Living as I do in one of the most conservative Catholic dioceses in the country, set in one of the reddest of states, I am accustomed to a daily chant of anti-choice rhetoric. Billboards, bumper stickers, public-access preachers and picketers trundle out slogans such as "Abortion stops a beating heart," or "My mom didn't have an abortion," or simply, "Jesus, I trust in you."
Like everyday traffic, the rhetoric tends to fade into a dull roar. But my ears pricked up over this year's anti-abortion rally on the National Mall. There's a new, discordant note in the choir, one we should give close attention.
For years, the anti-choice movement has been generally known as "right to life." Now, there's a concerted effort to remake it into a civil rights movement for preborn "people." As the Washington Post reported, Catholic priest Mark Ivany told the crowd, "The greatest difference between other civil rights movements and this one is that most of the people affected by Roe v. Wade can't march on Washington." Not to be outdone, Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ) declared that abortion represents bigotry against unborn children.
In this YouTube clip, you can hear him state that abortion is "child abuse" and try to marshal the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King to his cause.
This marks more than a rhetorical shift. On January 21st, Rep. Smith introduced H.R. 3, the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," with 173 cosponsors. It requires that complaints about violations be referred to the Director of the Office for Civil Rights.
Addressing the marchers, Rep. Smith spelled out what kind of civil rights he has in mind: "[L]et us recommit today to even more persevering prayer, fasting and hard work to ensure the human rights of all, regardless of age, race, religion, sex, disability, immaturity or condition of dependency."
Smith may intend those last two clauses to protect shy, underdeveloped teenagers from sarcastic teachers, but I rather suspect he has zygotes and fetuses in mind.
Assuming that Roe v. Wade remains the law of the land, what would such "civil rights" legislation accomplish? Not much. Constitutional rights trump laws trumped up by Congress.
On the other hand, if Smith et al eventually succeed and a right-wing majority on the Supreme Court reverses Roe v. Wade, what then? Not only would abortion again be outlawed, but the death of any zygote or fetus would have to be treated exactly the same as the death of an adult.
The American Pregnancy Association estimates that between 10 and 25 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage -- technically known as spontaneous abortion. An even-handed application of the law would require coroner's reports and inquests on these millions of annual miscarriages.
Worse yet, such a law would inevitably make the 1987 Carder nightmare a reality for other women. Angela Carder was a 27-year-old cancer survivor whose pregnancy and renewed tumors imperiled her life. Against her will, a court-ordered C-section was performed to try to save the fetus from the anti-cancer therapy she needed. Both she and the fetus died. So much for a woman's right to choose.
For decades now, we've heard that "life begins at conception." Biologically true, perhaps, but science clearly shows that personhood does not. When an egg is fertilized, a certain portion of its daughter cells are destined, if all goes well, to become a placenta. Not even the religious fanatics of the right would argue that a placenta is a person. Moreover, occasionally a fertilized egg will split, and identical twins will be born. Again, no one would argue that twins are one person.
If the science is clear on this point, religion is not. Some religions believe that life starts at "quickening," some at live birth, and some at conception. Such beliefs cannot be settled by a vote.
Here's where choice comes in. A particular theology can never make a good basis for public policy in a pluralistic, democratic society. Nothing demonstrates that better than the abortion controversy. Anti-choice advocates believe they are a majority, but, even if that's so, their position amounts to religious tyranny all the same. A free people must be free to follow the religious traditions of their choice.
Follow Clay Farris Naff on Twitter: www.twitter.com/claynaff
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If we insist that women have no obligation to care for their children, I think we should reexamine mandatory child support for men.
In addition, if a fetus is granted the definition of 'personhood' then the argument becomes one about right to privacy and one's own body. When does one person have the right to someone else's body to increase their own survival? If my brother needs a kidney and I have the only match, it does not mean he can force me to give him one of my kidneys.
Does someone else's right to life supersede someone else's right to dictate the use of his/her own flesh and blood?
20% of all pregnancies in America are aborted.
40% of all pregnancies in New York are aborted.
60% of all black pregnancies are aborted.
1- Prevention Policies.
a.) Make accurate and comprehensive contraception education mandatory.
b.) Make a range of effective contraception methods universally available at no charge or trivially low charge.
2- Financial Policies.
a.) Do not permit someone to be fired for becoming pregnant. If they cannot perform their job while pregnant require that they be able to resume work afterward.
b.) Provide free or heavily subsidized daycare such that the mother can continue working to support her family and thus retain pride in herself, the respect of her community, and possibly the joy of her craft.
Of course 60% of all black pregnancies are aborted. Low education and contraception availability rates make unwanted pregnancies frequent. Endemic poverty makes life creators unwilling to create life that they can't provide for responsibly. And certain segments of society have been running a PR campaign for several decades now in which poor pregnant women are blamed for all that ails us. They are literally, per these political factions, Destroying Our Country. Pay no attention to the bloated military contract behind the curtain, its those WELFARE QUEENS with their entitlements! Vile hateful leeches! Did you know animals like that don't even love their kids? They just have them to get a bigger check from the government!
That's pretty strong social pressure to abort there.
(Psa 139:13) For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb.
(Psa 139:15) My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the womb
(Psa 139:16) Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.
(Job 31:15) Did not he who made me in the womb make them? And did not one fashion us in the womb?
(Ecc 11:5) Just as you do not know how the breath comes to the bones in the mother's womb, so you do not know the work of God, who makes everything.
(Isa 44:2) Thus says the LORD who made you, who formed you in the womb and will help you: Do not fear, O Jacob my servant, Jeshurun whom I have chosen.
(Isa 44:24) Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: I am the LORD, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who by myself spread out the earth;
Do I need to go on?
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/01/the-return-of-the-catholic-exorcism/70364/
I, for one, am glad they had no rhythm. As is the rest of the world, no doubt.
Recently, my father "confided in me"; "yeah we used the rhythm method" and laughed derisively, "we wound up with six kids and two miscarriages"!
I never knew my mother had two miscarriages - they kept that stuff secret back then. My sister told me that one was a stillborn baby, close to full term I think. The Doctors new long before that the baby wasn't going to make it, but they never told my mother - hey, why not let it be a surprise. Interesting attitudes in the old days.
The thing I wonder is, did my mother have to carry the baby to term because back then, no matter what the the danger to the mother or the inevitable death of the baby, there was no circumstance under which the baby could have been aborted? Hmmm.
How many families did we know growing up that had 4 to 9 kids? All Catholic to my recollection. My parents had no rhythm either, and like you, I'm a "best of all possible worlds " kind of guy, since we're both here for it...lol..
My mom used to get Catholic Digest, a readers digest format. Back when the Linda Blair movie was out, I remember and article titled "Is it safe to watch The Exorcist"....lol..
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/01/the-return-of-the-catholic-exorcism/70364/
In order to elect people who abuse the living, starve the poor, let the unhealthy die, profiteer off suffering, greed, and waste, ...and want to secure their 'sacred property rights,' while making sure women are 'property.'
I've posted enough on the trap the blogger fell in. Another trap is "What about what the baby wants?!?!?!"
This one is clever because it has two layers. The obvious trap is that if you start hypothesizing "what the baby wants" you are accepting the notion that a mindless ball of tissue has wants in the first place. And most people cut straight to that question and insist on debating it instead.
But that question "does the fetus want anything at all?" also misses an even more fundamental point.
There are all sorts of actions that happen every day that are legal only when EVERYONE participating consents to the action. Doctors in particular do things every day that would get them tossed in jail for years if the person they were doing them to was unwilling and have formal legal requirements for obtaining consent that they must adhere to.
If five people have consensual sex its an orgy. If even ONE does not consent it is gang rape.
When consent matters, it takes only a single dissenting voice to make an action criminal. So what the fetus would want if it could want is immaterial. Consent never overrides dissent when determining criminality.
The problem with the argument in my mind is that one can project into any such hypothetical future. No one considers the consent of hypothetical future persons. No one suggests when a family makes a decision (to move, have a medical procedure) that they should consult children they might have 5 years later. It would be absurd to suggest that before a guy gets intimate with himself that he obtain the consent of the potential children resulting from his sperm (though sadly some to consider this) or that when a fertility clinic disposes of unused sperm that this is homicide of some potential, future human being (Peter Singer has used the example). However, when it comes to abortion we should some how legislate the rights of a zygote or embryo because it could one day be an adult human. The fact of the matter is a zygote or embryo is not a human and if it is aborted we are discussing the interests of a human that does not nor will ever exist.
Look at it this way. When we say "X's opinion matters" there are two different ways to mean that. A lot of the problem with this concept is that the unborn's hypothetical opinion DOES MATTER in one of those ways but not the other.
You respect Choice right? You know as well as I do that the thing that makes it hard to respect freedom and choice is that other people sometimes use those rights to do things we consider to be incredibly stupid and respecting freedom/choice means we can only try to talk them out of it, not stop them.
Now everyone, EVERYONE, chooses a hypothetical future that they like. And the opinions of the hypothetical people in that hypothetical future are important to them **personally**. So one person can be swayed by the hypothetical desires of the result of an unplanned pregnancy to keep it while another person is swayed by the hypothetical desires of future planned children and motivated to abort the unplanned.
There is nothing wrong with that and we are bound to let them be swayed by whatever hypothetical is important to them.
But Legally. In a court of law. That is different.
And we avoid trying to decide which of the competing hypothetical future childrens' desires the court needs to honor by noting that the court never honors the desires of attackers anyway and there is no need to start now.
Only dissent matters in terms of legality.
Now it is permissible to use lethal force when defending yourself from someone who is trying to take away parts of your body. Nonlethal is preferred when possible, particularly when dealing with the mentally incompetent, but lethal is acceptable when necessary. So if one of the disabled in your example goes after nurse in an attempt to take, say, a finger bone she may also resort to lethal force to prevent it.
The only difference is that she may have non-lethal alternatives as well and if they exist we expect them to be used.
Every pregnancy has life-long physical repercussions. For example, even the best possible gestation reduced your bone density by about 10% and that loss is irreplaceable. Pregnancy also reduces brain size (http://www.ajnr.org/cgi/content/full/23/1/19).
That's my calcium. That's my brain matter. If a person tries to take them from me against my will That. Is. Assault.
So if a fetus is a person then unwilling pregnancy is assault. And the preferences of attackers carry no legal weight.
If you are talking about something like Terri Schiavo where someone basically becomes a vegetable, I wouldn't say there is a difference. Someone with that severe mental damage doesn't want anything and never again will. To ask what they want is one of these traps. In fact, the mental damage is so severe that frankly they aren't living at that point. One may point to biological function, but they aren't a person experiencing life and never will be again. Just like an embryo isn't a person experiencing life and if aborted never will. There is no difference, in both situations you have an effectively nonliving collection of cells. To inquire about their wants or a difference is just one of these traps.
In the meantime, the debate is really about images, particularly a picture of a smiling chubby baby face; that’s what’s at stake for most people; that baby and its potential. The whole recapitulation of evolution from single cell organism to a wiggling Homo sapiens during gestation is an unbroken continuum; there is no stage at which one could say this is the crossover point where this is now a person.
The state has an interest in babies; while they create an obligation, they are also developing resources that need to be nurtured for their future value. That future value can best be realized with the cooperation of the mother.
If you force a mother to have an unwanted child then you’ve also crossed another moral threshold; you’ve coerced the mother into being a reproductive machine on behalf of the state.
The abortion pill is a hot black market item in countries that have bans in place. Works up to 8 weeks in.
Historically the local apothecary kept stocks of Penny-royal, Rue, Hellebore, Tansy, Silphium, or whatever the local herb used to brew abortificant teas was.
Learned that in High School. Was doing a report on Hamlet and I decided it would be based on the scene where Ophilia goes around giving everyone a flower. I knew that there used to be a code for flowers and that each flower she gave was probably symbolic in an important way and learning the old flower codes seemed interesting while Hamlet itself was a snooze.
Well every flower she gave had an official period meaning. Except one. Tansy was not part of the flower code. No meaning, not subtext, no record. They had to be using the flower code because every other flower was part of the code and the meaning fit the story. But not Tansy.
So I researched Tansy.
Tansy had one purpose in that period. To induce miscarriages.
So of course it wasn't part of the code. Not something you wanted to be waving around in public more of a private flow... OH. Ophelia is pregnant. No wonder she's so pissed that Hamlet is ignoring her.
Her suicide drowning scene suddenly made sense.
How do you answer those who say it's not necessarily a religious belief, but rather a moral one? That is, atheists can believe that abortion is morally wrong, so it is not necessarily tied to religion. Then they say that this "morality" should be universally shared and practiced.
atheists can believe that abortion is morally wrong
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So ... while an atheist certainly *could* say that have you actually met one who *does* say that?
As noted below you can't logically support an abortion ban based on the concept of fetal equality without also granting to adults additional rights since adults aren't entitled to unwilling flesh. So even if an atheist supported fetal equality that isn't enough.
But since atheists lack a creation myth that motivates them to defend mindless cells they have no emotional reason to even try. And it is clearly immoral to deliberately create unwanted children when we can't provide adequately for the kids we already have.
Also, from a practical perspective, every country that has tried banning abortion has run into the same problems we had when we banned alcohol. The cure is simply worse than the disease.
http://www.womensenews.org/story/the-world/041128/illegal-abortions-rampant-latin-america
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Monica Maureira remembers how--as the nurses interrogated her and the doctors lectured her--she watched her hands going transparent from the blood loss.
She was 16 years old and was hemorrhaging after having had a clandestine abortion in Chile, a country where abortion is illegal and considered immoral.
"I remember the nurses telling me that if I didn't give them the name of the doctor who gave me the abortion, they would let me bleed to death," Maureira says.
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I have encountered a few. But only a few.
It seems that once one rejects dogma and the supernatural, one tends to hold socially liberal views. Without appeals to the supernatural, many common arguments against abortion or homosexuality loose their strength. You can't appeal to a soul or to sin anymore. Also, if you reject religious dogma you are likely to reject other dogma such as conservative moral taboos. That having been said, this is a mere tendency. I have met atheists who oppose abortion and/or same-sex marriage. It is possible to come up with nonreligious arguments against abortion in addition to the religious ones.
Keep in mind that if the State can DENY a woman an abortion, then that means that the State's interest in her body is deemed higher than her own interest. Under that rational the State would have the right to order the woman to HAVE an abortion.
You can't have it both ways. Either the woman controls her reproduction or the State does. Which do you prefer?