My Ideas for Post-Roe Legislation
by Rachel MacNair
Now that Roe’s overturn looks like a real possibility, I want to suggest some ideas for legislation. When the Biden administration started, I wrote My Ideas for 2021 Legislation, detailing what I would advise if I were asked, knowing I wouldn’t be asked. I still hold to ratifying the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to abolish the death penalty, along with a whole host of legislation to prevent killing.
Here I’m going to focus entirely on abortion in what we hope will be a post-Roe world – state and federal legislation. As usual, these are my own thoughts, not official positions of the Consistent Life Network.
Point 1: Taking Care of Everybody
Several things should have been done all along that, in addition to their own merits, work as abortion prevention – whether abortion’s legal or not. But the idea that states banning abortion have all the more responsibility to pass these has come up in several media spots. For those states insisting on keeping abortion legal, these are some of the things that will be all the more important.
All programs that effectively reduce rape, domestic violence, and sex trafficking should get very, very high priority.
Henry Hyde made a good pro-life case for parental leave; see Paid Family and Medical Leave for the speech and more. The parental leave bill passed, but it’s unpaid, making it unworkable for many.
Raising the minimum wage, by reducing poverty, reduces abortion.
Bolstering Community Health Centers in general – and especially in the vicinity of Planned Parenthood centers that don’t have any nearby – will bring greater access to health care. Even a gridlocked Congress may be able to do this, because both Republicans and Democrats support Community Health Centers. It’s already in the CHC’s legal definition that they don’t do abortions.
The idea of a child allowance was originally proposed to be done through Social Security, but ended up as an expanded tax credit. It was wildly successful in reducing childhood poverty. But then it ended. My opinion is that Social Security payments make a better fit: being a parent is work, and work we need people to do. Sharing in the cost of that makes as much sense as sharing for people with disabilities and retirees. Social security might be more permanent than a tax credit.
One year the National Right to Life Committee and the National Organization for Women had their national conventions in Denver on the same weekend, so I went to major chunks of both. One button popular in both: “Every mother is a working mother.”
There should never family caps on any kind of poverty-relief payments; those have been shown to increase abortions.
Increasing affordable child care options.
Increasing access to affordable housing.
Finding better solutions to crime that don’t involve mass incarceration, which can break up families and other support systems for children. Cash bail for those safe enough to be let out can threaten jobs and make pregnancy harder. The exception to the abolition of slavery for those convicted of a crime encourages mistreatment of prisoners.
We need to find ways to make the Hyde amendment permanent. The Hyde Amendment bars federal Medicaid dollars from paying for most abortions. It’s a rider every year. It’s a life-saving measure, as shown in studies. It’s helpful to low-income women, since it removes some of the pressures to abort. Democrats have recently made its passage much more precarious than it used to be.
Anything that helps with access to health care: expanding Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) or any other method that works.
Point 2: A Horse Trade
I propose a bill that would expand Medicare to cover everyone from conception up to age 18, plus all obstetric care for pregnancies, plus include that the Hyde amendment is permanent and covers all federal programs.
Why Medicare? Because an age-based set of benefits is already established and doesn’t mark the recipient as poor. It has a better reputation with doctors, is more stable, and doesn’t rely on state governments who cut Medicaid.
Children as a whole aren’t the most expensive health care group. Medicaid and CHIP dollars could go into the Medicare budget to cover the same people. Medicare already covers children with disabilities (although that could be better done), so the most expensive children are already in the budget.
For Republicans, having the Hyde amendment permanent, and having conception be the beginning point – would that be so very valuable as to let them swallow their aversion to expanding Medicare?
For Democrats, having a substantial expansion of Medicare – would that be so very valuable as to let them swallow their aversion to the Hyde amendment?
Actually, I doubt it. I fear this is fantasy; positions are so entrenched. But if either one of the parties did decide to propose it, it would surely put the party in a spot, wouldn’t it?
In the meantime, those who follow Catholic and Mennonite doctrine, a large hunk of evangelicals, and us pro-life feminists and consistent lifers would all regard it as a win-win. We like both parts of the deal and wouldn’t regard it as a horse trade at all.
Point 3: Laws Directly on Abortion
Comedian Stephen Colbert noted (at 3:13-3:34) Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s remark, “We can’t stop bad people from doing bad things. They’re going to violate murder laws, they’re not going to follow gun laws. I never understood that argument.” Colbert responded, “I’ve got to say – ‘Laws are pointless’ is a bold position for the attorney general.” Having heard arguments recently that laws against abortion won’t stop all abortions, I apply the same point: for both guns and abortions, laws won’t stop the problem entirely, but they’ll have a substantial impact, and that’s life-saving. You don’t avoid saving some lives just because you can’t save them all.
I’ve written on the effectiveness of parental involvement for abortions on minors, as well as what studies show about various kinds of abortion laws on the books.
Suggestions we’ve already made for referendums can also apply to legislation, once allowed:
On stopping late-term abortions, where the best public support is: cast the proposal not in terms of restriction, but protection – it gets the same result, but frames it better. And it will be far more effective and persuasive if other protections of late-term babies are added. Say, health coverage and other supports for the mother, the unborn child, and for children born with disabilities. (We have a list of possibilities and would like to add to it if anyone has suggestions.)
Conscientious objection on state tax dollars could apply to both abortion and the death penalty, and military-related expenditures where that’s in state budgets.
Meanwhile, what’s the impact of laws that ban abortion outright, or after heartbeat detection? We all know women will travel to other states eager to receive them. But there’s a continuum of how much women actually want to do this:
Those who are being pressured or are unsure obviously benefit from having the ready availability of abortion removed. Those who only need a small obstacle or information on alternatives will mostly make their way to birth just fine.
Sidewalk counselors find a steady stream of such women in the most unlikely of places – namely, walking into the facility with an abortion appointment. There are far more such women elsewhere.
When the media report an upsurge of women trying to get appointments in neighboring states, they don’t notice those are only the women on one extreme of the continuum. Pro-lifers encounter women on the other parts all the time.
Also, couples will take more care about getting pregnant when getting un-pregnant is so hard. More women won’t get themselves on that continuum.
In any event, the major impact of abortion-banning legislation will be to close abortion facilities, or the abortion-performing part of some medical clinics. Shutting down the assembly lines of current abortion practice will have a major impact on abortion numbers.
We don’t have to do draconian things to make sure each and every abortion doesn’t happen. Numbers will drop precipitously (they already have in Texas) simply with the passage of the law alone.
At which point, all the things mentioned in Point 1 above, along with more prenatal justice education, become all the more crucial.
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For more of our posts on similar topics, see:
Why the Hyde Amendment Helps Low-Income Women
Removing Health Care Access is an Act of Violence
Racism Kills: Several Perspectives
Quotations compiled in PowerPoint by Rachel MacNair
Feel free to copy and paste any you find suitable in your social media.
Keeping You & Your Kids Sexually Pure , p. 86
The Poor Cry Out for Justice, and We Respond with Legalized Abortion
“Is It Too Late?” 1971 Speech of Fannie Lou Hamer
“Why an Heiress Spent Her Fortune Trying to Keep Immigrants Out”, The New York Times
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For more of our posts on racism, see:
Historical Black Voices: Racism Kills
Voices on Police Brutality in the Aftermath of the Murder of George Floyd
Police Brutality to the Preborn
“The Affairs of a Handful of Natives”: Nuclear Testing and Racism
Movies with Racism Themes: “Gosnell” and “The Hate U Give”
Reflections on the Alito Draft Leak of May 2, 2022
The May 2 article in Politico has caused quite a stir: a leaked February 10 draft of a proposed opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson. The draft says that “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” and explicitly overturns Roe v. Wade and Casey. Here we offer a variety of responses.
The Work Ahead
Excerpt from Statement of Democrats for Life of America, a CLN member group
Kristen Day, Executive Director
The Court clearly made a mistake 50 years ago when it took away these decisions from the people, and now we as a nation are so polarized that we forget that there are real people involved. This should not be about the next election. This should be about women, their families, and their children.
Many states have chosen to eliminate health and safety regulations governing abortion in response to the possibility that the Supreme Court might overturn Roe. They have voted to allow non-doctors to perform abortions on women. They have lowered their regulatory oversight of chemical abortions. Mail-order abortion pills have inflicted significant trauma on many women who used them and even sent them to emergency rooms.
On the other side of the spectrum, we have states limiting abortion from 6 weeks to 20 weeks. Still, some of those states lack the infrastructure to connect pregnant women with available resources to help them stay in school, continue their careers or have essential resources to support their growing families. More needs to be done in this regard.
Excerpt from Statement of Feminists for Life of America, a CLN member group
Serrin Foster, President
Our goal . . . is to make abortion unthinkable. And for us, it means helping women achieve what they really deserve: practical resources and support to support nonviolent choices.
Angry voices are masking so much pain. Efforts by big corporations to pay employees to travel to “abortion destination states” will only create a new generation of women who mourn or mask their pain.
And using poor women and women of color to defend abortion is unacceptable. Nothing is more racist than abortion. Their children are just as precious as any other.
Economic justice does not come from women laying their bodies down for brutal procedures or taking a series of poisonous pills to accommodate unsupportive administrators, bosses, or partners.
On the Streets
Excerpt from Response from Rehumanize International, a CLN member group
Herb Geraghty, Executive Director
Since the news broke, our team has been a presence outside the court nearly nonstop — staying out until past 2 AM and heading back at 8 AM the next morning. As a result, our secular, nonpartisan, and consistently pro-life message has been shared by media to millions of viewers. In this moment it is more critical than ever that our paradigm-shifting ideas are heard far and wide . . .
At many points, our small group were the only pro-life voices present outside the court — that means if we weren’t there, the media would only be able to report on the desperate talking points of the profit-hungry abortion industrial complex. The Supreme Court’s decision is not yet final — and the pro-abortion movement is working very hard to manufacture enough public pressure on key justices to intimidate them into changing their minds.
We must not allow the abortion industrial complex to take control of the narrative. We must use this time to lend our voices to the cause of justice for the unborn.
This witness has not been easy. We have faced more violence from pro-abortion protesters outside the court than ever before. I have been intentionally elbowed, pushed, shoved, hit on the head with signs, and had water thrown at me. I have had multiple signs ripped out of my hands and ripped up in front of my face or thrown far away into a crowd. I have seen my fellow activists punched, slammed in the head with megaphones, pulled to the ground, and even groped. Of course, as always, we have responded with nothing but nonviolence and de-escalation tactics.
Protection
Blog post – After Roe: A World beyond Abortion?
Aimee Murphy, Rehumanize International founder
We must create a new, human-centered paradigm for criminal justice after the offense of abortion, and of a life-affirming reproductive justice to prevent abortion.
I encourage my pro-life friends and colleagues to share a bold proposal for holistic, human-centered restorative justice after abortion with their communities, legislators, and leaders. Punitive, dehumanizing, and vengeful justice within our current retributive model is incongruous with human dignity. As pro-lifers we should understand that our retributive justice system — which only compounds and multiplies trauma and harm — can never be a human-centered, healing response to the communal pain and trauma of abortion. Instead, we need to see holistic, comprehensive community-based care for pregnant people, their prenatal children, and their families. Let’s build a world beyond abortion: protect the preborn in the law, and ensure families have the food, housing, childcare, healthcare, living wage, and paid leave to choose life and parent confidently.
I support restorative justice after abortion. I want to see healing for all who have suffered at the hands of the abortion industrial complex and their dehumanizing lies. I want to see healing for those who have chosen abortion and suffered the loss of their own child, or for those who mourn lost siblings, cousins, or other family members. I want to see healing for the clinic workers, the abortionists, and the corporations who participated in abortions, who should be given the space to come to terms with their complicity and openly grieve the children killed and missing today due to the violence of abortion. I want to see a justice system that acknowledges the loss of countless preborn children, helps offenders make restitution for the harm done, and more than anything that works together with families and communities to heal and make abortion unthinkable by providing the resources that will end the “demand” for this violent procedure.
Kevin D. Williamson
National Review, May 5, 2022
Kevin is not a consistent-lifer, but makes good points here. National Review accounts itself conservative in the William F. Buckley tradition.
The desire to punish is distinct from the desire to protect — it is rooted in an entirely different psychology and it produces very different policy prescriptions. If, as seems likely, Roe v. Wade is vacated and the matter of abortion regulation is properly returned to the state legislatures, we should be mindful of that difference and emphasize protection over punishment when crafting our statutes . . .
As I often observe, we Americans are not the Swiss — or even the Germans or the Dutch. We are not an especially ruly or easily governed people, as witnessed by our unusually high homicide rates . . . So it is unlikely that we will achieve 100 percent compliance with any abortion prohibitions we enact.
. . . even if we assume that every single one of the abortions that happen in the United States in a typical year (estimates vary, but probably around 850,000) would otherwise result in a pregnancy subsidized by Medicaid or another government program, this would not add up to a great deal of money — probably less than half a day’s worth of Social Security spending. If additional support for vulnerable mothers is required, then that is a bearable cost. As with practically every other welfare initiative, our problem there is going to be program design and administration, not resources.
Where There’s Value to the Leak
Excerpt from There’s an upside to the Alito draft leak
Mercatornet, May 6, 2022
Richard Stith, CLN Board member
The leak of Justice Alito’s draft of the majority decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, unfortunate as it may be, should not delegitimate the US Supreme Court.
If a snarky, plotting, election-related draft had been revealed, that would have truly delegitimated the court. But in the draft one only finds very solid scholarship . . .
Why should close reading, historical insight and an abundance of footnotes delegitimate the Court?
As a pro-life writer, I actually was a bit disappointed in the draft’s content. It contains no mention of the horror of abortion . . . it doesn’t mention any of the arguments that abortion hurts women . . .
[T]he leak has a silver lining. People will read through the draft opinion with greater care than they would ordinarily lavish on an actual Supreme Court opinion, where only the final result matters . . . And people find it plain exciting to read stuff that’s supposed to be secret.
Here is some evidence for my silver lining. The Washington Post yesterday published an annotated albeit somewhat simplified version of the text. I thought that both the abridgment and the textual comments were remarkably fair-minded, really devoted only to explicating Alito’s reasoning, not to unfairly debunking it.
Others are no doubt doing what the Washington Post did. This will soften support for Roe. If more and more people learn what an unfounded opinion it was, they will have less reverence for it . . .
But maybe advance titillation is slightly better than a done-and-dusted announcement in June.
And More
If Roe Is Overturned, Where Should the Pro-Life Movement Go Next? – in this New York Times article, Tish Harrison Warren does another excellent roundup of several viewpoints.
The Price of Roe – our website showing how Roe has sabotaged peace and justice and equality goals.
Our blog posts:
What Studies Show: Impact of Abortion Regulations
“The Daily Show” Doesn’t Do Its Homework
Abortion Facilitates Sex Abuse: Documentation
How Abortion is Useful for Rape Culture
Why the Hyde Amendment Helps Low-Income Women
The Poor Cry Out for Justice, and We Respond with Legalized Abortion
Threats to the Unborn Beyond Abortion
by Julia Smucker
The primary focus of pro-life advocacy (as conventionally understood in reference to the defense of prenatal human lives) is on opposing abortion – and rightly so, since the legalized killing of the unborn claims thousands of lives daily and is at the root of their dehumanization. Consistent life ethicists, while advocating strongly against abortion, also apply the term “pro-life” to the entire natural lifespan – again rightly so, reflecting the principle that all human life is inherently valuable and worthy of protection. Additionally, applying pro-life principles consistently means expanding our concern for the unborn to include all circumstances that endanger them, even when abortion isn’t considered, of which there are all too many.
Lack of Adequate Nutrition and Health Care
Julia Smucker
As an interpreter, I regularly encounter immigrant families starting new life chapters in the U.S., many of whom are refugees or asylum-seekers. When these families expand, so does their need for care, including essential prenatal checks and sometimes nutritional services such as WIC. Of course, immigrant families are far from the only people needing these services, but that’s the context in which I observe them. When I do, I’m often struck by the thought that, without even mentioning abortion, these service providers’ work could hardly be more pro-life. The very purpose of programs like WIC is to ensure born and unborn children get the nutrition they need at vital stages of development. Seeing these services in action brings home to me how essential they are from a pro-life perspective: when mothers are at risk of food insecurity during or after pregnancy, their developing children become even more at risk.
Maternal Stress
The negative health effects of poverty are easily passed from mother to child, not only directly by undernourishment, but also through the effects of stress on the body. Research has increasingly shown how toxic stress, which happens when stress hormones are released constantly over time, affects fetal development when those stress hormones are passed from mother to baby through the bloodstream. A 2019 documentary focused this research on poverty-related stresses to explain how they can “essentially handicap a baby for life literally before birth.” On a more hopeful note, the research also indicates “that the imprint of poverty and its toxic stressors can actually be reversed — just by making some radical shifts in prenatal care for poor moms, through programs that provide consistent, empathic one-on-one coaching with the mother while she is pregnant, and continuing through early childhood.”
Numerous studies focusing on race-related stress have come to similar conclusions, finding correlations between day-to-day experiences of racial prejudice and consistently high levels of stress hormones in the body, leading to multiple health risks that can be passed on to babies in the womb. Some studies have linked the stress caused by lifelong experiences of racial prejudice to low birth weight in babies. Others have found that, across multiple levels of education and financial status, Black women are disproportionately at risk of preterm labor and/or losing their babies within the first year after birth.
Police Brutality
Julia Smucker at
a protest of police brutality
A more immediate threat to life occurs with direct incidents of racialized violence. In 2020, Sarah Terzo compiled several news reports of such violence against pregnant Black women by police – which of course also gravely endangered their unborn children. Two of the five incidents Terzo cites involve Black women giving birth prematurely after experiencing excessive force at the hands of police officers. In the other three incidents, in which pregnant Black women were beaten or kicked, their babies died. All the above incidents, as reported, easily fit the categories of police brutality and excessive force; in most of them, the women who experienced the violence weren’t charged with any crimes. Even when a crime has been committed, it would be impossible for an unborn child to bear any responsibility for it. Therefore any use of police force that knowingly endangers an unborn child is reckless at best.
War
The world recently watched in horror as Russia’s military bombed a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, killing at least one pregnant mother and baby. This was an especially egregious example of the callous disregard for vulnerable human lives that occurs in war, but sadly, it’s not as anomalous as some might think. In fact, Rehumanize International author Samuel Parker noticed parallels between the Mariupol hospital bombing and a 2015 U.S. airstrike on a trauma hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in Kunduz, Afghanistan.
Just as it would be naïve to assume the only people harmed in war are armed combatants, it would be naïve to assume unborn children aren’t among the innocent victims of war too frequently dismissed as “collateral damage.” As the nonprofit Fields of Peace noted in a recent statement, “Today’s wars are fought in cities – the bombing of neighborhoods, apartments, schools, and hospitals. In modern war, for every one combatant killed, nine civilians are killed, the majority of them children…. War has become primarily the killing of children.”
Exposure to Toxins
Risks to babies in the womb from alcohol and other substances are well-established, and their avoidance during pregnancy is routinely advised. Developing babies may be exposed to harmful substances in additional ways, including the types of direct violence described above. Some evidence has suggested that tear gas – used in international conflict and by hypermilitarized police forces against protestors in multiple countries, including the U.S. – may be linked to miscarriages.
Another culprit: corporate carelessness with pollutants. To name one example, the 2019 film Dark Waters (summarized here) was based on the true story of a corporate lawyer who chose to represent his grandmother’s community, whose water supply was tainted by a company’s production of a chemical compound found to cause health problems in cows and humans – including birth defects. Multiple studies have also linked serious and sometimes life-threatening birth defects to air pollution.
Domestic Violence
A 2017 court battle in which an undocumented teenager sought and obtained an abortion was tragic on multiple levels. Among the several tragedies compounding the situation was the fact that the girl’s parents had previously forced her sister to miscarry – a grossly abusive act that not only killed one child but also contributed to the killing of another.
That domestic violence increases the risk of miscarriage, along with other health risks for mothers and babies who do survive to term, is well documented. This is a sadly global problem, borne out by studies in various countries including Egypt, Bangladesh, the U.S., New Zealand, Turkey, India, and Ethiopia.
Gun Violence
When interpersonal violence involves a deadly weapon, the situation becomes even more dangerous. And in a country with more civilian-owned guns than people, reports of shootings of pregnant women are shockingly numerous, whether by current or former partners, as innocent bystanders, or in unknown circumstances. Even if a pregnant woman is fatally shot in an altercation for which she may bear some responsibility, her death is still needless and tragic, and her baby is certainly blameless.
Mistreatment of Pregnant Inmates & Detainees
Babies of incarcerated mothers have similarly committed no crime, yet it’s their lives that are most endangered when their mothers are mistreated or neglected. In the worst cases, babies have died after being born prematurely in prisons or jails where they and their mothers were denied urgent medical care.
Similarly dangerous conditions have been reported for pregnant women in immigration custody, whose babies are innocent regardless of whether their parents have broken any laws. A fact sheet by Physicians for Human Rights reported multiple cases of severe neglect of detained women with pregnancy complications, and a total of 28 miscarriages experienced in ICE custody, between 2016 and 2018. Fortunately, more recent ICE policy imposed stricter limits on detention of pregnant and postpartum women, although the same limits don’t apply to Customs and Border Protection.
Conclusion
To be sure, abortion is the most direct attack on the lives of prenatal humans. Still, the examples above show that even if one focuses solely on protecting unborn lives, a purely single-issue focus only on opposing abortion is inadequate to the task. If we’re truly motivated by concern for the well-being of the unborn, this should naturally lead us to oppose any threats to them – and to their mothers – wherever such threats occur.
On the other side of the same coin, there’s a revealingly uncontroversial concern that arises instinctively in response to actual or potential harm to babies in the womb when it occurs outside the abortion debate – including among those who don’t take a strong position on abortion or even some who identify as pro-choice. If unborn children are so easily recognized as vulnerable human beings worthy of protection in those contexts, why should they be considered any less human or less worthy of life when their lives are deliberately and directly taken in medical settings?
Concern for the unborn, then, cannot exclude any injustices that endanger them. And concern for those made vulnerable by injustice cannot exclude the unborn.
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For more of our posts from Julia Smucker, see:
The Price of Violence: When Dehumanizing the Vulnerable Hurts One’s Own Causes
What Does it Mean to be Inconsistent?
Is Abortion Different from Other Violence?
To Know a Person is to Recognize a Human
A Healing Metaphor: Pandemic as War
Defining Reproductive Justice: An Encounter
My Christian CLE Perspective: Absolute Nonviolence Across the Issues
Beyond the Human – Plus Everyday Peace Actions
by Rachel MacNair
Among the insights of the consistent life ethic are:
- When we perceive human beings as potential targets and therefore dehumanize them, this is an outrage. It’s also inaccurate. All human beings should be respected and free from violence.
- When people perpetrate violence, it’s mentally unhealthy for them.
- Committing violence in one area leads to committing violence in other areas. The dynamics of violence have been set in motion.
But what if we subtract that first point? In some situations, it’s not inaccurate to say beings aren’t human, because they aren’t. If we consider non-human animals, do the other two points still apply?
The Consistent Life Network as a group opposes the killing human beings specifically, so we’re now discussing my own opinion. I offer some examples to illustrate why those remaining two insights still apply.
Violence and Mental Health
Experiments that Harm Animals
Researcher Harold Herzog reports his own experience: “My stomach turned queasy, I began to sweat, and my hands shook when I dropped it into the near-boiling water . . . More shaky hands, a sweaty brow, a queasy stomach . . . my response was purely visceral, a physical nausea akin to the body’s involuntary shudder in response to the odor of putrification.”
Euthanizing
The euthanizing of animals in shelters has been reported as a trauma for staff in Psychology Today: “Shelter workers who have to euthanize animals as a regular part of their jobs suffer a wide range of distressing reactions, including grief, anger, nightmares and depression, according to a study I conducted with a fellow social worker . . . .[comments include] ‘ I have a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of crying’ . . . ‘I’ve had breakdowns in the euthanasia room because I feel so helpless’”
Blood Sports
In a report of the American television newsmagazine, 60 Minutes (air date January 11, 1998) a Spanish bullfighter is reported as saying that he dreams of bullfighting every night – a possible post-trauma symptom. Another symptom is intrusive imagery: “You know every – each bull that I – that I fight and kill him, he’s a — he’s a part of you for the rest of your life. You understand that?”
Slaughterhouses
Jennifer Dillard wrote A Slaughterhouse Nightmare: Psychological Harm Suffered by Slaughterhouse Employees. From the abstract: “to the slaughterhouse workers, the cost of a hamburger includes the financial and physical hardships of the slaughterhouse work itself . . . Not only do the employees face serious physical health hazards, but they also view, on a daily basis, large-scale violence and death that most of the American population will never have to encounter.”
Violence Leading to More Violence
Studies show a strong connection between children being cruel to pets as a pattern that builds up to a pattern of violence against other human beings. See for example the book Cruelty to Animals and Interpersonal Violence. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is quoted in that book: “investigation and prosecution of crimes against animals is an important tool for identifying people who are, or may become, perpetrators of violent crimes against people” (p. 211).
Reasons for this may include:
- the priming effect of violence – that is, when it happens, you think of it more
- the lack of empathy necessary to be cruel
- habit and conditioning (in academic talk, systematic desensitization)
Systematic desensitization is used well by behavioral therapists in clients with phobias. Clients gradually get used to small things and then things closer to what they are afraid of. They relax themselves as a practice, and eventually the phobia is gone. In this case, however, if children are cruel to pets and this is not regarded as a serious problem, then they can become quite used to what would be repulsive to most people. The step to cruelty against people is not so large a step.
That’s likely to apply beyond children and pets. Desensitization spreads.
Solutions: Everyday Peace Actions
Long Transitions
The good news is that, unlike so many other issues, we can all take actions that help promote nonviolence in our daily lives. We don’t depend entirely on persuading others to act.
The bad news is, changing life-long habits is not an easy thing to do.
But again, the good news is that it doesn’t have to be done all at once. In fact, I propose it shouldn’t be. In the case of a vegetarian or vegan diet, for example, I did a survey several years ago at vegetarian events to discover the experience of successful vegetarians. I found their transition period was mainly from 6 months to 3 years. I took about a year on the transition to vegetarianism myself, finishing back in 1975.
Try a vegan dish or a vegan restaurant. If you like it, add it into your diet more frequently. If you don’t, drop it and go to the next one. There are all kinds of veggie burgers, and vegan pizzas, yogurt, ice cream, sausages, hot dogs, and possibilities within all kinds of different ethnic foods. Nowadays, the abundance of options in many places is quite large. That’s sometimes even the case in regular grocery stores, not necessarily specialty shops. Your nearest vegetarian and vegan restaurants can be found world-wide at happycow.net.
That’s the psychology, but biology also says a transition over time is best. While a high-fiber diet is usually ideal, going from low-fiber to high-fiber suddenly can make the body rebel with flatulence and digestive problems. A sudden upsurge in fruit or cruciferous vegetables can bring on diarrhea in some people.
Overall, however, the American Dietetic Association’s position is that appropriately planned vegetarian and vegan diets “are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.”
Currently, it’s impossible to be 100% vegan. But in many places it’s easy to be 99% vegan; I’ve done it for decades. Yet people who have no intention of ever becoming vegetarian are still making a contribution to nonviolence by experimenting with dishes and restaurants and using the ones they like.
Expanding Personal Nonviolence
Of course the nonviolent diet goes beyond what happens to the animals. Are the workers who produced the food well treated? Was the production environmentally sound? Are the corporations who produce it doing nasty things, or did it come straight from the farmer?
Buying fair trade in bananas, coffee, and chocolate – tropical products – is especially important. Those that aren’t fair trade generally have some horrific treatment of workers involved. For chocolate, that includes child slavery.
Then again, nonviolence in purchases goes well beyond food. See for example the Better World Shopper, which grades companies on these criteria:
Expanding What “Voting” Means
The way I see it is that spending a dollar is like casting a vote. Every dollar you spend is casting a vote for something.
I remember one election day, when after casting my ballot I went to eat lunch in a vegan restaurant. Candidate voting for us consistent lifers is pretty bleak. So later, I cast votes that vegan restaurants should be readily available. Those dollars spent there were a way of voting for that. I had a strong sense that visit had more impact than what marks I put on that piece of paper.
None of us can be pure on how we buy, of course – large corporations run by those of callous heart are too widespread. Boycott everything with a taint, and you have very little left to live on.
But I take the approach of a “tight wallet” and a “loose wallet.” My expenditures will be limited with large corporations. I’m much looser in spending when it’s such things as a mom-and-pop shop, local, employee-owned, small business, and especially if it’s oriented to charity or nonviolent advocacy.
I go to all kinds of demonstrations to protest war, the death penalty, abortion, police brutality, etc. I’ll keep at it, but when I do, I’m trying to influence the behavior of other people. I do find it gratifying to also have things I can do myself that will have a positive impact for nonviolence.
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For more of our posts on nonviolence in personal practice, see:
Suffering and Injustice Concern Us All / Vasu Murti
Parallels of Veganism and Prolife-ism / Kristin Monahan
My Personal Journey on Veganism, War, and Abortion / Frank Lane
Consistently Nonviolent Mutual Funds
Untying the Knot of War: Seek Negotiation, Not Escalation in Ukraine
by John Whitehead
The Russian war against Ukraine is nearing its two-month mark with no clear end in sight. The human suffering caused by the war, including reported human rights violations by Russian forces, is terrible to contemplate. Further, the ongoing US confrontation with Russia over Ukraine carries its own set of dangers: a more uncompromising stance toward the opposing side and the risk of escalation to a wider war.
No Room for Compromise?
US President Joe Biden has made several statements that a negotiated solution to the war less likely. He has repeatedly called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” and also referred to the Russian president as a “butcher.”
Other US policymakers have made similar statements. The State Department announced that it formally judged Russian forces guilty of war crimes in Ukraine. Both the Democratic and Republican ranking members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have indicated Putin must face consequences for such crimes. Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) said, “Putin must be held accountable for this tragic and barbaric assault on innocent civilians.” Senator Jim Risch (R-ID) said, “The international community must also take concrete steps to hold Putin and his cronies accountable for their war crimes.”
In a more just world order than the present one, world leaders who violate international law—whether Putin or anyone else—would indeed be held accountable for their crimes. That is regrettably not the current situation, however.
The United States doesn’t currently have jurisdiction to try Russian policymakers for war crimes and Russia isn’t a party to the International Criminal Court (and neither is the United States). Also, Russia’s status as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council would likely allow it to block effective prosecution of Russian war crimes. Most important, as long as Putin and his associates remain in power, they remain effectively immune from prosecution by a foreign or international court.
Calling Putin a war criminal is unlikely to lead to the Russian president being brought to justice. However, such statements are likely to make Putin more committed to waging war against Ukraine and less willing to negotiate.
The war has created a dire political situation for Putin. For all the death and devastation they have caused to date, Russian forces have not succeeded in seizing the Ukrainian capital of Kiev or otherwise decisively defeating the Ukrainians. The war might well end in a Russian defeat. Wartime defeat could threaten Russian President Vladimir Putin’s legitimacy and hold on power, which means he has strong incentive to do whatever is required to win. If a fall from power also means probable prosecution for war crimes, then that incentive to win becomes even stronger.
If US policymakers are effectively saying that Putin must be removed from power—a step that Biden has explicitly advocated, although he later walked back that statement—then that leaves little room for Putin to make any concession or negotiate an end to the Ukraine war. Russian officials have responded to condemnatory American statements by calling them “absolutely unacceptable and inexcusable” and warning of a “collapse” in US-Russian relations.
Escalating Conflict
In the absence of a negotiated solution, the Ukraine war continues and threatens to expand. The United States has provided an estimated $2.6 billion in military assistance to Ukraine since the February 2022 Russian invasion (and was providing military assistance to the Ukrainians for years before that point). Most recently, the Biden administration decided to send $800 million in military assistance to Ukraine, including military equipment previously not provided to that country.
Whatever else one might think of such assistance, US support to Ukraine’s war fighting carries with it the danger that the United States will be drawn into a direct conflict with Russia. If US military personnel train Ukrainian military personnel—as is apparently planned under the most recent military aid package—that opens the possibility of US troops being caught up in combat. Great caution is necessary.
The Biden administration has at least so far refrained from committing US troops directly to the war. In particular, the administration has not embraced the policy of a “no-fly-zone” over Ukraine, despite repeated requests for such a policy from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
A no-fly-zone would effectively require US or other NATO forces to shoot down Russian aircraft, if necessary. This would turn the Ukraine war into a full-fledged world war between Russia and the west.
The administration has also to date rejected the notion of giving Ukraine fighter jets. While not as extreme as imposing a no-fly-zone, flying jets from NATO nations into Ukraine so Ukrainians can use them against Russians could still be interpreted by Russia as an escalation.
Nevertheless, various voices within the United States have called for giving Ukraine fighter jets or even imposing the no-fly-zone. Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) has questioned the fighter jet decision, saying “President Biden should explain exactly why he vetoed fighter jets for Ukraine.” Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the Republican House minority leader, has said the United States should “provide [the Ukrainians] the planes where they can create a no-fly-zone,” a stance seconded by House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA). Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) has released a statement expressing support either for supplying jets or imposing a no-fly-zone (and also calling for measures to “further devastate the Russian economy”). We must hope the Biden administration continues to avoid such escalations.
Escalation on the Russian side is also a real danger, especially if the war continues to go badly and Putin gets desperate. What this might entail was recently spelled out by CIA Director William Burns: “a potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapon” While such a drastic step does not seem likely at present, what the future holds is unknown.
The Diplomatic Path
As long as the war continues without a diplomatic resolution, more people will die and the risk of some terrible escalation continues. All parties need to seek a cease-fire and some kind of negotiated settlement. The settlement’s precise form will no doubt depend on how the situation on the ground changes, but it will probably require an agreement of Ukrainian neutrality between Russia and NATO as well as concessions by all sides.
The idea of negotiations with and concessions to Putin and the current Russian leadership undoubtedly seems a bitter pill to swallow after the events of the past two months. However, a diplomatic resolution will ultimately not be bitter to the untold numbers of people whose lives will be saved by the war ending—not to speak of the still greater number of people who will spared if further escalation can be prevented.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev urged President John F. Kennedy that they “ought not now to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war . . . a moment may come when that knot will be tied so tight that even he who tied it will not have the strength to untie it.” After that, the only option would be to “cut the knot”—that is, wage world war. Now as then, leaders on both sides should not “pull the knot tighter” through further verbal and military escalation. They should seek to untie the knot and end the war.
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For more of our posts on Ukraine, see:
Not Your Pawns: A CLE Examination of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict
A Catastrophe Decades in the Making: The Russian Invasion of Ukraine
A Hidden Cost of the Ukraine War: How Russia’s Invasion Encourages the Spread of Nuclear Weapons
Walk On: Responding To Recent Situations in the Pro-Life Movement
by Sonja Morin
Content warning: physical assault, medical malpractice, and brutality against pre-born children are discussed in this article. Reader discretion is advised, especially for those who have experienced pregnancy loss.
“What?”… “what?”… “what?”
Sonja Morin
I did not realize how bad my hearing loss was until the four of us arrived in Boston’s North End. We had just counter-protested Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights (RU4AR) and their violent messaging in the “free speech zone” at the Boston Common this past Saturday, April 9. One of the organizers had come up behind me, and – after both taking my sign and practically hurdling over me to place one of RU4AR’s stickers on my megaphone – she whistled into my ears at a high pitch so as to disrupt my hearing for a sustained ten minutes.
As I write this, I am still dealing with the effects of that assault, ears still ringing and all. In reliving that moment again and again in my own mind, it brought my attention back to the intended topic of this week’s blog post: the situation of the 115 pre-born bodies recovered in Washington, DC by members of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) and Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust.
As the sole abortionist at Washington Surgi-Clinic, Dr. Cesare Santangelo knew what he was doing. His track record reveals countless incidences of malpractice, dehumanization, and absolute disregard for his parental and pre-born patients. He has admitted on camera that he would refuse care for pre-born children delivered alive after botched abortions. His errors have sent several women to the hospital after complications, one of whom died (see more details and the wrongful death lawsuit complaint). If the 115 babies’ bodies had not been intercepted, they would have faced a far more morbid fate even after death: immolation in the furnaces of Curtis Medical Waste to generate energy for the D.C/Maryland/Virginia metro area. Who knows how many bodies have been immolated prior to this discovery.
Conflicts about the manner in which these bodies were retrieved, as well as the release of information to the public, have ensued in the weeks following the recovery of the babies. This is the first time we are dealing with a situation to this degree and with this many bodies. Confusion, questions, and concerns are absolutely understandable as we embark into uncharted territory. Personally, I welcome this discussion as we seek to learn how best to grieve and call for justice.
But in the midst of all the dialogue about this situation, what we are missing is the fact that we would not have this situation to deal with had it not been for the initial brutality at the hands of Dr. Cesare Santangelo. We’ve let our own fears and confusion take rein. We forget that – at the time of writing this post – five bodies are still waiting in the DC medical examiner’s office, awaiting the moment of truth when their cause of death will be revealed. We forget that Dr. Cesare Santangelo and his complicit staff are still practicing in Washington, DC, regardless of the harm they’ve caused.
And if we ignore this situation, if we let our own preferences interrupt our work, how much more violence will occur? The people who assaulted the four of us counter-protestors in Boston this past Saturday give such an example. While our experience is in no way comparable to the gruesome death of these five babies, we saw a glimpse of the consequences of violent rhetoric. We cannot let violence and dehumanization conquer the frightened minds of all of us observers.
While we cannot undo the violence that has already happened, we can use our voices collectively to demand justice for all who have been harmed. We must expose the horrors happening in our own communities, starting with Dr. Santangelo’s office. We couldn’t give these 115 babies a chance at life; the least we could do is honor them in death, and ensure no more lives experience the same fate they did.
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For more of our posts from Sonja Morin, see:
Not Your Pawns: A CLE Examination of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Behind and Beyond the Shout for Abortion
We need works of art that convey
the radical horror of abortion
Rosemarie Tischer Stith, “Triumph” (1973)
The US Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) stated in support of abortion that the “ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.”
But laws are not the only impediment to a woman’s choice to abort.
The negation of social as well as legal constraints on abortion is necessary for abortion freedom. Moral qualms (and consequent mental health worries) could stop the choice of abortion. These, too, must be negated in order for women to feel free to abort. Abortion must become a normal part of a decent life.
Women must be made ready and willing to choose abortion if they are to “participate equally in . . . economic and social life” with their male colleagues. Abortion must become ordinary.
To this end, women are being encouraged to speak loudly about their abortions.
Shout Your Abortion is a movement working “to normalize abortion through art, media, and community events all over the country,” according to its mission statement. It’s a kind of shame-shaming in which women are exhorted to normalize “terminations,” to see them as an everyday part of life.
Its Twitter feed is full of messages like:
- “Abortion is normal. Our stories are ours to tell. This is not a debate.”
- “I aid and abet abortion and will do so proudly and constantly for the rest of my life.”
- “Happy #CelebrateAbortionProviders Appreciation Day!”
- “It seems incredibly damaging to label folks who choose abortion as naïve or uneducated or selfish. Or victims.”
From the beginning, as in the basic training of soldiers, shouting was going to be needed to make humans feel good about killing other humans.
Words can go only so far in combating this purposeful hardening of hearts. Closely reasoned arguments and statistics may fail to pierce the defiance of its “iron dome.” There is a thick layer of pain, abuse, fear, loneliness, and anger shielding abortion supporters from the truth.
Perhaps the best way to dissolve this coating is with art. Recall Picasso’s great painting of the carpet bombing of a town in northern Spain, Guérnica (now Gernika). It is a more radical revelation of the horror of war than any textbook.
Where is the art radically uncovering the horror of abortion?
I’d like to nominate the sculpture below: “Triumph,” by Rosemarie Tischer Stith (1973)
Artist Stith, herself a child refugee from the WWII firebombing obliterating Dessau, Germany, foresaw the great shout for abortion way back in 1973, the year a right to abortion was first proclaimed by the US Supreme Court.
Her 36-inch ceramic sculpture, “Triumph,” depicts a woman — standing tall in victory — her left hand on her hip and her right fist thrust into the air. Her head and hair are back. Her eyes are closed. Her mouth is open in a cry of triumph. Her chest swells in exultation, while her peculiarly elongated legs raise her pridefully high.
Under her feet lies her vanquished baby.
Here we see a mother’s contemporary assertion of dominion over her unborn child, but with her triumphal shout she dehumanizes herself rather than her child.
Indeed, the child is still intact, not yet aborted but only made available for abortion. The point of the sculpture is to depict not abortion itself but the new idea of motherhood that came with the US Supreme Court’s abortion proclamation.
This brief video reflects further upon old and new ideas of motherhood:
artist Rosemarie Stith and author Richard Stith, wife and husband
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Richard Stith is a professor emeritus of law at Valparaiso University in Indiana. He is on the board of the Consistent Life Network. See selected works.
This is a slightly revised version of an article appearing in MercatorNet, 3/28/22
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For more on art and the consistent life ethic, see:
Art Exhibit
Gendercide: Millions of “Missing” (Dead) Women
Poetry
“Seamless Garment” – Poem by Daniel Berrigan
Let us all agree on this one simple thing: It is not OK to kill people.
For more of our posts from Richard Stith, see:
Oppressors of Women Scapegoat Fetuses to Preserve Patriarchy
Equal Concern for Each Human Being, Not for Each Human Issue
When “Choice” Itself Hurts the Quality of Life
“Trust Landlords”: Pro-Choice Candidate Supports Eviction Rights (satire)
Open Letter to Fellow Human Rights Activists
A Hidden Cost of the Ukraine War: How Russia’s Invasion Encourages the Spread of Nuclear Weapons
by John Whitehead
The terrible toll of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is plain to see: thousands killed and millions driven from their homes. The invasion also threatens to bring about a nuclear disaster. Fighting around Ukraine’s nuclear power plants might cause an accident like that at Chernobyl almost 36 years ago. The war might draw NATO into direct conflict with Russia, leading to nuclear war. All these costs and threats from the war require an immediate humanitarian and diplomatic response.
In addition, we should not forget a subtler, longer-term impact of the Russia-Ukraine war. The Russian invasion of Ukraine could seriously damage the cause of nuclear nonproliferation. The current war provides fresh encouragement for nations to build or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons. Even if this war ends without nuclear disaster, the world may well be living with dangerous nuclear consequences for a long time to come.
Ukraine Gives Up Nuclear Weapons
Ukraine today possesses no nuclear weapons and is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which commits the country to not seek such weapons. However, this situation is a change from 30 years ago.
When Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, the country was a base for Soviet nuclear weapons. At the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, 1,900 nuclear weapons remained stationed on Ukrainian soil. Measured in sheer numbers, Ukraine had the third-largest nuclear arsenal in the world, after the United States and Russia, within its borders. This arsenal included weapons with a destructive power of 400-550 kilotons, or more than 20 times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Newly independent Ukraine’s government took an ambivalent stance toward the nuclear weapons on its territory. President Leonid Kravchuk established “administrative control” over the nuclear weapons in 1992 but assured US President George H. W. Bush that Ukraine would get rid of the weapons while “taking into consideration her national security.” The Ukrainian parliament, the Rada, similarly declared that the country would disarm but first required security guarantees. Ukrainian policymakers were presumably concerned about post-Soviet Russia, with which relations were tense. Meanwhile, the Bush administration wanted to reduce the number of former Soviet states with nuclear weapons to just one, Russia, perhaps out of a fear of a nuclear exchange among feuding post-Soviet states.
This situation led to a long diplomatic wrangle between the United States and Ukraine. American policymakers offered assurances to the Ukrainians about their country’s independence and territorial integrity being respected. However, the American policymakers would not offer their Ukrainian counterparts what the latter wanted: a legally binding guarantee that included assistance to Ukraine and automatic sanctions on an aggressor in the event of a threat to Ukraine.
Ukraine, the United States, and Russia were eventually able to negotiate a settlement, which included the Budapest Memorandum of December 9, 1994. In the Memorandum, the United States and Russia (and the United Kingdom, which was also a party to the agreement) committed “to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine” and “to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.”
The Memorandum contained essentially no means of enforcing this commitment, though: Russia and the United States pledged “to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine… if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression.” Since both nations are veto-wielding permanent members of the UN Security Council, each could block any Security Council “action” on Ukraine’s behalf.
Whatever the Budapest Memorandum’s shortcomings, Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons and to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—although the Rada warned that Ukraine might withdraw from the treaty if its territorial integrity were threatened. The Ukrainians began transferring their nuclear weapons to Russia and dismantling their own means for using such weapons. The last nuclear warhead left Ukraine in 1996; the last missile silo was demolished in 2001.
The limitations of the Budapest Memorandum became apparent in 2014, when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region and vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning the territory’s transfer. Russia used its veto again this February to stop a resolution condemning its current invasion of Ukraine.
The terrible significance of these events for anti-nuclear activists is clear. As Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association recently commented, “[Russian President Vladimir Putin]’s behavior undermines the [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] and reinforces the impression that nuclear-armed states can bully non-nuclear states, thus reducing the incentives for disarmament and making it more difficult to prevent nuclear proliferation.”
Even before the current invasion, some Ukrainians seemed to have second thoughts about giving up nuclear weapons. In 2014, at the time of Crimea’s annexation, several Rada members proposed that Ukraine withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Others introduced a bill, which was ultimately defeated, calling for a renewal of Ukraine’s nuclear status. Volodymyr Ohryzko, a former Ukrainian foreign minister, proposed that the country start producing nuclear weapons. Ohryzko commented, “[W]e have the moral and legal right to restore our nuclear status and take measures to protect ourselves independently.”
Ukrainian popular opinion became more supportive of obtaining nuclear weapons again, with almost 50 percent of survey respondents favoring this policy in 2014. More recently, Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, seemed to suggest in spring 2021 that Ukraine could pursue nuclear weapons in the future—although the Foreign Ministry later walked back that comment. What course Ukraine will ultimately take, like the conclusion of the present war, remains to be seen.
Best Option Available?
The dangers of nuclear weapons spreading to more countries is yet another tragic result of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Faced with such a maddening situation, the temptation is to say that the Budapest Memorandum should have provided more robust, definite guarantees to Ukraine. What such guarantees might have been is not obvious, though.
Had the United States signed a legally binding treaty in 1994 promising to defend Ukraine from attack, such a treaty would have been the practical equivalent of making Ukraine part of NATO. Yet Ukrainian NATO membership has been one of the central sticking points in US-Russian relations and has arguably contributed to the current conflict. Such a promise by the United States might have led to a conflict with Russia sooner rather than later.
An American guarantee of aid to Ukraine and sanctions on Russia in the event of a Russian attack on Ukraine might have been more politically feasible in the early 1990s. However, a combination of aid and sanctions has essentially been the actual American response to Russia’s 2014 and 2022 aggression against Ukraine—and, as we have seen, such a response has hardly resolved the problem.
The disheartening reality may be that the United States and other western nations did not have a practical way in the early 1990s of protecting a nuclear-free Ukraine from Russia. The largely symbolic Budapest Memorandum may have been the best available option. Beyond the Memorandum, the most effective way of protecting Ukraine would have been preventing the relationships among Ukraine, Russia, and the west from deteriorating to the level they reached in the 2010s. That did not happen, though, and now Ukraine and the world must deal with the consequences.
Several significant events over the last 20 years have made nuclear nonproliferation and controlling nuclear weapons more difficult. One was the 2011 military intervention by a coalition of nations, including the United States, in Libya. By leading to the overthrow of Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi, who had renounced his nation’s nuclear weapons program in 2003, the intervention provided another strong incentive for rulers to acquire nuclear weapons and never give them up.
Other significant events have been the United States’ withdrawal from agreements such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, as well Russia’s apparent violations of the latter treaty. Russia’s attacks on Ukraine, in violation of the Budapest Memorandum, are yet more episodes in this lamentable pattern.
The two nations with the world’s largest nuclear arsenals have predictably proven to be among the most significant obstacles to reducing the nuclear threat.
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For more of our posts on Ukraine, see:
Not Your Pawns: A CLE Examination of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict
A Catastrophe Decades in the Making: The Russian Invasion of Ukraine
For more of our posts on nuclear weapons, see:
Nukes and the Pro-Life Christian: A Conservative Takes a Second Look at the Morality of Nuclear Weapons
The Reynolds Family, the Nuclear Age and a Brave Wooden Boat “An Inferno That
Even the Mind of Dante Could Not Envision”: Martin Luther King on Nuclear Weapons
Nuclear Disarmament as a Social Justice Issue
A Global Effort to Protect Life: The UN Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons
What Studies Show: Impact of Abortion Regulations
The upcoming Dobbs v. Jackson case in the U.S. Supreme Court, which may overturn or curtail Roe v. Wade, calls for educating about this question: What do we know about what restrictions do?
The edited excerpts below are from Peace Psychology Perspectives on Abortion, Chapter 15, The Psychological and Social Impact of Legal Regulations.
by Rachel MacNair
Different states (U.S. and Mexican) had regulations in effect one year but not the previous year. Some impact one group more than another; for example, parental consent laws only matter to minors. Therefore, this could be analyzed as a natural experiment.
Women Who Ask and Are Turned Down
When abortions were primarily illegal and societal pressures for legalization were mounting, one method of easing restrictions allowed women to apply to a committee for permission to abort a pregnancy. A 1988 book reporting research from this condition is Born Unwanted: Development Effects of Denied Abortion.
How would the children compare with the children from accepted pregnancies? The answer is complicated, but the author’s summary includes:
Inspection of the data reveals that the difference is not so much in UP [unwanted pregnancy] children failing more often, but rather in being substantially underrepresented among the students graded above average, very good, or outstanding . . . the UP children consistently appeared worse, primarily due to underrepresentation in the above-average categories. (p. 88)
To re-iterate: “the UP subjects are not so much overrepresented on the extremely negative indicators as they are underrepresented on the positive ones” (p. 124).
Those of the “abortion-as-violence” position, however, argue that if abortion is killing a human being, doing so to avoid being underrepresented among the above average seems rather draconian. (The headline in Sisterlife, then newsletter of Feminists for Life: Prof Repulsed by Working Class; Recommends Elimination. Not Clear Who Will Repair His Mercedes.)
Funding
In the United States, after the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade suddenly legalized abortion in all 50 states, the Medicaid program for funding medical services to low- income people included abortion. Then in 1976 a legislative provision, the Hyde Amendment, restricted Medicaid funding to only cases of rape, incest, and preventing the death of the pregnant woman. These being rare, in many states funding was immediately severed, while other states continued. This provided a natural experiment.
The Guttmacher Institute reported that in states without funding, the abortion rate was 1.6 times higher for Medicaid-eligible women than for women of higher income. The fact that it is greater than one to one suggests poverty plays a role in abortion decisions. However, the rate in states with funding is 3.9 times higher for women on Medicaid.
Yet childbirths in the states without funding either stayed the same or were also reduced. The missing abortions were not entirely replaced by women continuing pregnancies, but by couples taking more care about becoming pregnant.
Distance of Facilities
An early study showed counties further away from the abortion clinics of Atlanta had lower abortion-to-live birth ratios than those nearer. A more recent study in Texas using 1993 data found the probability of a pregnant woman choosing abortion appeared quite sensitive to availability variables; women in counties further away from clinics had a lower rate than those near.
Parental Involvement
See the topic page on this at Peace and Life Referendums: What Studies Show for Parental Involvement for Abortions Performed on Minors.
Outright Legal Ban
The restrictions covered here will only prevent abortions in women whose desire to have an abortion is sufficiently ambivalent, or if the added inconvenience of procuring abortion puts the inconvenience of using a condom in a better light. Pregnant women who are determined to have an abortion will find funding, drive extra distances, tolerate information and waiting periods, and forge ahead. Only an outright legal ban makes abortion essentially unavailable. Even then, determined women will travel to where they are not banned or have them surreptitiously.
Two countries that have instituted legal bans after a period of fairly free availability are Poland in 1993 and Nicaragua in 2006. In both, the abortion rate went down (inasmuch as it was reported since it was banned), the maternal mortality rate went down, and indicators of maternal health went up.
However, there were simultaneous dramatic occurrences in both – a transition out of communism in Poland, and an assertive women’s health-care campaign by the Nicaraguan government.
In the opposite direction, abortion legalization in South Africa, Ethiopia, and Nepal was also accompanied by better maternal health outcomes, and likely for similar reasons.
Mexico had a “natural experiment” as abortion was legalized in some of its 32 states but not others. One 2015 study tested whether there was an association with maternal mortality (from both aborted and continued pregnancies) after controlling for other variables such as clean water. Over ten years, they found states with less permissive laws had lower maternal mortality than states with more permissive laws. However, there were independent associations with female literacy, skilled attendance at birth, low birth weight, clean water, sanitation, and intimate partner violence, which in a regression accounted for most of the variance in maternal mortality. Authors conclude: “Although less permissive states exhibited consistently lower maternal mortality rates, this finding was not explained by abortion legislation itself. Rather, these differences were explained by other independent factors, which appeared to have a more favorable distribution in these states.” The question of why less permissive abortion laws were associated with these other measures of benefit was beyond the scope of the study.
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For our posts on similar topics, see:
Why the Hyde Amendment Helps Low-Income Women
Abortion Facilitates Sex Abuse: Documentation
“The Daily Show” Doesn’t Do Its Homework