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GA06051
Health Issues Committee rejects overture to ban church financial support on either side of abortion issue
By Mike Ferguson
BIRMINGHAM, June 17 * The Health Issues committee voted down an overture Saturday that would have banned the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) from giving financial support to groups on either side of the abortion issue.
Late Friday night, the committee approved by a margin of 30-24 another overture on late-term pregnancy that calls for Presbyterians to encourage expectant mothers to keep their babies alive when late-term pregnancies must be terminated. However, the committee was reconsidering its position on that overture Saturday evening, too late for this story.
The late-term pregnancy overture, number 10-01, calls on Presbyterian churches "to provide pastoral and tangible support to women in problem pregnancies and to surround these families with a community of care. We affirm adoption as a provision for women who deliver children they are not able to care for, and ask our churches to assist in seeking loving, Christian, adoptive families."
The Rev. Donna Marsh of National Capital Presbytery said the proposal "makes logical theological common sense. This overture talks about viable babies * that's all. There are no muddy issues about the beginning of life. The basic moral guidance is to have both mother and baby live. You can be pro-choice and vote for what we're seeing here. It's both pastoral and loving."
But the Rev. Jean Holmes of Newton Presbytery said the overture's wording did not give women credit for having "minds of their own."
"I don't believe that for a minute," she said. "Somebody has to speak for what we do with our bodies, and I beg you to think about what a step backward this is."
The proposed ban on financial support for abortion-advocacy groups went down to a 40-13 defeat, with two commissioners abstaining. Jim Powers of Beaver-Butler Presbytery, advocate for the overture, called it a position-neutral proposal "that calls for an end to a contentious practice that angers many in our denomination."
"It may violate the hearts of many of our members when we oppose things like the appointment of pro-life judges and abstinence education," he said. "This would return us to a Presbyterian template of self-governance, and restore trust and faith for our 2.3 million members."
Katy Launius, a Youth Advisory Delegate from Milwaukee Presbytery, said she worried such a step would "take away from discussions in our congregations, because it would take away our national voice."
A third overture on abortion from the Presbytery of Mississippi would have put the church on record as opposing the practice of abortion while extending the love of Christ to those who have "suffered its practice."
The session at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Mississippi, where the overture originated, spent months working on and studying the proposal before making it, advocate John Henegan said. "We fully believe God knows us before we are born," he told commissioners. "God is inclusive and wants us to include people who don’t have a voice."
Instead of adopting that overture, the committee offered a substitute, commending the Presbytery of Mississippi for its work of group discernment and recommending that each presbytery create a task force to replicate the church's process of prayer and study. That alternative passed 35-20.
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