What became of the pro-life balance on abortion in the Presbyterian Church?

(Reprinted from Presbyterians Pro-Life NEWS, Spring 1999)

A reasonable person would expect that when a governing body, such as the General Assembly, adopts a policy in a particular subject area the policy would determine that governing body's actions and, further, that when a new policy is adopted, the new policy would replace any previous policy. A reasonable person would know that multiple policy statements over a period of years in the same subject area could only lead to confusion.

Instead of following this common sense practice with social witness policy, the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) determines current policy by building a compilation of selected portions of selected General Assembly actions over a selected time period. Some statements were adopted earlier and some were adopted later. Some were specifically actions to establish policy while others were resolutions adopted by one assembly without following a specified process for policy formation. Contradictory positions can be held simultaneously since no actions are accepted as superseding others. Making policy a process of cumulative actions means it is impossible for a General Assembly to effect a change in policy. Overture 99-43 proposes a solution by defining current policy.

The problem
While the General Assembly has guidelines for the development of social witness policy, it has no statement which explicitly identifies the policy currently in force. Guidelines for the development of Social Witness Policy have been in place since 1977. Because the guidelines do not state that the most current policy on a subject would be the one in force, General Assembly staff and entities have drawn selectively from both current and previous policies. Specifically, the current guidelines for Forming Social Policy do not expressly identify the most recently-adopted policy as the policy in force.

The context
Every year the General Assembly makes decisions intended to guide, direct, and influence the way in which we give witness and carry out our mission as Presbyterians. General Assembly staff and entities are bound by those decisions until or unless a subsequent Assembly issues new direction. Many actions of General Assemblies serve to enhance, reinforce, or elaborate on prior G.A. decisions. But it is also possible for the action of a subsequent assembly to reverse an action of a previous assembly. Without that possibility, errors of an Assembly could not be corrected.

There are two situations which require more than the action of a single Assembly to effect a change. Our Constitution carefully spells out requirements for changing the Constitution. They are different for the two parts (Part I: The Book of Confessions; Part II: The Book of Order), but both require action by the presbyteries as well as G.A.

The other case is social witness policy. The process for developing and changing social witness policy is not spelled out in the constitution. It is contained in guidelines adopted by the General Assembly in 1993. Those guidelines echo much of the material in a previous set of guidelines adopted in 1977.

New policies take into account former policies
The guidelines appear in the Manual of the General Assembly. Two of the four pages of guidelines are devoted to requirements for forming social witness policy. They include taking into account the tradition of past policy statements, and reporting relevant policy statements adopted by prior General Assemblies and the manner in which church and society have participated in the development of its policy.

This obligation to review past policy and to take it into account in any new policy development process is important. It assures the Church that former policies are known and taken into consideration.

We may assume that problems of some sort have prompted the request for a new policy: old policy may be out of date and unresponsive to new developments, for example, or the General Assembly may wish to significantly alter or reverse its stance on a subject.

Always open to reformation
The report accompanying the guidelines for social witness policy, called Why and How the Church Makes a Social Witness and Develops a Social Witness Policy, affirms that a social witness is always open to reformation. That affirmation is critical to the process. The affirmation makes it necessary to assure that the most current social witness policy is the policy that General Assembly staff and entities will carry out.

If the policies are permitted to be cumulative, and conflicting policies adopted by General Assemblies over decades are allowed to carry equal weight with the most recently adopted policy, it will be impossible for the Church to change its mind on any subject. The affirmation of the possibility of reformation means that new policy must be able to supplant previous policy.

Why should the General Assembly adopt overture 99-43?
When the General Assembly adopts policy statements on controversial issues it is especially important that it be clear about what policy is in force and what is to be implemented.

In 1988, prior to the adoption of the social witness policy process, but still under the process approved in 1977 and with consultation from staff of the Committee on Social Witness Policy (CSWP), the General Assembly set about to develop a new policy on problem pregnancies and abortion. Its charge included instructions to take into account the prior policy of 1983 and other statements of past General Assemblies as it formulated a new policy statement for the Presbyterian Church (USA)... (Minutes, 1988, Part I, p. 1016). Its intent was clearly a new policy.

The 1992 G.A. changed the policy on abortion
Many Presbyterians are aware that the new abortion policy adopted by the G.A. in 1992 legitimizes and calls for expression of the pro-life position in the Church, which the former policy did not. The 1983 policy and the 1992 policies on abortion have points of significant conflict. The task force that formulated the new policy took into account the former policy and all the other statements by General Assemblies. It asked for and got current research about Presbyterians views about abortion. It considered biblical and historical Church teaching about abortion. As a result, the 1992 policy was undoubtedly intended to modify and reform the denomination's policy on abortion. But that can only happen in practice if church staff and entities regard the 1992 policy as the one to be followed and implemented.

Overtures directing implementation referred to ACSWP
In practice, there has been no change in implementation. In 1998 two overtures asked the General Assembly to mandate implementation of the 1992 abortion policy. The overtures were referred to the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP).

The committee plans to set up a team to examine all the statements on this subject by General Assemblies historically, although their collection currently goes back only to 1970 and omits a significant number of G.A. actions favoring the preservation of life, both before and after that time. This expenditure of time and mission dollars on research into expanding this compilation, a time-consuming process fraught with error, is unnecessary and meaningless.

A clear statement of what constitutes current policy for purposes of program implementation and guidance would not only increase the efficiency and effectiveness of G.A. programs, it also would provide needed clarity for the whole Church and eliminate the untenable present situation of never having one policy supersede another.

While abortion is the most recent and clear example of how meaningless the current practice of policy definition is, abortion is not the only area where clarity about policy is needed. Assurance that General Assembly staff and entities are carrying out the will of the General Assembly is vital to the well being of the PC(USA).

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