Printer friendly version | Email to a friend | Comments (12)
My Personal Journey
on the Abortion Issue
Rachel MacNair
Miguel Ugalde
|
In November 1972 I turned 14. The next month, I finished the process for becoming a member of my monthly meeting. Meanwhile, I carried on with my heavy activism—mainly against the war in Vietnam, but also on other crucial issues of the day. When the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion came down in January 1973, it was only a minor blip to me. I regarded it as good news, since it would put the back-alley butchers out of business, and I didn't think much more about it.
A letter to the editor did give me pause. It suggested the unborn child was being dehumanized in the same way African Americans and Native Americans had been, and that this was just as wrong. This awoke in me the understanding that abortion shouldn't be treated lightly and should only be performed when the birth of the child led to a greater evil. I still believed it was better that women who insisted on doing it not be subjected to the back-alley butchers.
The 1970s wore on and I became especially active against nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, as well as earning my bachelor's degree from Earlham College with a major in Peace and Conflict Studies. I remember at Earlham a discussion on abortion where another woman student said that men just didn't understand what the experience of pregnancy was like—and she was making this as an argument against abortion. That interested me, since it was usually made as an argument for its availability. Later, I came to understand viscerally what that really meant.
With these small nibbles in the background, in 1979 I ran across a recently formed group called Prolifers for Survival (PS). The "for Survival" commonly referred at that time to nuclear survival of the human race, with the Mobilization for Survival being a major coalition of anti-arms-race groups. But with PS, here was a whole new viewpoint that started with the observation that different forms of violence are connected. Dehumanization, euphemisms, and rationalizations work in a similar way across a variety of issues. As a pacifist with a degree in Peace Studies, I was well aware of this—it's a common way of looking at, say, war and the funding of human needs or environmental destruction or injustices inflicted on workers, the poor, minorities, people with disabilities, and women. The new idea this group presented was that this applied to fetuses as well—and fetus is Latin for unborn child.
The group's founder, Juli Loesch, tells the story of how she was giving a house party to explain what was wrong with nuclear energy, and discussed how radiation hurts the child in the womb. A woman asked her, if this bothered her, whether having a curette (a curved surgical knife) deliberately going after that same child would bother her. As Juli tells it, she responded by cheerfully fudging the answer. But it did get her to thinking.
And what about those back-alley butchers? The case of Richard Mucie in my home town of Kansas City startled me. He fit the description, having killed a woman in 1968 in a horrifying way, the details of which I will spare you. The jury gave him the maximum sentence for manslaughter in the woman's death. Being wealthy, he managed to get out of prison early, but he opened an antique shop and as best we know was out of the abortion business. Then came Roe v. Wade in 1973, and he was back in business, opening shop literally on Main Street.
Another member of my monthly meeting, Reva Griffith, who worked at Planned Parenthood, told me they would never refer patients to him because of his low medical skills. But women picking someone out of the Yellow Pages would get no such warning. There are of course abortion providers who are more conscientious, but then, that was true in the illegal period as well. The court decision that I had thought put the more incompetent out of business actually in some cases put them back in.
So when the National Right to Life Committee held its convention just up the road from me in Omaha in the early 1980s, I attended with the Prolifers for Survival contingent. It was quite a cultural difference; in those days, we peace folks commonly had backpacks at conferences, and people there remarked upon mine as an oddity. Not that it bothered them; it was just outside their normal practice. We took a large banner to the conference's outdoor rally that said "Ban the Bomb, Not the Baby." We were questioned by one man who was immediately satisfied when we assured him we were pro-life and not counter-demonstrators, and we were otherwise welcome. The press, in what I would come to understand as a long-standing pattern, preferred to focus on small scribbled signs wanting Phyllis Schlafly for Secretary of Defense, this being an upcoming matter. As usual, the press preferred what fits the stereotype, and commonly ignored those of us who didn't match it.
Dehumanization, euphemisms, and rationalizations work in a similar way across a variety of issues.
Soon thereafter, a small group called Feminists for Life needed new officers, and we had a scratch-and-claw election. (That is, no matter how much we scratched and clawed in protest, they made us officers anyway.) I spent the next decade (1984-1994) being their president. That included doing over 100 radio interviews, a couple dozen college speaking engagements, and otherwise engaging in dialogue.
Meanwhile, I went to a Prolifers for Survival meeting in 1987 in which it morphed into the Seamless Garment Network (now with the new name of Consistent Life). This broadened the coalition as well as the issues being addressed, beyond merely war and abortion. Added also were death penalty, euthanasia, racism, and poverty. Many more issues are relevant when brevity is not needed; the principle applies broadly. When violence is presented as a quick way to solve problems, this is not merely unethical but mistaken in premise. Violence generally ends up causing more problems than it solves.
My son was conceived by artificial insemination by an anonymous donor, a point that makes it clear my pro-life position is not tied to sexual rigidities (the same can be said of the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians, <www.plagal.org>). All my pro-life friends were supportive, whether they approved or not; Protestant friends took the attitude that as long as I was doing it out of wedlock, at least I didn't fool around, whereas Catholic friends wondered why I couldn't at least have done it naturally. What startled me, though, was that it was among my pro-choice friends that I found disapproval. (I should put the pro-choice in quotation marks because, after all, to be consistent, they would have been supporting my choice.) And of course many did. But to some, choice means not accepting having children under less than ideal circumstances. This attitude showed up even among my friends. It's even more common in other circles, where people have contempt for "welfare mothers." There the term "choice" gets used as a way of covering up what is really intolerance for not choosing what they think ought to be chosen.
During my pregnancy in 1984, a nuclear energy restriction measure was on the ballot here in Missouri. So I met a lot of friends I hadn't seen in a while. They would ask how I was, and I would say, "I've succeeded in doubling the population of my body." No one had trouble understanding what that meant.
In fact, I made a practice during all the many interviews and speeches on abortion to assume that everyone understood we were talking about the killing of a child. Starting there, I would say that more often than not it took sexist pressures to get their mothers to allow this to happen. I kept track, and it was roughly one time in five that someone would challenge me on whether it really was the killing of a child. I was delighted then, because to my mind, this ought to be the whole case. If the fetus is not yet a human being, but a clump of tissue, then of course it ought to be left up to the woman entirely as to whether it remained in the uterus. Case closed. While we could make a case for abortion being a problem by being overuse of female-organ surgery by sexist male doctors, as with hysterectomies and C-sections, that would not lead to bans, but only be a matter of education.
Fernando Audibert
|
If the fetus is a human child, to my mind the pro-life case is made on the basis of the insights of nonviolence and the Testimony on Human Equality. With this difference in mind, it was in fact disheartening to me how many people simply went along with my characterization of abortion as child-killing and found it justified anyway.
But then, what about the mother? My experience with women who've had abortions has varied over the years, but women who understand themselves to have been traumatized by the experience—often coming to understand it this way long after the event—are naturally prominent for me in that I work with pro-life organizations. Such women are a major constituency group of the movement, and hearing about personal experiences is common. Unjust and sexist pressures on women, male-dominated sexual relationships, and callous employers or high school counselors came to my attention frequently, along with unsafe conditions in legal clinics.
But what about the women who are quite sure that abortion was the right thing for them? I've met many of those, and many remain quite clear about it. Yet I've also found that when such women present to me and assure me they feel no guilt, and then I respond with a sympathetic ear and an opinion that it's unjust and sexist pressures that often push women into it, it's not at all uncommon that I get agreement. My experience is that a great deal of therapeutic conversation can arise when it's known that a sympathetic ear is available—not judgmental against her for having the abortion, and not judgmental against her for having negative feelings afterward.
What about the abortion-providing staff? Do they respond to their work as if they were killing, or merely as if they were doing ordinary medical care? As I was contemplating the question back in 1995, it occurred to me that psychologists have studied how the human mind responds to killing, in what used to be called "battle fatigue," but which now has the more technical name of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
As I mused about this, I realized I was assuming that battle fatigue resulted from killing, since, after all, that's what soldiers do in battles. But that wasn't a shared assumption. The term PTSD has been applied to victims of all sorts of trauma, ranging from concentration camps to car accidents, and has been expanded to include rescuers as well. But even in the original focus on combat veterans, therapists and researchers primarily thought in terms of being shot at and seeing buddies shot, as opposed to doing the shooting. The few studies that considered the effect of doing the shooting mainly thought of those committing atrocities, as opposed to the kind of killing that's regarded as militarily justified.
So I had a lot of work to do. I went back to school and earned my PhD in Psychology. I studied: combat veterans, those who carry out executions, police who shoot in the line of duty, criminal homicide, Nazi records, and the small evidence available for groups like torturers and those pursuing blood sports like bullfighting.
So what was my conclusion regarding abortion staff? I did find plenty of case studies and a couple of quantitative studies clearly indicating trauma symptoms. While some data came from former abortion staff who had now become active in the pro-life movement—and there are many of those, which is remarkable when you consider what they have to admit to—there was also evidence from those still practicing and advocating abortion availability. The dreams especially fit the pattern of trauma and offer actual content. Trauma symptoms were clearly described both at times when the public controversy was seen as settled and when it was flaring. I've collected the evidence in my book Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress: The Psychological Consequences of Killing, published in 2002.
I've continued with my love of peace studies, having also authored or edited books on peace psychology, as well as staying organizationally active there. The current politics and portrayal in the media of the abortion debate as being a gaping right-wing/left-wing divide has been personally painful, and it appears to me that it has all the problems that normally go with the "us vs. them" way of dividing humanity up. Inasmuch as I can figure out what "left" and "right" are supposed to mean, I see left-wing and right-wing reasoning on both "sides" of this debate. I'm still waiting for someone to give me a definition that fits what I see. I made friends not only with fellow pacifist, feminist, and GLBT pro-lifers, but also with pro-lifers who self-identify as right wing or conservative, and of course with plenty of pro-choice friends with whom I share interests on other issues. All these friendships are precious to me, and enrich my life.
On only two occasions have I participated in an organized discussion of the abortion issue among a group of Friends where we could share our personal journeys and reflections. One was at an FGC Gathering and very well done. The other took place many years ago at my own meeting and was sabotaged by two people announcing that they didn't wish to discuss it and were not satisfied simply to go elsewhere to avoid discussing it but remained to insist that the rest of us wouldn't either. It appears to me that many of us are missing many opportunities to interact with sincere people of tender conscience with a concern for children in the womb and those who work hard on providing services to pregnant women and new mothers. There are so many things we can do for peace if we are more inclined toward the positive approach of working this through that I saw at that long-ago FGC Gathering, and if we do this more frequently within our own monthly meetings. q
Printer friendly version | Email to a friend | Comments (12)
This is a feature article from the
February 2010 issue of Friends Journal.If you enjoyed it, we encourage you to subscribe! You can also make a donation to support our work.
Comments
abortion and 'taking away the occasion'
For a long time I've been aware of Rachel and her work on psychology and peace, and now I find she's a Quaker who's been thinking about this difficult topic of abortion!!
I live in a community, mixed in class and race, and see around me the results of a very passionate and unforgiving 'pro-life' movement: many teens with babes of their own. There are efforts by women in the community to help teens not be in this position, and there are other agencies to assist those teens in having or not having abortions.
I have a dear friend in high school, when I held the position that abortion was wrong, who - I was to discover - had an illegal abortion. She went into the city to a doctor's office and could only be there an hour, so the deed was done, and with help from a friend, left long before it was medically wise. Today she would use a process that was more healthy.
Our society presupposes that taking a life is wrong. But that supposes all options are equal. Death and life are part of the same journey; the idea that Catholic doctrine championed for so long, that 'fresh' life is more valuable (so the mother was sacrificed for the babe in a difficult pregnancy) seems to me shocking and unexceptable. But if a mother can be saved and the babe is taken away, I see a sad and grief filling experience, AND the filled life of the babe was yet to be. I think there is value in remembering that we need grieving, and that life experience has a value.
I am against the death penalty because it makes my community the 'doer' of the deed. I know that making all of us silent partners in the taking of life has an effect on society.
I welcome and honor the work Rachel is doing to learn more about the effects on the providers. I suspect that, like the killing of anything, a process that acknowledges the grief such an act will foster will in the end have to be part of the process of doing an abortion. (I see some similarities to the way some Native Americans are said to honor the 'place' in Creation of the animal killed to be eaten, and the soul vs the body.) I also welcome better education and earlier education about sex, procreation, and harder work on valuing all people regardless of gender.
Like much of the medical industry, abortion providers, it would seem, get little support to contemplate their place in the medical work they do and how to process the consequences of their actions, despite the well advertised oath taken. We think of it more as an 'industry' than a 'service', and I wonder what that place in our minds puts all of this. I hope that in her studies, Rachel will not ignore these aspects as well.
And I agree with her frustration about the left/right divide, and have not answered an appeal in a long time from the left. Those of us in this 'camp' might practice 'disarmament' as we try to stay engaged with the ones in the shouting match. What would disarm them?
Sharing our journeys
I thank the Journal for publishing this. It is in hearing others' journeys that people come to understand where their convictions come from, and are able to really consider them and not just put them in some ideological box.
Rachel mentions two occasions on which Friends sought to provide opportunities for sharing on abortion. I was part of a Monthly Meeting worship sharing around abortion that did provide an opportunity for Friends to really hear where others were coming from.
While I was in the Spiritual Nurture Program of the School of the Spirit, I was moved to write one of my papers on my discernment experience with the issue of abortion. Others have said they found that helpful. I have it on-line at http://www.seamless-garment.org/discabor1.shtml
How do we come to understand the implications of our faith understandings? I think the process includes both self-reflection and true listening to the experiences of others. I hope that many Friends will find Rachel's article helpful in this process.
the possibility of a life
I suppose I am one of those Rachel would like to talk with. I just cannot see a fetus not yet viable outside of the mother's body as a life; I can only see that fetus as the *possibility* of a life. When I learned that tumors sometimes have teeth, and/or hair, I began to wonder.....is a tumor alive? And I just can't get beyond that.
So, I can't see a 1st trimester abortion as ending a life. I do see 1st trimester abortions as a tragedy--every woman, every time. But I cannot make, nor judge, the choices of others.
The issue isn't political. Shouting and judging on both sides hurts us all. It's a personal matter, and we all should help those who feel the need to consider abortion in any way we can.
I am pro-life, anti-death penalty, anti-war, anti-violence. But not anti-abortion in every case. I'm pro-the mother and whatever choice she needs to make. I'm pro-children, who need a loving village in which to grow up.
Thank you, Rachel, for the strong and thoughtful article.
From a Prayerfully Pro-choice Friend
It’s good that Friends Journal is opening a dialogue on reproductive freedom, choice and abortion. It would be great to see an article from a pro-choice point of view in Friends Journal as well. I’m a prayerfully pro-choice Friend, meaning that I am pro-choice because of my faith. My faith isn’t something that I have to hold separately from my view on this issue. It’s not a position that I came to easily or hold lightly.
A good resource I would suggest for other prayerfully pro-choice Friends and those wanting more information on the place where religion and reproductive freedom can meet, is the website for The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice www.rcrc.org
I’ve seen the face of the anti-choice movement when volunteering for my local Planned Parenthood. Daily the clinic would receive threats, protesters and vandalizing. Women coming in for routine medical checkups and birth control would be yelled at and shown fake photo-shopped pictures of bloody fetuses by protesters. I would respect the anti-choice position more if they were working for access to and education about contraception and preventing unplanned pregnancies, because these would lower the rate of abortions.
What about abortion in cases of rape or incest or if allowing the pregnancy to continue would damage the health and well-being of the woman involved? If abortion is made illegal what would be the punishment for a woman seeking one?
If abortion was illegal in the US tomorrow it wouldn’t stop abortions, rich women would fly to where it’s still legal and poor women would be forced to the back alleys. Prevention is the key and I think it’s something that we all can agree on. Overturning Roe v. Wade will just send abortions back to the unsafe back alleys.
Response - From a Prayerfully Pro-Choice Friend
Friend --
On the matter of the people who yell at abortion clinics, this is quite a small portion of the pro-life movement. The majority of the movement works directly in crisis pregnancy centers and similar volunteer work, and such center now vastly outnumber abortion clinics. The partisan political aspect of the movement is of course entirely depressing to me, but then we in the peace movement don't do terribly well on partisan politics either -- politicians tend to be markedly insincere and inconsistent. People doing educational activities aimed at persuasion are also far more common than people yelling at the clinics.
And several clinics have had individuals who are very calm and interested in being helpful; they offer information about where resources are available, and the occasional woman is grateful. The problem is that you only need one screamer to show up, and that whole approach is sabotaged. More screamers come, and the people whose interest is in actually being helpful are driven away. A person can't take a quiet approach when someone else is screaming, after all.
So the screamers are actually a small portion even of that small portion of the movement that would be at the clinics, except that they drive all the others away whenever they show up. Surely you can imagine how frustrating that is to people who would prefer to be gentle and helpful.
-- Rachel MacNair
RE: Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs)
Rachel-
I don’t agree that the people who terrorize abortion clinics are a small part of the anti-choice movement. They are the booming voice and the scary face of the anti-choice movement. They are who women see when they are just trying to get affordable, quality reproductive healthcare.
CPCs are not any more moral than the clinic protesters are. They purposely position their offices in proximity to abortion clinics with signs that read “FREE PREGNANCY TESTS” and such. In many cases, they have falsely advertised that they offer abortion services. When women get pregnancy options counseling from a CPC they are given information that is not medically-based or secular and the counseling is directive and does not give information about all available choices. “Persuade”, is the keyword here. Sadly, CPCs may outnumber abortion clinics now. They are growing so rapidly because fundamentalist evangelical mega-churches fund, support and many times even staff them.
When I hear the question
When I hear the question asked, "What about the case of incest or rape?" I wonder: "If a fetus is a child ( and at some point it does become one) does that child - the product of incest or rape- deserve life less than any other child? Is taking that child's life somehow different or better than taking the life of a child conceived by consensual intercourse?
If the question is now framed about the life and choice of the woman then the innocent but abused woman "deserves" an abortion "more" than the woman who became pregnant by consensual intercourse.
If the law or the cultural consensus makes exceptions for abortion in the case of rape and incest then we are saying that the question is not really about the life or death of a child. It is really about which women are more or less deserving of an abortion.
If it is about the child: all unborn children are alike in their innocence and need for protection.
I am an abortion survivor
I am an abortion survivor who went on to be sterilized a few years later so I would never have to make such a decision again. I was not at all traumatized at having an abortion, but as time passed, I was increasingly troubled by how easy it had been and how little thought went into it.
What troubles me is that in liberal circles it is very hard to talk about the "why not" of abortion without others assuming that you are trying to overthrow Roe v. Wade and make it illegal for anyone to have the choice. I do think it has to be an individual right, but I don't think we should trivialize the potential negatives for us individually and corporately. Can't those two concepts exist at once?
Questions & Concerns
I found the article by Rachael MacNair on her personal journey to being pro-life a good catalyst for thinking and discussion. I want to also commend Dr. MacNair for daring to practice an advocacy psychology, which too many of the timid colleagues in her discipline avoid.
That said, I do have concerns and questions I’d like to raise:
• Are pro-life and pro-choice positions necessarily mutually exclusive? Might one be pro-life by working for positive alternatives to abortion and a better support system for mothers and their young children, while not wanting to criminalize the option of abortion for women in desperate circumstances?
• Would going back to criminalize abortion alleviate the sexism Dr. MacNair sees as constituting the pressure some women feel to have an abortion? Or would it codify sexism as the law of the land?
• Is abortion really aptly described by the phrase, “killing the child?” Dr. MacNair has made the point that language can dehumanize and thus make violence more likely. Language can indeed obscure the humanity of oppressed people and make them seem like things or even a disease that can and should be eradicated. On the other hand, language also can used to obscure meaningful differences and distinctions. My first wife and I experienced a miscarriage (“spontaneous abortion”) and a couple years later an emergency surgery to save her life when the embryo embedded in one of her fallopian tubes (“ectopic pregnancy”). Is it meaningful and true to say “the child died” or “we killed the child?” Certainly fetal death occurred in both instances, with emotional consequences for both parents. But to me “miscarriage” and “ectopic pregnancy” carry truthful, humane meanings not communicated by “killing the child.” While abortion language such as “terminating the pregnancy” may not be humanizing enough for Dr. MacNair, is “killing the child” going too far in the other direction?
• When language such as “killing the child” is used, are pro-lifers willing to take responsibility for the pain, stigmatization, and violence that result for the parents and medical personnel involved? The recent case of the murder of Dr. George Tiller comes to mind, as well as women who have abortions and who hear intimations they are responsible for “killing the child.”
• The elephant in the room is the question of what is to be done about the steady erosion and possible repeal of Roe v. Wade by our current Supreme Court? Is it really pro-life for the State to exercise its power to compel a woman to carry her pregnancy to term under the coercion of criminal penalties for herself and/or the medical personnel involved? The right of the fetus to life is complicated by the fact that the unborn child is developing inside the body of another human being, the mother who provides all life-support functions until viability. Must being pro-life mean the pregnant woman must surrender the legal right to determine what is going on in her own body?
• When advocates of “consistent life” speak out by placing ads and writing opinion pieces, and they speak out only against abortion, is that a violation of ethical integrity? Dr. MacNair has written for conservative and evangelical publications about how to effectively use psychology as a pro-life tool, but I haven’t noticed her taking the opportunity to give equal time in these venues to the death penalty, capitalism’s rich-poor gap, or militarism. I notice several prominent consistent life advocates have trade-marked their pro-life, anti-choice workshops and presentations, and evidently make a good business of speaking out. Does the consistent life movement need to be more “consistent?”
Sometimes in life one is faced with wrenching ethical dilemmas in which competing values operate, and difficult choices must be made. It is good to have dialog to attempt to clarify those values and to communicate across political divides. Hopefully we are not limited to a win/lose outcome, and can find a way in our American democracy to honor the people and principles on both sides of the abortion debate.
Response - Questions and Concerns
Thanks so much for your thoughtful reflections. Since they do seem to be asking for an answer from me, I'll give a start to one on each point.
Point 1: Are pro-life and pro-choice positions necessarily mutually exclusive?
Wanting to be active about preventing abortions in gentle ways while not having a legal ban is a middle-ground position, and it's actually the most popular position in the U.S., with a plurality taking it. Just as the just war doctrine is more popular than either pacifism or runaway militarism, keeping the option of war for only when the situation is desperate. We pacifists know the very first response is to work actively to keep the situation from getting to the stage of being desperate.
Point 2: Would going back to criminalize abortion alleviate the sexism Dr. MacNair sees as constituting the pressure some women feel to have an abortion? Or would it codify sexism as the law of the land?
It depends on how it's done. Poland and Nicaragua have both banned abortions and are I believe the only two nations to have done so in recent history after having had abortions allowed before. In both cases, maternal mortality went down and sexism doesn't seem to be codified. But Nicaragua also had a maternal health campaign, so the mortality downturn shows that was successful, and of couse Poland was going through huge changes.
Given how many of the pressures to abort are blatantly sexist, I'm afraid I can't really make much sense out of the idea that prohibiting feticide would be codifying sexism, and I'd need you to explain that to me.
Point 3: Is abortion really aptly described by the phrase, “killing the child?” . . . My first wife and I experienced a miscarriage (“spontaneous abortion”) and a couple years later an emergency surgery to save her life when the embryo embedded in one of her fallopian tubes (“ectopic pregnancy”). Is it meaningful and true to say “the child died” or “we killed the child?”
I'm so sorry that you had to go through that. The "spontaneous abortion" of medical terminology is rather cold-hearted, as medical terminology often is. And no, the phrase "killed the child" makes no sense in either case here. But the child did die.
I know several women who have suffered miscarriages that had their suffering added to by the fact that people wouldn't take it seriously -- take a hot bath and get over it. Grieving is normal, and we as friends and family need to be sensitive to what the psychological needs of the couple are. Similarly, having to have a medical intervention to stop an ectoptic pregnancy is so very hard, and grieving is normal.
Point 4: When language such as “killing the child” is used, are pro-lifers willing to take responsibility for the pain, stigmatization, and violence that result for the parents and medical personnel involved?
I think far more damage is done if we aren't clear and honest about what is really happening in an abortion. Covering it up with euphemisms is not a good strategy; the vigilantes won't buy it anyway, and I know plenty of women who find it painful that people won't acknowledge what it is they really lost.
Vigilanteism is a problem of all large social movements -- remember the bombings by anti-war people in the 1960s? Pro-choice rhetoric has led to plenty of violence as well. I've gotten violent mail and threats, most of which I dismissed as someone running off at the mouth. But most painfully, I was initially denied for a special-needs adoption because of it. The local head of Planned Parenthood knew that was ridiculous because she knew me personally. I was finally cleared, but never did get a child placed. Unfortunately, on this issue, stereotypes go both ways and are rampant.
A few weeks after the killing of Dr. Tiller, Harlan Drake murdered James Poillon, shooting him point-blank as he held a pro-life sign out in front of a high school in Michigan. Drake stated outright that his motivation was that he didn't like the sign and didn't think the students should be subjected to it. Being subjected instead to an actual murder of an elderly man on oxygen right in front of them can't have been better, but the vigilante mind is not given to logic.
Point 5: Is it really pro-life for the State to exercise its power to compel a woman to carry her pregnancy to term under the coercion of criminal penalties for herself and/or the medical personnel involved?
There generally never were criminal penalties for the mother, and hardly anyone is proposing that now. The pro-life movement has too many women who've had abortions as members, and would never turn against one of its own major constituencies. The only way the law will be enforced is if women who've been through abortions enforce it. That may sound strange to the ears of those wrapped up in the rhetoric of "choice," but it makes perfect sense to those of us who know so many women that felt they had no choice.
I think it's a deception of women to keep abortion legal. How could it be killing a child if it's legal? If it's not killing a child, then of course it should remain legal and nothing more need be said about why.
But, as you were suggesting in the first point, the question of legal status is only a small portion of what has to do with whether abortions happen or not. While I think legal bans do reduce the numbers, there are many more helpful things that reduce the numbers. Having social support, equality in sexual relationships, treatment for substance abuse or depression, teaching life-planning skills, or preventing domestic abuse would all lower the numbers as well. And of course they have the
additional advantage of having value in themselves whether they lower abortions or not. Attitudes about abortion will have far more impact than its legal status. I'm far more interested in having it understood to be violence, not only against the child but against everyone involved.
More Point 5: The right of the fetus to life is complicated by the fact that the unborn child is developing inside the body of another human being, the mother who provides all life-support functions until viability.
Yes, the mother. The mother. The mother.
Point 6: When advocates of “consistent life” speak out by placing ads and writing opinion pieces, and they speak out only against abortion, is that a violation of ethical integrity?
I'm having trouble understanding you here. To be consistent-life means to oppose violence across the board, but it doesn't preclude focusing on one aspect of it at a time. Using peace principles to oppose abortion with an audience for whom peace principles are already understood makes perfect sense to me. It would only be an ethical problem if I pretended to oppose the other forms of violence and didn't.
Actually, the peace movement is so very accustomed to linking issues of violence that we most assuredly would not need the consistent life ethic for the idea to occur to us. The ethic was born because when peace people think about abortion as being another form of violence, that's naturally the way we would think.
More Point 6: Dr. MacNair has written for conservative and evangelical publications about how to effectively use psychology as a pro-life tool, but I haven’t noticed her taking the opportunity to give equal time in these venues to the death penalty, capitalism’s rich-poor gap, or militarism.
Of course you haven't noticed me talking to prolifers about the death penalty and militarism and related issues. Why would you be there when I was doing so? How much do you hang out in such venues? One of my major points is that pro-lifers are only going to want to hear about these issues from other prolifers, and we miss an major educational opportunity if we don't take advantage of that. I assure you, I've been taking advantage of that, and so have the groups with which I'm active. If it doesn't show up in the specific articles you've seen, then that's due to what the publisher was interested in publishing from me.
When I offer my psychology work about post-trauma symptoms in abortion staff on the idea that killing is traumatic, I commonly relate this to combat veterans and executioners, and I find many pro-lifers catch on quickly. For another approach, if you look at the Consistently Opposing Killing book (published by Praeger, 2008), which is explicitly consistent-life, you'll see we added a couple of chapters about how nonviolence works that most Friends and other peace activists will find rather ordinary but are there because pro-lifers need the education and are more likely to read it there than in a source they don't trust.
Again, thanks so much for taking the time out to write your reflections.
-- Rachel MacNair
Well done, Rachel
What a well-thought out response, to a well-thought out reply to a well-written article. I love to see Pro-lifers and pro-choicers engaging in constructive conversation!
Life of mother or of child?
In "abortion and 'taking away the occasion'", the guest writes: "the idea that Catholic doctrine championed for so long, that 'fresh' life is more valuable (so the mother was sacrificed for the babe in a difficult pregnancy) seems to me …"
I don't know what the practice of the Catholic Church has been regarding a choice in favor of the baby's life, but the following quotes from John Paul II and Benedict XVI may help answer some questions.
In brief, "As far as the right to life is concerned, every innocent human being is absolutely equal to all others." (The meaning of "innocent" is inferred from: "If such great care must be taken to respect every life, even that of criminals and unjust aggressors, the commandment "You shall not kill" has absolute value when it refers to the innocent person." Evangelium Vitae no. 57, as well as from a paragraph below.)
Since the right to life of mother and child are absolutely equal, the mother who chooses to die instead of the baby may be choosing: "a radical self-offering, according to the spirit of the Gospel Beatitudes (cf. Mt 5:38-40). The sublime example of this self-offering is the Lord Jesus himself." Evangelium Vitae no. 55.
I think of a bucket with all innocent life within it. Some innocent life is obviously more innocent than others, but if you are innocent and in the bucket, you are given an absolutely equal right to life as any other in the bucket. This resembles Jesus' parable of all the laborers in the vineyard who work different lengths of time, but get the same total pay. I understand John Paul II's main point in the whole abortion issue to be that unborn children, now excluded from the bucket (not as guilty but as simply not counted) need to be included in the bucket with the same equal right to life as any other innocent, and that they even have more right to be in the bucket to enjoy this equal right to life, because "No one more absolutely innocent could be imagined. In no way could this human being ever be considered an aggressor, much less an unjust aggressor!" —Evangelium Vitae no. 58.
Context for these quotes are below. I love to read them.
John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae no. 57, 25 March 1995
"Nothing and no one can in any way permit the killing of an innocent human being, whether a fetus or an embryo, an infant or an adult, an old person, or one suffering from an incurable disease, or a person who is. Furthermore, no one is permitted to ask for this act of killing, either for himself or herself or for another person entrusted to his or her care, nor can he or she consent to it, either explicitly or implicitly. Nor can any authority legitimately recommend or permit such an action".52
As far as the right to life is concerned, every innocent human being is absolutely equal to all others. This equality is the basis of all authentic social relationships which, to be truly such, can
only be founded on truth and justice, recognizing and protecting every man and woman as a person and not as an object to be used. Before the moral norm which prohibits the direct taking of the life of an innocent human being "there are no privileges or exceptions for anyone. It makes no difference whether one is the master of the world or the ?poorest of the poor' on the face of the earth. Before the demands of morality we are all absolutely equal".
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_...
Benedict XVI, To the Bishops of Kenya, 19 November 2007
When you preach the Gospel of Life, remind your people that the right to life of every innocent human being, born or unborn, is absolute and applies equally to all people with no exception whatsoever. This equality “is the basis of all authentic social relationships which, to be truly such, can only be founded on truth and justice” (Evangelium Vitae, 57).
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2007/november/do...
John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae no. 55:
There are in fact situations in which values proposed by God's Law seem to involve a genuine paradox. This happens for example in the case of legitimate defence, in which the right to protect one's own life and the duty not to harm someone else's life are difficult to reconcile in practice. Certainly, the intrinsic value of life and the duty to love oneself no less than others are the basis of a true right to self-defence. The demanding commandment of love of neighbour, set forth in the Old Testament and confirmed by Jesus, itself presupposes love of oneself as the basis of comparison: "You shall love your neighbour as yourself" (Mk 12:31). Consequently, no one can renounce the right to self-defence out of lack of love for life or for self. This can only be done in virtue of a heroic love which deepens and transfigures the love of self into a radical self-offering, according to the spirit of the Gospel Beatitudes (cf. Mt 5:38-40). The sublime example of this self-offering is the Lord Jesus himself.
Post new comment