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- THE WEEK, Page 36SOCIETYPro-Choice Pullback
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- Like other mainstream Protestants, the Presbyterians rethink
- abortion
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- Abortion is no longer a "Catholic issue" in the U.S. -- if
- it ever was. Last September the biggest Lutheran body adopted a
- moderate pro-life policy. Two months ago, the Southern Baptist
- Convention filed its first joint Supreme Court brief alongside
- Catholics, urging abolition of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision
- that legalized abortion. The United Methodist Church almost
- pulled out of a pro-choice lobby it helped establish.
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- Then, last week, the Presbyterian Church (membership: 2.8
- million) expressed second thoughts about the pro-choice stand
- it took even before the Supreme Court did. Presbyterian
- delegates in Milwaukee said secular law should still allow open
- access to the procedure. But in terms of personal morality, they
- rejected abortion for economic reasons and endorsed it only for
- a grave threat to a mother's physical or mental health, severe
- physical or mental defect in a fetus, rape or incest. The new
- policy also acknowledges that many Presbyterians see each life
- in the womb as "created for a purpose and belonging to God."
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