Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)
GOP presidential aspirant Dr Ben Carson is a Seventh-day Adventist but says that he is strongly anti-choice on abortion. That means that he is out of sync with his church.
The Seventh-day Adventist church (nearly 2 million members in the US; several million worldwide) officially approves of abortion for serious medical reasons or in cases of rape or incest. The church approved this policy around 1970. Shortly before Roe v Wade was handed down (1973) I was asked to speak on the subject at Columbia Union College, an Adventist college in Takoma Park, MD. The fairly large audience was composed of students, faculty and clergy. Unsure of the audience, I took the position of the American Law Institute (ALI) at the time, that abortions should be legal for serious medical reasons and for victims of rape or incest. The audience accused me of being too conservative! (I was just being cautious.)
There are about 60 Adventist hospitals in the US and all seem to perform abortions. The only one for which I have statistics is the Washington (DC) Adventist Hospital., and here they are:
1975 to 1982 -- 213 abortions per year
1992 -- 547
1993 -- 574
2006 to 2010 -- about 200 in toto
The numbers taper off mainly because abortions are cheaper in clinics.
Of course all of the GOP aspirants are anti-choice, including Carly Fiorina, the lone female and failed Hewlett-Packard exec who has no respect whatever for the rights of conscience and religious freedom of women, about 1/3 of whom will have had abortions before the age of 45.
