The next scene requires us to extend the lectionary reading to include the testing of Solomon’s newly granted wisdom.
How did Solomon know which baby belonged to which woman? Wisdom is not some supernatural ability to know what to do in a particular situation, but a general and keen understanding of how things are, how the world works, how we work. Solomon’s wisdom was manifest here in recognizing the bond between mother and child that caused the real mother to make the most difficult of decisions for the welfare of her baby. Even if it cost her a lifetime of wondering, not knowing what would become of her son. It mattered not that she, a prostitute, bore the baby out of wedlock. The baby boy was her son. If Solomon could be so sure of the bond between mother and child, why does this bond appear so fragile that 1.2 million times each year it fails to protect the unborn child? Has human nature changed?
Let me make two suggestions. First, we live in a culture unfriendly to life. For example, our culture expects that sex should be readily available to those who desire it. To make this possible, we use contraception beforehand, and, if necessary, can resort to abortion afterward. Even in the Christian community, sex has been separated from pregnancy. We might still hold that sex is inseparable from marriage, but not inseparable from pregnancy. The upshot is that pregnancy often becomes an unexpected event—something has gone wrong. And therefore we seek to fix it. There is great cultural weight behind the impulse to abort.
Secondly, we too often assume that a mother who has aborted actually desired that abortion. Last week I read an article dismissing the suggestion that a clinic intake interview should include the question “are you the one who wants this abortion?” claiming that the answer would be obvious. Well, perhaps not. One thing we know is that the chief reason that a mother undergoes abortion has to do with her relationships. The bond between a mother and her child may well be stronger than we assume. But that relationship is not the only one that bears upon her decision. The bond between a pregnant woman and the father she has given herself to is often also very deep. It is far from unusual for a mother to choose abortion due to pressure from someone important to her.
One of the most important things we can do for life in our culture is make it plain in our common life together, and particularly from our pulpits, that life is a blessing, that sex appropriately leads to pregnancy, and that, despite the cultural effort to blunt it, the bond between a mother and her child is real. The effects of abortion upon women testify to the strength of this bond. We might deny it, but we cannot make it go away.