The Norwegian bishop Anne Lise Ådnøy formulated a prayer for the preservation of the abortion law in the United States. The prayer evoked fierce reactions.
On Wednesday, the Stavanger bishop posted a message on her Facebook page about the ongoing tug-of-war over abortion in the United States. “A cold wind is blowing over the US states. The right to self-determined abortion may disappear or be severely restricted. (…) How can a society play women's life 50 years back?” asked the bishop before concluding the speech with a prayer: “Good God, you who created women in your image. Makes it possible for American women who become involuntarily pregnant to terminate their pregnancies within a legal, safe framework. Amen.”
Shocking
Therese Egebakken, a diocesan council member in Stavanger, thinks the prayer proposal is shocking. “I especially think that the bishop left out the unborn life in his prayer. The child's perspective is completely gone. But abortion is always about at least two lives. Prayer is at least as important for the unborn life.”
Egebakken gets support from Sofie Braut, a former member of the Stavanger diocesan council and associate professor at Tryggheim high school. “This was a sad contrast to the prayer we hear in the church. There we ask God to protect life from conception to the end”, she says to the Christian Norwegian daily Dagen.
Therese Utgård Aas, who, in addition to being a doctor, sits on the Church Council, expresses her gratitude to the bishop. “I think it was very brave. This is the first time I have seen such a prayer from a bishop in Norway”, says Aas to the Christian Norwegian daily Vårt Land.
Necessary evil
In hindsight, Ådnøy wonders if it was right of her to formulate herself as she did. “Maybe I should include “protection of the foetus” in the prayer, but it was a sincere prayer that one should not remove the right to legal abortion”, she says to Vårt Land.
The bishop tells Dagen that she was aware that such a move would provoke reactions. She says that she fears illegal abortions in the States. Ådnøy states that she understands the criticism, but “we live in a world where a lack of access to safe abortions puts women in a situation that creates a lot of suffering.” She adds that she sees abortion as something that, in some situations, is a necessary evil. “We accept the military, and they sometimes have to take lives. I have the same attitude to the abortion law as I have to the military.”
