Pro-Choice Pullback

ABORTION IS NO LONGER A "CATHOLIC ISSUE" IN THE U.S. -- if it ever was. Last September the biggest Lutheran body adopted a moderate pro-life policy. Two months ago, the Southern Baptist Convention filed its first joint Supreme Court brief alongside Catholics, urging abolition of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. The United Methodist Church almost pulled out of a pro-choice lobby it helped establish.

Then, last week, the Presbyterian Church (membership: 2.8 million) expressed second thoughts about the pro-choice stand it took even before the Supreme Court did. Presbyterian delegates in Milwaukee said secular law should still allow open access to the procedure. But in terms of personal morality, they rejected abortion for economic reasons and endorsed it only for a grave threat to a mother's physical or mental health, severe physical or mental defect in a fetus, rape or incest. The new policy also acknowledges that many Presbyterians see each life in the womb as "created for a purpose and belonging to God."