Tom Flynn was a moralist and a pragmatist. He rejected religion on moral grounds. He knew that the alliance of religion with morality was spurious. But in light of the power and intensity of the anti-abortion movement, he was pragmatic enough to side with those who defended abortion in ways that would circumvent monotheistic furor. In so doing, he wittingly or unwittingly borrowed elements from the pagan tradition of morality. In memory of Flynn, I will use the approach to abortion that he shared with Ruth Bader Ginsburg to explain why monotheism has not necessarily been an advance in the history of morality and why the pagan tradition still beckons.

The inventors of monotheism imagined that if the multiplicity of pagan gods were replaced with a single supremely just deity who was bent on punishing the wicked and rewarding the virtuous, religion would provide morality with invaluable support. Accordingly, Plato (followed by Augustine) vociferously disparaged the arbitrariness and caprice of Homer’s gods as depraved models for human conduct. However, the gods were never intended to be models for human beings but quite the reverse. When Homer presented Zeus as the personification of thunder and lightning, made Poseidon the embodiment of the violence of the sea, painted Aphrodite as the force of sexual passion, and depicted Hades as the sting of death, he was presenting formidable forces to be reckoned with—not paragons of virtue.

In the pagan world, religion was about the human confrontation with the forces of nature, while morality was about fairness in dealing with other human beings. Emulating the gods was hubris. We throw that word around a lot, especially in relation to American foreign policy, but we fail to appreciate its moral significance in the pagan world. For the ancient Greeks, hubris was a serious crime that could garner a penalty of death because it almost invariably leads to criminality on a large scale.

In moralizing the divine, monotheism shifts the focus of morality from concern with the consequences of our actions to a rigid compliance with divinely ordained rules and prohibitions. This shift has often been understood as a shift from a shame culture in which the community provides the standard to a guilt culture in which conscience is the voice of God within. A shame culture focuses on the effects of one’s conduct on the community, whereas a guilt culture requires obedience to the demands of the deity—regardless of the consequences.

One of these divine rules is believed to be the prohibition of abortion. So passionate is the aversion to abortion among the religious in our society that anything short of its total prohibition is considered a “holocaust of the unborn.” The god of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims punishes the whole community for the sins of the few. He punished the entire house of Ali because his sons blasphemed against God, and Ali did not restrain them (1 Samuel 3:13). Accordingly, monotheists must restrain their fellow citizens if they are not to stand accused themselves. Those who kill abortion doctors understand themselves to be avengers of God, acting on his behalf and in his name. Ironically, they become murderers in a desperate effort to be “pro-life.” From a pagan perspective, monotheism inspires hubris as well as illogic.

In Catholic countries such as Mexico and Ireland, where anti-abortion laws were strictly enforced until very recently, every miscarriage was treated as the basis of a criminal investigation. This amounts to criminalizing the natural functioning of female procreative capacities. In Texas and elsewhere, anti-abortion laws amount to state- enforced pregnancy, even in cases of rape or incest. Many American states are eager to put in place laws that force women to have children, including the children of their rapists.

In defending abortion, Flynn was sensitive to the ways in which religious objections fly in the face of our stewardship of Earth. In thinking of Earth as a disposable planet that God will annihilate very soon, monotheists have cultivated a callous understanding of morality that is indifferent to the planet: Go forth and multiply with no heed for the morrow; God will look after the consequences. This is not only the height of irresponsibility but a recipe for death and suffering. We know that the consequences are famine, war, poverty, and pestilence. Every nation has a moral responsibility to control its population. Yet this obvious moral fact has never been affirmed by the United Nations. To the contrary, many countries, including the United States, are eager to prohibit abortion while also limiting access to birth control. This is the kind of inhumanity that monotheism inspires.

Pagans would regard our modern plight with envy as well as incomprehension. The ancient Greeks would envy the ingenious means at our disposal for controlling our population. They would long to have been spared the agony and heartache involved in the death by exposure of newborns that they could not afford to keep. They would be mystified by the acrimonious debate over abortion in our society.

Tom Flynn devoted his life to bringing attention to the perverse immorality that monotheism fosters. However, he was also interested in finding practical solutions to social ills. This is why he shared Ginsburg’s pragmatic view that, in the context of our monotheistic world, the defense of abortion in Roe v. Wade was flawed. To the extent that the anti-abortion movement has made abortion criminal in the minds of our fellow citizens, abortion can no longer be defended on the basis of freedom—because no one can claim a right to choose what fellow citizens so fervently believe is iniquitous. Instead, Flynn agreed with Ginsburg that abortion should be defended as part of the “equal protection” clause of the Constitution—the clause in the Fourteenth Amendment that prohibits any law from treating people unequally on the basis of race or gender. By treating one gender very differently from the other, abortion laws violate the equal protection clause and are therefore morally flawed and should be abolished. This is not to deny that shame and stigma will limit the practice. Wittingly or unwittingly, this approach to abortion is a tribute to a shame culture that takes the sentiments of society to heart while undermining the excesses of monotheistic zeal.