The Cure for Headache
by Acyutananda
Cut off your head to be rid of
All those pounds of ugly fat!
Can’t you find any better
Solution than that?
“Got to end this endless war,”
Said President Truman,
So he pulled out all the stops,
Did something inhuman.
Tony Timpa got excitable
(It was cocaine self-pollution),
So they arrested his cardiac,
Called it conflict resolution.
Your child was inside of you,
I know you wished it weren’t.
Now the earth is scorched,
And innocence burnt.
It’s now the 21st Century
Since the Golden Rule,
That bright idea
That we learned in school.
© 2021
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For more of our posts with poems, see:
“Seamless Garment” – Poem by Daniel Berrigan
Let us all agree on this one simple thing: It is not OK to kill people. by Robert Randall
The Case for Abortion as the “Preeminent Priority”
by Fr. Jim Hewes
Top Ten Reasons
- Wars killed over 100 million people in the last century. It took a hundred years to reach that number. The United Nations estimates 45-50 million abortion each year, so it would take only two or three years of abortions to surpass that number.
The brutal reality is that the lives of 900,000 pre-born children end every year in the United States from abortions. What would we think if 900,000 school children or 900,000 immigrants were killed every single year (or 900,000 lives lost to Covid-19)? Abortion is the number one cause of violent death in the world and in the United States, making abortion the number one priority. The immensity of that violence dwarfs every other issue by a mile.
In addition, there are millions of women wounded and damaged for many years after their abortions, which also affect fathers, siblings, grandparents, other family members, and abortion industry workers.
- There is the undeniable fact that if one doesn’t exist, then other human rights won’t come into play. Since abortion is at the very beginning of life, it sets the trajectory of what kind of society we are creating: not a culture of life but a culture of death, which excludes a whole group of human beings simply based on arbitrary characteristics of their size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency.
- An injustice has almost never ended unless the evidence of the injustice has been shown. There’s the heartbreaking photo of 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc, after a napalm attack in 1972, showing the horror of war. One can view the 3-year-old Syrian refugee child, Alan Kundi, lying dead, face down on a beach in Turkey, to demonstrate the plight of refugees. One can show pictures of homeless people in cardboard boxes, living on the streets, to show their terrible situation. One can watch emaciated bodies to see the effects of hunger or poverty.
Yet you rarely ever see pictures of pre-born children. Pre-born children are viewed differently, especially by the media which shapes so much public opinion on issues. They never show abortion victims, because they are being hid away and forgotten, which absolutely lessens their value. So, society is never brought face-to-face with the ugliness and the horrifying nature of this terrible evil.
The day of George Floyd’s death, with all the subsequent media coverage and protests, there were 800 African American pre-born children killed, completely unnoticed.
Pre-born children are never heard, only silent screams; they’re never able to give horrifying testimonials of what’s been done to them. They’re the one group that doesn’t get asked about the meaning of their abortion. They need the unparalleled attention, the strongest protection, and the most outspoken voices advocating on their behalf, lest they continue in silence to be marginalized, ignored, and brutally destroyed. In abortion. the pre-born are basically without a voice because they’re not considered human, but a mere concept (a product of pregnancy) or an abstraction (health care / reproductive rights); in abortion their humanity isn’t even recognized but simply seen as an outpatient surgical procedure, or just mere cells.
- Violence and death are more readily accepted by society to solve complex problems when vulnerable life is destroyed at the very beginning of life, and the killing takes place within the very heart of, and with the complicity of the family. As Mother Teresa stated: “abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships.”
- Those who have died by euthanasia, the death penalty, the crime of murder, or in war are ordinarily afforded some type of dignity, by a funeral service and burial. Pre-born children are dismembered, then thrown in a trash bag as medical waste, and dumped as garbage.
- Seventeen death-row inmates were executed in 2020. If even one person is executed, it’s one too many. But would there have been an earth-quaking event of a civil war back in the 1860’s, if there were a total of 17 slaves in the entire country? When slavery was legal in much of the U.S., with about four million slaves, 13% of the nation’s population, it took on paramount importance. Slavery wasn’t the only evil in 1860, but it was a fundamental evil and thus a preeminent social issue. It had to be eliminated to create a new foundation for true justice to emerge across a wide variety of other social issues. To say that slavery was the most important social issue didn’t detract from the importance of other issues (like child labor, etc.). Instead, it highlighted the foremost evil that had to be overcome for the good of the entire nation. Such is abortion today.
Another example: imagine we’re in Germany during the early 1940’s (or Pol Pot’s Cambodia in the 1970’s or Rwanda in 1994) and someone stated: “I don’t understand the argument for giving the Holocaust more weight than all other killings in Germany. People’s lives are no less taken away when killed outside the Holocaust than within it. If during the early 1940’s in Germany, the Holocaust is inherently more important than all other issues, then all other issues are inherently less important than the Holocaust.” Would this approach make any sense?
Just because a particular issue is the defining issue, which surpasses all other important issues of life in a particular time and place, this wouldn’t diminish the other life issues, just highlight what needs the most focus as long as that overriding injustice lasts. Those previous situations of intrinsic evils no longer exist and are no longer priorities now, because the circumstances have dramatically changed in those countries. If the pre-born were declared persons by the Supreme Court and abortion became illegal for the entire country (not just returned to the states to decide) then the pre-eminence of abortion might change in the United States.
- We’re not so much choosing the approach of pre-eminent priority, but rather it’s being forced on us by the magnitude of the injustice and the vulnerability of pre-born children. When a society legally and morally/ethically removes protection from any group of people, then you endanger the protection of everyone else. The principle applies no matter what group of people you formally deprive of personhood. It just that the pre-born are the only group today who have been deprived of that legal status. So, in a sense, it is not we who choose to make abortion the priority issue. The court and society chose it.
- Abortion has lessened the value of life outside the womb and has desensitized us to the horror of violence for those who have already been born.
If a parent can kill an innocent, helpless, unwanted child because of “choice,” why can’t anyone kill someone else because of “choice”? This was exactly what Mother Teresa of Calcutta said: “If we say that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell others not to kill one another?” Also: “Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love but to use violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”
- People who don’t have solidarity with the pre-born lay the groundwork of not being in solidarity with anyone vulnerable after birth. Most CLE people would generally agree that there should be “a preferential option for the poor;” no one is poorer, more weak, more defenseless, more vulnerable, more marginalized, more frail than pre-born children.
Why Preeminence?
One of the confusions, especially around election time, is the mistake of thinking that a “single-issue voter” has the same meaning as one who holds “abortion is a preeminent priority.” Abortion as “a preeminent priority” always sees an essential strong link of abortion with all the other issues of the consistent life ethic / seamless garment / non-violence. If abortion is really a true preeminent priority, it doesn’t automatically mean that abortion is the only issue; nor does it mean that one sets aside all other issues of life. One’s opposition to abortion, as well as holding the preeminent priority of abortion, will not really be credible if one does not work against the other threats to life outside the womb.
It’s human nature and the make-up of American society to tend to be competitive. But prioritizing an issue doesn’t lessen other issues or other lives, unless it’s looked at only through a competitive lens. It’s not meant to cloud out all other considerations of life issues.
For it’s not just about having a right to be born, but a right to an abundant life, It’s vitally important to help those same babies who are not aborted for the rest of their lives. This includes supporting mothers who are single parents or struggling in poverty or facing violence in wars or other conflicts.
Unfortunately, too many single-issue voters don’t challenge anti-abortion politicians on other important social issues. These also have an impact on those not aborted as well as other human lives. What happens too often after anti-abortion politicians get elected is that many single-issue voters remain silent and give these politicians a “pass” because they were against abortion. They allow the pre-born to be “weaponized” for certain political purposes or for helping one political party.
Those who hold abortion as a preeminent priority, on the other hand, know it’s not enough to just get a human life born and prevent that life from being aborted, if that same life is then destroyed or gradually harmed by certain policies that perpetuate the violence of war or poverty, or leave women after the birth of their child with little or no support.
If you take into account all these reasons (and more), the right to life is foundational and the centerpiece to the whole structure of society’s existence and underlies every right. The right to life precedes and undergirds every other issue of life, and prioritizing abortion is the key underpinning for all other issues of life. Abortion outweighs all other issues and doesn’t admit of exception or compromise. It’s intrinsically always unjust, and gravely immoral regardless of motive or circumstance. Abortion is first and foremost wrong universally, in every place and in every conceivable circumstance. Without the right to life, all meaning and purpose is erased and lost forever.
All evils are not equal, which is why abortion is of such paramount importance. If the fundamental right to life is not secure but contingent on others, no rights are ultimately secure. If there is no right to life, society and all other rights are built on sand.
It’s just a reality that none of us can do everything, so we naturally prioritize something. This preeminent priority approach doesn’t diminish the value of the other issues or other lives, nor does it mean ignoring or neglecting the other issues of life; for each and every life is in God’s image and likeness, with infinite dignity.
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For more of our posts from Fr. Jim Hewes, see:
Death Penalty and other Killing: The Destructive Effect on Us
Reflections from My Decades of Consistent Life Experience
Consistent Life History: Being Across the Board
For differing opinions on the balance of issues, see:
Is Abortion Different from Other Violence? / Julia Smucker
Specialization or Generalization? The Many Ways of Following the Consistent Life Ethic / John Whitehead
Equal Concern for Each Human Being, Not for Each Human Issue / Richard Stith
Does the Consistent Life Ethic Water Down Life Issues? / Bill Samuel
A Cold War Comes Home? Anti-Asian Racism in Light of US-China Hostility
by John Whitehead
Racism against Americans of Asian heritage has received significant attention recently. Concerns about anti-Asian hate crimes arose last spring as the Covid-19 pandemic began to affect the United States. The horrifying murders of eight people, six of them Asian, in the greater Atlanta area in March 2021 revived concerns about bigotry toward Asian Americans. As activists and others work to counter this evil, we should consider the role that hostile US policies and attitudes toward China—which go beyond the response to Covid-19—may play in fostering anti-Asian prejudice.
Hate Crimes at Home
Covid-19 raised the possibility that people of Asian descent would be scapegoated for a pandemic that originated in Asia. Early in 2020, the FBI predicted that anti-Asian crimes would rise “on the assumption that a portion of the US public will associate COVID-19 with China and Asian American populations.” Soon after, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned about “the potential for hate crimes by individuals and groups targeting minority populations in the United States who they believe are responsible for the spread of the virus.”
Over a year later, the scale of anti-Asian hate crimes since Covid-19 broke out in the United States is hard to measure confidently. The FBI’s national report on hate crimes committed in 2020 won’t be available until November. In the meantime, we have some preliminary, partial numbers and anecdotal evidence that are cause for concern.
The Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism (CSHE) at California State University, San Bernardino, released a report this spring on anti-Asian incidents. Analysis of official preliminary police data showed anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 146% from 2019 to 2020 across 26 of the largest American jurisdictions. The increase is all the more striking given that hate crimes generally increased by only 2% in these jurisdictions during this period. The study also compared reports of anti-Asian hate crimes in 16 large US cities and counties in the first quarter of 2020 versus the first quarter of 2021. It found a 164% increase, from 36 to 95, between 2020 and 2021.
STOP AAPI Hate, a coalition of community organizers and academics, created an online, multilingual portal through which people could report anti-Asian incidents. The portal collected reports of 3,795 incidents, both criminal and non-criminal, in 2020 and early 2021. Police data for some large cities show noticeable increases in anti-Asian hate crimes compared to previous years. New York City had an average of 6.4 anti-Asian incidents annually during 2015-2019 and had 28 in 2020. For Los Angeles, the numbers were 6.6 annually during 2015-2019 and 15 in 2020.
As noted, these data have limitations. The STOP AAPI portal doesn’t try to verify the incidents reported to it, and since the portal was created in 2020 we cannot compare its numbers to previous years. Also, the apparent increase in incidents might be the result of increased media attention rather than a real increase. Nevertheless, the numbers suggest a possible pattern of increased anti-Asian hatred.
The reported incidents might also be just the tip of the iceberg: many hate crimes might go unreported for various reasons. Quyen Dinh, the executive director of Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, a civil rights group, comments, “A lot of our community members don’t know they can report, or they are afraid to report to law enforcement…They would rather share with the community groups they feel comfortable with.”
Beyond the patterns suggested by numbers, anti-Asian bigotry turns up in multiple specific incidents reported since March 2020. A New York Times compilation of 110 such incidents provides disturbing details. To take just a handful of examples:
- March 2020: In Midland, TX, three members of an Asian American family, including a 2-year-old and 6-year-old, were stabbed in a grocery store because their attacker thought they were Chinese and had Covid-19.
- November 2020: In Washington, DC, a tea shop owner was confronted by a customer who shouted “Chinese” and “Covid-19” and eventually pepper sprayed the owner.
- February 2021: In Los Angeles, a Korean American man was hit in the face by two attackers who called him racial slurs and “Chinese virus.”
- March 2021: In New York City, multiple violent attacks on Asian Americans took place, including an incident where a Filipino American woman was knocked down and kicked while her attacker yelled “You don’t belong here.”
- March 2021: In San Jose, CA, a woman was sexually assaulted by an attacker who shouted anti-Asian slurs.
Hostility Abroad
These and other anti-Asian incidents have taken place in the context of fears about Covid-19 and political rhetoric that identifies the virus with China. Former President Trump sometimes referred to the virus as the “China virus” or the “Chinese virus” (although he later backed off from those words and called for tolerance of Asian Americans). Trump also once used the term “kung flu,” which was also used in multiple anti-Asian incidents.
However, other circumstances beyond Covid-19 might contribute to anti-Asian attitudes within the United States today. Even as Covid recedes (we hope), hostility between the United States and China continues to be a serious problem.
The Biden administration has identified China as a leading US rival. CIA Director William Burns has called China “the biggest geopolitical challenge that we face.” Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has said “no challenge we face rivals the holistic threat posed by China, and more specifically the Chinese Communist Party.” Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA), arguing against cuts to the US defense budget, tweeted that “China’s goal is nothing less than the complete destruction of the United States.”
Meanwhile, the Senate is considering a bill, the Strategic Competition Act of 2021, targeting China. The bill calls for spending $300 million annually “to counter the malign influence of the Chinese Communist Party globally.” The funds would go to, among other purposes, “expose misinformation and disinformation of the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda” and “support civil society and independent media to raise awareness of and increase transparency regarding the negative impact” of various Chinese economic initiatives.
As Jessica J. Lee and Rachel Esplin-Odell of the Quincy Institute comment, the Act could encourage paranoia and hostility toward China and skew media coverage of China, “in favor of anti-China journalism, [while] drowning out more unbiased analyses and reports on constructive engagement with China.” While the Act, to its credit, condemns anti-Asian racism, it may nevertheless encourage general hostility to China that will influences attitudes toward Chinese Americans and other Asian Americans.
Fears of foreign influence might already be influencing the treatment of Asian Americans within the State Department. The Asian-American Foreign Affairs Association (AAFAA), which represents diplomats of Asian heritage, has long expressed concerns about how security clearance rules intended to reduce “targeting and harassment by foreign intelligence services as well as to lessen foreign influence,” are applied to Asian Americans.
In March 2021, 100 Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders from the foreign policy and national security fields released a statement saying “the xenophobia that is spreading as U.S. policy concentrates on great power competition has exacerbated suspicions, microaggressions, discrimination, and blatant accusations of disloyalty simply because of the way we look. Many of us have been targeted because we are either ethnically Chinese or simply look Asian.” The statement goes on to say “Treating all Asian-Americans working in national security with a broad stroke of suspicion, rather than seeing us as valuable contributors, is counterproductive.”
Countering Hatred
Some positive steps to counter anti-Asian racism have been taken. Congress recently passed the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act, which contains provisions to improve multilingual reporting of hate crimes, access to support services, and public education about hate crimes. The 2021 State Authorization Act, currently being considered in Congress, would reform State Department security clearance procedures. The new procedures would allow diplomats to appeal clearance decisions and have the decisions reviewed independently. Meanwhile, the Strategic Competition Act should be rejected, at least in its current form.
We should also step back from the general hostility toward China that is increasingly embraced by both US political parties. This need not mean stopping all criticism of the Chinese government over, for example, its human rights record in Hong Kong or Xinjiang. However, it does mean scaling back extreme anti-China rhetoric and balancing criticism with recognition of the need for great power cooperation. Hostility among nations is always dangerous. Such hostility has the added danger of turning inward and harming vulnerable communities at home.
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For similar posts from John Whitehead, see:
“Remember Pearl Harbor—Keep ‘Em Dying”: War and Racism in the Pacific
The Wages of War, Part 1: How Abortion Came to Japan
Wages of War, Part 2: How Forced Sterilization Came to Japan
“Millions Who Are Already Hanging by a Thread”: The Global Repercussions of Covid-19
Sickness is the Health of the State? Civil Liberties and Conflict during a Pandemic
“I Became Like a Soldier Going to Battle”: Post-Abortion Trauma
by Sarah Terzo
Jacqueline Middler
Jacqueline Middler had two abortions and deeply regretted them. She wrote a book, White Stick, hoping to convince other women not to make the same choices. (All quotations below are from this book).
Middler became pregnant her first year of college. She didn’t know what to do but was leaning towards choosing life. Then she spoke to a friend who’d had an abortion.
The friend said there were many things Middler wouldn’t be able to do if she had a baby. She wouldn’t finish college, she would lose her scholarship, and her boyfriend, whom she wanted to marry, would break up with her.
Middler said, “But I can’t kill my baby.” (p. 30)
The friend told her there was no baby, only cells. Middler writes, “Finally, words that comforted me. I wouldn’t be killing a baby – just a group of cells.” (p. 31)
Midler didn’t know that a preborn baby’s heart is beating at 21 days, and some scientists think it starts even earlier. She didn’t know that a child in the womb was already right or left-handed at eight weeks, or that by 10 weeks the baby has fingerprints and sucks her thumb.
Middler had doubts, but she silenced them. If she had an abortion, she reasoned, no one would ever know. She could continue with her life as if nothing had happened.
When Middler told her parents of her decision, they said they didn’t agree, but they would support her choice. Middler recalls wishing they would step in and forbid her from having an abortion, or at least give her more direction. But the full burden of the choice was placed on her shoulders.
Middler says, “[I] had already hardened my heart… Once I made the decision, I never wavered. I became like a soldier going to battle, determined to win and get my life back on track.” (p. 32)
Whether in abortion or through war, it isn’t human nature to kill. People must suppress their instincts and harden their hearts to do so.
Middler bled after the abortion. She began to see her abortion as killing a baby:
[M]y constant pain and blood loss reminded me of what I had done. Within the discharge from my body were pieces of tissue, and I wondered what part of my baby they represented. (p. 42)
She suffered emotionally and became addicted to drugs and alcohol:
I cried so much. I had hoped to never think about my choice again, but now I thought about it every second of every day. I couldn’t share these thoughts with anyone… As the ugly head of my grief and pain came roaring up to crush me, I beat it back down into the small place in my heart where I let it reign. If the noise got too loud, I reached for drugs or alcohol to quiet the pain.
Outwardly, I looked the same… But inwardly I struggled to process the shame and guilt. Somehow, I finished the term and began packing for home. As I stepped aboard that plane, I was not the same girl who had come to school. My inner being was broken, hardened, and numbed by my choices and my drug use…By taking my baby’s life, some of my own life had died too. (pp. 42-43)
Middler became extremely promiscuous after her abortion, going to parties, drinking and drugging, and going home with various men. At one point, she managed to stay sober for several months, only to find out she was pregnant again. She “celebrated” her decision to have another abortion by drinking again. She got mindlessly drunk and used marijuana.
At the time, she thought that the heavy drinking and drugs had damaged her baby. She says she “didn’t want the baby to suffer in this life with physical deformities or mental incapacities, so ending his or her life before it started seemed like a good thing to do.” (pp. 52-53).
Years later, she would admit to herself:
These thoughts had nothing to do with the baby’s well-being but had everything to do with my own selfish desires not to be inconvenienced by a damaged baby. I knew my life would forever be tied to this baby’s father as well. I knew he would want to be part of the baby’s life. But I knew I did not want to be tied to any one person. I’d grown too numb to think of anyone but myself. (p. 53)
Things got even worse for her after the second abortion. She says, “I felt more than broken – I felt destroyed. In this dark place, I could see no light, no hope.”
She spent the rest of her time in college in a drunken, drug-induced haze. She says:
I alienated everyone, including good friends. I bought drugs and smoked them by myself, often disappearing into the woods to spend many hours staring endlessly into the vast forest, wishing I could disappear. I was not the same person anymore. In fact, I knew that the carefree girl I’d been before my abortions would never return. My choices had affected every aspect of my life and had now destroyed it. I sat in a dark place…
When I returned to school this time, my life felt empty. To protect myself, to be able to move through the motions, I shut down my emotions. I locked them up tight within. I felt more than broken – I felt destroyed. In this dark place, I could see no light, no hope. (pp. 52-53)
Eventually, she stopped abusing substances and began attending church, finding comfort in Christianity. When she got married, she had two miscarriages. Each miscarriage brought back memories of her abortions and thoughts that God was punishing her. She still had to face her abortion and the harm it had done to her life. She says:
As a result of my choice to murder, I made other bad decisions – one after another. Abusing alcohol and drugs, alienating friends, choosing bad partners, screwing up good jobs – the list goes on and on. (pp. 105-106)
Through church ministries, prayer, and “taking responsibility” she found healing:
I acknowledged what I did – took responsibility – and grieved for my choices. I cried. I got angry. I accepted it. Then I decided to let it go. It wasn’t easy. I still look at my abortions as a time I ruined my life. However, I no longer beat myself up for those choices. I allow myself to feel the grief and then fill myself up with God’s words of love for me instead. (p. 109)
She went on to give birth to three children.
Years later, she and a friend went to a concert by a singer they both liked. Before the concert, they were shown a pro-abortion video. The crowd was overwhelmingly pro-choice:
I had no idea that this artist’s concerts had morphed into pro-choice events. I watched and listened as many different women and doctors appeared on the screen talking about how important it was to have the choice of abortion. The main speaker talked about how she had eight abortions and how she thought abortions were just another form of birth control. Her callous remarks and hardened heart hurt me. (p. 133)
The singer yelled pro-choice slogans into the microphone, and the crowd stood up and cheered.
She and her friend were the only ones not standing and applauding. Middler says:
I looked around and saw every woman in the audience cheering for their freedom, and I wondered if they knew the shackles that would bind their souls. I wondered if there was a voice for the people like me who had abortions and knew abortion was wrong, knew that choice was life-altering, knew the depths of hatred one could have for oneself, and knew the choice would be with you forever. I wondered if there was a voice for us – someone who could tell others not to go this route…
At that moment, I told God I would be the voice for women like me if he wanted me to. I would share my story. (pp. 114-115)
Middler has the following message for women considering abortion: “Choosing abortion will change the direction of your life, but not in the way you might think. Having an abortion is not the easier choice.” (p. 114)
She hopes that her book will change hearts and minds on abortion and encourage women to choose life.
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For more of our posts on personal journeys, sees:
My Personal Journey on Veganism, War, and Abortion / Frank Lane
Off the Fence and Taking My Stand on Abortion / Mary Liepold
Sharon Long: My Personal Pro-life Journey / Sharon Long
Reconstruction of a Nation: Resilience in the Face of Terror / Aneeza Pervez of Pakistan
Brown v. Board of Education and Me / Bill Samuel
Coming to Peace and Living a Consistent Life After Military Service / Eve Dawn Kuha
Vaccinations and Tender Consciences
by Rachel MacNair
I’m about to make some heavy criticisms of the way the Covid vaccines came to be, so I start by saying I’ve now gotten both of my Moderna vaccinations. I encourage everyone qualified to be socially responsible to the community by getting theirs as well. Failing to do so, under current circumstances, is taking part in a major massive threat to life.
But as for the criticism, I start by observing that it was large corporations that came up with the vaccines. It had to be; smaller outfits don’t have the wherewithal to do something so complicated.
Yet people in very large groups can so easily fall into mind-numbing bureaucracy. Large corporations get us huge military projects that use up resources and hurt the environment for death-dealing machines that shouldn’t exist. Large corporations lobby to lower their taxes and therefore to cut desperately needed social spending. They also underpay their workers, so poverty increases. Large corporations are the major polluters of the environment; as individuals, we don’t do nearly so much, and when we do, it’s usually because of what large corporations sell us.
One major problem on the vaccines, as I see it, is that the large corporations that came up with them have shown similar callousness by using fetal cell lines somewhere in the process. Moderna and Pfizer used it in testing, but not in production. Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca used it in production (see An Ethics Assessment of COVID-19 Vaccine Programs). The fetal cells themselves aren’t in the final product, so no one need fear that they’re getting the fetal cells injected in their arms. Nevertheless, I resolved not to get the J & J and to hold out for the ones that only used it in testing. It didn’t matter since Moderna was what I was offered, but still, I had resolved that.
The baby that was killed and then used for the cell line was killed decades ago. I’m not a Catholic – I’m a Quaker – but Catholic arguments I’ve heard are: we aren’t actually materially participating in abortion, nor making any more abortions happen. If there were an alternative that had no use of the fetal cell line at all, of course we’d make a point of using that. But there isn’t – just the distinction in how much they did it. We all have to use products that have some evil in them – for example, we use buildings that were built by enslaved people. We aren’t in any way supporting, or failing to oppose, the horrific evil of slavery by continuing to use those buildings. Most important of all, the massive life-saving to be achieved by the vaccine is absolutely, absolutely necessary.
I buy those arguments, or I wouldn’t have taken the vaccine. But there are Catholic people and others who are aghast at the abortion connection of the vaccines and therefore dead set against them.
Of course there are.
The health researchers should have expected that. This is the real world.
The response of many pundits has been to try to argue such people into dispensing with their tender consciences on this point, and to take the vaccine anyway. I assert they’re arguing with the wrong people.
We as a society always knew that a mass vaccination campaign requires that people be persuaded to take the shots. Health promoters need to talk many people into it.
Therefore, it’s grotesquely, grotesquely irresponsible to have used anything in production that might add to vaccine hesitancy. Add to it by leaps and bounds. Add to it by maybe millions of people. Specifically, people of tender conscience.
No, the researchers ran roughshod over those consciences. The very mindset that allowed the researchers to discount the lives of unborn children goes with the mindset of discounting people of tender conscience. As if we don’t exist. Or shouldn’t.
Therefore, though the researchers could have used alternative methods that would have avoided leaving so many people queasy, they forged ahead with them. Then, upon discovering that there are people that they’ve inflicted this burden on, rather than realizing what a humongous mistake they made and expressing contrition, they argue with the people of tender conscience that they just shouldn’t have the tender conscience. Those researchers themselves don’t, and they’ve made non-persons out of all of us who do.
They weren’t paying attention to this most basic detail when using the fetal cell line. They argued against opponents of using it, inasmuch as they paid attention to us at all.
So now that they discover a problem – one that should have been foreseeable – their idea of a solution is to bully us into accepting their definition of the situation instead of our own.
We as a society are stuck in the situation, and we can’t change the past. But all arguments that we as advocates for life ought to behave as if our current situation is a given run aground for me when that past could have been different if large corporations had been more responsible.
I could handle their arguments for the current vaccines better if they realized their mistake, apologized, learned from the experience, and promised not to do it any more. Without that, the arguments from people who discount both babies and their defenders can never sit well with me. I’ve gotten my vaccinations and encourage others to do the same, but I resent the disrespect toward me and my group that their production decisions entailed.
That disrespect is deadly, because it fosters the predictable result of greater vaccine hesitancy and resistance.
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For more of our blog posts on the pandemic, see:
Post-pandemic: What Worries Me
A Healing Metaphor: Pandemic as War
The Random Death Sentence: COVID in Prisons and Jails / Sarah Terzo
Masking Up but Not Shutting Up: Defending Freedom of Speech during a Pandemic
#SayHisName: The Medical Murder of Michael Hickson
Making a Nonviolent Revolution – Review of Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know
by John Whitehead
Certain historical episodes of nonviolent resistance to injustice are famous: the Indian struggle for independence; the American civil rights movement; or the Arab Spring uprisings come to mind. However, many people who are aware of such episodes aren’t familiar with the larger history of nonviolent resistance nor with how such resistance can be used most effectively. For those wishing to learn more about nonviolent resistance, Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know (2021), by Erica Chenoweth, is a good introduction.
Chenoweth is a political scientist at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard who has written extensively over the past decade about how nonviolent civil resistance is more effective than violence in overcoming injustice. This latest book provides a clear, popular overview of the topic, presented in the form of answers to possible questions about nonviolent resistance. Consistent life ethic advocates and other activists will find the book a valuable guide to why and how nonviolent methods of resistance can succeed.
Changing the Power Balance within a Society
The book defines “civil resistance” as a “method of active conflict in which unarmed people use a variety of coordinated, noninstitutional methods—strikes, protests, demonstrations, boycotts, alternative institution-building—to promote change without harming or threatening to harm an opponent.” (p. 28) Such resistance differs both from violent rebellion and activism that works purely within official institutions, such as voting for candidates in an election. Indeed, as noted, civil resistance may involve creating parallel political or economic institutions to the official or mainstream ones within a society.
Civil resistance campaigns seek to overturn some unjust status quo, whether a repressive regime, a colonial occupation, or a social injustice such as racial segregation. Civil resistance works to achieve such goals by exerting enough pressure to get people and groups supporting the unjust status quo—the military, business leaders, religious or other influential institutions—to shift their support to the resistance campaign. This support may take the form of actively helping the resistance or merely not working against them: security forces, for example, might refuse to use violence against resistance members.
Egyptian Arab spring protest. This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC
These loyalty shifts don’t require those in power to agree that the current situation is unjust, merely to recognize that their interests now lie in siding with the resistance. For example, economic resistance techniques such as strikes and boycotts can create enough economic pressure to make business leaders support the resistance campaign’s goals.
Achieving such a crucial loyalty shift generally requires that the resistance campaign has a large, diverse membership; uses diverse resistance tactics; and remains disciplined and resilient even when they encounter state repression. Chenoweth emphasizes that successful resistance campaigns don’t rely solely on protests or other public demonstrations. Less confrontational methods, such as boycotts or staying at home rather than going to work or school, can exert pressure in ways less vulnerable to repression.
Another point Chenoweth frequently repeats (with an urgency that seems born of frustration) is that successful civil resistance campaigns require a high degree of organization and long, careful planning and preparation. A loosely organized movement that takes to the streets without a clear strategy is less likely to succeed, she argues.
However, a successful civil resistance campaign doesn’t require a single charismatic leader, such as a Gandhi. Relying on such leaders makes a campaign vulnerable to collapse should the leader be imprisoned or killed.
Chenoweth cites a variety of quantitative studies, many of which she conducted with collaborators, to support her claims about civil resistance, including civil resistance’s superiority to violence. Of 627 campaigns that occurred between 1900 and 2019 and that aimed to overthrow governments or create new nation-states, over 50% of the nonviolent campaigns succeeded within a year of the campaigns’ point of greatest popular participation. In contrast, only about 26% of violent campaigns during this period succeeded.
She also cites a 2014 study that examined 46 mass killings between 1989 and 2011. The study concluded that campaigns can succeed even in the face of violent government repression of nonviolent protests, provided the campaign is well organized. Also, another study cited notably concludes that nonviolent campaigns generally suffer far fewer deaths than armed rebellions do.
Chenoweth offers plausible arguments for why nonviolent resistance campaigns tend to be more successful than violent ones. Nonviolent campaigns attract larger, more diverse followings because they are less dangerous, don’t require people to overcome scruples about using violence, and are open to people not suitable for military service. Nonviolent campaigns also earn more sympathy from the general population (Chenoweth cites a variety of opinion surveys from various countries on this point). Last, nonviolent campaigns make defections by state security forces more likely, while violent rebellion makes such forces more likely to close ranks.
Chenoweth also addresses the hard cases of resistance to genocidal or otherwise extremely violent regimes and offers a blunt, sobering assessment: “genocidal or totalitarian regimes…are difficult to confront with any kind of resistance, violent or not… nonviolent resistance does not always work, even when many people are using it together,” but “taking up violence may be even more disastrous” (pp. 156, 157).
Erica Chenoweth
Problems and Limitations
Although Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know contains much that will be useful to consistent life ethic advocates, this is not a consistent life ethic book. Chenoweth writes sympathetically of public suicide by self-immolation, questionably regarding such protest as “nonviolent” (p. 82). The book’s few mentions of pro-life activism are generally negative, with Chenoweth suggesting that such activism might be an example of how nonviolent resistance can sometimes be immoral.
Moreover, Chenoweth’s argument for nonviolent resistance is essentially pragmatic—nonviolence is preferable simply because it is more effective—and she largely refrains from condemning violence on moral grounds. This attitude will likely be disappointing to pacifist, and many non-pacifist, consistent life ethic advocates.
Civil Resistance also fails to address some crucial questions about nonviolent civil resistance. The book’s focus is various struggles within states, in which the government being challenged is either some homegrown regime or a more or less established colonial regime. What is not addressed is how to struggle against aggressive foreign states that have not yet established control of another state. Granting that nonviolent civil resistance is more effective than violence in challenging an established regime, would such nonviolent resistance also be more effective than violent resistance in stopping an invasion by an outside state? The answer may well be “Yes,” but the book doesn’t address the question.
Another largely unaddressed question is how to deal with nonviolent civil resistance that is used for bad ends. While one might not categorize pro-life activism this way, certainly scenarios in which civil resistance is used to thwart or disrupt just laws or policies are easy to imagine. The January 6, 2021, Capitol riot was hardly nonviolent, but purely nonviolent resistance could have similarly disrupted the conduct or ratification of an election. How should governments and activists respond to harmful civil resistance? How do such cases fit into a larger theory of civil resistance? (Chenoweth makes a few attempts to talk about this issue, but they are under-developed.)
Conclusion
Despite such limitations, Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know is a solid introductory guide to civil resistance’s methods and potential. Consistent life ethic advocates should read it, ponder it, seek out other works on the topic (the book contains a list of suggested resources), and decide how best to employ nonviolent resistance in their own work.
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For more of our posts on the theory of nonviolence, see:
Would Nonviolence Work on the Nazis?
Remembering Gandhi at 150: The Power of Nonviolence and Respect for Life
Jasmine, Aladdin, and the Power of Nonviolence
Abort or Face Discharge
by Sarah Terzo
A book published in 2010 revealed that the military had a policy that all servicewomen who became pregnant had to abort or face discharge – and this policy was in place before Roe vs. Wade, when abortion was still illegal throughout the United States.
The U.S. military’s purpose is to wage war. Killing enemy combatants, fellow human beings, is part of that mandate. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that an industry based on killing wouldn’t value the lives of preborn children either – or, as it turns out, the right of women to choose to have their children.
Requiring Abortion – before Roe
In 1970, the Department of Defense issued a policy permitting military hospitals to commit abortions on military members and their spouses. In 1970, abortion was illegal in most states, and was only just being legalized (usually with heavy restrictions) in a few. In fact, that year New York became the first state to legalize abortion for any reason up to 24 weeks for all residents and nonresidents.
Military hospitals, however, were performing abortions even in states where the procedure was legally banned.
In addition, the military required servicewomen who became pregnant to have abortions or face discharge.
Records show 4,041 women in the Air Force alone were discharged for getting pregnant and refusing abortions from 1969-1971. Possibly 7,000 women across all military branches were discharged because of pregnancy from roughly the late 1940s to the mid-1970s.The number of women who aborted is unknown.
An Air Force regulation read:
“A woman officer shall be discharged from the service with the least practical delay when a determination is made by a medical officer that she is pregnant” or “has given birth to a living child,” unless the “pregnancy is terminated.”1
Military policy required female Air Force officers who became pregnant to abort or lose their jobs. A pregnancy would end a female officer’s military career – unless she had an abortion.
The Susan Struck Case
Captain Susan R. Struck, a career officer in the Air Force, became pregnant while serving as a nurse in Vietnam.
At first, she planned to have an abortion. The Guardian quotes her:
“But that night I had a dream,” recalled Struck, now aged 75, speaking in a joint interview with the Guardian and WNYC in the city of Sierra Vista, Arizona, some 50 years later.
She dreamed about the fetus, and being called “Mommy”, and the next morning she says: “I sat up in bed, and I said, ‘No way. No way are they going to do this. Susan Struck is not going to fall for this crap.’”
Struck was also a Catholic, and this influenced her choice to have her baby.
She was able to hide the pregnancy for seven-and-a-half months, but received a discharge notice when her pregnancy was discovered.
She gave birth to her child, a baby girl named Tanya, and put the child up for adoption.
Her punishment was discharge, but unlike Air Force officers before her, she decided to fight back. She went to court, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union. The lawyer assigned to her case was Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who would later become a Supreme Court Justice. She obtained a stay of discharge, but it turned out only to be temporary. She lost both in the United States District Court in Seattle and in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Both sets of judges ruled that she could be discharged for her refusal to get an abortion.
Though it first was sought during her pregnancy, at this point her discharge was purely punitive. There was no reason Struck couldn’t resume her duties. Her pregnancy was over, her baby gone. She wouldn’t be impeded by a medical condition or the need to care for a child. But the Air Force was determined to discharge her anyway.
The case was appealed to the Supreme Court. But perhaps fearing bad publicity, the Air Force changed its policy. According to authors Linda Greenhouse and Reva Siegel, it did not reverse the policy. Female Air Force officers who became pregnant would still face discharge if they didn’t have an abortion. What the Air Force did was allow officials to waive enforcement of the policy in individual cases. They then waived the policy in Struck’s case in 1972.
There is a discrepancy in sources here. A military-sponsored website implies that the policy was abandoned, not revised. The Guardian, another source, is ambiguous on this point, saying only that the discharge would no longer be ‘automatic.’ Whether Greenhouse and Siegal have it wrong or whether the military is trying to sugar-coat its history is unclear.
Because Struck was no longer facing discharge, the Supreme Court dismissed her case as moot.
Interestingly, this whole event played out while abortion was illegal in most states. Abortion wasn’t legalized until Roe vs. Wade in 1973.
It’s likely that members of the fledgling pro-choice movement knew about Struck’s case. However, there doesn’t seem to be any documentation that they ever publicly addressed or opposed the coerced abortion policy. They focused all their attention on legalizing elective abortions across the United States. They didn’t rally to defend Struck’s right to have her child. This was despite their professed commitment to women’s “right to choose.”
I have read contemporary books by early pro-choice activists such as Bernard Nathanson (who later became pro-life), Larry Lader and Malcolm Potts and perused many early pro-choice documents. I have never seen reference to Struck’s case.
It’s hard to see a bigger violation of the “right to choose” than women being forced to abort under pain of their careers being ended. Yet pro-choice forces didn’t advocate for the women suffering under the military’s policy.
Despite winning the lawsuit, Struck faced so much hostility that she left the Air Force anyway and became a pediatric nurse. She eventually established a relationship with the daughter she placed for adoption.
Great Britain
Another coerced abortion policy was in place in Great Britain. According to pro-choice feminist Janet Hadley:
[T]he British military had a policy of kicking women who became pregnant out of the service if they did not abort. If a woman was found to be over 16 weeks pregnant, she was discharged, even if she was in a clerical or office job or other noncombat position.2
As we can see, this coerced abortion policy applied to women whose jobs wouldn’t be compromised by the physical condition of pregnancy. It wasn’t limited to potential combatants.
One victim of the policy, a telephone operator at the Women’s Royal Navy Service, who had an abortion, said:
They gave me a weekend to think about it. It was like I was going to the dentist to have a tooth out. There was no compassion and no counseling… My boyfriend didn’t want to know, I had no choice.3
Women went to court to challenge the policy. According to a lawyer who represented the women:
There was a culture of abortion. If you went to the medical officer, you got told how quickly an abortion could be arranged and that the military hospital was lined up ready to do the operation.4
Fortunately, this policy did end, and military personnel are no longer required to get abortions in Great Britain.
Conclusion
These forced abortion policies give insight into the nature of the military, both in the U.S. and elsewhere. The military, whether in our country or another, puts its members in harm’s way and endangers their lives as a matter of course. It isn’t surprising that in addition to not valuing its members’ lives, it tends not to value their right to choose against abortion. Nor is it surprising that an industry predicated on killing would have no scruples about mandating more killing.
Footnotes
- Linda Greenhouse and Reva Siegel, eds. Before Roe v. Wade: Voices That Shaped the Abortion Debate before the Supreme Court’s Ruling (New York: Kaplan Publishing, 2010), pp. 198 – 199
- Janet Hadley Abortion: Between Freedom and Necessity (Great Britain: Virago Press 1996), p. 102
- “Abortions Test Case for Army” Guardian March 28, 1994
- Hadley, p. 104
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For more of our posts on similar themes, see:
Abortion and War: Breaking through the Euphemism Barrier
How Abortion is Useful for Rape Culture
Oppressors of Women Scapegoat Fetuses to Preserve Patriarchy
Abortion and Violence Against Pregnant Women
Zoom Conference: April 24, 2021
Various people took screenshots and offer reflections.
Bill Samuel
Sen. Katrina Jackson was a really inspiring keynote speaker. The spirit she exudes is wonderful and it set the tone for the conference. The other speakers I heard from the workshops I attended and the closing session were also excellent. Those planning it did a great job of getting a diverse set of speakers. The conference delved even deeper than the issues themselves with a lot of focus on how we act towards others with different perspectives, which reflects the spirit behind the Consistent Life Ethic of respect for each and every human being. There was much excellent dialogue among the attendees which was encouraging to all.
Louisiana State Senator Katrina Jackson
Julia Smucker
Inclusivity and bridge-building were running themes throughout, not simply in a touchy-feely way but brought alongside the need to acknowledge tensions and human complexities. A key piece of advice given by keynote speaker Katrina Jackson, and echoed by several panelists in the breakout sessions I attended, was to take the common ground we have with people we’re working with on specific issues as a starting point; when people have seen our genuine passion for things they are also passionate about, this can eventually create openings for meaningful dialogue on points of disagreement and can prevent others from putting us into a box (or us from putting others into a box, for that matter). This resonated strongly with my experience as a consistent-lifer who’s been involved in advocacy on multiple issues.
Political Spectrum Workshop
Racial Justice Workshop
John Whitehead
At this great conference’s closing session, which was co-hosted by Darren Calhoun and Carol Crossed, a theme that came up repeatedly was living with tension. Darren and Carol brought up the tension between admiring historical figures’ virtues and accomplishments while also recognizing their hateful attitudes and actions. I thought this theme was also relevant to other issues participants discussed over the course of conference. Katrina Jackson’s talk made me think of tensions involved in working with people on a single issue we agree on, even as we disagree on other issues. Sarah Terzo and Sophie Trist’s session on writing made me think of the tension between writing’s, especially fiction’s, artifice and its possibility of getting at some truth. During Carol’s session on depolarizing conversations on life issues, we discussed how to be honest without alienating people. Defending life involves living with the tensions created by trying to balance so many different concerns. We must each negotiate these tensions in our own ways.
Carol Crossed / Darren Calhoun
Scenes from the song “Tear Down the Walls” from The Many. Top two photos: Leslie Michele and Darren Calhoun.
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For more of our conference posts, see:
Progressive Prolifers at the Progressive Magazine 100th Anniversary Celebration / Mary Krane Derr
Roe Anniversary Protests, 2019
When Women Lead: The Pro-life Women’s Conference / C.J. Williams
Rehumanize International – 6th Annual Conference (2019)
#Rehumanize2020: Experiences of a Virtual Conference (2020)
Death Penalty Jurisprudence of Former Missouri Supreme Court Judge Laura Denvir Stith
Author’s note: I recently retired from the Supreme Court of Missouri after serving as a judge of that court for 20 years. My brother, Richard Stith, a member of the Consistent Life Network, thought its members would be interested in learning about some of the death penalty decisions and dissents which I wrote while a member of the Court. I am not a member of the Consistent Life Network, and no doubt do not agree with all of the views of its membership. But, because I share the membership’s interest in the fair application of the death penalty, I have agreed to discuss some of my most important death penalty opinions and dissents. Please keep in mind as you read this or read about any legal decision that the role of a judge is to express the judge’s understanding of the law and justice, not the judge’s personal views. Because the law is complex, wise judges of good conscience may disagree as to how a case should be decided. It is through thoughtful expressions of their differing views in opinions and dissents that the law grows and improves.
The most significant opinion I have authored in terms of its impact on the law and on justice throughout the United States is State ex rel. Simmons v Roper, 112 S.W.3d 397 (Mo banc 2003), which was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roper v. Simmons, 43 US 551 (2005). Mr. Simmons was found guilty of a murder committed when he was 17 in the 1990’s. The jury imposed a death sentence after the prosecutor argued that if he was this dangerous at age 17, how awful would he be later? This was then thought constitutional because while in 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court had held that it was cruel and unusual punishment to execute someone who committed murder at age 15 or younger due to their lack of maturity, by 1989 it had held it was not cruel and unusual punishment to execute someone who was 16 or 17 at the time of their crime, implicitly suggesting that such an execution would not violate our “evolving standards of decency.” Similarly, that year in a separate case the U.S. Supreme Court held that it was constitutional to execute someone who was intellectually disabled at the time of their crime under our evolving standards of decency.
So, when in 2002 the attorney general of Missouri asked the Missouri Supreme Court to sign Mr. Simmons’ death warrant, the latest U.S. Supreme Court decision would by itself indicate that was ok. But, that year, in Atkins, the U.S. Supreme Court had reversed its holding about the intellectually disabled and had held that it violated our evolving standards of decency to execute someone who was intellectually disabled.
To a majority of the Missouri Supreme Court, this raised the important question of whether the U.S. Supreme Court would find that standards for execution of juveniles also had evolved since 1989. In both cases, in the interim, additional state legislatures had barred such executions, while none had added in an approval not previously present, and more had been learned about the lack of full development of a juvenile’s brain while in their teens.
A minority of my colleagues said this was for the U.S Supreme Court to revisit if it wanted, and that it was presumptuous for us to do so, and many scholars around the country offered similar criticism. But, this view overlooked that the Missouri Supreme Court was almost certainly Mr. Simmons’ last opportunity for consideration of whether he was eligible to be executed, as the U.S. Supreme Court takes a case from Missouri or any other particular state only once every three or four years, and normally refuses cases that simply apply prior law. So, if it said he could be executed, the U.S. Supreme Court almost certainly would have denied review and Mr. Simmons would have been executed without anyone determining whether under then-current community mores, his execution was cruel and unusual. The majority of the Missouri Supreme Court explained that it believed it therefore was its obligation to determine this question. Further, we explained we believed the U.S. Supreme Court had invited us to do so by holding in their earlier cases that what is cruel and unusual varies over time, that it reflects the current community consciousness, and that evolving standards of decency might prohibit what had not been thought to be cruel or unusual in the past. So, my opinion stated, it turned out correctly, that Missouri had authority to look at the 2003 community standards and see if they had evolved to bar execution for crimes committed by juveniles.
The decision I authored for the court rejected the argument that only legislative enactments could be looked at to determine community standards, noting that the U.S. Constitution does not state that state legislatures shall decide what is cruel and unusual. Rather it broadly states that such punishment is prohibited, thereby leaving it to the courts to make this determination.
Accordingly, in prior cases the U.S. Supreme Court had looked to numerous sources in addition to legislatures, including religious and cultural and civic and medical groups. Applying this same analysis, the Missouri decision held it was a violation of the cruel and unusual punishment clause to execute someone for a crime committed as a juvenile. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed using exactly our reasoning and quoting our decision twice. Execution of juveniles is now barred in the United States, and more than 70 youths were taken off death row around the country as a result of that ruling.
Another important majority decision I authored was State v. Whitfield, 107 S.W.3d 253 (Mo. banc 2003). It had multiple important holdings. First, the Missouri Supreme Court held that it believed the U.S. Supreme Court cases simply set a minimum standard which the states must follow in applying constitutional provisions, including the right to habeas corpus. But, we held in Whitfield, we believed states are free to set a higher standard. Therefore, even though the U.S. Supreme Court had refused to apply retroactively its decision that a jury rather than a judge must find every element of a crime necessary to impose the death penalty, we held Missouri would do so. The U.S. Supreme Court later held in a case called Danforth that this was correct, that states were free to apply the right to habeas corpus more liberally than the U.S. Supreme Court had, citing in the course of its decision a law review article I wrote that had been published in the interim in the Valparaiso Law Review, “Contrast of State and Federal Court Authority to Grant Habeas Relief,” 38 Valparaiso Law Rev. 421 (Spring 2004). Whitfield also held that because the jury had been unable to reach a decision whether to impose death, that was in effect an acquittal of death, since one can be given the death penalty only if all jurors agree to impose it. Therefore, the defendant’s sentence could not be relitigated.
A later decision of the Missouri Supreme Court narrowed another holding in Whitfield, in which it had held that juries had to make the determination whether factors in mitigation of punishment outweighed those in aggravation because it is a factual question. The majority said, over my dissent, that this is a subjective decision which the judge can make if the jury deadlocks. State v. Wood, 580 S.W.23d 566 (Mo. banc 2019).
Other important death penalty dissents I have written often have involved intellectual disability and whether and how it should affect imposition of the death penalty.
State ex rel Cole v. Griffith, 460 S.W.3d 349 (Mo banc 2015), dealt with a man who had a mental disability. Unusually, this was because, while he was not found incompetent at trial, in the years he was in prison his mental competence had so deteriorated that he was hearing voices and showing other symptoms of psychosis. The majority decided that his claims of incompetence were not sufficiently credible to entitle him to a hearing, even though, as I pointed out in my dissent, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that if a threshold showing of incompetence is made at the time of execution then one cannot be executed, because it would be cruel and unusual punishment to execute someone who did not understand the nature of and reason for his death. To deny a factual hearing on this key factual issue was manifestly unjust.
State ex rel. Clayton v Griffith, 457 S.W.3d 735 (Mo. banc 2015), involved what I stated in my death penalty dissent was a particularly egregious violation of the rights of a mentally disabled individual. Mr. Clayton had an injury causing him partial loss of his frontal lobe. He argued that made him ineligible for the death penalty. The majority said, in part, that he was required to show that he had this mental disability prior to age 18, and since his traumatic brain injury did not occur until he was 32, whatever it did to him did not constitute mental incompetence and therefore could not justify changing his sentence to life in prison. I argued in dissent that he was entitled to a hearing to show he was mentally incompetent as a result of the traumatic brain injury, without regard to how or when he got his injury. The requirement to show the mental disability was diagnosed before age 18 is to prevent someone faking a mental disability later — it serves no purpose where, as in that case, all agreed defendant suffered an injury which caused his mental disability after age 18. One should look to the purpose of a rule and not apply it blindly to do an injustice.
Finally, in Johnson v. State, 580 S.W.3d 895 (Mo. banc 2019), Mr. Johnson’s counsel failed to tell him that if he were found by the jury to be intellectually disabled, he could not get the death penalty. Instead, the lawyer told him he better take a plea deal for life in prison without parole because otherwise he likely would get the death penalty. The lawyer gave this advice because he did not understand the difference between intellectual disability, which if proven means you are less culpable and under the U.S. Supreme Court Atkins decision means you are not eligible for the death penalty, and mental incompetence, which means you cannot be held guilty because you did not know right from wrong. Under Atkins, even if you knew right from wrong and so were guilty, you could not get a death sentence. Had Mr. Johnson known this, he would not have pleaded guilty because the worst he could get was a life sentence, and if the jury believed his defenses that he was misled by others due to his disability, then he might have gotten a lesser sentence than that. The majority refused to provide even a hearing, although his I.Q. was without question below 70 – in fact, he tested at an I.Q. of 53. I said in dissent, “What is at stake is whether a man who is intellectually disabled must serve life in prison without parole because his counsel failed to understand the meaning or consequences of intellectual disability under the law governing imposition of the death penalty.”
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For more of our posts on the death penalty, see:
Is the Death Penalty Unethical? / Hannah Cox
Why Conservatives Should Oppose the Death Penalty / Destiny Herndon-de la Rosa
Racism and the Death Penalty / David Cruz-Uribe
The Death Penalty and Abortion: The Conservative/Liberal Straitjacket / Rachel MacNair
Instead of Division, Schools of Thought
by Rachel MacNair
Several kinds of arguments show up in most large, long-lasting nonviolent social movements. Activists often express distress about these divisions, thinking more unity would mean more success.
I’d like to make the case that instead of thinking of “unity” – an unworkable concept when dealing with large groups of people with strong opinions – we should realize that these kinds of arguments happen so constantly that it’s better to expect people to have them. We can work with these differences harmoniously.
If we’re aware of it, these differing schools of thought can actually be used to make all movements far more effective.
Not Division, But Multiplication
- the “purists” vs. the “pragmatists”
Purists say compromise is immoral and detrimental in the long run. Pragmatists argue for an “all or something” approach, believing it is immoral to allow violence to continue while waiting for purity.
These two approaches can complement each other. The purists keep the compromises from getting too watered-down. The pragmatists can use the purists to make themselves appear more moderate.
We once had a major heated debate in the division of peace psychology in the American Psychological Association (APA) on the topic of torture under the Bush administration and the APA response to it; I was president of the division during one of the years of this raging debate, 2013. I discerned that this was what the controversy was about: the purists were accusing the pragmatists of selling out, and the pragmatists were accusing the purists of posturing rather than getting something done.
I proposed to both sides the point that the two approaches complement each other. The pragmatists caught on to this immediately, and confirmed it: on the APA Council, they had been seen as a bunch of radical extremists – until the more extreme purists made a lot of noise. Suddenly, with the same position, they were the moderates, and the people more reasonable to negotiate with. Yet they did have to say that they couldn’t water it down too much for fear of the purists in their group (and of course, they didn’t want to water it down too much, so the purist agitation was a big help).
I also had an easy time explaining the two categories to the purists as the basis of the dispute. It was a little harder to get across to them why it was better to have both schools of thought rather than everybody going with just theirs.
The proposal did pass in the Council, so there was a step taken in the right direction. But all of us agreed this wasn’t the final thing we wanted to achieve. That came later with a major media exposé of the torture situation, which suddenly put everything in a new light. That exposé happened, of course, in part through the continued activism of the purists, yet the APA Council was more open to it because they had taken the previous step.
In the case of the pro-life movement, the American Life Lobby – now changed to the American Life League – split off from the National Right to Life Committee early on for this very reason: NRLC was willing to make legislative compromises to get legislation passed, and ALL was only willing to tolerate entirely good legislation. There’s a reason they changed from Lobby to League; they do better at the tasks that purists are good at.
- “reform” vs. “root cause”
There is a parable of the people of a village who awake to find babies floating in their nearby river. They immediately help the babies, pull them out, dry and clothe and feed and shelter them. This happens day after day. Finally one person decides to go up along the river to find out why on earth all these babies are being thrown in.
This parable is often told as an explanation of a radical approach – that is, one that goes to the root. The babies are obviously better off not being placed in danger than they are being rescued.
Still, while the person is searching for the root cause, the babies are still in desperate need of immediate assistance.
What if the person can’t find the root cause? Or can find it, but can’t do anything once found? Or can do something, but it takes a long time? Or gets it done, only to find that another cause of babies being thrown in the river pops up somewhere else?
Both approaches are therefore needed. Reforms and immediate aid not only help right away, but the assertive example that people care about this problem may end up being part of the root-cause solution, since apathy is likely to be part of what causes the problem. Incremental steps toward the ultimate solution may also be more workable than trying to get it in one fell swoop; still, it’s important to keep the root causes in mind rather than merely tinker.
- the “street” people vs. the “straight” people
Nonviolent “street” people argue it’s immoral to wait for normal legal channels rather than taking direct action immediately. “Straight” people believe respectability is crucial to success.
This isn’t a strict division. Both groups attend legal demonstrations. Those who may engage in civil disobedience might still lobby for a certain bill.
Still, there are usually tensions, as those desperate for respectability think those who opt for the priority of urgency are hurting the movement, and vice versa.
Again, these two perspectives provide for a more holistic movement. Those in the street who communicate urgency can be ignored if seen as crazy and not respectable. Those who are respectable can be ignored because the issue isn’t understood as urgent. Both together can bring about a greater likelihood of being listened to.
I remember a time when I was inside, attending a state convention of the National Organization for Women, when a large group of pro-lifers showed up outside. They were yelling “Stop the killing now!” as a chant. Since the other NOW conference attenders knew I had a pro-life feminist position, they came up to me to explain how they weren’t in favor of killing, and I was able to dialog with them reasonably. Without me, the folks outside would have been dismissed entirely. Without them, I would have been regarded as an eccentric and dismissed entirely. We got so much more done because both of us were there.
- the “old-timers” vs. the “newcomers”
Newcomers are obviously crucial to a movement. A movement can’t grow without them. They also bring in fresh new ideas, enthusiasm, and help avoid ruts.
Old-timers are also crucial. They have experience of what does and doesn’t work, and of what has happened before.
Newcomers who are brimming with new-found enthusiasm may also have the impression that nothing has gone on before. They weren’t there when it happened. They may think the movement wasn’t doing successful things because it hasn’t been all the way successful yet. The contempt for the experience and accumulated wisdom of those who have been working hard for years can be very painful to the targets of the contempt. (I speak from personal experience.)
- the “single-issue” vs. the “everything’s connected”
A focus on a single issue has greater clarity. It allows more people to work on a problem, since widely divergent views on other issues don’t matter.
A focus on multiple related issues has greater coherence. It allows for a greater sense of community among people who are concerned with inter-relationships in a larger context: various peace issues, feminism, civil rights, anti-poverty, and so on. The consistent life ethic, of course, excels in this way of thinking.
The different approaches are useful in different contexts. Because there are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches, some discernment about what’s called for in specific situations is helpful.
We in the Consistent Life Network take the multi-issue approach as a matter of organizational mission. That doesn’t mean that individual blog posts or items in the newsletter can’t be focused on a single issue. Many of our sympathizers and member groups are focused on a single issue, and we encourage that – for those situations in which it’s the most helpful.
Conclusion
We all take first one side and then the other when it comes to newcomers and old-timers, but on everything else, some people will firmly decide on one side rather than the other. If we’re more conscious of how these can actually all fit together, we can stop having frustrations that we do one way while other people do another. We have to, because these differing perspectives are bound to show up, as demonstrated by the observation that they practically always have.
But they also don’t have to be clear distinctions. I, for one, commonly find myself on either side in each of these, depending on the circumstance. Individuals can always choose one, the other, or both, with some discernment.
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For more of our posts on similar topics, see:
Specialization or Generalization? The Many Ways of Following the Consistent Life Ethic