Why Is It Legitimate for Legislators To Oppose Abortion on Religious Grounds?

Am I missing something?

On Saturday, I watched the House debate the Stupak amendment restricting access to abortion and noticed that most of the loudest anti-choices voices came from Roman Catholics and Christian fundamentalists who oppose abortion because that is what their faith teaches.

Why is that legitimate? Is not separation of church and state still in effect?

Would it be appropriate for Jewish and Muslim House members to oppose legislation beneficial to the pork industry or to insist on a ban on eating pork products altogether? I mean, Henry Waxman would not let pork pass his lips but the last thing he will use his clout for is to ban BLTs for everyone else.

I know abortion is serious and pork eating isn't (except for Jews and Muslims who died rather than submit to those who tried to make them eat pork). But the principle is the same. Those who oppose abortion should not have them. End of story.

As for the person of faith's objection to his tax dollars going to pay for other people's abortion because he or she considers abortion be be murder, so what.

That is how I felt about Bush's attack on Iraq and Israel's use of US supplied weapons in Gaza. But my tax dollars paid for the killing anyway -- just as as the opponent of capital punishment subsidizes that form of, what she considers to be, murder.

None of us gets a line item veto on taxes that subsidize government actions we don't like.

Religious considerations of any kind are utterly inappropriate in the US Congress. More than that, they are unconstitutional if we take the "separation clause" seriously.

And, yes, I'd apply that to Israel too. If a legislator's support for US aid for Israel is motivated by faith, then that is just as inappropriate as opposing abortion out of religious convictions.

No, we cannot control motivations. A legislator is going to do what he's going to do. All I'd change is that the next time a legislator invoked his faith, I'd gavel him down. Out of order.

Spare us the piety.

If James Madison watched the House debate on Saturday, he'd have spun in his grave. I did, and I was only in my living room. Get religion out of Congress. All religions.

Note: This argument also applies, in spades, to the legislators who use their faith to justify discrimination against gays and lesbians and to oppose the right to marriage. I've got news for the ultra-faithful. Leviticus is about as relevant to the Constitution as "Gone With the Wind."

 

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Comments

[biggduude]

But what I am suggesting is this - secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Barack Obama

http://www.barackobama.com/2006/06/28/call_to_renewal_keynote_address.php

[middleoftheroad]

I'm pro-choice myslef, but would the founders be spinning? Does seperation of Church and State really call for Secularism? They halted the constitutional congress to pray. To them, we were Endowed by Our Creator etc... Plus, they don't care that you don't care that tax dollars should not be used for abortions...you wanted to take a majority by running conservative Dems in conservative districts, then this is what you get....without that, Progressives would not even be putting the country through this. You want the govt to take over health care, then this is what you get.

If you had a choice between a trigger and no Stupak-Pitts or or a public option with it, what would you want...you may not have a third choice!

[propitiousmoment]

Legislative acts on religious grounds are the promotion of one religion over another - i.e., the establishment of a particular set of religious preferences, imposed on the whole body politic regardless of their individual religious persuasions. It's unconstitutional. Like the man said, when senators and reps start to spout off about this stuff on religious grounds, they ought to be gaveled down as out of order. It's all just a lot of posturing for their ignorant base anyway, but that is beside the point.

[NICELYDONE]

two points,,, 1) abortion is still legal , the bill just treats it as the elective surgery it is as are tattoos and body piercings and boob jobs,an in the extreme rare instance where the health of the mother is at issue then it should be dealt with 2) make no mistake about it , the USA has and is a nation based and formed by people of faith, and Christianity happens to be the overwhelming influence .. The constitution nowhere uses the words "separation of Church and state ".... what it does say is that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or PROHIBITING the free exercise thereof"..1st ammendment freedom of speech which is being exercised

[cecebo]

"make no law respecting an establishment of religion"

Sorry, but you must not be interpreting this section in the same way as millions of AP history high school students and college students, legal scholars, not to mention Thomas Jefferson and several other statesmen and Supreme Court Justices, do. But nice try.

And on your first point, I had a miscarriage and my doctor ordered me to have a D and C (also known as abortion) so that I would not get sick and die from infection, as my grandmother did. Although I was completely insured out of my pocket, this bill would state that I would have had to pay cash out of pocket if I received any of the subsidies or purchase on an open exchange, which I will surely have to at my income. How on earth can you call that elective surgery like a frickin tatoo??

[clevelandchick]

Three points

1.) This health insurance better deny all medical coverage, including prescription, for Erectile Dysfunction, it's not like men really need to have sex to live. An abortion may be necessary to save the life/health of a woman. Men don't need the ability to get a stiffy to live.

2.) This nation was not based and formed by people of faith, you are confusing the American Revolutionaries with the Pilgrims. It was formed by people who wanted to get out from under the iron thumb of British rule. While some leaders may have been people of faith, many were not. Jefferson changed his religious identity constantly ending with the term Deist. Ben Franklin had nothing but contempt for Christians and Christianity.

3.) Forcing women, who as a demographic have the highest poverty rates, to spend more money "just in case someday" she "might" be raped or need a medically necessary abortion is financial discrimination.

The funny thing is that in the Old Testament, abortion is allowed if a pregnant woman's husband dies and his brother wants to take her for his own wife...the brother has a right to kill the unborn fetus. So the whole religious argument that abortion is an abomination in God's eyes is a load of bull.

[meltingpot]

Where in the Bible is that exactly?

[34MillionFriends]

Just a general comment. Opposition to family planning and legal safe abortion all over the world is at its core religious. And it costs women their lives, their autonomy, their equality. You could take a stand for family planning through the United Nations Population Fund at www.34mill­ionfriends­.org
For seven years we have been asking Americans for at least one dollar. $34 million would, according to UNFPA, would prevent 800,000 abortions.
Jane Roberts co-founder

[deezus]

I don't see religion having much to do with the Stupak amendment. It is just a compromise to get the health care reform bill passed. Without it, there are too man pro-life and vulnerable pro-choice politicians that would vote against the reform bill. Seems like simple politics to me. You give religions too much credit.

[ampersand59]

The point the writer makes is that for passage or defeat relegious beliefs should be a none issue in legislation-- and I totally agree. I don't eat pork because I was raised as an Adventist [I have overcame the brainwashing-- i am relegion free] however, I would pursuade someone not to eat it but i would not deny someone who choose to eat it. Sometimes I wonder how these prolifers and evangelical nimwits do no see that they and the Taliban are on the same side of the religious divide: Sharia laws for women and theocracy for all. I wonder when evangelicals (in america) is going start killing women in the street for non compliance.

[rjmiller]

So dismiss the religious argument and they'll make the glaringly obvious moral one.

This is not to say that the pro-life moral argument necessarily holds up, but it can be made.

[mydwyf]

What 'glaringly obvious moral one ?'
Life is not a right. It is a privilege. As we should realize every time we eat,
shelter ourselves from the elements, flush the toilet, etc. etc.
'Right to life' is suspiciously like the 'manifest destiny' which stole this continent from
its previous inhabitants.

[jmpurser]

Thank you for stating the obvious. I don't mean that as a cutting remark. We simply don't face up to the obvious truths of our society and the cost of this willful ignorance is piling up.

[ConcernedJoe]

Right on!! Well said.

A woman has a constitutional right to have an abortion (see numerous rulings by SCOTUS). Just like the right to live freely as any citizen in good standing. Restrictions on our rights (including woman's rights) have to have overwhelming obvious justifications otherwise the Constitution and the many lives given for our freedoms mean nothing. Your RELIGIOUS fantasy that a fetus has a soul and is a full person is NOT justification to strip away a woman's right to choose.

But here is the kicker... if facts and justice matter: a small % of abortions are funded by insurance now. Most abortions are performed early (within 1st trimester) and are cheap. Insurance not employed or necessary. Those done later on (those that require hospital care, etc. and can be expensive and insurance used if available) are overwhelmingly done for medical imperatives - to humanely avoid unnecessary misery, suffering, and expense.

A woman has a RIGHT to protect her person - her being - her dignity. Her access to abortion - her right to have options and be able to choose - is fundamental to that. What these restrictive amendments do is leave poorer people with less practical rights than richer people.

[cecebo]

What you call "cheap", $300 -700, would be prohibitive to hundreds of thousands of women in this country alone. Not only that, but they have a very narrow window of time to come up with that. Are we really wiling to return to the days when only rich women and debutantes have safe access to abortion? And for my post miscarriage abortion, I was very happy to have it covered by my insurance.

[pinksheets]

It might not be appropriate discourse for the Congress, but it's not like they couldn't simply find another way to make their argument, leaving us in the exact same place we are now.

[donald hebfour]

On Saturday, I watched the House debate the Stupak amendment restricting access to abortion and noticed that most of the loudest anti-choices voices came from Roman Catholics and Christian fundamentalists who oppose abortion because that is what their faith teaches.

You've concluded that they "oppose abortion because that is what their faith teaches." Your conclusion may or may not be valid.

Bottom line, abortion kills a human and there's nothing the about to be killed human did to be in that womb and nothing that human can do (because the supreme court said it's ok, and society says let women control their bodies, etc.) to protect him/herself from being killed.

If those folks oppose abortion because of "their faith," that faith is about as weak as the supreme court and society since their faith bought the "in between" argument. Reminds me of the garden of Eden where Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent. Their arguments were in between: useless, since they were promised that they would die if they disobeyed and we continue to die to this very day. Their in between arguments didn't keep us from dying any more than the in between arguments of today keep the little human being in the womb from dying when aborted. Society as an organism, cannot stay healthy when it allows the taking of a life from the womb of his/her mother.

[JIzin]

Society as an organism, cannot stay healthy when it allows the taking of a life from the womb of his/her mother.

No its society as an organism cannot stay healthy when women are not allowed to make their own reproductive health choices.

Women who choose to undergo abortion do so for very good reasons. They have legitimate health complications. They can not support the baby because they are not married. They are in an abusive relationship. They already have all the children they want. They know that they are not emotionally ready for the responsibility to take care of a child.

Abortion is a legal right, and its the right of the women to choose to not carry a baby to term. The baby has no rights while it is dependent on the mother to have life period.

[rbetan]

Killing of a human is murder. But who says that an abortion results in the death of a human. Who decides when the mass of cells becomes human?
And how is that decision made? And will that decision result in the imposition of one moral/religous view point upon a person who does not share the same view point?
And does the the fact that the majority share one viewpoint make that viewpoint more valid than one held by the minority?
According to the constitution the answer would be no.
If the so-called Prolifers pledge to adopt all the children who were a result of an unwanted taken to full term, then they would have more credibility.

[max08]

This should be sent to everyone's congressman by snail mail so they can tack it up where they can see it.

[max08]

YAAAHHHOOO­OOOOOOOOOO­! Thank you. Thankyouth­ankyouthan­kyou, Mr. Rosenberg.

[WASanford]

What a great rant, it was right on. There has to be something wrong with those who have to force the rest of us to live by the tenets of their beliefs. These people are dangerous, they are like the Borg* they want to assimilate all of us. Worse, the authors of this crummy amendment live at the "C" street headquarters of a religious group known as "The Family," ** These guys believe that God wants them to take over the world.

* From "Star Trek." The Borg traveled the universe assimilating any intelligent life forms they found into their computer that ran everything.

** Find out more about "The Family" in Jeff Sharlet's book titled, strangely enough, "The Family"

[BarryS]

Just live as a Gay person for a while. These religious creeps have make life miserable for Gays.

[WASanford]

I think it's a "misery loves company" thing. Otherwise they get nothing from it.
I agree with you and you've been fanned!

[mamalisa38]

And here they said they didn't want the government between you and your doctor. Can't have it both ways.

I wish these people would mind their own damned business and leave the rest of us alone.

[cheeriogirl]

Thanks for being the voice of reason in the midst of this fiasco, Mr. Rosenberg. Great article.