"I know I murdered the life within me."

Yesterday, Mere Comments described an article in the liberal Jewish Monthly Tikkun written by Donna Schaper. Donna Schaper is a 58-year-old senior minister at Judson Memorial Church in New York City who also speaks and writes on the side. In her article she writes about her abortion 19 years ago. Mere Comments only posts a portion of her article but another version of the article (probably a very close version) was printed in the Hartford Courant in February of this year and is available online at the blog of A Classical Presbyterian. Her article is quite disturbing, to say the least.

Schaper outrightly admits that she believes "abortion is a form of murder," named her unborn child "Alma" and was "terribly troubled." Yet claims she was "behaving as an adult" because she made a choice. She also claims that women who make the choice to have an abortion are "positive moral forces in history." While recommending abstinence to unmarried people in countries struggling with AIDS is "immoral to its core."

Her article is difficult to comment on because its almost entirely nonsensical. Donna Schaper describes her actions as "murder" yet provides virtually no defense for them except to compare her actions to just war theory without providing any reasoning behind that comparison.

I also took the time to review some of Schaper's sermons and other writings available online. What I found was a deep contrast in how she views the violence of her abortion compared to the violence in other circumstances.

In her essay on her abortion Schaper writes, "I did what I think men do all the time when they take us to war: They choose violence because, although they believe it is bad, it is still better than the alternatives."

Yet during after the Columbine shootings she wrote, "Violence wins battles it should never even be allowed to have. We let it. And we cannot let it. We can withdraw permission from the myth that violence solves things. It doesn't. It only destroys things."

In a sermon on June 25 of this year, she writes, "Violence doesn't solve things. Violence comes from excessive absurdist masculinity. That is the horse and the carriage in this race. Some men, and many women too, are protecting the old way of being a guy. It's over, but they don't know it yet."

I'm left to wonder how the violence of abortion which "doesn't solve things" and is from "excessive absurdist masculinity" makes women who choose abortions a "positive moral force in history" simply because they made a choice. Believing that you murdered your child yet defending your actions (and not apologizing for them) with such poor reasons must be most difficult indeed.