Is abortion a woman's right to choose or is it ungodly?

It would be so easy to turn away from this question. There are, after all, no easy answers-not for women who actually have to make the choice, at least-and others have already given their opinions. But I'm not sure that enough has been said here.

There are too many assumptions about abortion. Something about the question here suggests some of it: "a woman's right to choose or ungodly," as though (1) the choice is no big deal and (2) it's an either or situation. We don't live in a world with a single truth we all agree upon or a single religion to decide what is ungodly for all or not.

The vast majority of pro-life protesters are Christian. We know this due to their signs at protest marches, from polls in the media, from the vocal stance of some of the denominations such as the Catholics and the Mormons. And yet, that does not mean that the majority of pro-choice protesters (or those who believe in a woman's right to choose but don't march in picket lines) are agnostic or atheist. The Catholic Church has long been divided on the subjects of birth control and abortion. Meanwhile, the Episcopalians, Methodists, Quakers, Unitarian Universalists and members of the United Church of Christ are known to be pro-choice. Know to be-just as faithful Catholics can find that they differ, surely there are members of these churches who do as well.

The Bible itself says little to nothing about abortion, depending on how one sees it. Exodus 21:22-25, in some versions, reads: "If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she has a miscarriage but there is no serious injury, the offender must b e fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."

Leaving aside complaints of how the woman is pretty much just a piece of property for another day, pro-choicers have latched on to this-the only passage seemingly about (accidental) abortion-to show that the Bible does not treat it as some great sin. Pro-lifers come back with the idea that this is a mistranslation and the passage isn't about a miscarriage but a live birth.

And since this obscure passage is in the Old Testament, what do Jews think about abortion? Just as Adam wasn't actually a person until God breathed life into him, an embryo or fetus isn't considered a person by Jewish law. Once the head is delivered, the baby becomes a person. It only becomes more complicated from there, throwing out the simplistic division between pro-life and pro-choice.

For instance, abortions aren't just allowed in case of medical distress for the mother, they are ordered by Jewish law-the potential life sacrificed to save the actual life. However, this does not mean that the fetus has no worth as a pre-human. In fact, abortions are prohibited on the grounds of fetal imperfections. They are not necessarily had only for medical reasons, though, any more than in the rest of the population. Complicated.

And beyond what the religious law says, Jews still find themselves following their hearts, some become pro-choice and others pro-life.

Muslim law, across the various schools, permits abortion, in the case where the pregnancy puts the mother's life in danger. Some schools of thought/schools of law allow no other circumstance for abortion while others allow it within a certain time period in the case of rape.

So there is no consensus from the religions of the Book as to whether or not abortion is ungodly. And if it is, what does that have to do with everyone else? It's bad enough to interfere with an individual and her relationship with God, but how can you put your religious beliefs on others?

The first time I really sat and considered abortion seriously was in my early teens. The subject came up, and everyone on the bus (no, I don't know why this came up on my school bus, but it did) gave an opinion. The girl next to me expressed that not only was her religion against abortion, but if it weren't, she would not be there to have the conversation. Something had gone terribly wrong while her mother was pregnant with her and the doctors gave her slim chance to live if she did not abort. Because of her religion, she refused.

Mother and child both survived, thankfully. But rather than being an anti-abortion lesson for me, that served as a lesson of choice. Her mother had not been forced into an abortion, but neither should someone be forced not to have one.

The next time abortion became a real thing to me rather than a right to argue about was a few years later. I was best friends with a boy when his girlfriend got pregnant. We were fourteen years old. I stayed on the phone with him for hours on the day her parents took her for the procedure. We talked about how sorry he was that this had happened, how he couldn't bear to live knowing he had a baby out there somewhere if they had chosen adoption, but he didn't think he would be able to bear the abortion either. I cannot even begin to express his anguish.

And the anguish was his, and hers, and I imagine that her Catholic parents were also in anguish over what they felt they had to do for their child. Who else should have a right to toss in an opinion? It was their suffering, their relationships with God, and ultimately her body and her right to choose.

Abortion should be safe, legal, and hopefully rare. The religious judgments are best left to the Deity involved.