During the Second World War, almost from the time the
United States entered the war on December 8, 1941, the Soviet Union, which had
been invaded by Nazi Germany on June 22, 1941, was demanding that the United
States and Great Britain establish a "Second Front" in Western Europe. By this the
Soviets meant doing so by invading Occupied France on its Northwest Coast. The
Western Allies did invade North Africa in November 1942, and Sicily and
Southern Italy in the summer of 1943. But the major offensive in the West,
which would require that the Germans move major forces from the Eastern Front
to France, was not, as is well known, undertaken until June 6, 1944.
The Abortion Wars in this
country have been underway since well before the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade was handed down on January
22, 1973. That decision established that freedom of choice in the outcome of
pregnancy was the Constitutional right of any pregnant woman, under the right
to privacy subsumed by the Court to be in accordance with the due process
clause of the 14th Amendment (1). The only limitation placed by the
Court in Roe and subsequent decisions was that this right was a pregnant
woman's without limitation, until the "time of fetal viability" (that is the
ability of a fetus to live independently with the usual support provided to
newborns, outside of the womb, generally considered to occur at about the 24th
week of pregnancy).
(While the Court
explicitly rejected the argument, I feel that this personal freedom is also
supported by the Ninth Amendment, to wit: " The
enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to
deny or disparage others retained by the people." Ambiguous? Interpretable? Oh
yes, and that was exactly the original intent [Justice Scalia] of the
Founding Fathers. They built into the Constitution, throughout the document,
beginning with the Preamble [2], a good deal of ambiguity and thus
interpretability when it came to personal rights and liberties. No wonder
Robert Bork, the ultimate so-called "originalist," once described the Ninth an
"as inkblot on the Constitution.")
Since
the time of Roe v. Wade, the Pro-choice movement has pursued a strategy that
has three major elements. One is that it has focused almost entirely on the
choice issue. The second is that from the beginning its promotion of that
element has been primarily court-based. The third is a major emphasis on the
provision of contraception and birth-control services to reduce the incidence
of unwanted pregnancy leading to abortion. (This is, of course, something the
so-called "pro-life" movement just ignores, other when it is not completely
opposed to the availability of such services, revealing its essential sexism, misogyny,
and male chauvinism).
What
political organizing that has been done on the pro-choice side from
time-to-time has been primarily in response to what the anti-choice forces have
been doing. Indeed, the Republican Religious Right has been ramping up the political
assault on abortion rights for years. Their political strategy has been
three-fold. One has been focused on gaining control of state governments in
order to enact anti-abortion rights laws per se. The second (see
for example recent actions taken by state governments in Arkansas [3] and North
Dakota [4]) has been aimed at getting the issue back to the Supreme Court where
they would hope, given the Catholic-dominated, who cares about stare decisis, right-wing majority, to
achieve reversal of Roe v. Wade. Third, they envision the total criminalization
of abortion through both state and national Constitutional "origin of life"
amendments.
It is proposed here to broaden
the battle on behalf of freedom of choice in the outcome of pregnancy, opening
a "second front" in the war, using the issue of religious
determinism/authoritarianism. This would make the battle everyone's, not just
women's. This is not to say that this issue has not been raised. It certainly
has been, from time-to-time (like the North African and Southern Europe
invasions). It is to say that it's time for its full force to be brought to
bear, on the equivalent of the beaches at Normandy. "When
life begins" is a religious (and philosophical/ethical, for us atheists)
concept, not a scientific one.
On GOP pseudo-science, concerning the
criminalization-of-abortion issue, there is, for example, the fake
"libertarian" (Dr.) Rand Paul saying that it's a scientific fact that life
begins at the moment of conception and thus abortion should be re-criminalized.
Speaking as a physician myself, I wonder what medical school he went to, or
maybe he just wasn't paying much attention during his obstetrics clerkship. No,
Rand, it is not a scientific fact
that life begins at the moment of conception, any more than, Todd (Akin), women
when raped have some sort of built-in magical contraceptive mechanism. The first is a religious notion, the second,
pure fantasy.
In fact, on the religious
side, great Catholic theologians, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas
Aquinas themselves, did not believe that the soul (which, they felt, upon its
arrival in the fetus indicated that "life" had begun) was present in the embryo
from the moment of conception, but that it arrived somewhat later (5). "Later"
was usually defined by them as the time of "quickening," which occurs some time
on the 2nd trimester. So early abortion was OK for Catholics. That
is until it happened to be declared not OK by Pope Pius IX in 1869 (he who also
delivered to Catholics the doctrine of Papal Infallibility and the concept of
the Virgin Birth).
That the matter of abortion-rights is a first and
foremost a religious question is the key point that the "pro-choice"
movement has not used to anywhere near its fullest extent all of these years.
It is a matter of a woman's choice, of course. But in their drive to
criminalize such a choice the anti-choicers always proceed from a
religious position, theirs, that "life begins at the moment of conception."
What our side has missed all of these years is that there is an equally valid
religious belief (and an atheist/humanist belief as well) that life begins at
the time of viability.
Thus what the GOP and the other so-called
"anti-abortionists" really want to do is criminalize the religious belief
of anyone who holds that life begins at the time of viability. Yes, folks, criminalize
it. It is suggested here that we move to finally win the abortion wars, by
adding to the very important principle of the "woman's right to choose" freedom of religion, as provided for in
the First Amendment, and opposition to the religious
authoritarianism/determinism of the Republican Religious Right.
Suddenly the issue would be expanded from one solely
of women's rights (which I fully support) over what is happening to one's own
body, to the one also of the rights of all
of us to hold religious/ethical beliefs that are indeed within the mainstream
of the broad population of the United States. Then, all of a sudden it would
become everyone's issue, not just that of women. And it is. For if the GOP, the
Republican Religious Right, can criminalize a set of beliefs on when life
begins, one can just imagine what might come next. Why, perhaps, criminalizing
the belief that the "one true God" is that of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
not the one of the Book of Exodus (Moses), or the one of the Koran, or criminalizing
the belief that there is none. That is a road we do not want to follow, do we?
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References :
1. Wikipedia, "Roe v. Wade," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade .
2. Jonas, S., " The Preamblers," http://blog.buzzflash.com/jonas/185 .
3.
Eckholm, E., "Arkansas Adopts a Ban on Abortions After 12 Weeks," http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/us/arkansas-adopts-restrictive-abortion-law.html?emc=eta1&_r=0 .
4. Eligon, J., "North Dakota to Put End to Abortions
on the Ballot" http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/23/us/north-dakota-allows-vote-on-strict-abortion-limit.html .
5. "The
Roman Catholic Church's "traditional teaching' on Abortion," http://liberalslikechrist.org/Catholic/abortionteaching.html .
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