First female Archbishop of Canterbury criticized for being pro-abortion

Dame Sarah Mullally was named the first female archbishop of Canterbury last week, and received immediate criticism over her apparent support for abortion.

Key Takeaways:

• The Church of England announced its first female archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally.

• Mullally has made comments that indicate support for abortion despite the Anglican Church's pro-life stance.

• She has been criticized for "scandalous views on abortion" and has also said she believes in "choice" for parents of preborn children with Trisomy 18.

The Details:

The Church of England has maintained a largely pro-life stance, believing that abortion should be allowed in cases related to the life of the mother. It would be expected, then, that any archbishop would have opinions on abortion in line with the Church's teachings. However, Mullally has indicated that she believes in "choice," and she has been criticized for "scandalous views on abortion."

Earlier this year, she said that "decriminalizing abortion can ... inadvertently undermine the value of unborn life..." and said, "Women facing unwanted pregnancies are confronted with the hardest of choices. Ultimately, they require compassion and care in order to support them fully in the heart-wrenching decision they must take." She called for "improvements to abortion care," noting the "inadequacies of the 'pills by post' assessments."

Undermining life

It isn't that legalized abortion might inadvertently undermine the value of unborn life as Mullally claims; the issue is that abortion at its core always undermines the value of human life. Creating a law that says an entire group of innocent, vulnerable human beings can legally be targeted for death completely rejects their value and denies their humanity.

In a 2012 blog post, Mullally wrote about Rick Santorum, at the time a former senator who was running for the US presidency. She wrote that Santorum's daughter, Bella, "has a genetic disorder which means that she will die early," and that an article she read regarding Santorum noted "that nearly 90% of all such children in the US would have been aborted..."

Bella has Trisomy 18, a condition which pro-abortion individuals tend to use to justify legalized abortion, specifically in the second and third trimesters. Families of children with the condition were outraged when a Texas woman, Kate Cox, made headlines and received support from the Biden administration over her fight to have a D&E (dismemberment) abortion to end the life of her daughter Chloe following a Trisomy 18 diagnosis. Cox was hailed as a hero for dismembering Chloe specifically because of her diagnosis.

Bella Santorum was not quite four years old at the time Mullally penned the blog post. She is now 17 years old, but Mullally believes that strictly because of Bella's diagnosis, her life was expendable and the choice to have killed her would have been a valid one.

Mullally says she will lead with "care for the vulnerable," but her comments about the life of Bella Santorum show otherwise.

"Enabling choice"

"I would suspect that I would describe my approach to this issue as pro choice rather than pro life although if it were a continuum I would be somewhere along it moving towards pro life when it relates to my choice and then enabling choice when it related to others – if that makes any sense," she wrote.

She implies here that she would never have an abortion, but it's fine for other people to kill their preborn children. If abortion is nothing more than a choice, and presumably a good and valid choice, then why would she feel the need to explain that it would never be a choice she would make?

Mullally is of the 'personally pro-life' stance, which has led to support for abortion even among self-proclaimed followers of Christ, who should stand firmly against the slaughtering of God's innocent children in the womb. Being 'personally pro-life' is an elitist stance that exploits God's gift of free will and leads others into the sin of abortion. As an appointed leader of Christians, Mullally has a responsibility to lead Christians away from sin, not into it.

The Bottom Line:

There are Christians who argue that abortion is acceptable because the Bible doesn't mention the word. But the Bible is pro-life from cover to cover. It condemns the killing of innocent people and gives preborn children their rightful place as members of the human family.

Christianity teaches that God became a human being at the moment of fertilization, not at Christ's birth, and Psalm 139, Isaiah 49, and Jeremiah 1:5 each speak to the humanity of children in the womb.