Scientific Integrity Problems – Psychology
The following letter (lightly edited) was sent in December, 2021.
Membership Department, American Psychological Association (APA)
Dear colleagues:
I have been a member since 1996, and have (for identification only) served as membership chair and 2013 president of Division 48, peace psychology.
I tolerated having occasional disagreements with APA organizational policy because this was my profession’s organization, and whenever one belongs to a specific community, it is better to stay and work through disagreements than to withdraw and have no more influence. For example, our whole division was discouraged over the APA’s role in “enhanced interrogation,” but over the years that eventually worked out in a more satisfactory manner (see pages 7-9 and later here). Having people who thought it important to stay rather than leave was important.
In the same way, I have been disturbed by the organization’s positions and activities about feticide. The Task Force on Mental Health and Abortion with its 2009 report never had a call for nominations, and its membership didn’t reflect the diversity of perspectives on the topic. I was a reviewer for the first draft of that report, and spent a good 30 to 40 hours going through it carefully for comment. The second version of the report did not receive similar review.
I thought its conclusion highly debatable, but it was never debated. No forum for proper scientific interchange with those of different perspectives was ever arranged.
The press release announcing the report was sent out the day before it was actually voted as accepted by the Council. Contrary to Psych 101, the vote to accept it was held by show of hands in front of everyone. I attended that Council meeting, and I perceived a political rally rather than a sober discussion.
Nevertheless, I stayed and made attempts to address my concerns. People of good will have differing opinions, and I am accustomed to dialog with people in a respectful manner.
Now, however, we go beyond the merely debatable. You have put out a press release that states something that is blatantly inaccurate: Texas abortion law likely to lead to worse mental health for women, says APA president
The statement of Jennifer F. Kelly, PhD. says:
Our position is based on scientific research showing that women who are denied abortions are more likely to experience higher levels of anxiety, lower life satisfaction and lower self-esteem compared with women who are able to obtain abortions . . . Research also suggests that adding barriers to accessing abortion services may increase symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression.
Here is the wording of the abstract of the APA Task Force report, the overview of studies:
Two issues were addressed: (a) the relative risks associated with abortion compared with the risks associated with its alternatives and (b) sources of variability in women’s responses following abortion . . . The most rigorous studies indicated that within the United States, the relative risk of mental health problems among adult women who have a single, legal, first-trimester abortion of an unwanted pregnancy is no greater than the risk among women who deliver an unwanted pregnancy. Evidence did not support the claim that observed associations between abortion and mental health problems are caused by abortion per se as opposed to other preexisting and co-occurring risk factors.
Observe: the issue of mental health problems from not getting an abortion was not addressed at all. Since it was clear that the authors would have liked to make that claim if they could, they clearly could not.
The conclusion was a lack of mental health problems from the abortion only, and then only for specified people (women who represent less than half of all abortions). The risk was “no greater” for abortion as opposed to giving birth. They did not find that it was less.
Subsequent to the report, there was a “Turnaway Study” done by an advocacy group, Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH). Three years after their abortions, two-thirds of the women approached declined to be interviewed; half of those remaining dropped out. Therefore, the sample is badly skewed toward those having fewer problems. The questions asked were shallow. The comparison group – those turned away – had the feature of being further along in their pregnancies than those who received abortions, so they were actually not a proper comparison group. This study is often cited, but I see that Dr. Kelly did not cite this one in the press release.
In any event, this is one study, and APA guidelines (Wilkinson, 1999) are clear that just one study does not a conclusion make. It is a mosaic of studies that lends itself to conclusions.
Dr. Kelly’s statement mentions only one study, apparently that of Herd, Higgins, Sicinski, & Merkurieva (2016). From the abstract:
Using the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, a 60-year ongoing survey, we examined associations between unwanted and mistimed pregnancies and mental health in later life . . . We found that in this cohort of mostly married and White women, who completed their pregnancies before the legalization of abortion, unwanted pregnancies were strongly associated with poorer mental health outcomes in later life.
What they found was that when mainly young married White women lived in a time when they could be trapped in undesired marriages amid assumption that career and children could not both be done simultaneously, then that did not work out well for them. It was a time period in which women who had suffered domestic abuse kept it quiet and had nowhere to go, so that having children meant they were all the more trapped, and exacerbated the problem. These features strike me as enough to account for the observed results.
This study says nothing whatsoever about women who live in current times under current conditions. In short, this is a study that never actually addresses the question of what happens when abortion is restricted.
Again, citing only one study does not a conclusion make. Yet there is quite a bit of literature that does directly address questions of what happens when specific abortion restrictions are put in place. Having written a book chapter on this (MacNair, 2016, pp. 240-255), if you check its reference list you can see what ought to go in the mosaic of studies (once studies since 2016 are added) before a proper conclusion can be drawn.
Dr. Kelly implies that what she says is the consensus of researchers, or that the research as a whole lends itself to the conclusion she draws. It simply does not. Cherry-picking only those studies that support a desired conclusion is well established as being inimical to science. This also diminishes my confidence in how scientifically rigorous APA is on other matters with which I am less familiar.
When the Task Force was convening, I was approached by a post-abortive woman who runs an organization of such women who feel they were wronged by their abortions – the circumstances that compelled or persuaded them, and the traumatizing nature of the abortion itself. She said she could arrange to have the Task Force sent thousands of testimonies. I explained to her carefully that they were doing an overview of quantitative studies and a torrent of one-sided personal stories would not be helpful. She understood, and the Task Force was spared a barrage of heartfelt stories.
But those women are still stinging that their voices were never heard. No one representing their understanding was ever allowed a voice. The recent APA press release is stunningly insensitive to them.
The American Psychological Association is an organization which has broken the rules of proper scientific inquiry. APA is also portraying the features I cite in my work on peace psychology as supporting violence, including dehumanization (the unborn child is never even so much as mentioned), oversimplification, euphemisms, pressures for conformity, and a glaring in-group/out-group dynamic in which I am clearly in the out-group.
My attempts to call for more discussion and debate have gotten nowhere, and I have been trying for many years (see for example pages 3-4). As long as this intolerable situation remains, I am afraid I can no longer be a part of this.
Rachel MacNair
References
(in APA Style)
American Psychological Association (2021, September 3) Texas abortion law likely to lead to worse mental health for women, says APA president. Retrieved from Texas abortion law likely to lead to worse mental health for women, says APA president
Herd, P., Higgins, J., Sicinski, K., & Merkurieva, I. (2016). The implications of unintended pregnancies for mental health in later life. American Journal of Public Health , 106(3), 421-429.
MacNair, R. M. (2016). Peace psychology perspectives on abortion. Kansas City, MO: Feminism & Nonviolence Studies Association.
Major, B., Appelbaum, M. Beckman, L., Dutton, M. A., Russo, N. F., & West., C. (2009). Abortion and mental health: Evaluating the evidence. American Psychologist, 64(9), 863-890.
Wilkinson, L. & Task Force on Statistical Inference, APA Board of Scientific Affairs (1999). Statistical methods in psychology journals: Guidelines and expectations. American Psychologist. Retrieved from https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1999-03403-008
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Update: While the APA membership department only gave a sorry-you-feel-that-way response, APA’s press office did respond with a substantive note with helpful content. Rachel is drafting a response to them, and we’ll post any further updates here.
For a post Rachel wrote previous on the American Psychological Association, see:
Violence Bolstered by Professional Contradictions
For excerpts from the book Peace Psychology Perspectives on Abortion that we’ve published as posts, see:
Excerpt – Peace Psychology Perspectives on Abortion
Excerpt – Peace Psychology Perspectives on Abortion: War Causes Abortion
Excerpt – Peace Psychology Perspectives on Abortion: Prevention of Child Abuse
December 28: Day of the Massacre of the Innocents
Happy Holidays!
For the source on the Massacre of the Holy Innocents, see the Biblical book of Matthew, chapter 2. This echoes Exodus 1:16.
Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Enuma Okoro
Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, pp. 80-81
(reading for) December 28
After Jesus was born, Matthew’s gospel records that King Herod was so disturbed by the news of a potential contender for the throne that he ordered a preemptive strike, executing all boys in Bethlehem under two years of age. Since its earliest centuries, the church has remembered these “holy innocents” who died because Jesus’ coming posed a threat to those in power. Today we remember all the little ones, born and unborn, who are sacrificed in a culture of death that has not yet welcomed the good news of Jesus. And we recall that Herod’s kingdom is now long gone, but the kingdom of God goes on.
Pope Francis
Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis to Bishops on the Feast of the Holy Innocents
December 28, 2016
Christmas is also accompanied, whether we like it or not, by tears. The Evangelists did not disguise reality to make it more credible or attractive . . . For them, Christmas was not a flight to fantasy, a way of hiding from the challenges and injustices of their day. On the contrary they relate the birth of the Son of God as an event fraught with tragedy and grief . . .
We are asked to protect this joy from the Herods of our own time . . . who devour the innocence of our children. An innocence robbed from them by the oppression of illegal slave labour, prostitution and exploitation. An innocence shattered by wars and forced immigration, with the great loss that this entails. Thousands of our children have fallen into the hands of gangs, criminal organizations and merchants of death, who only devour and exploit their neediness. . . .
Christian joy does not arise on the fringes of reality, by ignoring it or acting as if it did not exist. Christian joy is born from a call . . . to embrace and protect human life, especially that of the holy innocents of our own day. Christmas is a time that challenges us to protect life, to help it be born and grow.
Massacre of the Innocents (1565)
Artist: Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-69)
Kathy Kelly
World Beyond War, January 22, 2021
About Suffering: A Massacre of the Innocents in Yemen
Depicting multiple episodes of gruesome brutality, Bruegel conveys the terror and grief inflicted on trapped villagers who cannot protect their children. Uncomfortable with the images of child slaughter, the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II, after acquiring the painting, ordered another reworking. The slaughtered babies were painted over with images such as bundles of food or small animals, making the scene appear to be one of plunder rather than massacre.
Were Bruegel’s anti-war theme updated to convey images of child slaughter today, a remote Yemeni village could be the focus. Soldiers performing the slaughter wouldn’t arrive on horseback. Today, they often are Saudi pilots trained to fly U.S.-made warplanes over civilian locales and then launch laser-guided missiles (sold by Raytheon, Boeing and Lockheed Martin), to disembowel, decapitate, maim, or kill anyone in the path of the blast and exploding shards.
Note: Unfortunately, Kathy Kelly is not a consistent-lifer – but her comment on the famous painting is spot on.
The Christmas Visit. Postcard, c.1910
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This is a list of holiday editions of our weekly e-newsletter, Peace & Life Connections.
In 2010, we showed “It’s a Wonderful Movement” by using the theme of what would happen if the peace movement and the pro-life movement hadn’t arisen. We also had quotes from Scrooge (against respect for life) and a Martin Luther King Christmas sermon.
In 2011, we covered the materialism-reducing “Advent Conspiracy” and offered two pieces of children’s art: a 1938 anti-war cartoon called “Peace on Earth,” and the anti-war origins of “Horton Hears a Who,” whose tagline – “a person’s a person, no matter how small” – is irresistible to pro-lifers.
In 2012, we had a couple of quotes showing the pro-life aspects of two prominent Christmas tales: A Christmas Carol with Ebenezer Scrooge, and the movie It’s a Wonderful Life. We also quote from John Dear about Jesus as peacemaker and Rand Paul about the 1914 spontaneous Christmas Truce; he then related it to the culture of life.
In 2013, we shared several quotations reflecting on Christmas.
In 2014, we offered a quotation from a lesser-known Christmas novella of Charles Dickens and cited the treatment of abortion in the Zoroastrian scriptures.
In 2015, we had a list of good holiday movies with consistent-life themes – check it out for what you might want to see this season. We also had information on Muslim nonviolent perspectives.
In 2016, we discussed how “The Magi were Zoroastrians” and detailed how good the Zoroastrians were on consistent-life issues. The ancient roots of the consistent life ethic run deep!
In 2017, we covered Interfaith Peace in the Womb.
In 2018, we detailed Strong Women against Violence – Connected to the Holidays.
In 2019, we showed Christmas as a Nonviolent Alternative to Imperialism.
In 2020, given what was most on people’s minds at the time, we covered Pandemics Related to Christmas.
The Impact of Family Caps on Abortion
Author Sarah Terzo
by Sarah Terzo
Women sometimes choose abortion due to poverty. Therefore, the existence of social programs to help the poor have an impact on the abortion rate, according to numerous studies.
Researcher Laura Hussey asked the following question to women who had abortions:
Other countries provide a lot of assistance to women and their families that the government, employers, and schools in the US do not provide. These countries give women things like free childcare, free healthcare, money they can use to pay their family’s expenses, and the chance to take months or even years off of work with pay after giving birth.
Would you have made a different decision about your pregnancy if you could get that kind of help?1
Only 49% said they were sure they would still have had their abortions if such help had been available. Twenty-two percent said they would’ve had their babies, and 34% were unsure. The study shows that social programs to help the poor (or lack of them) have an impact on the abortion rate. But there is more evidence.
The Child Tax Credit and Abortion in England and Wales
The number of abortions in England and Wales rose 4% between 2017 and 2018. According to the abortion clinic chain British Pregnancy Advisory Service, part of the increase was caused by a new cap on child tax credits. It limited the child tax credit to two children.
Director Clare Murphy said that:
[C]ouples are making different decisions about the number of children they can afford and feel able to properly care for.
The two-child benefit cap was designed to influence reproductive decision-making and we are certainly aware of cases where that has been a factor in a woman’s decision to end a third, unplanned pregnancy.
One woman having an abortion at BPAS said, “If there was no two-child limit, I would have kept the baby, but I couldn’t afford to feed and clothe it … I’ve really struggled to come to terms with my decision.”
Another said:
The two-child cap forces people into a corner of knowing they can’t provide versus abortion. Although I understand it is not the government’s responsibility to be financially responsible for parents having children, I also felt that thanks to this rule I was forced to make this decision.
BPAS’s survey found that of women having abortions with two or more children, 57% said the tax credit policy influenced their decision.
Impact of Welfare Family Caps in America
In America, 22 states have instituted welfare family caps. In states without these caps, a woman on welfare who has a child receives more money. In states with them, this assistance is eliminated, usually after a certain number of children are born.
One poor mother said:
When we first had the twins, the only person in my family getting aid was my oldest son. We didn’t have money to buy them car seats to get home [from the hospital]. …We didn’t have money to pay for diapers, wipes, shampoos, and toiletries. …
I had to go to charities, wait in line, and hope that the charities had diapers that day. I am constantly trying to pay just enough to not have [the utilities] shut off.
It’s easy to see how some women abort to try to avoid this type of poverty.
Family caps in New Jersey
New Jersey instituted a family cap in 1990. They were the first state to do so. Abortions had been declining nationally since 1985 but after the family cap, this trend “reversed dramatically” in New Jersey according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute. Between 1992 and 1993 abortions among those affected by the family cap rose 10% and from that point began, “a steady trajectory upward… Reasonable individuals could posit a relationship between the implementation of a Family Cap and the rise in abortion.”2
One study found that “the Family Cap was indeed responsible for a decline in the birth rate among New Jersey’s welfare population and that this decline was facilitated by increased family planning and more abortions.”3
The study attributed 240 abortions a year, or 1100 total, to the family cap. Another study found that the abortion rate among those affected by the family cap was 14% higher than those unaffected.4
The burden of the cap fell primarily on Black women. The Boston Globe analyzed a study from Rutgers University that found:
Black women have been more affected by the law than other racial groups. Abortions among black women on welfare exceeded births from March 1993 … while the abortion rate for white and Hispanic women increased only slightly.5
In fact, later research found that for black women, there was a 21% decline in births and a 32% increase in abortions in the years after the family caps went into effect.6
According to researcher Michael J Camasso, “the experimental evidence indicates that the New Jersey Family Cap effect on both birth and abortion decisions is conditioned by a woman’s racial/ethnic status.”7 Drawing on studies, Camasso documented that the increase in abortions among Black women was directly related to the family caps.
Family Cap Supporters Admit They Increase Abortion
The people who instituted the family cap in New Jersey knew it would increase abortions. According to Wayne Bryant, sponsor of family cap legislation, “[Abortion] is a tough decision…but it’s a responsible decision for a family that believes it’s in their best interest.”8
In the Wall Street Journal, Charles Murray, who supports family caps, wrote:
It will lead many young women who shouldn’t be mothers to place their babies for adoption. This is good. It will lead others, watching what happens to their sisters, to take steps not to get pregnant. This is also good. Many others will get abortions. Whether this is good depends on what one thinks of abortion.9
William Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard, wrote, “We can’t not reform welfare because it might lead to a few more abortions.”10Supporters of family cap laws, then, freely acknowledge that these laws increase abortions. They don’t dispute this fact.
Opposition to Family Caps
No family should have to choose between abortion and abject poverty. As pro-life champion Representative Chris Smith says:
If you take away funding from the poorest of our children and pay for abortions on demand through Medicaid, like New Jersey and New York and many other states do, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude that you’re either going to have poorer children or dead children.11
Some conservatives, despite their purported pro-life stand, have supported family caps, even knowing they increase abortions. The Heritage Foundation, which is ostensibly pro-life, has gone on record supporting them. To these groups, saving money (and possibly policing welfare mothers they consider irresponsible) is more important than preserving lives and preventing abortions.
But many pro-lifers, like Chris Smith, have opposed caps. There was a movement against the caps in New Jersey, and many pro-life individuals and organizations were part of it. It was originally a bipartisan effort, led by Assemblywomen Charlotte Vandervalk, a Republican, and Joan Quigley, a Democrat. The campaign made strange bedfellows. In addition to pro-lifers, rescinding family caps was supported by NOW, the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, Legal Services of New Jersey, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
A 2007 book documented these efforts.11 But the welfare child cap in New Jersey wasn’t repealed until September 30, 2020.
There are still welfare family caps in other states, and the pro-life movement isn’t as active in the fight against them as it should be. Although more recent research shows that the birth rate among those on welfare in states with family caps isn’t much higher than the birth rate of non-welfare mothers in these states, it’s likely these caps are still pressuring some women into abortions.
In one survey of women having abortions, 73% gave financial problems as a reason for the abortion. For over 20%, it was the primary reason. Poverty is a driver for abortion.
Footnotes:
- Laura Selena Hussey The Pro-Life Pregnancy Help Movement: Serving Women or Saving Babies?(Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2020) 207-208
- Michael J Camasso Family Caps, Abortion and Women of Color: Research Connection and Political Rejection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) 28
- , 96
- , 105
- “Study Finds New Welfare Policy Boosted NJ’s Abortion Rate” Boston Globe June 18, 1998, p. 18
- Michael J Camasso Family Caps, 155
- Michelle Ruess “Abortions Rise as NJ Limits Welfare Payments” The Bergen Record May 17, 1995
- Charles Murray “The Coming White Underclass” The Wall Street Journal October 29, 1993, p. A14
- Tamar Lewin “Abortion Foes Worry about Welfare Cutoffs” New York Times March 19, 1995, p. 22
- Iver Peterson “Abortions up Slightly for Welfare Mothers” New York Times May 17, 1995
- Michael J Camasso Family Caps
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For more of Sarah Terzo’s posts on similar topics, see:
Social Programs to Help the Poor are Pro-life
How Euthanasia and Poverty Threaten the Disabled
How Ableism Led (and Leads) to Abortion
The Consistent Life Ethic and Traditional Tantra
(Not the Tantra That You May Have Heard Of)
by Acyutananda
Acyutananda
First let me say that I could be wrong in my beliefs. Like any member of any faith tradition who lives in a cosmopolitan environment, I meet people every day whose beliefs seem to flatly contradict my own, and who are not dumb. So how could I feel even somewhat confident that what I believe is true? Well, it seems to me that I, and other adherents of my path, have simply been lucky enough to have been exposed to valuable teachings and had valuable experiences that others may not have had. Moreover, I can see how the panoply of religious and spiritual beliefs that contradict each other could so easily have evolved from the attempts of the founders of different paths (including mine), with their own personalities, coming from very different cultures, to share their realizations about transcendent experiences that they had had basically in common. But I could be wrong.
The cosmology of my path stems from the inner vision of one man in modern times, but much of that inner vision matches ideas going back to the Upanishads, and even before that to the early Tantra that influenced the Upanishads. In terms of the “Six Orthodox Schools of Hindu Philosophy,” that cosmology has more resemblances to Samkhya, Yoga, and Vedanta than to the other three. The essence of the cosmology actually matches very well a statement once made by Max Planck, the founder of quantum physics: ‘I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness.'”
My beliefs, though they are beliefs and not proven facts, do not terribly disconcert scientific minds, because honest scientific minds, at least, admit to being mystified by consciousness. Adherents of my path believe that all is one because there is only one Consciousness. We think that Consciousness gets solidified for different periods of time into all the different phenomena of the universe, some of it into this thing, some into that thing. All phenomena, all things, of the universe eventually dissolve again into pure Consciousness, and we as human beings and as the most conscious beings are the things best poised to merge in that way. Moreover, our emergence from that Consciousness “designs” us to yearn for that merger, which we effect by remembering Consciousness at every moment of our lives. That infinite Consciousness is also infinite Bliss, beyond any suffering.
All this fairly describes the philosophy of Tantra, and yet Tantra is not essentially about philosophy – it is about techniques, techniques which promise practitioners the possibility of eventually seeing the truth for themselves, with no need for philosophy. Tantra is distinguished from other paths by certain aggressive techniques for confronting our own fears, our own lust, our own disgusts, and other psychological events that would drift our minds away from Consciousness when we meditate. Since it is about techniques, Tantra has been found congenial by many Hindus, many Buddhists, and many Jains, who did not entirely agree philosophically, as well as by people such as on my path, who identify only as Tantrics and do not call our path a religion, but simply a spiritual quest.
There developed, as an offshoot of traditional Tantra, a kind of Tantra focused on sexual stimulation and on redirecting that stimulation for higher purposes. And it is that kind, and not the traditional Tantra, that for some reason caught the imagination of people in the West and that almost everyone in the West identifies as Tantra, if they know the word at all.
But here I am writing about traditional Tantra, which as I said has been found congenial by many people of different beliefs. It can safely be said, nevertheless, that all Tantrics yearn for something like a merger with an infinite Consciousness. And here is where morality comes in. What prevents us from merging with infinite Consciousness is our sense of separation from it, our sense of individual identity. That sense increases when we think and act selfishly, and decreases when we think and act selflessly. Ultimately, we have to put all living beings above ourselves. As we find in Christianity, “he that is least among you all, the same shall be great.”
So unless someone simply doesn’t aspire to enlightenment and the end of all suffering, there is an objective morality: right actions are those which empirically help people toward enlightenment, and wrong actions are those which empirically hinder people from enlightenment.
Not only is there an objective morality, but also, we are all born with a compass as to that morality – a sense of right and wrong, a conscience, a sense of when we are acting selfishly. But we may have to peel away layers of ego protection in the forms of various psychological foibles – tribalism, projection, neurotic emotional needs, denial – in order for our consciences to emerge. Only those who are free from such foibles can have a really high level of moral sensitivity to apply to any situation that may arise. And it will be impossible to abandon those mental mechanisms, which keep our cherished egos intact, until we start to taste the transcendent experiences that are the rewards for that abandonment – so that our own physical security, worldly pleasures, and self-congratulation come to seem cheap by comparison.
If I, and believers in various other metaphysical ideas, are wrong in our beliefs, then transcendent experiences can be explained entirely by certain patterns of synaptic firing in the physical matter of our brains. Nonetheless, such experiences will require an escape from ego, an escape most reliably brought on by “a lifetime’s death in love, ardor and selflessness and self-surrender.”
One thing we learn on a spiritual path, as I mentioned, is that ultimately we have to put all living beings above ourselves. But in terms of specific circumstances, does that mean, for instance, that I should let a malaria-carrying mosquito bite me so that it can live? No, because if I live and maintain my health, I am in a position to seek the overall good of living beings on a bigger scale than just that of one mosquito. And the way nature is designed – extremely competitively – the overall good cannot involve the best outcome for every individual living being. The overall good may require me to kill that mosquito rather than feed it.
Thus violence of a kind is an inescapable part of life. The food of every living being is another living (plant or animal) being. In Sanskrit, Jiva jivasya bhojanam. Violence is an inevitable part of life, but what we as human beings who yearn to lose our sense of separation and become one with pure Consciousness can avoid and must always avoid is selfish violence, aggressive violence – violence with an ultimately selfish purpose.
So one of the key inner treasures we acquire along a spiritual path is the simple but passionate feeling that all humans should have a chance to live their lives free from violence as much as possible. I find Tantra superb in drawing us inexorably toward that feeling, but it is a feeling that was within all of us all along, and that adherents of other paths also come to in their own ways.
Among the very specific moral teachings to be found in modern Tantra are the wrongness of legal abortion and of the death penalty. Among those teachings also, we find condemnation of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We find an imperative to put an end to poverty. We find advocacy for environmental protection. We find, in short, a principle and a collection of policy outlooks which other people, coming from their own background, have called the Consistent Life Ethic.
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For more of our posts from Acyutananda, see:
The Cure for Headache (poem)
A Daunting Disadvantage for the Pro-Life Side
For more of our posts on different religious paths, see:
Christianity
The Consistent Life Consensus in Ancient Christianity
Fratelli Tutti – Consistent-Life Excerpts
The Consistent Life Ethic: My Christian Perspective
My Christian CLE Perspective: Absolute Nonviolence Across the Issues
Hinduism
Abortion and War are the Karma for Killing Animals
Interfaith
Why the Interfaith Approach is Important
Islam
Breaking Stereotypes in Fearful Times
Paganism
Ancient Roots of the Consistent Life Ethic: Greece
Open Letter to Governor Stitt: the Pro-life Case against the Death Penalty
Dear Governor Stitt:
As an organization, we at the Consistent Life Network have signed on to the letter calling on you to stop Oklahoma executions. The letter was sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Oklahoma, which was seeking many signatories.
As a pro-life/pro-peace group, we strenuously object to the ACLU’s position on abortion. Since we know that you’ve said you would sign any pro-life bill that crossed your desk, for which we applaud you, we want to make the case against the death penalty from a pro-life/anti-abortion perspective. Below we offer words from prominent abortion opponents who have done so.
Quotations in alphabetical order by last name:
Sam Brownback, then Republican United States Senator (later Governor of Kansas)
U.S. News and World Report, April 11, 2005. p. 34
If we’re trying to establish a culture of life, it’s difficult to have the state sponsoring executions.
Colby Coash. Nebraska state senator
quoted in Time Magazine, May 20, 2015
I’m a pro-life guy. I couldn’t reconcile my pro-life beliefs regarding the unborn with doing something different with the condemned.
Hanna Cox
Alabama Executes a Murderer a Day After Banning Abortions
New York Times, May 16, 2019
Alabama cleared the way on Thursday for the scheduled execution of a convicted murderer, a day after the state enacted a near-total ban on abortions, two actions on contentious social issues that often have people across the political spectrum invoking the sanctity of human life.
“It’s a contradiction that I always observed,” said Hannah Cox, the national manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty . . . Approving of executions, Ms. Cox said, is “a stance that cheapens the pro-life argument.”
Laura Hollis
Death is Not the Answer
Creators Syndicate, August 22, 2019
The embrace of death as solution is not a phenomenon that admits easily of “left versus right” political — or even cultural — divisions. Americans on the right often defend the death penalty just as vehemently as the left cheerleads for abortion . . .
How easily we accept the conclusion that death is the answer to our most serious problems. Unwanted baby? Kill it. Have an incurable disease? Kill yourself. Commit a heinous crime? The government should kill you. These precedents — and the assumptions about human life that underlie them — should frighten us.
Christian Josi, former Executive Director, American Conservative Union
Life locked away, not death
Washington Times, June 25, 2001
My fundamental problems with the death penalty began as a result of my personal concern, echoed by many on all sides of the political spectrum, that it was inconsistent for one to be “pro-life” on the one hand and condone government execution on the other.
Kathryn Jean Lopez
Stop the Death Penalty
National Review, February 24, 2020
I do think that good Christian pro-life people need to examine the witness of not having mercy for a Nick Sutton. People respond to love. Mercy is for the guilty. We can’t be callous in these circumstances, or our arguments about the life of the most innocent might not be heard. I understand why the governor did what he did, but the death penalty should prompt more of a cultural examination of conscience. It could bring a lot of people of good will — those “pro-life” and “social justice” groups that seem strangely divided — together.
Tom Neuville, leading Republican on the Minnesota’s Senate Judiciary Committee
Minneapolis Star Tribune, December 7, 2003
Life is a gift from God. It isn’t up to us to take it away. Whether you take an innocent life of a baby, or of a person who has committed a heinous act, it is still an act at our hands, and it makes us a less caring and less sensitive society.”
Laura Peredo, president of Ravens Respect Life at Benedictine College
at a press conference supporting a law to repeal the death penalty in Kansas
March 17, 2015
No crime can change the fundamental truth that every human life possesses dignity from the moment of conception until natural death. I am one of a growing number of young people who support repealing the death penalty—a reform that demonstrates our unwavering commitment to safeguarding life at all stages, without exceptions.
Topeka Capitol Journal
Advocates Seek Repeal of Capital Punishment, March 17, 2015
Conservative Republican political figures and the president of a Benedictine College pro-life student group delved Tuesday into ramifications of Kansas law authorizing convicted killers to be sentenced to death. . . .
Gov. Sam Brownback, an anti-abortion Republican who would hold the veto pen if the House and Senate passed a repeal bill, didn’t participate in the rally.
He did say in an interview prior to the event that anti-abortion activists had increasingly been drawn into the capital punishment conversation.
“You hear it connected,” Brownback said. “You hear it said more frequently now.”
Richard Viguerie
When Governments Kill: A conservative argues for abolishing the death penalty, Sojourners, 2009
Conservatives have every reason to believe the death penalty system is no different from any politicized, costly, inefficient, bureaucratic, government-run operation . . . But here the end result is the end of someone’s life. In other words, it’s a government system that kills people. Those of us who oppose abortion believe that it is perhaps the greatest immorality to take an innocent life. While the death penalty is supposed to take the life of the guilty, we know that is not always the case. It should have shocked the consciences of conservatives when various government prosecutors withheld exculpatory, or opposed allowing DNA-tested, evidence in death row cases. To conservatives, that should be deemed as immoral as abortion . . . But even when guilt is certain, there are many downsides to the death penalty system.
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For more of our posts on the death penalty, see:
Why Conservatives Should Oppose the Death Penalty / Destiny Herndon-de la Rosa
Is the Death Penalty Unethical? / Hannah Cox
The Death Penalty and Abortion: The Conservative/Liberal Straitjacket / Rachel MacNair
Racism and the Death Penalty / David Cruz-Uribe
Death Penalty Jurisprudence of Former Missouri Supreme Court Judge Laura Denvir Stith / Laura Denvir Stith
For more of our posts on pro-lifers making a pro-life case against other forms of violence in addition to abortion, see:
Abortion Facilitates Sex Abuse: Documentation
by Rachel MacNair
I recently wrote this item for our newsletter, Peace and Life Connections:
Rachel Maddow had an October 12, 2021 segment where she said, “One provider in Houston spoke of a 12-year-old patient who came in with her mother . . . The 12-year-old said, mom it was an accident, why are they making me keep it? She is 12.”
Twelve-year-olds don’t become pregnant by accident. While it’s possible she was impregnated by a boy near her own age, which is legal, more likely it was an adult pedophile who exploited her, which is statutory rape – a felony.
Why is this not being investigated? How do we stop such crimes if the only concern raised ignores the crime entirely?
This is another case where a focus on the availability of abortion leaves people oblivious to such glaring alarm bells.
Rachel Maddow
In addition to the 12-year-old that Rachel Maddow cites, there’s documentation of more real-life experience. Below I offer a sampling of cases that made it to court. Given the nature of the problem, instances where the abuse never comes to light are probably far more frequent than those where it does. And when it does, it only makes it to court a small portion of the time.
My notes are in italics.
Colorado – Smith
Smith v. Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, Case Number: 2014CV31778
Excerpt from Amended Complaint, Summary of the Case:
This case seeks economic and non-economic damages arising from the Defendants’ multiple failures to inquire about how a thirteen-year-old girl became pregnant, or what her relationship was to the adult man who brought her to the Defendants for an abortion, despite numerous opportunities to speak to the girl alone; their failures to report known or suspected sexual abuse despite numerous indications that the man had sexually abused the girl; and administration of a long-term and undetectable form of birth control to the girl despite her fear of needles, all of which enabled the man to continue his years of sexual abuse of the girl without discovery or consequence.
In July of 2012, the adult man was charged with two counts of felony sexual abuse and, in January of 2013, he was sentenced to 28 years in prison.
Ohio – Roe
Roe v. Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region, 122 Ohio St.3d 399, 2009-Ohio-2973.
Excerpt from the Complaint:
- In the fall of 2003, Jane engaged in a sexual relationship with her 21-year-old soccer coach, John Haller. At the time, Jane was 13 and in the eighth grade. The sexual relationship continued through 2004, and in March of that year, Jane discovered that she was pregnant.
- Jane told Haller. Haller convinced Jane to have an abortion . . . Haller called Jane and told her to schedule the abortion. And he also instructed her that if she was asked to provide a parental telephone number, she should give Planned Parenthood his cell-phone number in lieu of her father’s phone number.
- After the abortion, a Depo-Provera shot was administered to Jane, and she was given condoms. Haller and Jane resumed their sexual relationship. But within three days of the abortion, Haller ended the relationship. After the breakup, Jane and Haller’s sister, also a classmate of Jane’s, had an argument about Haller and his relationship with Jane. A teacher overheard the argument, including the references to Jane’s sexual relationship with Haller, and reported the suspected sexual abuse to the police.
- After a criminal investigation, Haller was convicted of seven counts of sexual battery. . . .
Washington – Savanah
State of Washington v. Savanah, No. 74924-2-1
Excerpt from appeals document:
After Savanah’s daughter, R, disclosed that she had been sexually abused, the State charged Savanah with four domestic violence sex offenses. At trial, R testified at length to the abuse. R stated that Savanah raped her for the first time when she was 14 years old. She recounted sexual abuse that continued for the next seven years.
R testified that she became pregnant three times, when she was 14, 16, and 17 years old. In each case, Savanah took her to Planned Parenthood for an abortion. Records from Planned Parenthood confirmed that Savanah took R to the clinics for the procedures.
Washington, D.C. – Butler
Butler v. Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, D.C., Case NO. 1:08-CV_00231. Filed February 12, 2008; Settled March 16, 2009
The petition states that plaintiff was 13 years old and became pregnant due to a rape; her mother took her in for the abortion. There’s no indication in the petition that the Planned Parenthood staff collected evidence to help identify the rapist with DNA, and no further information on whether he was ever charged.
Excerpt from Complaint:
- That within twenty-four (24) hours of her discharge from Defendant’s facility after the termination procedure, the minor Plaintiff . . . became very ill.
- That on or about September 8, 2006, the minor Plaintiff . . . presented to the emergency room at Civista Medical Center with severe abdominal pain and peritonitis.
- That a CT scan of the minor Plaintiff’s abdomen on September 8, 2006, showed a significant amount of bleeding in the abdomen with free air. Consequently, the minor Plaintiff underwent immediate emergency surgery to evacuate the large abdominal bleeding the day after the termination procedure performed by Defendant . . .
- That during the surgery on September 8, 2006, it was discovered, intra-operatively, that the minor Plaintiff . . . had suffered the following injuries as a direct and proximate result of the termination procedure performed by Defendant . . . :
- severe abdominal bleeding;
- severe vaginal injury;
- severe injury to the cervix;
- significant uterine perforation; and
- a small bowel tear.
- That a significant portion of the fetus that was allegedly removed from the minor Plaintiff . . . during the pregnancy termination performed by Defendant, was also found inside the minor Plaintiff’s abdomen on September 8, 2006.
- That the minor Plaintiff . . . is now infertile for the rest of her life due to the injuries sustained.
Conclusion
The first three cases show how abortion covers up the crimes and allows them to continue being committed. The fourth involved no cover-up, but shows that abortion isn’t just a simple solution to a victim’s problem.
Proponents of abortion availability need to come to grips with this. Offering instances of those under the age of consent – children too young to do the tasks of motherhood well – as an argument for abortion means ignoring the grim reality that their becoming victims of sex abuse, and therefore impregnated, becomes far more likely when abortion is readily available. Abortion facilitates the crime.
And treating abortion as the solution to the problem, without even bringing up the idea that the crime should be prevented, obviously facilitates the crime even more.
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For more of our posts on abortion’s relationship to sex abuse, see:
The Message of “Never Rarely Sometimes Always”: Abortion Gets Sexual Predators Off the Hook
How Abortion is Useful for Rape Culture
Re-Imaging Our Worth
by Rosalyn Mitchell
Rachael Denhollander is a survivor. She fights for justice as a Christian lawyer, mother, activist, and former gymnast. The author of What is a Girl Worth? asks a core question of the sexual abuse scandal that rocked United States Gymnastics, the Olympic movement, and broader society. She is the first public accuser of the now-convicted pedophile, former Team USA medical doctor Larry Nassar.
As a physician, Nassar preyed on young women, using his privilege to groom athletes, befriend them, and abuse their trust.
It would be naïve to assume that one man’s evil was responsible –a convenient answer that neglects the structural failures of institutions. All levels of power, with various culpabilities, are responsible, from local club gymnastics coaches to national team staff to organizations like United States Gymnastics and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Recently four survivors, Ally Raisman, Maggie Nichols, McKayla Maroney, and Simone Biles, testified at a United States Senate congressional hearing on the failure of these institutions. The truth came to light due to an alliance of brave survivors, journalists, law enforcement, and the broader public.
Therefore, as a gymnastics fan, I choose to reflect on this topic. I want to thank the online gym community, the Gymternet, for their coverage, specifically the Gymcastic Podcast and The Skating Lesson.
Using the lens of the Consistent Life Ethic, I ask: how could society allow such rampant abuse?
I’m not pretending to have all the answers and ask that we listen to the survivors. I write my perspective critiquing society’s commodification of human worth and argue that sexual abuse violently dehumanizes its victims.
This topic is a life issue as all people deserve to live free of violence from fertilization to natural death. We must protect human life against commodification as the worth of countless little girls is greater than any gold medal.
A traditionally elite sport like gymnastics sacrifices both bodies and minds to the dark side of the Olympic movement. During the Tokyo Olympics, as during every Olympics, the public fell in love with athletes. Gymnasts like Sunisa Lee, the first female Hmong American and Asian athlete to win an Olympic All-Around gold medal. She competed with legendary teammates like Simone Biles, the greatest gymnast of all time.
Yet for every Lee, and rarer still Biles, are millions of nameless failed athletes. The grim reality of the quantity needed to produce champions parallels a factory. American gymnastics became golden after adopting the merciless militancy needed to win Olympic gold.
The Karolyis, a pair of Romanian coaches who coached Nadia Comaneci, adopted a semi-centralized training system at the notorious Ranch in wooded Texas, where champions were made. Marta Karolyi oversaw the rise of the Women’s Artistic Gymnastics team as the National Team Coordinator. Success followed, counted in gold medals, with the program dominating the Rio Olympics.
Behind the scenes, the exploitation was an open secret: the control, the eating disorders, the injuries. Therefore, in an ironic twist of fate, a pedophile, Dr. Larry Nassar, offered relief from psychological and emotional abuse. Presenting himself as a friend, he would feed the gymnasts contraband like candy, flatter them with kind words, and offer “healing” pelvic massages. Many gymnasts did not know until afterwards of the sexual abuse disguised as a legitimate medical procedure.
How about parents? Away. The isolated setting discouraged communication with the outside world. Speaking up meant certain blacklisting in a culture that demanded obedience.
Imagine being a young gymnast. Would you risk your Olympic dream? All these factors enabled sexual abuse.
What for? Money. Fame. Ego. A cruel industry that capitalizes on pretty girls doing extraordinary athletics being commodified as plastic dolls.
Very few athletes, especially young women, are allowed to display their personalities. When interviewed, they’re trained to answer with empty phrases like, “I only want to do my best.” Never in terms of winning, as outward ambition is inappropriate. Athletes in a sport like gymnastics are performers, not people with thoughts and emotions.
It’s because of the broader culture of dehumanization that such abuse can occur, because human worth is commercialized. Phrases like “the cost of living” assign human life a numeric value. Life is cheap. Easily replaceable. People are taught that if they cannot perform they are disposable, as utility defines human dignity.
If gymnastics’ success was not profitable, I boldly argue, the abuse would not have occurred, at least not on this level. The cover-up and systemic failure to protect young girls are motivated by profit. One could not speak the truth because the truth was too expensive.
I counter this narrative by arguing that human life is too valuable not to speak up. A human being is inherently more precious than any gold medal. To answer the question that Rachael Denhollander asks – “What is a Girl Worth?” – the answer is that she is invaluable.
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For another post from this author, see: 300 Roses
For some of our posts on women’s rights, see:
Gendercide: Millions of “Missing” (Dead) Women
Abortion and Violence Against Pregnant Women / Martha Shuping, M.D.
The Myth of Sexual Autonomy / Julianne Wiley
How Abortion is Useful for Rape Culture / Rachel MacNair
Social Programs to Help the Poor are Pro-life
Sarah Terzo
by Sarah Terzo
Statistics in the United States
One of the most common reasons women give for having abortions is they can’t afford to care for their baby. In a 2004 study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, of U.S. women who had abortions, 73% gave this as one of the reasons
There’s evidence the situation may be even worse today. Women getting abortions are more likely to be poor than those who had the procedure roughly 30 years ago. While only 16% of women of childbearing age in the general population live below the poverty line, in 2014, 49% of women getting abortions did. In 2008, the percentage was 42%. In 1994, it was about 25%. The percentage of women having abortions who are poor is steadily increasing: 2.3% per year between 2008 and 2014.
Additionally, of women having abortions, 26% had incomes of 100% to 199% of the poverty line. Yet these women are only 18% of the population.1
In an article in the New York Times, demographer Diana Greene Foster said, “The patient population in abortion clinics is increasingly made up of poor women.”
Statistics in Great Britain
The abortion rate is increasing in Great Britain. There were 209,519 abortions reported in England and Wales in 2019, the highest number on record. The abortion rate went from 17.4 per 1000 women in 2018 to 18 per 1000 women in 2019. Driving up the numbers is an increased abortion rate for married women with children.
According to The British Pregnancy Advisory Service, financial reasons play a role. The BPAS is a chain of abortion facilities. Its director of external affairs, Claire Murphy, says:
The reasons for this increase will be complex but women and their partners, when faced with an unplanned pregnancy, will make decisions based on the circumstances they find themselves in — and financial instability or uncertainty can often play a key role in those choices.
Murphy believes the number of abortions will increase further due to financial instability because of the COVID pandemic.
Impact of Social Services
Laura Hussey
Researcher Laura Hussey wrote a dissertation in 2006 to address whether social service funding impacted women’s abortion decisions. She found lack of money influenced some women who were ambivalent to choose abortion. Hussey says:
In contrast to the assumptions of previous research . . . women’s responses to my survey suggest that even if economic need is not the only reason for choosing abortion, some women would choose otherwise if only they had access to assistance addressing that need.2
Hussey conducted her survey on women who came to pregnancy resource centers, who had considered abortion but chose against it. Hussey asked them about different factors influencing their decisions. Two questions were related to financial need:
“I got help affording a baby from a government program like welfare (TANF), food stamps, Medicaid, child care assistance, or housing assistance”
and
“I got help affording a baby from family, friends, my employer, school, or church or another organization.”
Nearly half (49%) said government assistance was “very important” to their decision, and 59% said nongovernmental assistance was “very important.”3
Yet many of the women rated multiple reasons as “very important.” None rated financial assistance as the only important reason.
Psychological and social factors were cited more frequently than financial ones. For example, the belief that motherhood is fulfilling rated highest , at 89%. Also, 75% said seeing an ultrasound of their babies was very important. And 66% cited a moral objection to abortion.
Another question asked in the survey was, “Think about the help you got from government programs, family, friends, or others, with your expenses like baby supplies, childcare, healthcare, housing, and time off from work or school. Do you think you would have had an abortion if you had not received this help?”
Only 8% of the women answered yes, and 23% said they were unsure. The rest said they would’ve still had their babies.
That 8% is a small number, but it represents lives saved. All lives have immense value and worth. Even saving one life would be worth it. And 23% were undecided, meaning that up to 31%, or almost a third, may have chosen abortion if financial help wasn’t available.
Hussey did another survey of women who chose abortion. She asked them their reasons. Two of the options were:
“I cannot afford to have a baby because I struggle to afford my own and my family’s basic needs,”
and
“I can afford my own and my family’s basic needs, but I cannot afford to have a baby.”
Hussey says:
Consistent with previously cited research, respondents commonly cited financial need as a reason for choosing abortion. The two financial need reasons my survey included for women to rate as “very important,” “somewhat important,” “not important” or “not applicable” were the least likely of all the 13 items in the battery to be rated as unimportant or inapplicable.4
However, those who rated financial reasons as very important frequently rated other reasons as “very important” or “somewhat important” as well. In fact, those who rated financial need as “very important” cited an average of 4.6 “very important” reasons. In contrast, those who did not rate financial need as “very important” chose an average of 1.1 “very important” reasons.
This seems to indicate that while financial need is just one of several reasons give for abortion, it’s still an important factor.
Women were then asked:
Other countries provide a lot of assistance to women and their families that the government, employers, and schools in the US do not provide. These countries give women things like free childcare, free healthcare, money they can use to pay their family’s expenses, and the chance to take months or even years off of work with pay after giving birth. Would you have made a different decision about your pregnancy if you could get that kind of help?
It was 22% who said they would’ve made a different decision. Had these resources been available to their mothers, 22% these aborted babies would’ve survived. Another 34% said they were unsure.
Only 44% of the woman said they were sure their decision would’ve been the same. This is less than half.
These statistics indicate that a better social safety net would save babies’ lives.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, there were 862,320 abortions in the US in 2017, the most recent year statistics are available. If 22% of women having abortions chose life instead, this would save the lives of 189,710 babies a year. And 34% were unsure whether they would’ve changed their minds. This implies that the number could be even higher.
Experience with Immigrants
Personal testimonies from pregnancy center workers also attest to the power financial problems have to drive women to abortion.
Maria Suarez Hamm
Maria Suarez Hamm is the former director of a pregnancy center in Maryland. She was interviewed by Hussey in 2012. According to Hamm, most of her clients are Latina immigrants. They came to her center while considering abortion. Lack of money, she says, is “usually the number one reason” why they were seeking abortions.5
Many immigrants, she says, were unprepared for the high cost of living in the United States. Most earn only meager wages, and many promised to send money back to impoverished relatives. Hamm says things look “impossible” to them. The temptation to abort to solve the seemingly insurmountable financial problem is hard to resist.
Hamm’s center helps these immigrants with baby items, maternity clothes, and other things they need. Through the center, she tried to meet their needs. However, her job would’ve been far easier if the government provided more robust programs to help. Very little financial help is available.
Higher welfare payments, subsidized childcare, increased food stamps, paid family leave, and greater eligibility for these programs could save the lives of around 190,000babies a year – as well as preventing born children and adults from going hungry and/or becoming homeless.
Social programs to help the poor are pro-life.
Footnotes
- The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine The Safety and Quality of Abortion Care in the United States (Washington, DC: the National Academies Press, 2018)
- Laura Selena Hussey “Social Policy and Social Services in Women’s Pregnancy Decision-Making: Political and Programmatic Implications” (PhD dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, 2006) 206
- Laura Selena Hussey The Pro-Life Pregnancy Help Movement: Serving Women or Saving Babies? (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2020) 204 – 205, 206
- Ibid., 207 – 208
- Ibid., 36
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For more of our posts on poverty, see:
How Euthanasia and Poverty Threaten the Disabled / Sarah Terzo
Over 20 Million People Facing Starvation – And We Should Care! / Tony Magliano
“Millions Who Are Already Hanging by a Thread”: The Global Repercussions of Covid-19 / John Whitehead
“Is One Life Issue More Important Than the Rest?”: A Question That Might Not Need an Answer
by John Whitehead
Consistent Life Ethic activists generally have varying interpretations of the Ethic. Some take an absolutist stance on nonviolence, others allow exceptions to strict nonviolence. Some tend to specialize on working against a particular threat to life, others tend to work against multiple threats. Another difference among Consistent Life Ethic activists (which relates to the specialization vs. generalization difference) is varying views on whether working against a particular threat to life is somehow more important or a higher priority than working against others.
As with other differing views, I think Consistent Life Ethic activists need to agree to disagree on whether certain life issues take priority over others and live with such differences. Such tolerance of diversity is essential for several reasons. First, like other differing opinions, disagreements among activists about the relative importance of life issues are not likely to be resolved anytime soon. The enduring nature of such disagreements and the necessity of building up a movement require high tolerance for differing views.
Beyond the general need to tolerate disagreement within a movement, accepting disagreements about the relative importance of life issues is essential for an additional reason: The relative importance of different life issues probably has no real practical significance.
That is, whether all the life issues have equal importance, whether one issue is the most important, and which issue (if any) is most important need not have any meaningful effect on how Consistent Life Ethic activists pursue their activism. Let me explain why I think this.
“Most important issue” does not mean “only issue.”
Whatever their precise views on life issues’ relative importance, Consistent Life Ethic activists should be able to agree that no one threat to human life, however serious, is the only threat to life. Therefore, no commitment to any one issue exhausts the work that needs to be done to protect life. If any idea is central to the Consistent Life Ethic, this is it. (Indeed, I suspect most people, even if they don’t believe in the Consistent Life Ethic, would accept that multiple injustices or problems, as opposed to only one, need to be addressed in our world.)
Once we accept that multiple threats to life need to be opposed, I think it follows that we need activists working on multiple life issues. The alternative, that we all work to protect life against just one threat—presumably until that threat is somehow ended—is not realistic. Sad to say, threats to life or other injustices are rarely definitively “ended.” Often a victory for life and justice over a threat is followed by the threat taking a new form and the struggle continuing. Consider the long struggle against racism in the United States, which has been going on since the nation’s founding and is not over yet. If work against other threats to life had to wait until that struggle was won, we would still be waiting.
Trying to work against threats to life strictly one at a time, in order of supposed importance, is a recipe for never meaningfully working against those threats judged to be of lesser importance. We need to protect life against multiple threats. This means we need activists working against multiple threats, whether by devoting themselves to multiple life issues or by specializing on different issues. Such a diverse approach doesn’t require taking any particular view on which life issue, if any, is most important; it simply requires recognizing the importance of more than one issue.
Sustained activism requires passion, which takes different forms.
Not every believer in the Consistent Life Ethic is going to be drawn to the same approach to activism. Some people will be drawn to a generalist approach to the life issues, some to a more specialized approach; and those drawn to a specialized approach will want to specialize on different issues. This diversity is good, as it means people will devote themselves to the activist approach for which they have passion.
Passion for your cause is vital to activism. Passion helps sustain activists’ commitment over time, often even when the work is difficult or not immediately rewarding. Passion may also make activists more effective, as people are motivated to work that much harder on a cause that they care about deeply. Insisting that all Consistent Life Ethic activists follow the same approach or prioritize the same issue works against such passion.
In a more personal vein, I find that passion for a cause is essential for me. My own approach to Consistent Life Ethic activism has been to specialize on working against war and specifically nuclear weapons. For me, that is the most engaging and motivating way of upholding the Ethic. Opposing war isn’t my exclusive concern—I will certainly work on other life issues—but it is my focus. If I were pressured to switch my focus to another life issue or to give up a specialized focus, that would be devastating to my motivation and commitment. I don’t think I’m alone in this.
Conclusion
From these two conditions—the need to address multiple threats to life and the value of activists’ personal passion—I would draw the conclusion that Consistent Life Ethic activists should pursue whichever life issue or issues they like. Again, this conclusion implies no definitive answer one way or the other to the question “Is one life issue more important than the rest?” The practical reality is just that the Consistent Life Ethic movement needs different people working in different ways to protect life against the many threats to it.
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For some similar posts reflecting on the consistent life ethic, see:
The Price of Violence: When Dehumanizing the Vulnerable Hurts One’s Own Causes
Instead of Division, Schools of Thought
Pro-lifers for choice are dangerous
If we agree that a mother may kill a child in the womb, why not outside the womb?
by Richard Stith
Richard Stith
Anyone who has been to public debates on abortion knows that each side talks past the other. True to their self-definitions, the “pro-life” side argues primarily that the fetus is human and alive, while the “pro-choice” side speaks mainly of individual freedom. Rarely do they respond to each other’s points.
The intriguing possibility exists, therefore, that audiences may be convinced by both sides. That is, listeners may conclude both that fetuses are living human beings and that abortion should be permitted.
Indeed, the pro-choice side encourages us to hold both positions at once. We can support the right to choose even if we agree with the pro-lifers that abortion takes a life. We can believe what we want, as long as we do not impose our views on others. Politicians, including President Biden, seem particularly attracted to this I’m-personally-opposed-but stance. Back in 2015 he was very explicit about it.
I’m prepared to accept that at the moment of conception there’s human life and being, but I am not prepared to say that to other God-fearing [and] non-God-fearing people that have a different view. Abortion is always wrong. . . . But I’m not prepared to impose doctrine that I’m prepared to accept on the rest of [the country]. (1)
There is much evidence that a large number of people find themselves in this position. This year is the 50th anniversary of Judith Jarvis Thompson’s well-received piece, “A Defense of Abortion”, in which she explicitly argued that even if the unborn child is a person like the rest of us, its life may rightly be taken in abortion. Abortionists themselves may take such a stance: “I had a woman wake up in the recovery room and say, ‘I just killed my baby.’ And I said to her, ‘You did, and that’s okay.’” (2)
An unusually explicit New York Times/CBS News Poll published back in 1998 squares with the findings of earlier and later surveys in finding many people affirming both sides at once. That NYT/CBS poll found that approximately half of all Americans agreed that abortion is “the same thing as murdering a child,” as the Times questionnaire so graphically put it.
But these abortion-is-murder respondents were by no means solidly “pro-life.” About one third of them also agreed that “abortion is sometimes the best course in a bad situation.” Let’s call such people “pro-lifers for choice.”
My question is: what will our society be like if this mixed position continues to be influential?
How will such a stance affect public policy making in the future?
Please note that I am concerned only with subjective beliefs here, not with whether abortion really takes a life. Even if we assume abortion itself does no harm, we can still ask about the impact of persons who believe simultaneously in the right to abortion and in prenatal human life.
Isn’t our ability to defend life after birth seriously undermined by people who see no important difference between born and unborn children, and yet think those still unborn shouldn’t be protected by law? If it’s OK to kill a healthy child, what can be so wrong with involuntary euthanasia of seriously disabled newborns? And why care much about stopping child neglect, for example, if child murder is thought permissible?
Dr. Lisa Harris
Abortionist and medical school professor Lisa Harris wrote thoughtfully, “In general feminism is a peaceful movement. It does not condone violent problem-solving, and opposes war and capital punishment. But abortion is a version of violence. What do we do with that contradiction?” (3)
On a still more abstract level, the belief that violence against children may be none of the government’s business strikes at the heart of our notions of community responsibility. If we do not share a common concern for the next generation, what do we share?
Worse still: for those who consider abortion to be murder, it is not just any kind of murder. It is, as the New York Times poll put it, the same thing as “murdering a child.” And where there is a child, there is a mother.
Abortion, in the view of more or less half the American people, is the killing of a child by its own mother. Can we live with the belief that mothers have a fundamental right to take the lives of their children? I doubt it.
The mother-child relationship has been too long held up in this civilization (though no doubt sometimes with wrongful sexist intent) as the archetype of self-sacrificing nurture, as the centerpiece of all idealism. If we think it’s right to permit mothers to dismember their children, what violence may we still forbid?
The conclusion I draw is that an acceptance of the right to abortion by those who think it murder may have grave public consequences, regardless of whether abortion in fact amounts to killing. If many of us think (even erroneously) that abortion takes a life, then upholding a right to choose it cannot but dull our shared sense of responsibility for those elsewhere threatened by violence.
Notes
(1) Joel Gehrke. “Joe Biden: “Abortion Is Always Wrong” National Review, 22 September 2015.
(2) Lisa A. Martin, PhD, Jane A. Hassinger, MSW, Michelle Debbink, MD, PhD, Lisa H. Harris, MD, PhD. “Dangertalk: Voices of abortion providers” Social Science & Medicine 184 (2017) 75-83.
(3) Lisa H Harris. “Second Trimester Abortion Provision: Breaking the Silence and Changing the Discourse” Reproductive Health Matters, 2 Sep 2008.
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For more of our original posts from Richard Stith, see:
Equal Concern for Each Human Being, Not for Each Human Issue
Open Letter to Fellow Human Rights Activists
When “Choice” Itself Hurts the Quality of Life
The Mirror-Image Counterpart of the Selfish Society
Oppressors of Women Scapegoat Fetuses to Preserve Patriarchy
“Trust Landlords”: Pro-Choice Candidate Supports Eviction Rights