To Be Or Not To Be

To Be Or Not To Be

by Marco M. Pardi

“A woman’s right to choose an abortion is something central to a woman’s life, to her dignity….And when government controls that decision for her, she’s being treated as less than a full adult human being responsible for her own choices.” Ruth Bader Ginsberg

“The cemetery of the victims of human cruelty in our century is extended to include yet another vast cemetery, that of the unborn.” Pope John Paul II

Terms:

Abort – To stop in the developmental stages.

Spontaneous abortion – (medical term). Commonly called Miscarriage. Occurs through various circumstances, not necessarily resulting from intentional human agency.

Induced abortion – an act of human agency.

All comments are welcome and will receive a reply. All previous posts are open for comment.

Once again the United States is in the throes of debate over induced abortion. This time appears to be more inclusive and more likely to include societal violence. It is more inclusive as it appears to be a more pronounced conflict of political ideologies conflated with religious views and scientific realizations not known in the debates of fifty years ago. And, once again, the legally binding decision For or Against the validity of the long established Roe V. Wade Supreme Court decision is in the hands of a few Supreme Court Justices, now numerically superior on the side of the ultra right wing group that rushed through their confirmation.

Fifty years ago, as a young college Anthropology instructor, I was asked to take part in a public debate on the Roe v. Wade case then being decided. I did so. Of course, I found an irony in the case: I was unfamiliar with the term roe as a human’s name; I had always thought of it as the eggs of a fish especially when still enclosed in the ovarian membrane. (Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary). Although I saw certain parallels I realized no one else seemed to so I didn’t mention that. Nonetheless, I based my presentation on logic, as would anyone arguing a legal case. I will do so again here, with the proviso that logic properly done does not have a predetermined outcome. I will also say I will not attempt to present a full and comprehensive legal case for either side (You’re welcome).

Debates on topics such as this commonly circle around some entanglement of logic and emotion, often foundering on the latter as the former is less inflammatory and thereby loses strength. Thus, the outcome is often a hardening of pre-existent feelings more than a bridge to cognitive understanding.

Mindful of that, we should remember that the determinant legal issue of reproductive freedom is being debated in court, not just in private salons or other meeting places. Thus, as in any court case, assertions must be based upon and supported by evidence. Appeals to beliefs and feelings will be ruled inadmissible, even inflammatory. Nonetheless, we should at least look at those appeals as they are often introduced with the knowledge that even when ruled out they have found their way into a juror’s mind. We may begin by portraying a court interaction as A for assertion and R for rebuttal.

A: Life is a God given gift and must be protected and preserved.

R: The assertion claims as self-evident that there is a God and that this God gives gifts. According to honest theologians this is a compound conjecture; an If connected to a Maybe, and is inadmissible. There is no evidence for either.

A: Human life begins at: conception; or presence of a heartbeat; or detection of movement (“quickening in the womb”), and stopping the development is the taking of a human life.

R: The markers cited in the premise are arbitrary and apparently based on theological interpretation. The subordinate clause in the assertion is dependent upon the validity of the premise. Medical science stipulates to the potential for development of human life at those markers, not the factual actuality of its presence. The premise presupposes a developmental outcome and is therefore conjecture.

The reader is free to propose other such assertions, however it possibly now seems clear such assertions, based in theology, have no legal footing. It should be noted that at no time are the assertions cited above declared materially wrong; they are disqualified because there is zero supporting evidence and are based on faith. They may in fact be true, but the United States is a secular society, not a theocracy, and faith – belief in an assertion for which there is no evidence, has no standing.

Moving to the legal framework for debate:

A: Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, a “strict Constitutionalist”, asserted that there is no mention of abortion in the Constitution. The implication is that since abortion is not a federal issue it should be decided by States, and Roe V. Wade was improperly heard and decided.

R: Justice Alito conveniently ignored the fact that, to date, there have been 27 Amendments to the Constitution addressing issues not specified in the original Constitution.

A: The issue before the Supreme Court solely concerns the question of what legal venue is entitled to legislate and adjudicate issues of abortion.

R: False. As will be explained in Discussion, the implications flowing from the patchwork of State courts and legislatures include and affect far more than just abortion.

Discussion:

The efforts to remove the freedom of women to control their own bodies including reproductive functions and outcomes are by no means universally held among the dominant religions in the United States. Nearly twice as many evangelical Protestants (63%) oppose legal abortion compared to mainline Protestants (33%), according to the most recent survey of abortion views by faith performed by Pew Research Center. Three-quarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses and nearly as many Mormons (70%) say abortion should be illegal. In contrast, 83% of American Jews and 55% of American Muslims say abortion should be legal.

American Catholics are largely split, with 56% supportive of legal abortion and 42% opposed, a 2019 Pew Research Center survey found.

As of this writing there are 26 of 50 States which have either passed prohibitive “trigger” laws, designed to go into effect should the Supreme Court strike down Roe V. Wade, or are currently developing such laws. In several cases the laws are such that, before a woman even knows she is pregnant she is subject to a heavy monetary fine and lengthy prison sentence if convicted of taking an action which terminated her pregnancy even if resulting from rape or incest. In addition, personnel ranging from her doctor to her driver, should she obtain transportation to a health clinic for purposes of abortion, also face heavy fines and lengthy imprisonment. The same applies to her if she obtains a medically prescribed pill, even by mail, which might terminate her pregnancy. The root of these laws is the pronouncement that the fertilized egg; or the small collection of cells emitting a nerve action (called “heartbeat”); or the fetus long before viability outside the womb is “a person”. In short, Where does life begin? Yet, medical science is far from agreed on any answer to that. Certainly the potential for life, under the right circumstances, is there, but the actuality is debatable. The same (potential) could be said of the gametes carried by either sex. If prevented from uniting under the “right circumstances” they are expelled and die, through menstruation, nocturnal emission, or other means. Are these processes then homicide? Surgeons operating to remove cancerous tumors strive to achieve “clean margins”, meaning removal of neighboring healthy cells. But we have long had the ability to clone individuals from such healthy cells, though ethical considerations have stopped – for now – cloning of humans. Should these surgeons be convicted of murder?

Several States are also considering the banning of certain forms of contraception. Some forms, such as barrier methods, prevent conception. And, yes, some allow conception but prevent implantation of the fertilized egg. What appears overlooked is that some of the latter forms of contraception are prescribed for serious medical conditions unrelated to prevention of pregnancy. Banning those forms would effectively doom females afflicted with those conditions to serious and perhaps fatal consequences.

The Declaration of Independence strongly declares the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But whose life? A fertilized cell? A collection of cells? Or a female capable of child bearing, albeit if she herself is a child? Unwanted pregnancy can and often does produce a cascade effect including but not limited to fear, shame, depression, shunning by family and friends, failure to complete school, loss of or inability to obtain gainful employment (a recently completed study by a consortium of economists found that pregnancy reduces a woman’s income potential by 30% while increasing her costs dramatically), a child or children raised in dramatically sub-optimal familial, social, medical, and educational conditions, and greatly reduced lifelong potential for the child. “Life”? Check. “Liberty”? Liberty was taken from the mother and therefore from the child. “Pursuit of happiness”? You’re kidding, right?

A corollary phenomenon overlooked by so many “Pro Life” people (actually, Pro Birth) is the almost complete overlap they share with those strongly advocating for reduction of “welfare” such as the WIC (Women, Infants & Children) program, free school meals, housing assistance, Medicaid and other programs addressing the poverty caused largely by inadequate opportunities for family planning.

I have written elsewhere of what I see as reasoning behind the “big money”, especially as funneled through the titular Republican Party to support the denial of freedom and the subjugation of women. A desperate labor pool will accept low wages, third world working conditions, no retirement funds, and job termination due to outsourcing or automation. A desperate labor pool will gladly volunteer for the “three hots and a cot” life in a military which can be summoned at any moment for wars of profit they will never share in. Not shareholders in the “defense industries”, they will reap only a meager separation pay, or retirement pay, and maybe a chance to get on the waiting list for Veterans Administration health care.

Regular readers of this site know I have often applied a name to this “reasoning”. But go ahead, apply one of your own. And while you are devising that name I would ask you to ask yourself if you want To Be that or do you choose Not To Be that.