Culture of Conscience: Would You Pay Taxes that Fund Abortions if Hyde and Helms were Repealed?
by Thad Crouch
(see at the bottom for a link of a video of the author speaking the same content)
Taxes for Violence
This month, several pro-choice congressional representatives introduced the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage bill to repeal the Hyde Amendment and allow federal funding for domestic abortion violence for any reason to any woman receiving federally funded health care or insurance. Some representatives also introduced the Abortion is Health Care Everywhere Act to repeal the Helms Amendment and allow federal funding for international abortions.
Hopefully, these bills won’t pass. Yet it may prove helpful to consider how pro-life taxpayers might respond if Hyde and Helms were repealed. Such laws would violate not only the right to life; they would also violate the rights to freedom of conscience and religion.
Financial self-help author Vicki Robin says “Money is something we choose to trade our life energy for” when we work. This implies that our use of money is a use of our life energy. Forcing pro-lifers to put our lives’ energies toward violating unborn humans’ dignity is also a violation of our own consciences and human dignity.
Would you choose to risk prison and property seizures or comply with a law to pay for abortion violence?
Imagine how you might feel if your paycheck or home were seized to fund killing unborn humans in their mothers’ wombs. Would the fact that, if you paid your taxes, some would also go to some good, conscionable purposes make it ok for you?
Stop reading for a moment. Slowly take a deep breath. Think about it. Feel it.
We might be surprised as pro-lifers to learn how easily we could avail ourselves of experienced, practical advice and decades of wisdom from the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC).
Their experience shows that fear of what the IRS can do is greater than what they historically actually do to war tax resisters. The IRS doesn’t treat honest war tax resisters as evaders. There are always options to agree to an IRS payment plan, and only a few dozen out of tens of thousands of war tax resisters have been imprisoned in the last 60 years. Nearly all those incarcerations were for refusing to disclose assets, and that’s avoidable by invoking the Fifth Amendment.
Pro-lifers could take advantage of these. Yet – don’t begin a construction project without counting the costs. NWTRCC educates people to make their own conscientious decisions and teaches multiple methods of resistance.
There are legal methods such as living on a low untaxable income. There are also ways to reduce risk with illegal strategies, such as refusing to pay a symbolic amount or by putting would-be taxes in an escrow account that pays interest towards life-affirming projects. The latter allows one to withdraw those funds to avoid money or property seizures.
Many war tax resisters choose not to pay a significant percentage or perhaps even all of our taxes and instead redirect them to charities. Some of us change jobs, work as contractors, work under-the-table, and/or don’t use bank accounts to reduce risk. We find keeping our consciences clear and our life energy nonviolent worth the risk. Some of us transform IRS repercussions into opportunities for public witness, media coverage, and community support.
Nonviolent Taxes
Pro-lifers could also introduce legislation to protect our freedoms of conscience and religion by using the model of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, which advocates for the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act. This will protect the First Amendment rights for those with deeply held moral or ethical beliefs – religious or not – about paying for war. If passed, such persons would not pay less in taxes. Instead, our taxes would go into a fund that Congress could budget for any non-military purposes.
The U.S. peace tax fund campaign has been going on since 1971. Two congressional-ordered U.S. Department of the Treasury studies showed that a peace tax fund would increase government revenue while protecting Americans’ freedom. Yet it has not become law.
Even though the government recognizes Conscientious Objection against participating in the military and killing in war — as long as it’s a deeply held sincere objection to participation in all wars without criteria designating which wars are ethically conscionable — it remains illegal to love one’s enemies and respect their lives while earning a livable income.
While the Hyde and Helms Amendments somewhat recognize how seriously many Americans object to federal funding of abortion, they don’t restrict state abortion funds. Since 16 states fund abortions, and 27 fund the death penalty, the Consistent Life Network suggests that possible future state referendums based on the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund could be used to protect conscience from state abortions and executions.
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) – versions of which also exist at the state level – declares that the government may not burden or restrict a person’s exercise of religion unless it demonstrates that the burden or restriction furthers a compelling government interest and is done through the least restrictive means.
The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) may more likely apply RFRA to abortion tax resisters than war tax resisters for two reasons.
- First, it may be more politically feasible in some states to pass a Pro-life Tax Fund into a law that finds its way to SCOTUS than passing a Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act.
- Second, the Supreme Court ruled that RFRA protects the religious freedom of Hobby Lobby from the government forcing them to pay insurance for employees’ birth control pills. Hobby Lobby asserted that any birth control method that kills human zygotes aborts humans. Here SCOTUS ruled that the conscience of a corporation, which is a legal person, is protected from killing an actual living human that SCOTUS does not recognize as a legal person.
Since Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., no war tax resistance case has appeared before SCOTUS, and perhaps not at any level of the U.S. judicial system. Perhaps such a case will one day appear in court. That case could argue that the government has no compelling interest since the Treasury found that a Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act would increase revenue.
Once RFRA does that, then one next logical avenue might be to create tax laws that comply with both a new RFRA precedent and existing SCOTUS precedents that eventually applied Conscientious Objection to military participation for those who object based on deeply held, sincere non-religious conscientious beliefs. Should not actual human persons have the same legal protections as a corporate “person” to object to paying for killing humans?
Culture of Conscience
Members of Veterans For Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War (now About Face) salute Conscientious Objector Travis Bishop as he is shackled and led to prison after court-martial. Fort Hood, Texas, 08/14/2009. Photo by Eric Thompson, used with permission.
Consider that the more our society can empathize with and support others’ freedom of conscience to refuse cooperation with violent or unjust behaviors, the more we can engender people’s growth from a limited ethic toward a more Consistent Life Ethic. Thus freedom of conscience is perhaps one of humanity’s most vital freedoms of choice.
Many of us campaign for a world without socially acceptable and legally permissible aggressive violence and struggle to build a society with a peace based on a justice rooted in respect for human life and dignity. A culture of conscience is a step toward that society. Supporting Hyde, Helms, and the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act is a step toward that culture of conscience.
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For related posts, see:
Why the Hyde Amendment Helps Low-Income Women
Consistently Nonviolent Mutual Funds
Video of Thad Crouch with the same content as above:
Masking Up but Not Shutting Up: Defending Freedom of Speech during a Pandemic
by John Whitehead
Shortly after the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic, activists and journalists raised concerns about how governments’ response to the crisis might restrict freedom of expression and other civil liberties. More than a year later, we have a better sense of how the pandemic response has limited press freedom and the flow of information in the world.
Some government regulations to stop Covid-19’s spread—such as mask requirements or social distancing measures—are reasonable and justifiable. Personal freedom is not the only value worth defending. Protecting the lives and health of people, especially vulnerable people, warrants certain restrictions.
However, many civil authorities have gone beyond reasonable restrictions to measures such as arresting and imprisoning journalists and others for their statements or shutting down media outlets and other platforms. Such restrictions on free speech sometimes have been questionably justified as necessary to prevent the spread of false information about the pandemic.
These issues’ significance extends far beyond both the current crisis and journalists’ work. Governments with the power to intimidate people or prevent information from being shared can use such power outside public health crises to silence activists or critics, including those working to defend life. Peace, pro-life, and social justice activists are all vulnerable to such power’s abuse. Even public health can suffer because of restrictions on free expression: governments can shut down criticisms of inadequate responses to crises.
Patterns of Repression
Human Rights Watch, in a February 2021 report, says that 51 governments have arrested, detained, or prosecuted thousands of people for criticizing the government response to the pandemic or other government policies. Covid-19-related public health measures have sometimes been invoked as reasons for this repression. The Committee to Protect Journalists estimated that 274 journalists had been jailed as of December 1, 2020—a new high since the 2016 peak of 272.
Different countries offer various examples of repression. In Russia, government officials prosecuted almost 200 journalists, activists, politicians and others between March and June 2020. Their alleged crime was spreading false information about Covid-19. The Chinese government reported in January 2021 that 17,000 people had been investigated the previous year for “fabricating and spreading Covid-19-releated false information online.”
Indian authorities arrested at least 640 people, including teachers, bloggers, and others, in the spring of 2020 for supposedly publishing false information about Covid. Turkey carried out a similar campaign in 2020 against “provocative Coronavirus posts” on social media, detaining over 500 people. In Vietnam, officials required 650 Facebook users to remove pandemic-related posts and fined more than 160 of them.
Human Rights Watch also notes that at least 12 countries have shut down, suspended, or otherwise interfered with newspapers, television stations, and social media accounts because of pandemic-related reports. In Malaysia, an Al Jazeera documentary on migrant workers’ plight during the pandemic was met with a police investigation that included questioning of journalists, a raid on Al Jazeera’s offices and two local television stations, confiscation of Al Jazeera computers, and refusal to renew two journalists’ visas. A migrant worker featured in the documentary was deported.
Health workers have been among those targeted for repression. Nine medical staff in Egypt who complained about a lack of protective medical equipment and Covid testing were detained on charges including “spreading fake news” and “misusing social media.” In May 2020, Dr. Ibrahim Bediwy warned about censorship in an online message that said “Any doctor in the current situation is not safe.” Bediwy was then arrested on terrorism charges and detained until January 2021.
Even wealth is not necessarily protection against repressive measures. Ren Zhiqiang, a prominent retired Chinese businessman, harshly criticized the government’s pandemic response. He was then detained by authorities, expelled from the Communist Party, and, in September 2020, sentenced to 18 years in prison. The sentence was supposedly for various financial crimes but may well have been punishment for his public comments.
Repression of speech sometimes has been violent or otherwise abusive. In India, police beat journalists in Hyderabad and Delhi in March 2020 In April 2020, journalists in Haiti were attacked by unidentified men while investigating claims that the government’s National Identification Office was violating social distancing guidelines. In Venezuela, police detained Iván Virgüez, a lawyer and human rights activist who had criticized the official pandemic response. While in police custody, Virgüez was kept handcuffed to a metal tube about two feet off the ground for two hours and denied use of a bathroom for over a day.
Perhaps the most notable example of abusive repression of journalism is the case of Mohamed Monir in Egypt. Monir’s reporting included criticism of the government’s pandemic response. Whether as retaliation for such criticism or for other reasons, Monir was arrested in June 2020 and charged with joining a terrorist group, spreading false news, and misusing social media. An older man with health problems, Monir spent over two weeks in detention and eventually died—of Covid-19.
Defending Freedom of Speech
Given Covid-19’s terrible toll—almost 2.7 million deaths, as of this writing—proper public health regulations are essential. However, justifiable concerns about Covid-19 should not be used to justify repressing dissent or criticism of civil authorities. Nor should concern about false information lead us to give government officials the right to decide which information is true or false and to enforce such decisions with harassment, fines, arrest, or imprisonment. Such policies are ripe for abuse and threaten all of us who wish to protect life and are willing to criticize those in power.
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For more of our posts on the pandemic, see:
The Random Death Sentence: COVID in Prisons and Jails
Sickness is the Health of the State? Civil Liberties and Conflict during a Pandemic
A Healing Metaphor: Pandemic as War
Post-pandemic: What Worries Me
“Millions Who Are Already Hanging by a Thread”: The Global Repercussions of Covid-19
Consistently Nonviolent Mutual Funds
For consistent-lifers saving for retirement and otherwise investing money, we offer this practical guide.
Social Responsibility
There are a good large number of mutual funds that have social responsibility criteria, generally aimed at peace and environmental concerns (here’s one list). Poverty concerns are generally addressed as part of social justice in a variety of ways. Racial equity is commonly a criterion.
Care must be taken to read the fund’s screening criteria, because some will actually include “abortion rights” as a positive in their screening. However, most ignore the matter entirely.
Abortion and Pro-Family
There are some funds that screen out abortion investments with a “pro-family” set of concerns but without screening out any military businesses – the Ave Maria Fund, Inspire, and the Timothy Fund.
Nonviolent Across the Board
Below in alphabetical order are known funds that have exclusions for both military or weaponry and abortion; other issues are normally included because that’s what “social responsibility” means.
We’d be delighted to hear of other funds and will add them to the web page list if more information comes in. Send to weekly@consistent-life.org.
Aquinas Fund
http://www.aquinasfunds.com/funds/catholic_equity.html
Follows the Socially Responsible Investment Guidelines of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Catholic Investment Strategies
https://www.catholicinvestments.com
Follows the Socially Responsible Investment Guidelines of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Praxis Funds with Everence
https://www.praxismutualfunds.com/
Now listed as faith-based; originally Mennonite.
Values screens: “We screen out companies for abortion, adult entertainment, alcohol, firearms, gambling, nuclear power, predatory lending, tobacco, and weapons production and support systems.”
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For another of our blog posts on practical personal practice, see
Lethal from the Start: Uranium Mining’s Danger to the Most Vulnerable
by John Whitehead
Nuclear weapons kill directly when they are exploded in wartime or in tests. They also kill indirectly: obtaining uranium, the metal used to produce both nuclear power and nuclear weapons, can expose people to radiation or other hazards. The results are often harmful, even lethal. As with nuclear testing, the people exposed to these hazards are frequently those whose race or other circumstances place them at the margins of the societies acquiring uranium.
Uranium can cause harm in various ways. Breathing in uranium dust or eating uranium-contaminated food can damage the kidneys and lead to kidney failure. Inhaling or ingesting uranium or being exposed to large amounts of it can also increase the likelihood of cancer from radiation emitted by the metal. Those involved in mining or processing uranium or who are otherwise exposed to it are at risk.
Uranium Mining among the Navajo
The United States’ production of its nuclear weapons took its toll, with a grim historical symmetry, on the original victims of US foreign policy, the Native Americans.
The southwestern United States contains significant uranium deposits. From the 1940s to the 1980s, mining companies extracted millions of tons of uranium from land in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah belonging to the Navajo Nation. The federal government used uranium from this land to build nuclear weapons. Work in the mines also provided Navajo men with much-needed employment. The mines, numbering over 500, eventually shut down. The consequences for the Navajo have been lasting and dire.
Miners lacked protective equipment and would bring dust from the mines home on their clothes. Debris from uranium mining made its way into the local communities. Some people even built their homes out of uranium.
Uranium-contaminated water was also a problem. Maria Welch, a researcher at the Southwest Research Information Center who is Navajo, recalls that “When they did the mining, there would be these pools that would fill up…And all of the kids swam in them.” Some people let their livestock drink contaminated water.
Uranium milling, the process by which uranium ore is converted into a more refined form, took place close to Navajo land. Radioactive waste from milling seeped into local groundwater. The most infamous incident was on July 16, 1979, at a New Mexico facility where uranium was processed. A facility wall broke, releasing tons of radioactive waste into the nearby Puerco River. Some Native American communities didn’t know about the accident for several days. Further, even when notified by the Indian Health Service not to use water contaminated by the accident, nearby residents didn’t necessarily have alternatives. Wildlife drinking the contaminated water died. The contamination spread to wells, sometimes leading to radioactivity levels 7,000 times the acceptable level. The wells were generally abandoned.
In recent years, Welch has studied hundreds of Navajo to determine the mining’s effects. She found that 27% of study participants had high levels of uranium in their urine, compared to 5% of the general US population. Within the Navajo Nation, cancer rates doubled from the 1970s to the 1990s. Stomach cancer rates among the Navajo are typically 15 times the national average—and sometimes even higher. Kidney disease has also been a problem in the community.
Helen Nez and her children drank water from a northeastern Arizona spring that contained uranium levels five times what is safe. Nez drank from the spring while she has pregnant. Of her 10 children, 4 died as toddlers. Three more children died as young adults. Her remaining children have health problems as adults.
Some efforts to redress this injustice have been made. The federal government has paid compensation to uranium miners. Also, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has done some work to clean up the contamination from uranium mining, while at least one mining company and its subsidiary have paid $1 billion in compensation and clean-up costs to the Navajo.
As of 2017, however, only 9 out 521 abandoned mines identified for federal clean-up had been addressed. The EPA estimated that financial settlements between the federal government and the mining companies would allow for cleaning up only 40% of the mines. Meanwhile, the abandoned mines continue to pose a health risk.
Sadie Bill, Helen Nez’s sister, comments, “We lost too many people.” She adds, “We don’t want our future young people to have to go through this again.”
Uranium Mining among Soviet Subjects
The Soviet Union’s uranium mining had similar health and environmental consequences among non-Russian peoples under Soviet control.
For example, uranium mining around the town of Mailuu Suu in Kyrgyzstan left significant residues of radioactive waste in the area. One result has been a cancer rate double that of the rest of Kyrgyzstan.
Another result has been higher levels of miscarriage, stillbirth, and birth anomalies than anywhere else in the country. Research in 2007 found radioactive uranium in the placentas of women in Mailuu Suu and nearby communities.
Minabar Umarova, chair of the town’s Women’s Committee, comments, “Our analysis in 2014 of health among local women and children in Mailuu Suu revealed that our town of 24,000 had 180 children [younger than 18] with disabilities. At the same time, the neighboring district of Suzak with more than 240,000 residents had only 165 disabled children.”
This contamination affects other areas as well. Landslides dump radioactive waste into a local river, which carries the contaminants into other communities, including neighboring Uzbekistan. Similar to the Puerco River disaster, a 1958 incident led to 600,000 cubic meters of radioactive waste being released into the Mailuu Suu river.
In the decades since Kyrgyz independence from the Soviet Union, Mailuu Suu has received aid from the World Bank and European Union to remedy the damage from uranium mining.
Further west, Czechoslovakia was a significant uranium mining center during the period the country was dominated by the Soviet Union. At the town of Jáchymov, a notorious mining site, lung cancer was a frequent disease among miners. Average miner life expectancy in the town was 42. Uranium mining at Jáchymov would also sometimes use slave labor. An investigation in the early 1990s found that, as in the Navajo Nation, radioactive materials would sometimes end up as building materials for locals’ homes.
Consistently Deadly
Nuclear weapons’ ultimate end is to cause death. Besides their use in wartime, they also cause death during testing and when the materials to make these weapons are first produced. We shouldn’t forget the dangers of uranium mining, whether the mining is done to make nuclear weapons or to generate nuclear power. Nor should we forget that those who suffer the mining’s effects are frequently vulnerable people, far from the centers of decision-making power.
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This is a companion piece to “The Affairs of a Handful of Natives”: Nuclear Testing and Racism, in which John Whitehead takes the same approach of considering racial minority groups suffering from nuclear testing, widened to all five of the major nuclear weapons testing countries.
For our posts on similar topics, see:
Nuclear Disarmament as a Social Justice Issue
An Inferno That Even the Mind of Dante Could Not Envision”: Martin Luther King on Nuclear Weapons
The Reynolds Family, the Nuclear Age and a Brave Wooden Boat
Nukes and the Pro-Life Christian: A Conservative Takes a Second Look at the Morality of Nuclear Weapons
The Danger That Faces Us All: Hiroshima and Nagasaki after 75 Years
A Global Effort to Protect Life: The UN Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons
Let us all agree on this one simple thing: It is not OK to kill people.
by Robert Randall (reprinted)
It is not OK to kill people because you don’t like them.
It is not OK to kill people because they don’t like you.
It is not OK to kill people because they are different from you.
It is not OK to kill people because of what they believe.
Or because of what they don’t believe.
Or because they believe differently than you do.
It is not OK to kill people because they are wrong.
It is not OK to kill people because of who or what they are.
It is not OK to kill people because they are male.
It is not OK to kill people because they are female.
Or because they are any other gender or genders or gender-less.
It is not OK to kill people because they are straight.
Or gay,
Or bi.
Or trans.
It is not OK to kill people.
It is not OK to kill people before they are born.
It is not OK to kill people after they are born.
It is not OK to kill children. Or young people. Or middle-aged people. Or old people.
It is not OK to kill people because they are disabled in any way.
It is not OK to kill people because they are a different race.
It is not OK to kill people because they are aboriginal.
Or because they are white.
Or because they are black. BLACK LIVES MATTER.
Or because they are yellow.
Or because they are brown.
Or because they are red.
Or because they are any other color or shade or race or ethnicity.
It is not OK to kill people.
It is not OK to kill people because they were born in a different place than you.
It is not OK to kill people because they are from a different country.
It is not OK to kill people because they are Chinese.
Or Russian.
Or American.
Or Iraqi.
Or Ukrainian.
Or Afghan.
Or Sudanese.
Or Yemeni.
Or from any of 190 other countries.
Or without a country.
It is not OK to kill people by refusing them asylum or refugee status.
It is not OK to kill people by deporting them.
It is not OK to kill people.
It is not OK to kill people because they are a different ethnicity than you.
It is not OK to kill people because they are native people.
Or Kurds.
Or Chechens.
Or Hutu.
Or Karen.
Or Anglo.
Or Armenian.
Or Uighur.
Or Rohingya.
Or any of thousands of ethnic groups or tribes or cultures.
It is not OK to kill people.
It is not OK to kill people because they have a different religion than you do.
It is not OK to kill people because they are Hindu.
Or because they are not Hindu.
It is not OK to kill people because they are Muslim.
Or because they are not Muslim.
It is not OK to kill people because they are Christian.
Or because they are not Christian.
It is not OK to kill people because they are Jewish.
Or Sunni.
Or Shia.
Or Catholic.
Or Protestant.
Or Buddhist.
Or any brand or subset of any of those things.
Or any of hundreds of other faiths and religions.
Or because they are not any particular one of those.
Or because they are none of those.
It is not OK to kill people for any “religious” reason whatsoever.
It is not OK to kill people.
It is not OK to kill people even if God tells you to kill people.
That is never the voice of God.
It is not OK to kill people if some religious leader tells you to do so.
That is not the voice of God, either.
It is not OK to kill people if some political leader tells you to do so.
That is not the voice of God, either.
It is not OK to kill people if your country tells you to do so.
Your country is not God, either.
It is not OK to kill people even if you are ordered to do so.
It is not OK to kill people even if you are in a uniform.
It is not OK to kill people who are in a uniform which is different from yours.
It is not OK to kill people even if it’s your job. Leave that job.
It is not OK to kill people because they are targeted.
It is not OK to kill people even if they are “collateral damage.”
It is not OK to kill people because their politics are different than yours.
Or their economics.
It is not OK to kill people because they are liberal. Or conservative.
It is not OK to kill people because they are capitalists.
Or socialists.
Or communists.
Or libertarians.
Or Georgists.
Or federalists.
Or one worlders.
Or decentralists.
Or anything else you may describe them as.
It is not OK to kill people.
It is not OK to kill people because they are rich.
It is not OK to kill people because they are poor.
It is not OK to kill people by making them poor.
It is not OK to kill people who are nationalists.
It is not OK to kill people who renounce nationalism.
It is not OK to kill people who are patriots, no matter to which country.
And it is not OK to kill people who are citizens only of the world.
It is not OK to kill people.
It is not OK to kill people because of what they do. Or did.
Or because of what they might do.
Or because of what they didn’t do.
Or because of what they won’t do.
It is not OK to kill people even if you think they deserve it.
It is not OK to kill bad people.
It is not OK to kill people who kill people.
It is not OK to kill people who won’t kill people.
It is not OK to kill people because they are in a gang.
Or not in a gang.
Or in the wrong gang.
It is not OK to kill people while breaking the law.
It is not OK to kill people while enforcing the law.
It is not OK to kill people because they are terrorists.
It is not OK to kill people, because we become the thing we are trying to kill.
It is not OK to kill people no matter who you are.
It is not OK to kill people if you are a “regular guy”.
It is not OK to kill people if you are a “big man”.
It is not OK to kill people if you are a warlord.
It is not OK to kill people if you are a religious leader.
It is not OK to kill people if you head a large corporation.
It is not OK to kill people if you head a country.
It is not OK to kill people even if you head the most powerful country on earth.
It is not OK to kill people even if you are a great international statesman.
It is not OK to kill people.
It is not OK to kill people with your bare hands.
It is not OK to kill people with sticks and stones.
It is not OK to kill people with knives and swords.
It is not OK to kill people with guns.
It is not OK to kill people with poison.
It is not OK to kill people by medical procedure.
It is not OK to kill people with tanks.
It is not OK to kill people with lethal injections.
It is not OK to kill people with pathogens.
It is not OK to kill people with airplanes and bombs.
It is not OK to kill people with missiles.
It is not OK to kill people with drones.
It is not OK to kill people with nuclear weapons.
It is not OK to kill people with anything, no matter how creative you may be.
And it is not OK to build things to kill people.
Nor is it OK to kill people by denying them the things needed for life:
It is not OK to kill people by denying them adequate food.
It is not OK to kill people by denying them adequate health care.
It is not OK to kill people by denying them adequate shelter.
It is simply not OK to kill people.
It is not OK to kill people for fun.
It is not OK to kill people for entertainment.
It is not OK to kill people to stand your ground.
It is not OK to kill people for revenge.
It is not OK to kill people for justice.
It is not OK to kill people for democracy.
It is not OK to kill people because you are at war.
It is not OK to kill people to keep the peace.
It is not OK to kill people in a revolution.
It is not OK to kill people for the greater good.
It is not OK to kill people.
It is not OK to kill people for profit.
It is not OK to kill people for business purposes.
It is not OK to kill people because they have something you want.
It is not OK to kill people for their land.
It is not OK to kill people for their resources.
For water.
For trees.
For oil.
For gold.
For uranium.
And it is not OK to kill people because of what you have that they want, either.
It is not OK to kill people with pollution.
It is not OK to kill people by environmental destruction.
It is not OK to kill people by changing the climate.
It is not OK to kill people by killing the planet.
It is not OK to kill people. Or to kill the web of life on which people depend.
It is not OK to kill people for your own honor.
It is not OK to kill people for family honor.
It is not OK to kill people for national honor.
There is no honor in killing people.
It is not OK to kill people because of some great wrong done in the past.
It is not OK to kill people yourself.
And it is not OK to have someone else do the killing for you.
It is not OK to kill by gang.
It is not OK to kill by mob.
It is not OK to kill by thugs.
Or death squads.
Or people’s revolutionary army.
Or militia.
Or army.
Or navy.
Or air force.
Or space force.
It is not OK to kill people using other groups of people.
And it is not OK to tell them it’s OK to do it.
And it is not OK to train them to do it.
And it is not OK to tell them to do it.
And it is not OK to pay them to do it.
It is not OK to pay them directly to kill.
It is not OK to pay them indirectly to kill.
It is not OK to pay taxes to kill.
It is not OK to invest in killing people.
Because it is not OK to kill people.
It is simply not OK to kill people.
Let us all agree on this one simple thing: It is not OK to kill people.
Revision Date Nov. 1, 2020. This work is not copyrighted. It may be used and abridged as needed to promote its ethic that IT IS NOT OK TO KILL PEOPLE. It may NOT be changed in any way to indicate that it might ever be OK to kill people. For more information or electronic copies contact Robert Randall, 275 Andy Tostensen Road, Brunswick, GA 31523-6204 USA; 912-399-4862; rrandall@compuserve.com
Reflections from My Decades of Consistent Life Ethic Experience
by Fr. Jim Hewes
In 1978, Frank Staropoli and I founded the Diocesan Human Life Commission, with our charter clearly being what was later called a “consistent life ethic” or a “seamless garment.”
During those years, when we tried to reach out to pro-life groups, we ordinarily didn’t find the warmest reception because of our willingness to not be just anti-abortion but also concerned about that life outside the womb. Abortion was still our paramount concern, because if one doesn’t exist, the other human rights will not come into play. Nor will people be able to promote a consistent ethic of life, or live out the non-violent teachings of Jesus, if they aren’t allowed to exist.
In addition, the pre-born were our main priority because of the magnitude of the loss of life (over one million abortions a year at that time), and because their killing was legally sanctioned.
Yet we also knew that once you stop abortions and these children are able to enter the world, we can’t allow their dignity to be compromised or their lives to be then destroyed by wars, other forms of violence, and poverty. Unfortunately, we didn’t find much receptivity with the social justice groups because of our emphasis and priority on the abortion issue.
We had many talented pro-life people come on the Human Life Commission, but they eventually left because of our spending time on other issues about life after birth. For example, we co-sponsored Fr. Dan Berrigan, who came to Rochester. Fr. Berrigan protested about nuclear concerns outside the gates of the Seneca Army Depot in a county in the Diocese, and he also stood in protest in front of Planned Parenthood in the city of Rochester.
Daniel Berrigan and friends, sit-in in Rochester
On the other hand, we had many gifted people who worked in the social justice/peace area, who came on the Commission but also eventually left because they felt we put too much emphasis on abortion.
So one side felt that the consistent ethic of life weakens or “waters down” the importance of abortion. The other side felt there was too much emphasis on abortion, to the detriment of other important issues of life.
We believed either of these positions were misconceptions of what a consistent life ethic really meant. I find myself 40 years later still dealing with these same misconceptions and inconsistencies.
Misconceptions
The problem is both sides have misunderstood or misused the “consistent ethic of life.”
One side, at times, misuses the consistent ethic of life by de-emphasizing the priority and paramount importance of abortion by trying to make all issues have the same importance.
The lives of 900,000 preborn children end every year in the United States from abortions. What would we think if 900,000 toddlers or 900,000 immigrants or 900,000 African American men were killed every single year? In addition, the UN estimates between 45-50 million abortions, that many pre-born children’s lives ended every year world-wide. This translates into 900,000 human individuals terminated each week. That means over 125,000 human beings are destroyed every day (plus millions of women whose lives are devastated by their abortions). How can the magnitude of that violence not dwarf every other issue by a mile, unless one holds that preborn children aren’t really human beings?
The other side emphasizes the priority and paramount importance of abortion but tends to neglect other issues. For example, what about the Iraq War, where between 100,000 to 600,000 civilians, noncombatants, were killed in acts of this war, including pregnant women and their pre-born children? What about the executive act to allow $8 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia to continue to bomb and kill those in Yemen, especially innocent women (some of whom may be pregnant) and children? What is really the meaning of us as pro-life people, if we help women, so they won’t have abortions but choose life, yet support a candidate who later fails to fully respond to them in their great need? Or who sends these same un-aborted lives after they grow up to be killed or kill others through violent conflicts and wars, or die because of poverty and neglect?
I’m not saying pro-life people have to be involved in every issue of life, but how much time does it take to send a letter? Or for peace and justice people to support pro-life initiatives like supporting the states to stop funding Planned Parenthood and to withhold Medicaid and other federal money from organizations that perform abortions, to cut taxpayer funding under the Title X program from any facility that performs or refers for abortions, such as Planned Parenthood; to keep in place the “Mexico City Policy,” ensuring that tax dollars will not fund the abortion industry overseas; to back a rule requiring insurers to specify which health insurance plans cover abortion; to support the conscientious objector protections for those who refuse to participate in abortion; to support that section that ended the Obamacare mandate, which forced employers to cover abortion in health insurance they offered to their employees; to push hard for the Senate to pass key legislation to protect babies (like the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act and the Born Alive Act)?
The problem is pro-life people too often give politicians a free pass on other issues of life, if they’re against abortion. Then other social justice people give a free pass to politicians who support immigration reform or health care, but vote against any legislation which would protect the pre-born.
People are inconsistent if they think that they can defend a person who takes a pro-life position on certain life issues like abortion but refuses to even acknowledge other life issues and their proper importance; or on the other hand, supports issues of peace and justice but doesn’t see the inconsistency of not offering justice and peace to the pre-born.
Complementing
Later on the US Bishops would state: “This focus [on abortion] and the Church’s firm commitment to a consistent ethic of life complement each other. A consistent ethic of life, far from diminishing a concern for abortion or equating all issues touching on the dignity of human life, recognizes the distinctive character of each issue while giving each its proper role within a context of a coherent vision.” (Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities, A Reaffirmation 1985 p.3-4)
Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who popularized the consistent ethic of life, in a statement entitled “Deciding for Life” on October 1, 1989, stated: “Not all values, however, are of equal weight. Some are more fundamental than others. On this Respect Life Sunday, I wish to emphasize that no earthly value is more fundamental than human life itself. Human life is the condition for enjoying freedom and all other values. Consequently, if one must choose between protecting or serving lesser human values that depend upon life for their existence and life itself, human life must take precedence.”
Cardinal Bernardin would state in one of his other presentations: “The fundamental human right is to life – from the moment of conception until death. It is the source of all other rights.” Cardinal Bernardin told the National Catholic Register in 1988, “I don’t see how you can subscribe to the consistent ethic and then vote for someone who feels that abortion is a ‘basic right’ of the individual. The consequence of that position would be an absence of legal protection for the unborn.”
Later, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in their 1998 document, “Living the Gospel of Life” would affirm our approach by stating:
Opposition to abortion and euthanasia does not excuse indifference to those who suffer from poverty, violence and injustice. Any politics of human life must work to resist the violence of war and the scandal of capital punishment. Any politics of human dignity must seriously address issues of racism, poverty, hunger, employment, education, housing, and health care. … But being ‘right’ in such matters can never excuse a wrong choice regarding direct attacks on innocent human life.”
Indeed, the failure to protect and defend life in its most vulnerable stages renders suspect any claims to the ‘rightness’ of positions in other matters affecting the poorest and least powerful of the human community. If we understand the human person as the ‘temple of the Holy Spirit’ — the living house of God — then these latter issues fall logically into place as the crossbeams and walls of that house. All direct attacks on innocent human life, such as abortion and euthanasia, strike at the house’s foundation.
The US Bishops in “Faithful Citizenship-Forming Consciences” in 2019 would also mirror this approach by stating that all issues of life are important, but abortion is the issue of “preeminent priority.”
The members of the Diocesan Human Life Commission who eventually remained were solidly for the consistent ethic of life, with a priority on the abortion issue. I saw those that stayed become more consistent in how they viewed all issues concerning life, not just abortion.
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For more of our posts from Fr. Jim Hewes, see:
Consistent Life History: Being Across the Board
Death Penalty and other Killing: The Destructive Effect on Us
For more of our posts answering criticisms of the Consistent Life Ethic, see:
Does the Consistent Life Ethic Water Down Life Issues?
Equal Concern for Each Human Being, Not for Each Human Issue
Is Abortion Different from Other Violence?
“The Affairs of a Handful of Natives”: Nuclear Testing and Racism
by John Whitehead
While nuclear weapons haven’t been used in war for over 75 years, they’ve still killed and hurt people. Testing of nuclear weapons exposed many to radiation, with terrible health consequences. The people harmed have frequently been from different, far less powerful, ethnic groups. Nuclear weapons’ deadly effects have combined with racial injustice. Two threats to life reinforce each other.
Global Nuclear Testing: An Overview
Since the original “Trinity” test in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, nuclear weapons have been tested 2,056 times, generally to develop “effectiveness” in war.
Most tests were underground. Above-ground tests were more common in the early decades; more than 500 weapons were tested in the atmosphere. The 1963 Limited Test-Ban Treaty, which many nuclear-armed nations agreed to, banned above-ground tests. Such tests therefore fell dramatically. Above-ground testing is more likely to spread radioactive fallout, but underground testing can also.
How many people died or otherwise suffered is unknown. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, estimates hundreds of thousands of cancer deaths because of testing. While we lack exact figures, a few historical cases illustrate the harm done—and which groups were most directly harmed.
Historical Examples of Nuclear Testing
American Testing, the Marshall Islands.
The first nation to obtain nuclear weapons, the United States, is also the most frequent tester of such weapons. The U.S. conducted 1,030 nuclear tests.
Many American nuclear tests were held within the U.S., but the land of non-American, non-white people has also been used; for example, the Marshall Islands.
The Marshalls are two chains of islands in the Pacific, covering an area roughly the size of Mexico. In 1947, the United Nations made the U.S. responsible for administering the Marshalls, home to about 52,000 people. Even before this, though, the U.S. used the Marshalls as a nuclear test site.
The U.S. conducted its first test there on July 1, 1946, at Bikini Atoll. Bikini’s 167 residents were removed from their homes and were relocated repeatedly over the following years. The Bikini test was the first of 67 American nuclear tests in the Marshalls from 1946 to 1958.
The most infamous test was “Castle Bravo” on March 1, 1954. The bomb had 1,000 times the explosive force of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The fallout spread over 100 miles.
Castle Bravo test, 1954
Nerje Joseph, then 7, remembered witnessing the test from her home. Shortly after dawn, Joseph saw a sudden “sunrise” in the west, followed hours later by a snow-like substance falling from the sky: the bomb’s fallout.
Days after Castle Bravo, U.S. personnel began evacuating people. By that time, residents suffered from burns, vomiting, and hair falling out: symptoms of radiation poisoning.
The Castle Bravo test’s effects weren’t limited to the Marshallese. Fallout covered a Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon No. 5, almost 100 miles away. Many crew members became sick and one died.
Later in 1954, the Marshallese filed a protest with the United Nations, calling for an end to testing. They explained they were “not only fearful of the danger to their persons from these deadly weapons” but “also concerned for the increasing number of people removed from their land.” They filed a follow-up petition in 1956.
The American reply was “as long as there is a threat of . . . aggression, elementary prudence requires the United States to continue its tests” and assured the Marshallese “further tests are absolutely necessary for the eventual well-being of all the people of this world.” The U.N. ultimately denied the Marshallese’s petitions. Tests continued.
The Marshalls became independent in 1990, although the U.S. retains access for military purposes. The U.S. also agreed to pay compensation for the nuclear testing.
The tests’ legacy for the Marshallese include health problems such as radiation poisoning and cancer. The U.S. National Cancer Institute estimated 170 “excess” cancers, above what one would expect, could be attributed to the tests. Women reported miscarriages, stillbirths, and infertility. Almost all the children under 10 in one community exposed to Castle Bravo, including Nerje Joseph, developed thyroid problems. One child died of leukemia.
Beyond health problems, the Marshallese must cope with environmental pollution, displacement, and disruptions of their traditional way of life. Joseph comments, “We had a oneness . . . We worked together, we ate together, we played together. That has been lost.”
Soviet Testing in Kazakhstan.
The other leading nuclear power, the Soviet Union, conducted the second-most tests: 715 from 1949 to 1990. Over 400 Soviet tests were conducted in eastern Kazakhstan. While Kazakhs are ethnically distinct from the Russians who dominated Soviet politics, Kazakhstan had been under Russian control since pre-Soviet times.
Soviet testing included an August 1956 test that caused 600 people in the city of Ust-Kamenogorsk, about 250 miles away, to be hospitalized for radiation sickness. Soviet authorities set up a clinic to treat test-affected people. Those treated weren’t told what ailed them. After the U.S.S.R collapsed and Kazakhstan became independent, some clinic records were destroyed or taken back to Russia.
Kazakhs struggled with a multitude of health problems in the decades since nuclear testing ended. In the 1990s, one in three children in the testing region had physical or mental problems. The Children’s Hospital in Almaty, a major Kazakh city, treated 50 to 100 children a month with ailments that could have been caused by radiation.
Valentina Nikonchik remembers playing outside when the military tested a thermonuclear device on August 12, 1953. She heard a deafening sound and fainted. Years later, she developed thyroid and heart problems.
Eliugazy Nurgaliev was among 43 men in his village exposed. “Suddenly the sky turned red and a big red storm gathered above our village. We lost our minds,” he recalls. Some men died not long after. Others developed radiation-related illnesses. Nurgaliev survived but his parents died of cancer and three of his children were stillborn or died in infancy.
Yevmagbetova Sandigul comments, “I remember as a child being out alone in the street once when the sky turned purple-gray and there was a strange wind. Later, people complained of headaches. Everyone said it was a bomb.” Sandigul later suffered from weak heart walls, which doctors attributed to genetic damage. “Everyone had someone in the family with problems,” she says. “Babies were born in our village with tails.”
Identifying precisely which illnesses resulted from testing is complicated. Diseases such as cancer are common; not every case is caused by radiation. Also, the sheer number of environmental problems in Kazakhstan make causes of health problems hard to pinpoint.
Yet scientific studies suggest testing’s health effects. A 2002 study analyzed DNA from multiple generations in Beskaragai, a town with significant radiation doses. Those directly exposed to tests had double the rate of mutation in their germ lines—DNA in sperm and eggs—compared to controls. In 2018, researchers reported the risk of hypertension among people whose parents had lived in areas exposed to radiation increased according to how much radiation their parents received.
French Tests in Polynesia and Algeria.
France conducted 210 tests from 1960 to 1996.
Most were in French Polynesia, archipelagoes in the south-central Pacific. A former French colony, the Polynesian islands gained domestic political autonomy by the mid-20th century but remained affiliated with France. In the 1960s, France began a nuclear testing program there , centered on the uninhabited, relatively isolated islands of Moruroa and Fangataufa.
French nuclear test in Algeria
The test sites’ isolation didn’t contain the nuclear blasts’ effects. Declassified French government documents later revealed a July 17, 1974 test spread fallout across the whole of French Polynesia. It exposed Tahiti to 500 times the maximum accepted radiation level.
Jean-Claude Hervieux, an electrician who worked on the French nuclear tests, saw the tests’ impact on Polynesians. Hervieux remembers, “A local teacher said children were sick and vomiting. . . Mothers were asking why their children’s hair was falling out.”
Later research pointed to health damage. A study of people diagnosed with thyroid cancer between 1984 and 2002 found a “significant statistical relationship” between cancer and exposure to the nuclear tests. In 2006, a French medical research group found an increase in cancer among those close to the tests. Bruno Barillot, who investigated the tests for the French Polynesian government, identified them as causing high levels of thyroid cancers and leukemia.
Another set of nuclear tests took place before the Polynesian tests. The first French nuclear weapon detonated, four times the power of the Hiroshima bomb, was tested on February 1, 1960, in the Algerian desert. Algeria was then a French colony, but tests continued after Algerian independence. From 1960 to 1962, France conducted 17 nuclear tests in Algeria.
One notable incident was the underground “Beryl” test in May 1962, which went wrong and spread radiation above ground. Hussein Dakhal, from a nearby village, remembers “I heard the explosion. Since then, life has changed for us . . . unknown diseases and health problems started to emerge.”
Algerians suffered from radioactive debris left at the test sites. Remains of equipment such as remote-controlled towers for detonating the bombs or trucks left in the blast area to test the bombs’ power became sources of scrap metal for locals. They used this for building materials, jewelry, or even kitchen utensils, unaware of the danger.
The French Ministry of Defense estimates 27,000 Algerians were affected. Abdul Kadhim al-Aboudi, an Algerian professor of nuclear physics, estimates test-affected people at 60,000.
In 2010, France passed a law to provide compensation to people harmed by French nuclear testing. Compensation has been paid out slowly and sparingly.
British Tests in Australia.
Britain conducted 45 tests from 1952 to 1991.
In 1950, the British government reached an agreement with Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies to conduct nuclear tests there; Australia’s parliament wasn’t consulted. The British conducted 12 nuclear tests from 1952 to 1957. Most were held at two South Australia sites called Maralinga and Emu Field.
Yami Lester, an Australian indigenous activist blinded by a nuclear test
Tests were conducted with little regard for the indigenous communities. A single “native patrol officer” was to inform locals, across an almost 39,000 square mile area, about the tests’ dangers. Another officer wrote his superiors to complain this officer was “placing the affairs of a handful of natives above those of the British Commonwealth of Nations.”
A test of a 9.1 kiloton bomb, on October 15, 1953, sent radioactive debris 15,000 feet into the air, spreading fallout over a wide area. This reached Walatina camp, an indigenous community. Lalli Lennon recalls, “It rumbled, the ground shook, it was frightening.” Her husband Stan remember the fallout as “sort of hazy, like a fog or something.” Lalli and her children later developed fevers, headaches, vomiting, and diarrhea.
When the British finished their Australian testing, they assured the Australian government all plutonium had been buried. Australian authorities later discovered huge numbers of plutonium-contaminated materials were still there.
An Australian Institute of Criminology report concluded: “In addition to British scientific and military personnel, thousands of Australians were exposed to radiation produced by the tests . . . These included not only those involved in supporting the British testing program, but also Aboriginal people living downwind of the test sites, and other Australians more distant who came into contact with airborne radioactivity.”
Britain eventually paid compensation to the Australian government and indigenous people. The Australian authorities also paid compensation to indigenous communities.
Chinese Testing in Xinjiang.
China conducted 45 tests from 1964 to 1996. All were held at Lop Nur, in Xinjiang, China’s westernmost province. Xinjiang is home to ethnic groups other than China’s Han majority, such as Uighurs and Kazakhs.
Publicly available information about Chinese nuclear testing is limited. In 2008, the Chinese Minister of Civil Affairs made the cryptic announcement that government payments to veterans and families of dead military personnel would include money for “some military personnel and civilians” involved in nuclear tests. Japanese physicist Jun Takada, who wrote a book on Chinese nuclear testing, calculated the peak radiation dose generated by testing exceeded that measured on the roof of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor after its 1986 meltdown.
We can’t draw conclusions on Chinese nuclear testing’s effects. However, the pattern of testing elsewhere has been to harm people close to the testing sites. The tests’ location in a region with a large ethnic minority population (whom Chinese authorities have often treated brutally) suggests how testing may have unfolded.
Harming the Vulnerable
Various nuclear-armed nations tested their weapons in places far removed from their homelands or centers of political power. Nuclear weapons’ deadly effects fell on the some of the least powerful people within those nations’ spheres of influence. Nuclear testing reinforced and worsened existing racial and ethnic inequalities.
Nuclear-armed nations can take specific steps to make amends for their past actions. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which prohibits any nuclear weapons testing, has already been signed and ratified by 168 nations, including Russia, France, and Britain. The U.S. and China have signed but not ratified it. Ratifying the CTBT and encouraging others to is a good goal for the new Biden administration.
Nuclear-armed nations can take steps to repair the damage, including providing full information on the tests’ effects. An independent agency or tribunal, perhaps with the United Nations, should evaluate this information and decide what full and adequate compensation might be. Certainly part of appropriate compensation is cleaning up any remaining environmental contamination.
Nuclear weapons ultimately threaten all humanity. However, over the past 75 years, they’ve disproportionately harmed those already vulnerable because of larger inequalities. Threats to human life connect in insidious ways.
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For more of our posts on nuclear weapons, see:
Nuclear Disarmament as a Social Justice Issue
Nukes and the Pro-Life Christian: A Conservative Takes a Second Look at the Morality of Nuclear Weapons
“An Inferno That Even the Mind of Dante Could Not Envision”: Martin Luther King on Nuclear Weapons
The Danger That Faces Us All: Hiroshima and Nagasaki after 75 Years
Catastrophe by Mistake: The Button and the Danger of Accidental Nuclear War
A Global Effort to Protect Life: The UN Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons
The Civil War Conundrum, 150 Years Later
by Rachel MacNair
My great-grandfather was born a Quaker, but when he married my great-grandmother, he converted to being Methodist for her sake. His parents were Quakers, and once I took an interest in genealogy, I found that, through them I had Quaker ancestors (that is, members of the Religious Society of Friends) going all the way back to the 1600s. The line got broken, and I picked it up again when I was 14.
Hiram Bennett Matthews
My great-grandfather’s father, Hiram Bennet Matthews, was one of those Quakers who thought during the U.S. Civil War that he had to choose between conflicting values: being against war or against slavery. He was one of many Friends who felt this as a quandary at the time. A more famous one was William Jackson Palmer, who became a general and later founded Colorado Springs.
I say to my great-great grandfather: we’ve now traveled in the time machine to see what ended up happening. It’s over 150 years later.
The first few decades after the Civil War, we had sharecropping, plus loitering laws – being imprisoned for being unemployed, and then put to involuntary labor. We had terrorizing and Jim Crow laws. Lynchings were done as public spectacles.
The Civil Rights Movement was an outburst of nonviolence after many decades of nonviolent resistance. It had many great achievements. But it didn’t solve the problem entirely.
Now it’s over 150 years later, and we had an event that brought these points to mind for me: the flag of the Confederacy unfurled through the halls of the U.S. Congress during a riot there – January 6, 2021.
Hiram, your great-great granddaughter still needs to go to protests of police officers killing Black Americans and otherwise targeting them with intense brutality. Along with many other struggles against racism. Over 150 years later.
Rachel MacNair at protest of murder of George Floyd (with Covid protection) June, 2020
The violence of the Civil War, including the intense destructiveness of Sherman’s March to the Sea, and all the hatred this generated has been transmitted through many, many generations. Nonviolent action has blunted much of it, but the amount of violence was so overwhelming that the task of genuine freedom for those whose ancestors were enslaved is still not entirely achieved.
Though the war brought about an official government-ordered end to slavery, in the form of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, more quickly than the slow action of nonviolence would have, the historical evidence is more consistent with the idea that genuine freedom for African Americans might actually have been delayed by that war.
Indeed, the 13th Amendment didn’t even abolish slavery, since it made an exception for those convicted of a crime. Just in 2020, voters in Nebraska and Utah finally got rid of that exception in their state constitutions, but it’s still in several other state constitutions.
We can’t run history over again to see how things might have turned out had those Quakers stuck to pacifism and put their lives on the line in nonviolent actions instead of military ones. History is complicated.
But what we do know is that the sense of a quandary was badly over-simplified. The idea that a war would end slavery didn’t pan out.
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For more of our posts on nonviolence against war, see:
Would Nonviolence Work on the Nazis?
Nuclear Disarmament as a Social Justice Issue
For more of our posts on police brutality, see:
Voices on Police Brutality in the Aftermath of the Murder of George Floyd
Police Brutality to the Preborn
Police Brutality against Protesters
For more of our posts on consequences of war, see:
Making the Case for Peace to Conservatives
The Wages of War, Part 1: How Abortion Came to Japan
Wages of War, Part 2: How Forced Sterilization Came to Japan
Angela Kennedy (1963 – 2020)
by Katharine Gilchrist
Angela Kennedy
Consistent ethic advocate Angela Kennedy has died at the age of 57 (November 26, 2020). She was the editor of the anthology Swimming against the Tide: Feminist Dissent on the Issue of Abortion (1997), which covered the topic of the consistent life ethic. Angela leaves behind her daughter Stevie and son Sean.
Her passion for many of the issues closest to her heart was informed by a succession of difficult life experiences. She faced many challenges and fought them with a fierceness that was an inspiration.
Her background in nursing informed her opposition to abortion. She also experienced two unplanned pregnancies – her two children could not have had a better mother. From nursing she went on to a career in health and safety, ending up as a sociologist before having to give up paid work because of her failing health and family responsibilities.
Angela was very aware of unfashionable issues. She made connections that other people sometimes missed. Back in the 1990s, people who raised the issue of discrimination against fat people were not always taken seriously. Too often, it was seen as a joke. Angela, however, knew that such discrimination had real effects on the lives of people who deserved better.
A long-term vegetarian, she campaigned vociferously against breed specific legislation. Some dogs who never attacked anyone are sentenced to death because of vague legislation about their supposed ancestry. This is cruel and absurd.
The long-term illness of Angela’s beloved daughter Stevie was the inspiration behind her work on ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). To put it simply, the supposed experts were suggesting that ME/CFS patients would respond to treatments that would work for depressed people, such as therapy and exercise. Those experts did not take kindly to criticism from the likes of Angela. They would often brand all their critics as shrill and abusive, which was both untrue and unfair. This led Angela to write the book, Authors of Our Own Misfortune? The Problems with Psychogenic Explanations for Physical Illnesses (2012).
Recent developments in clinical guidelines very much suggest that Angela and her fellow campaigners will be fully vindicated.
For many years, Angela was an active member of the Labour Party. Unfortunately, her commitment to fairness was not matched by that of the party as a whole. Angela’s health deteriorated and her landlord evicted her and her adult children.
This led to a dreadful couple of years, in which Angela, Stevie, and Sean were placed in temporary accommodation whilst their local council (led by Labour politicians) refused to help them. The council repeatedly refused to provide even basic accommodation that was suitable for Angela and Stevie’s disabilities, whilst trying to trap them in a bureaucratic nightmare of endless form-filling and bombarding them with hostile comments. Their council was supposed to provide vulnerable people with suitable accommodation.
Their local Member of Parliament, also representing the Labour Party, refused to help. Even their local branch of the Labour Party ignored their plight. This suggests to me that not everyone who claims to want a better world is sincere. Angela, however, really did want to make things better.
Despite her dire situation, Angela tried to keep her spirits up and completed many lovely cross-stitch patterns. She simply never gave up.
Unfortunately, the medical profession gave up on her. Angela ended up in hospital, seriously ill, where she contracted Covid-19. Against her wishes and those of Stevie and Sean, her life support was switched off.
This is, of course, a scenario that many disabled people fear. The UK government will not guarantee a “right to live” for those who those who fear being written off by biased able-bodied people.
This is not the ending to Angela’s story that any of her friends could have anticipated a few years ago. We would prefer to remember her as lively and healthy and full of plans.
Killing the Disabled
by Tara Zoe Roshe (pen name), republished with permission from her Medium blog
I am a disabled woman with rheumatoid arthritis, a disease that attacks the joints. I use a walker or a wheelchair in my daily life but was able-bodied a short 10 years ago. Over the past few years, my physical condition has gotten progressively worse.
Assisted suicide has become legal in many parts of the United States. This makes me worry about where the medical field is heading.
Legalized assisted suicide and killing the disabled
My home state of New Jersey has legalized assisted suicide. The law is limited, but as we know, over time, the government tends to expand the rules about who qualifies for assisted suicide.
Canada has a law providing the option of euthanasia to those with terminal illnesses. Over 78% of euthanasia victims gave “loss of ability” as their reason for wanting to die. The 2019 report on Canadian euthanasia supports my statement that the loss of physical ability to do things, not pain or other symptoms, was the most common reason cited.
Under the law, a disabled person wanting to die only has to go through an approval process and request that a doctor kill them.
Now, a bill has been put forward in Canada, which will, if passed, make it even easier. Doctors would be allowed to perform euthanasia on disabled or chronically ill people upon request.
The only requirement is that the illness or disability be progressive. Under the bill, if I lived in Canada, I would be eligible to be killed by a doctor upon my request.
In the Netherlands, assisted suicide was first legalized for only the terminally ill, but it is now legal for those with disabilities and mental illnesses who are physically healthy. For example, this 29-year old who suffered from depression just died by assisted suicide.
Is the United States going to travel down the same road as Canada and the Netherlands? Will assisted suicide be legalized for those with disabilities in the future?
Disabled people sometimes seek mental health care for depression or other mental illnesses. How will the legalization of assisted suicide affect this mental health care? How will doctors’ willingness to help end lives that they assume are “not worth living” affect the way they care for disabled people?
Doctors and the value of disabled peoples’ lives
We already know that many doctors don’t see the value of disabled people’s lives. This is evident in how disabled people with COVID were denied care in Oregon, with some dying as a result.
In hospitals in Oregon, disabled people were denied respirators. They were refused admission to intensive care units. They were pressured into signing DNR (do not resuscitate) orders, even when they were cognitively disabled and didn’t understand what the forms meant.
One disabled woman died of COVID after the hospital refused to treat her, even though she had a legal directive saying that she wanted to receive intensive care. Her caregiver tried to intervene, but the hospital still refused to treat the woman. And she died.
Caregivers brought a paralyzed man to the hospital, only to have hospital workers say (in front of him) that they didn’t want to waste a COVID test on him. They wanted the caregivers to take him home to die. The doctors told the caregivers that the man had no “quality of life.”
The caregivers successfully got the hospital to admit the man, but the hospital discharged him with orders to his nursing home to stop feeding him and to let him starve to death. Fortunately, the workers at the nursing home ignored this order.
Why do doctors see such little value in disabled peoples’ lives? Author, researcher, and doctor John Wyatt wrote in his book Matters of Life & Death: Human Dilemmas in the Light of the Christian Faith that most doctors:
have little first-hand experience of the lives of children and adults with disability. Hence, their understanding of the lives of disabled people is mainly drawn from the medical literature, especially standard medical textbooks.
There is a strong tendency for health professionals to list and emphasize the precise medical and functional impairments associated with a particular diagnosis, without counterbalancing emphasis on the abilities and positive features of the lives of people with the condition…
There is accumulating evidence that health professionals consistently undervalue the quality of life of the disabled . . ..compared with parents and with the individuals themselves.
Wyatt cites a study that backs up his claims.
Legalized assisted suicide only reinforces doctors’ beliefs that disabled people have lives that aren’t worth living.
What type of medical care will I get?
RA is a progressive disease, and I wonder what type of health care I will receive as I get older and become more severely disabled.
RA can, in fact, become terminal if it attacks the heart or other organs. I wonder if I will ever be pressured to accept assisted suicide. Even more so, I wonder whether I will get the same suicide prevention services as an able-bodied person if I need them.
from the home page of Not Dead Yet
A disabled person is given suicide advice, not suicide prevention
Recently in New Zealand, there was a case where a young woman named Claire Freeman, who was wheelchair-bound and in chronic pain, in a similar situation as mine, attempted suicide. She went into a mental hospital. She told the psychologist who was assigned to her that she wanted to die.
Instead of treating Freeman’s depression and counseling her against suicide, the doctor suggested she travel to Switzerland to a suicide clinic and kill herself there.
Every able-bodied patient in that hospital was being told not to kill themselves and receiving therapy and medication to treat their suicidal feelings. But a person in a wheelchair was encouraged, by her own doctor, to kill herself.
Freeman says:
I realized that a lot of the advice I had been given, like from the psychologist and from a psychiatrist who saw me after an earlier suicide attempt, was because they were looking at me and just seeing the disability.
“They were not saying, ‘Hey, what’s going on in your life? Are you working too much? Are you in too much pain?’
None of those questions were asked, it was just, ‘Of course she wants to die, she’s in a wheelchair, she’s in pain.’
Freeman changed her mind about suicide and is now glad to be alive.
My own struggles with suicide
Due to my bipolar disorder, I have sometimes struggled with suicidal feelings. In my 20s, I spent time in a mental hospital. I was young and physically able-bodied then. I didn’t develop RA until I was in my 30s.
The doctors were determined to prevent my suicide and worked with me to overcome those thoughts and feelings. I can’t help but wonder if I ever need to go into the hospital again, will I be treated the same way now that I am in a wheelchair?
Maybe I would today, but what about 10 years from now, when my disability is even more severe? What about 20 years from now?
Now, if someone is actively suicidal, they can be placed in a mental hospital, even against their will, and given treatment. A person can also voluntarily seek treatment for suicidal feelings.
If I seek treatment in the future, will doctors encourage me to live or help me die?
The existence of euthanasia and assisted suicide makes my struggles harder.
Every time I read a story about a disabled person who was euthanized in another country, it hurts me on a personal level. It makes me angry that people didn’t see the value in their life.
It makes me afraid that others won’t see the value of mine.
Sometimes it makes me wonder if my life really does have value. If so many people believe that a person like me isn’t worth keeping alive, maybe I’m not.
The sanction given to disabled people’s suicides confirms my deepest fears- that I’m not valuable or important, that I’m not worthy of life. Resisting these dark feelings can be hard when I’m in the depths of depression.
Depression lies to you.
It distorts your thinking. It tells you you aren’t deserving of help or love. It tells you, you are worthless. It tells you no one cares.
The existence of assisted suicide reinforces these lies.
When I’m already struggling with suicidal feelings and consider killing myself through assisted suicide, it feels like society has given me permission to do so. It sends the message that suicide is a reasonable answer to my depression, physical condition, and pain.
This makes my suicidal feelings stronger.
Assisted suicide affects disabled people just by being available to other disabled people.
Finding allies
I am now a disability rights activist in the fight against euthanasia and assisted suicide. Not Dead Yet is an organization of disabled people that sees the threat inherent in legalizing assisted suicide.
I found supportive people when I became involved in the pro-life movement. Specifically, the wing that holds to the consistent life ethic.
The consistent life ethic is a philosophy that all human life is valuable, and that killing, unless (some woul add) in extreme cases of self-defense, is always wrong. Those who adhere to this ethic oppose war, the death penalty, euthanasia, and abortion.
Any threat to human life is something to oppose.
The people I’ve met through my activism value the lives of disabled people. They value my life. I’ve made the best friends I’ve ever had among my fellow activists. They are (peaceful) warriors who fight alongside me against the ethic that devalues lives like mine.
I am grateful to have found a community of friends who value all lives, even disabled ones, and grateful that so many people are with me when I speak up for the value of my life and other disabled people’s.
We deserve suicide prevention, not suicide assistance.
We deserve to be treated the same way as able-bodied people by the medical community.
We need to continue advocating for ourselves and others.
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For more of our posts on this topic, see:
Figuring out Euthanasia: What Does it Really Mean?
When “Choice” Itself Hurts the Quality of Life
#SayHisName: The Medical Murder of Michael Hickson
How Euthanasia and Poverty Threaten the Disabled
What’s Cruel for the Incarcerated is Cruel for the Terminally Ill
Will I be Treated the Same Way Now?
A Lawyer’s Turnaround on Baby Doe with Her Own Down Syndrome Baby