http://www.mormonsocialscience.org/index.php?q=node/13
“Q: Are there statistics on therapeutic abortion within the Mormon population?”

“I had a minute to look at some abortion statistics in the report by the Utah Department of Health. In the 1999 report the rate of abortions is given per 1000 live births. The state rate is 68.3/1000, but the rate varies substantially by county. The highest rate, 201.8, occurred in Summit county, which contains Park City, and has a high proportion of non LDS. The lowest rate for a large urban county was in Utah county with about 80% LDS. The rate was 24.8. The other urban counties, Salt Lake, Davis, and Weber with LDS populations in the 60% to 70% range had rates of 115.3, 50.8, and 83.2 respectively.”

The website referred to a Tim Heaton article in Dialogue 32:4 p. 34

In the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, women reported that 13.5 percent of their pregnancies ended in induced abortion. The comparable figure for Mormon women was 5.2 percent.

http://content.lib.utah.edu/cgi-bin/docviewer.exe?CISOROOT=/dialogue&CISOPTR=8057

However those numbers look a little suspect given the 13.5 percent number should be more like 25 % . I hear estimates that under-reporting bias gives around 60% who have committed an abortion will actually admit to it in a survey.

It’s important to remember that the LDS view on abortion we’re discussing here is not a view on when abortion should be legal or not. Its a view on when abortion should be grounds for ecclesiastical sanction.*

*Outside of the exceptions, abortion can be grounds for excommunication and other ecclesiastical penalties. Abortion is one of the few things, along with murder and, I think, adultery that requires higher ecclesiastical approval before the guilty party can be baptized.

That was a very good comment and I have been pondering a long the lines in my own personal belief formation. I do tend to think even if a revelation was received that was to affirm that a spirit entered a body at conception and it was permanently attached to that body of cells, it would make no difference as to the Mormon church’s official policy. Such a revelation, though, might be valuable for an individual decision maker, giving them an additional reason not to go through with an abortion.

However, we already have Elder Nelson saying that when the spirit enters the body is irrelevant. I think Oaks’ argument stands even if abortion is a form of killing with the same temporal consequences as any other killing (outside the womb). I think some close parallels can be found (they may have to add on some conjectural elements to mirror the same situations) to Mormon exceptions outside the womb and I would think the counsel to seek for spiritual guidance would be equally applicable to resolve tough moral dilemmas.

But back to speculation, in addition to your own possibilities I see several more. I suppose there is some degree of family pre-assignment in the pre-existance, but I wouldn’t carry this to the extent that everything is pre-determined without any flexibility. It may be that a spirit body’s traits are going to be best matched by a certain genetic traits. It maybe that the optimal solution for an aborted child is to be reassigned another body to wait until the next body is available from the same set of parents is available. To me, a couple that welcomes additional spirits into the world or perhaps provides an opportunity for a previously wronged spirit to do so, is taking a very real repentance step. It would be a beautiful thing for a spirit to forgive his parents and be willing to help them have another chance.

But suppose a spirit is permanently attached to a body. LDS thought allows that an infant that dies prematurely might be raised to maturity in the millennial conditions on Earth. If this is also the case for pre-born infants, than it may also be possible that a “repentance” can be affected by the parents by participating under such conditions.

I suppose the key to making either of the scenarios work is how much the infant is willing to forgive his/her natural parents and how willing he/she is to retain the same eternal family in which eternal consequences will be intricately linked. Given that there may be choices involved from the other side, it may be unhelpful to deliver a revelation that will effect mortal behaviour either way, than our understanding already does.

The idea is that sex is primarily meant to allow married couples to “provide physical bodies” for some finite number of spirits waiting in heaven for their shot at mortality.

The question is whether these waiting spirit children get another shot at mortality if “their fetus” is terminated.

The question of when the spirit unites with the flesh is probably important here. If the spirit irrevocably and fully unites with the fetus upon conception, then you are definitely depriving a distinct spirit person from a life in that particular body.

Or perhaps there is no union until birth (this does not seem to be the view of most LDS commentary). If this is the case, the fetus is something less than a full human and the spirit individual is just waiting in heaven for the next available birth body to hop aboard.

Or maybe the connection of spirit body and physical body is tenuous until actual birth. The Book of Mormon has the voice of Christ speaking to Nephi in a vision saying “tomorrow come I into the world.” Then “tomorrow,” Christ was indeed born. Who was talking? Was it Christ himself speaking as a spirit from heaven to Nephi while not actually inhabiting Mary’s womb in spirit? Was the fetus in Mary’s womb speaking with Nephi? Or was Christ’s spirit commuting back and forth between fetus and heaven, right up until birth? Or was it simply God the father speaking for Christ, or some other authorized messenger?

If the connection between spirit and flesh is either non-existent or tenuous, or intermittent before birth, then Elder Oakes analysis based on personal accountability, and not legal murder, makes sense. Because it’s not exactly murder, just something similar to it. But it is still possibly irresponsible, regardless.

But whichever the conclusion about spirit and body, I think many Mormons have an attitude of “better luck next time” when it comes to regarding the fate of an aborted birth. The idea being that the spirit being in question will have another shot at mortality when the fetus is carried to term by some other woman. You wait in line, and you get your turn.

Of course the idea of a finite number of spirits waiting to be born on earth creates additional moral dilemmas when combined with world birth patterns. Many people suffering in the third world would give almost anything for a chance to live in the US or Europe. If the mothers in the US and Europe are aborting a lot of fetuses, while mothers in Africa are carrying a LOT of fetuses to term, this means that lots of spirit children are stuck living mortality in the 3rd world instead of the nicer surroundings of the USA. It frames our society’s practice of legal abortion as yet another way in which the privileged citizens of the world exclude people from their “private club.”

Anyway, I think you can attack abortion from a variety of angles without actually calling it “murder.” It’s hard to tell how much Mormons have internalized the general Catholic reasoning against abortion. Perhaps we object to it on completely different grounds. But probably a little of both.

Some day I’m gonna mess with someone by putting a bunch of weird tags like “h1″ and “blockquote” and stuff in my comment and not closing them, muahahaha.

Matt, does your idea grant that the baby is a person, then? Having a definite position on that would make the rest of the discussion much easier.