CBF-FUNDED ORGANIZATION ADVOCATES  EXTREME PRO-ABORTION POSITIONS

Is abortion morally wrong?  Should taxpayers be forced to fund elective abortions?  Are parental notification or parental consent laws harmful to teenage girls?  Is the use of terms like “baby” or “child” or “human being” instead of “embryo” or “fetus” pro-life propaganda?  Does the state have a right to restrict the number of  childbirths as in China? 

The Missouri Baptist Laymen’s Association (MBLA) has charged the Center for Christian Ethics At Baylor University with using its ethics journal, Christian Ethics Today, to advocate extreme pro-abortion positions.  The Center for Christian Ethics, which receives funding from the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, includes on its eight member board of trustees Daniel Vestal, the CBF’s top executive officer, and Patricia Ayres, a former CBF moderator. 

According to Roger Moran, research director for the MBLA: “The same theological liberalism that divided Southern Baptists and gave rise to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, has also led the SBC and CBF down distinctly different paths in regard to the issue of abortion.  The most recent example is the CBF-funded Center for Christian Ethics (CCE).”   

The CCE is headed by Foy Valentine, a key figure within the Southern Baptist “moderate” movement.  For 28 years, Valentine served as  executive director of the SBC’s Christian Life Commission.  According to Moran, Valentine has long been involved in the pro-abortion movement.  In 1978, while serving as executive director of the CLC, Valentine was invited by the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights (RCAR) to become a “national sponsor” of RCAR, at which time he accepted.  Valentine had already signed an RCAR document in 1977 entitled A Call to Concern, which stated that those signing the document viewed “campaign[s] to enact religiously-based anti-abortion commitments into law…as a serious threat to religious liberty and freedom of conscience.”  (emphasis ours) 

The RCAR document also supported federal funding for abortions, a position taken by Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) in 1978, another staunch pro-abortion organization that began advocating abortion rights in the mid 1960’s.  Valentine served as an AU trustee for many years and from 1989 to 1993 served as president.  Numerous CBF leaders have served on AU’s governing board and its current president, C. Welton Gaddy, is a member of the CBF’s Coordinating Council.            

Moran further noted: “Valentine’s involvement with pro-abortion religious left activists also includes his current position on the board of directors of The Interfaith Alliance (TIA), where four members of the TIA board signed a 1996 RCAR letter supporting President Clinton’s veto of the bill that would have banned the partial-birth abortion procedure.”  Serving with Valentine on the TIA board is CBF Coordinating Council member David Currie.  Founded in 1994, TIA’s first executive director, Jill Hanauer, served as the political action director for the National Abortion Rights Action League before joining TIA.   

In the December, 1997 issue of the CBF-funded CCE ethics journal, in an article entitled “Abortion And Public Policy,” author John M. Swomley begins by stating: “My purpose in this article is to demonstrate that abortion per se is not morally wrong…”  Presenting the extreme “pro-choice” position, Swomley makes such statements as:  “The embryo is not a child. It is not a baby.  It is not yet a human being.  The use of the term ‘baby’ or ‘child’ or ‘human being’ to describe an embryo or fetus is a propaganda device.”  “When does human life begin?’  The Bible’s clear answer is that human life begins at birth with breathing.” “There is no moral right to tell a woman, married or unmarried, that she must become or remain pregnant against her will.  Compulsory pregnancy is a form of slavery.” (emphasis ours) 

According to Swomley, any legislation that would restrict or inhibit the “right” to an abortion, causes women to “experience violence in our macho or male-dominated society.”  One such “covert type” of violence, he notes, is “frequently hidden behind the myth that motherhood and care of children defines a woman’s role.”  Regarding taxpayer funding of abortions, Swomley writes:

“There is violence also in the idea embodied in some legislation that a poor woman may have a publicly funded abortion only if the pregnancy endangers her life.  This means that any damage to a woman’s health short of death is ‘acceptable’ violence; suffering brought by exacerbation of existing health problems such as diabetes or heart disease and the shortening of her life thereby are ‘acceptable’ violence.  The imperiling of a woman’s mental health is also a type of violence.”  

Continuing his argument of violence toward women, Swomley attacks parental notification and consent laws: “Violence occurs in the requirement of parental notification by teenagers before they can get an abortion.”  He further notes: “So the insistence on laws requiring parental consent is a form of violence against young women.” 

Equating legislative remedies regarding abortion to “compulsory pregnancy,” Swomley argues that restricting access to abortion would force women to serve as surrogate mothers without pay:  

“In effect this would mean that a woman who does not want a child, but who becomes pregnant from rape, incest, failed contraception, or ignorance about her reproductive processes, must serve as a surrogate mother without pay for the benefit of another person or couple, since the major proposed alternative to abortion is adoption.  Forcing women to bear children they do not want and cannot support or care for, and then go through the trauma of giving them away is a form of violence.” 

Swomley also argues for the right of governments to restrict the number of childbirths: “A community following a devastating war or a plague that had virtually destroyed all human life might expect a pregnant woman to bear the child.  By the same logic, any community, whether a family or a state, which already had more people than it could furnish with food and water, could restrict the number of childbirths.  There are already children dying by the thousands in some parts of the world because of too little water and food and no foreseeable prospect of change.  What is the inherent right of thousands of fetuses to be born if they will jeopardize the existence of those already born.?”   

Though Swomley’s article represents the extreme “pro-choice” point of view, he also represents the kind of religious leaders CBF-related organizations have chosen as their allies.  A brief look at Swomley reveals that his credentials are as lengthy as they are liberal.  They include:

·        Professor Emeritus of Christian Ethics, St. Paul School of Theology, Kansas City, MO.

·        Secretary of the national board of directors of the ACLU.

·        Longtime chairman of the ACLU’s national church/state committee.

·        Member of the Committee on Civil and Religious Liberty of the National Council of Churches. 

·        President of Americans for Religious Liberty (ARL).  (The executive director of ARL is  Edd Doerr, who also serves as president of the American Humanist Association and a former 16 year staff member at Americans United.  Former Baptist Joint Committee executive director James E. Wood Jr. serves on the board of ARL.) 

·        Former trustee at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. 

·        Board of Directors of The Interfaith Alliance.

·        Received the 1985 Humanist Pioneer Award from the American Humanist Association.

·        Writes a monthly column in the Humanist magazine. 

·        Serves as an associate editor of Human Quest (The Churchman), a “journal of religious humanism.”

·        Serves as a contributing editor to Christian Social Action, an official magazine of the United Methodist Church.   

·        Long-time leader of the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights (now called the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Rights).  Swomley was a signer of an April, 1996 RCAR letter to President Clinton and Congress supporting the partial-birth abortion procedure.  ARL president Edd Doerr is recent past vice president of RCAR.  Former CBF moderator John H. Hewett became RCAR’s Kentucky state coordinator in 1979.  

·        Conference speaker at the 1981 annual conference of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs.  (BJC has reprinted articles by Swomley in their newsletter) 

·        Conference speaker at the 1980 annual seminar of the Christian Life Commission under the leadership of Foy Valentine. 

·        Advisory board member of Planned Parenthood of Greater Kansas City, MO. 

According to Moran: “Leadership within the CBF (and CBF-related organizations like the Center for Christian Ethics, the Baptist Joint Committee and Americans United) have played both sides of the same coin.  Not only have they aligned themselves with abortion rights advocates from the Religious Left, but with equal fervor have stood against conservative Christian organizations advocating the pro-life position.” 

In 1995, the Center for Christian Ethics hosted a discussion entitled “Countering the Radical Religious Right.”  A statement was issued which states in part: “We are alarmed because the Radical Religious Right poses significant dangers to our churches, our political system, and our American way of life.”

According to the CCE, a position-paper entitled “Countering the Radical Religious Right,” written by CCE trustee John Leland Berg, (currently an employee of the National Education Association) “was the basic position-paper document in hand when the Center for Christian Ethics convened for the purpose of considering the current challenge of the Radical Religious Right.”  According to this paper: “The Radical Religious Right seeks a church-dominated society where; (1) abortion is outlawed; (2) homosexuality is returned to the closet; (3) secular humanists and other liberals are run out of government, public education and the media.”  Those identified by the CCE position-paper as the “Radical Religious Right” were Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, and D. James Kennedy. 

In regard to late-term abortions, the CCE paper criticizes efforts on the part of conservative pro-life Christians to pass “legislation outlawing certain abortion procedures used primarily in late-term abortions,” which they note, “would be the first step toward outlawing all abortions.”   

Those signing the CCE statement opposing the “Radical Religious Right” included three CBF moderators; both CBF coordinators (Daniel Vestal and Cecil Sherman); and executive directors of the Baptist Joint Committee and Americans United. 

According to Kerry Messer, president of MBLA: “The extreme pro-abortion article by Dr. Swomley in the CBF-funded CCE ethics journal is just one more example of the clear difference between the charted courses of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.”  Messer further noted: “The willingness of top CBF leadership to condemn conservative, pro-life Christian leaders like James Dobson while at the same time aligning themselves with pro-abortion advocates of the Religious/Political Left demonstrates clearly the degree to which liberalism has influenced the leadership ranks of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.”  

MBLA research director Roger Moran noted: “It is the view of the Missouri Baptist Laymen’s Association that the label of ‘Radical’ belongs not to those who have stood for the right to life of those not yet born, but to those who would argue that abortion is morally acceptable; that taxpayers should be forced to pay for elective abortions; that parents should have no knowledge or say-so in their daughter’s decision to have an abortion; that  terms like ‘baby’ and ‘child’ represent pro-life propaganda; and that China’s one-child abortion policy is somehow justifiable.”  

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