. ²¹

I suggest that such a balance between care and justice had been achieved by one other form of moral inquiry: the early confessionals. As displayed in the opening case, the priest in the confessional was able to treat his penitents with both caring and justice, taking into consideration the penitents' circumstances without losing sight of their shared inherited principles and maxims. Rules were indeed important, but care for the spiritual and emotional life of his parishoners was every priest's highest concern. Both the casuists and the care ethicists, in their attempt to achieve such balance, offer us rich models for thinking ethically about the problems of abortion churches face today.

The similarities between Gilligan's work and the methodological assumptions made by the early priests in the first confessionals are apparent and can be instructive in our attempt to appropriate this balanced method. Both Gilligan and the casuists assume that the moral self is radically situated and particularized. As Lawrence Blum articulated it regarding Gilligan:

[The moral self] is "thick" rather than "thin," defined by its historical connections and relationships…. For Gilligan, care morality is about the particular agent's caring for and about the particular friend or child with whom she has come to have this particular relationship. Morality is not only about how the impersonal "one" is meant to act toward the impersonal "other."²²

The same is true, I hold, for the early confessionals. Moral discernment in the casuistic tradition is concerned with relationships and circumstances. Neither the penitent nor the wronged person is generalizable in the confessional; indeed, the act of penance, especially in the early church, coincided with the discernment of particular circumstances and relationships. Morality, both in the confessional and in an ethics of care, is not a matter of the individual obeying laws or principles generated solely via rationality; rather, in both programs each person is seen, as Blum suggests of Gilligan, "as approaching the world of action bound by ties and relationships (friend, colleague, parent, child) that confront her as, at least to some extent, givens." ²³

²¹ Joan Tronto, "Beyond Gender Difference to a Theory of Care," Signs: Journal of Women and Culture in Society, 12 (1987), pp. 644-663.
²² Lawrence Blum, "Gilligan and Kohlberg: Implications for Moral Theory," Ethics, 98 (1988), p. 474.
²³ Ibid., p. 475. Seyla Benhabib, in her article "The Generalized and the Concrete Other: The Kohlberg-Gilligan Controversy and Feminist Theory," (in Feminism as Critique, edited

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As the late medieval moralists became more and more absorbed in articulating precise, legal cases in the penitentials, the practice of the confessional shifted, in Gilligan's terms, from an ethical system based on a balance between justice and care to one that was totally invested in a law-based sense of justice. By the sixteenth century, casuistry was faltering because scholastic morality, as with Gilligan's male voice, had begun to be calculated on mathematical and deductive bases. By the end of the seventeenth century, casuistry had virtually disappeared, precisely because it had overemphasized an ethic of legalized justice and had simultaneously drifted away from attending to the relationships, connections, and circumstances incumbent on each individual case.

"We place too much emphasis on abstract and deductive argument, and not enough of our moral life goes into examining the contexts and relationships that surround our ethical decisions. "

As Jonsen and Toulmin's book signifies, however, the casuistic method is once again under consideration among moral theologians, moral philosophers, and Christian ethicists alike. Similar concerns regarding relationality and justice are appearing in the rather unrelated fields of feminist theory, women's studies, and developmental psychology. We place too much emphasis on abstract and deductive argument, and not enough of our moral life goes into examining the contexts and relationships that surround our ethical decisions. These new discourses demonstrate that we must come to a point where context is routinely integrated into abstraction, where care is part of what justice means.

A NEW MODEL FOR ETHICAL THINKING

Sometime, let us say, in 1993, perhaps in North Carolina, a young woman who finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy will go to her pastor to talk about her options. There are no formal penitential books to guide today's Protestant clergy, but whether the minister is Methodist or Presbyterian, high church or evangelical, young or old, male or female, chances are very high that this minister's response will fall into one of two categories. If he is "pro-choice" (meaning that personally he believes that every woman has a right to choose what happens to her own body), he will probably ask the woman with the unwanted pregnancy what she wants or what she is called to do in her heart. If she suggests that she might be

by Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 19871) makes a similar point by arguing that the generalized, abstract subject theorized by Rawlsian liberalism is at best a myth, and at worst, demographically limited to white, propertied males.

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considering abortion, this minister may help this woman find a clinic, procure the money if necessary, and assure her that her choice is both moral and appropriate. If the minister is, however, "pro-life" (meaning she is personally against abortion because every fetus has a right to live), she will probably discourage the woman from having an abortion, and, if the woman is willing, perhaps help her find a way to slip out of town for a while into some sort of "situation" where the woman can bear the child alone and in peace. Later, the minister may help to place the baby with an appropriate Christian family. In both scenarios, the ministers will respect the woman's desire for confidentiality. No questions will be asked about the father, no questions will be asked about the circumstances under which the woman became pregnant. To ask such questions, both ministers would agree, would be to invade this woman's privacy. In either scenario, no one in the church will likely know even that this woman is, or was, pregnant.

In both of these scenarios, the pregnant woman is treated as an individual without a history, without relationships, without a context. Her decision will be made on what she feels is personally right or wrong for her, or if her minister is able to exert his or her influence, on an abstract principle about when life begins. Both ministers have learned to respect this woman's privacy and integrity, and even though they sense she may be crying out for support, for guidance, for her loved ones to tell her what to do, each of these ministers can only offer so much, and can only push so far before they bump up against this woman's autonomy and individuality. However, considering the above discussion regarding casuistry and caring ethics, I suggest that, in treating this woman as an isolated and abstract individual, we rob her of her connections, relationships, and community. By making recommendations to her based on the maxims we hold about life's beginnings, we consider very little about how this decision will affect her life, her circumstances. Indeed, in the way this scene is played out in everyday life in Protestant churches all across America, we do not even ask these women who they are or how they got into this situation.

The ethical methods of both casuistry and caring can be applied to this case in a way that will produce a more healthy and faithful response to this woman's situation. Specific ways can be suggested that help us shift this case and its outcome from an ethics based on abstract individuals, abstract principles, and laws into a resolution based on a balance between an ethics of justice and an ethics of care. We can find a way to move beyond the pro-life versus pro-choice impasse into a territory where these women and the communities of which they are part can function collectively to make the best decision possible for each case.

First, we must recognize that no woman creates a baby by herself. Even if she is completely isolated in this world, at least one other person participated in this act. Understanding that the politics surrounding sexual intercourse can be extremely complicated and painful, our impulse as Christian ministers very often obstructs us from asking too many

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questions about the father and inseminator. It's not our business, we tell ourselves, and, if the woman reports that the father "isn't in the picture," we don't push further. I suggest, however, that getting the father involved should be our first concern. Many feminist authors writing about abortion decry the state of affairs where a man gets a woman pregnant and just walks away. These feminists speak from both sides of the debate and point out that "a woman's right to choose" all too often becomes "a man's right to use." In the Christian church, this is unacceptable. If two people were to receive an award or had committed a crime, it would be neither fair nor honest to honor or punish only one. The church's first priority should attempt to remedy those situations where unwanted pregnancy is addressed only as a woman's private problem. Precisely because we are the Christian church-with an existing network for thinking and teaching about ethical behavior-we have the potential to become a model community, holding men responsible for their part in the reproductive act.

Thus, when a woman comes to a minister for help or guidance with her unwanted pregnancy, we must inquire about the most glaring circumstance of the situation: the father. Pastors should be taught in seminary that her or his responsibility, as pastor, is to bring the man into the situation. If the man is a member of any other Christian church, the man's

". . . feminists … point out that 'a woman's tight to choose'all too often becomes 'a man's right to use. . ."

pastor should be contacted and both should be invited to and encouraged to attend a discussion. By training ministers to respond this way, we could significantly change the script where abortion is chosen simply for the convenience of the male. ²⁴

Although it may seem idealistic, I suggest that, as long as we continue to train people for the Christian ministry in centralized locations, it would be very possible to implement this plan in churches through the education of pastors. How do we train clergy to deal with unwanted pregnancy and abortion now? In seminary classes, they may be subject to pro-choice or pro-life arguments; in either case, they may only accept or agree with the line of reasoning to which they already subscribe. The implicit message clergy get is to follow one's political convictions without intruding on a woman's privacy. In most seminaries, that is the extent of ministerial

²⁴ In some instances, it won't be so easy to get the man involved. For example, perhaps the woman doesn't know who the father is, or perhaps he doesn't go to any church and, therefore, he may have no community willing to hold him accountable. These are difficult situations, and I can offer no foolproof remedy that will guarantee the father's involvement. I can suggest, however, that, if many of our churches began to deal more realistically and effectively with situations of unwanted pregnancy, the church itself may come to play a more vital role in the life of young people today.

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training on the issue. In light of an ethic of care, this training is patently unacceptable.

Second, we must understand that what these two people have created, wanted or unwanted, belongs not only to them but also to the church. Congregations must understand that people with unwanted pregnancies are making choices about someone who, in a very real sense, belongs to the entire congregration. If the baby is to be born, it will be baptized into the community and will become part of each member's life. If the fetus is aborted, that spot will be filled only by a hole, by a lack of relationship and love in the life of every member. Although this congregation cannot demand that this woman either have an abortion or have a baby, she (and the father) owe the congregation a conversation explaining why they have made the choices they have. The congregation, then, must respond to either that baby or that empty space by recognizing their complicity in the structuring of a world where such a decision was made.

Rather than blaming the woman for her choice of abortion, or the father for his part, I suggest that we restructure the event so that the congregation members hold themselves responsible for the things that block this woman from having a child. In meetings and through negotiations with the pastor, the congregation should attempt to remove the

"Whatever any woman would lose for carrying her baby to term should be redressed and supplied by her church. "

obstacles that keep this woman or this couple from having this baby. If the woman is afraid that she will be expelled from her high school or Christian college or will lose her scholarship if the university finds out she is pregnant, the church should picket the school until policy is changed. If the woman is afraid she will lose her job, the parish should exert pressure on that workplace to change its rules and should strive to provide the woman with an equivalent job. If the woman is afraid to raise the baby, the congregation should step in and offer anything that is needed, including housing, support, even another family to raise the baby. Even if a woman decides that she must choose abortion, the congregation should still attempt to make the world a safer place for her to have a baby, because in so doing, the world might be made safer for the next woman with an unwanted pregnancy in that community. Whatever any woman would lose for carrying her baby to term should be redressed and supplied by her church.

Congregations can respond this way only if they understand that what is growing inside that woman's body is part of the life of the congregation. The sacrifices that one could and would make for one's own children should be made for this woman and her child. If we are really functioning as church, we are indeed part of one another; we are one church family;

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we are one body of Christ. Church people, in attempting to respect each other's privacy, have drifted from this commitment to solidarity. And in the individualistic, autonomous church we have inherited, single women with unwanted pregnancies are the ones most often left alone, abandoned.

This model resonates with both casuistry and an ethics of caring. An emphasis is placed on the community, on relationships and on context. The practice of casuistry in the confessional stands in, at least initially, for public confession before the entire community. Even well into the Middle Ages, decisions about correlative penances were not made in private but were constitutive of a large public debate, which depended on the community of the church. In the work of Carol Gilligan, community functions in a less abstract way. While there is no theorization of particular communities such as "church," each person is understood, in Gilligan's model, to be deeply and inextricably embedded in a particular community. Each person is a husband or wife to someone, a child to someone else, a parent, perhaps, to others. Each person has friends and acquaintances and correlative responsibilities to those relationships. "Knowing what to do" in Gilligan's model involves understanding and evaluating the intricacies of these relationships. The model I have sug-

"A whole new church could emerge as a result of reminding pastors that no woman gets pregnant by herself."

gested for a contemporary church dealing with an unwanted pregnancy reflects both of these community-oriented insights. The pastor, by refusing to help this woman as an isolated individual, represents the larger community and eventually leads her to that community. The community members state their claim on and their responsibilities toward this woman and, in so doing, recognize and honor the role that she and her baby have in their life. The kinds of relationships discussed by Gilligan become a source of support in this church rather than things from which to hide.

Both casuistry and caring hold that rules and maxims are important to the moral life, and both, therefore, avoid slipping into any one of the various brands of relativism or emotivism. However, casuistry and caring avoid the counterbalanced legalism associated with rules and maxims by understanding that every case happens in a context. In both models, primary attention is paid to that context in a way that allows us to compensate for the complications of everyday life. Such flexibility is present in the model I have offered. While we in any particular church may be guided by our beliefs that abortion is either wrong or right, we also acknowledge that morality must be determined on a case by case analysis. Moreover, it is our responsibility, as the church, to change these circum-

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stances and contexts so that the next unwanted pregnancy can be negotiated differently. Here, ultimate attention is paid not to rules but to the many everyday realities that surround each case. A whole new church could emerge as a result of reminding pastors that no woman gets pregnant by herself and having those pastors remind their congregations that each member of that church looses something with every abortion. Rather than a community that needs protection from the presence of unwanted pregnancy, the church could become a place where women come to find solidarity, community, support, and open arms for themselves and their unborn children.