Climate Change and the Consistent Life Ethic: An Opportunity to Connect Issues
by John Whitehead
Climate change and how to counter it has been much in the news over the past few weeks, with these topics being raised in the United Nations and in the streets. Harm to our shared environment should concern all of us and should especially concern advocates of the consistent life ethic. We should consider how climate change connects to other threats to life we are committed to working against: how climate change worsens poverty; can harm children, including children in the womb; and may make war or other violent conflict more likely. Such connections should heighten our commitment to work against violence to the earth.
Climate Change and Poverty
A warming climate will hurt the poorest the most, especially through negative effects on food production. Global warming will reduce yields of staple crops such as rice and wheat. Regions such as Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa are particularly vulnerable to climate change’s effects on crops. People with the fewest resources, who are most directly dependent on their own farming, will most likely bear the greatest burden of such effects.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) describes the possible effects of climate change on the world’s poorest people. The IPCC projects what an average global temperature increase of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels in the coming decades will mean. Such an increase
would disproportionately affect disadvantaged and vulnerable populations through food insecurity, higher food prices, income losses, lost livelihood opportunities, adverse health impacts and population displacements . . . Some of the worst impacts on sustainable development are expected to be felt among agricultural and coastal dependent livelihoods, indigenous people, children and the elderly, poor labourers, poor urban dwellers in African cities, and people and ecosystems in the Arctic and Small Island Developing States.
(IPCC, Global Warming of 1.5 ºC, Chapter 5)
Further, a global temperature rise of only 1.5°C may prove unrealistically optimistic. If the increase is greater, perhaps reaching 2°C, the effects on the poor will be even more dire.
Climate Change and Children
The IPCC also warns of increased temperatures leading to health problems and disease. A warming climate leads to heat-related deaths, poorer air quality and hence respiratory illnesses, and the spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever. Disruptions caused by extreme weather events can also lead to food and water supplies being contaminated, also leading to illnesses.
Children are especially vulnerable to these kinds of environmental dangers, given their developing immune systems; the quantity of outside material, relative to their size, they take in by breathing, eating, and drinking; and the amount of time they typically spend outside. For example, the US Environmental Protection Agency reports that infectious diarrhea, a water- and food-borne illness, annually kills 1.5 million children, most of them in developing countries.
Climate change-related health risks extend to preborn children as well. In pregnant women, respiratory illnesses or dehydration from heat can contribute to pre-term birth or low birth weight. Moreover, if climate change and related extreme weather events worsen poverty or malnutrition, as noted above, that may also harm pregnant women and their children’s health. These effects of climate change concern those who wish to protect children, before and after birth.
Climate Change and War
Another feared result of higher temperatures is that the resulting damage to farming and food supplies will lead to violent conflict. Such conflict might arise from competition over scarcer resources, for example, or from civil unrest over governments’ failures to address scarcity.
Whether such a connection between climate change and violent conflict really exists has been a long-running controversy. Some research supports this connection. A 2013 survey of 50 studies on the topic found “strong support for a causal association between climatological changes and conflict across a range of geographies, a range of different time periods, a range of spatial scales and across climatic events of different duration.” One surveyed study found that the risk of conflict in tropical countries increases with the shift from the (relatively cooler and wetter) La Niña weather pattern to the (relatively hotter and drier) El Niño pattern. This finding suggests that an overall shift toward a hotter, drier world might increase the risk of conflict.
However, others argue against this supposed climate-conflict link, criticizing the methodology involved in reaching this conclusion as well as the neglect of other factors that lead to conflict. At worst, linking climate change to conflict might lead to a kind of fatalism that holds violence to be inevitable as long as climate change persists.
These criticisms are well taken and we should not automatically assume that climate change makes war or other conflict more likely. Nevertheless, we should not ignore or dismiss the possibility either. Even a critic of the climate change and conflict connection noted that “there’s no doubt that climate change can, on some occasions, be linked to violence and warfare.” A group of social scientists with various views on the climate change–conflict relationship recently, after various consultations, reached the tentative conclusion that climate change may have had only modest effects on conflict to date but, if left unchecked, could increase risks of future conflict.
Further, the notion that climate change could make conflict more likely makes sense simply on an intuitive level. If poverty, famine, and disease, as well as disruptive events such as extreme weather and mass migration, become more common or severe they could well strain political institutions’ ability to resolve conflicts peacefully. Certainly we would be naïve to expect climate change’s negative effects to decrease conflict or make the world a more peaceful place. Those concerned with peace building would do well to devote attention to countering climate change.
Conclusion
As two writers on climate change observed, this important topic can too often seem “abstract, uncertain, unfamiliar, impersonal, diffuse and seemingly distant.” Connecting climate change to its impacts on people’s lives can make the issue more vivid and the stakes clearer. For consistent life ethic advocates specifically, making these connections shows how protecting the environment connects with protecting human life against other threats that already concern us. Preventing further warming of the planet, by measures such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions and pursuing renewable energy sources, should be pursued as a way to also prevent worsening poverty, increased illness, and perhaps even violent conflict. At the same time, responding to climate change requires aiding the world’s poor and those people, especially children, suffering from the health effects of a damaged environment. Building structures for managing the stresses of scarcer resources or extreme weather events in a peaceful, constructive way is also an important response to climate change—and a proactive form of peacemaking.
Prevention of Child Abuse
by Rachel M. MacNair, Ph.D.
Excerpts of Chapter 13 in Peace Psychology Perspectives on Abortion. References are turned into links.
Abuse of children is among the most horrific forms of violence and is depressingly widespread world-wide. Therefore, it is important to know whether the impact of abortion on its prevalence is helpful, harmful, or neutral.
The reasoning that abortion availability helps reduce such abuse includes:
- Abuse can be caused when children were born unwanted and are therefore resented. Having them not be born at all should accordingly result in a drop in the child abuse rate.
- There may be fewer births in those groups most likely to engage in child maltreatment.
The thesis that abortion availability is harmful includes these ideas:
- It removes a taboo on hurting children, and because it allows violence to children prenatally, violence will then be greater to postnatal children as well.
- It leads to children being treated as consumer products, rather than as human beings, thereby adding a requirement of “wantedness” by parents that children should not be required to meet.
The neutral position is [that] abortion is not really under consideration when child abuse occurs.
The Rise and Fall of Child Abuse Rates
U.S. child abuse rates skyrocketed after Roe v Wade, the decision legalizing abortion in all 50 states, was decided in 1973 . . . The rate per 1,000 population went from 2.16 in 1973 to 11.59 in 1990 . . . This is consistent with the hypothesis that millions of abortions might act as other violence does, by serving as a model, and by desensitizing.
However, correlation is not causation, and those inclined to draw a conclusion only from the simple fact of upsurge need to use caution. A readily-available alternative explanation is that it was not that more child abuse was actually happening, but that people were more sensitive to it and more inclined to report it due to educational efforts and changing cultural mores about its acceptability. Additionally, different criteria have been used to determine and measure abuse. Therefore, figures and rates are not always comparable.
Then, around 1990, the child abuse rates in the United States started a downward trend Concurrently, so did the abortion rates.
The connection between the two may be coincidence, of course. The theory that abortion and child abuse are connected as two similar forms of violence would predict that lowering abortion would lower child abuse, but human behavior is not that simple.
Those of the abortion-as-option view have frequently proposed that greater contraception education and use grew over time and resulted in the abortion downturn. Effective campaigns against child abuse were growing at the same time, and becoming successful. Given the historical time period, with the rise of campaigns for human betterment, there were many additional positive social indicators at the same time.
When looking at outcomes for an entire society, innumerable variables could be explanations, and speculations as to why ranges broadly. We can never know whether the child abuse rates would not have been higher yet without abortion. Still, the evidence that abortion availability might have any kind of positive impact on child abuse rates requires more detailed study than merely the change in rates.
The Case that Abortion Helps Prevent Abuse
Marianne Bitler and Madeline Zavodny utilized the varying times at which abortion became legalized in different U.S. states before the 1973 court ruling that legalized it nation-wide. They then considered reports of child abuse by taking [the children’s] age into account so as to have a measure of whether abortion would have been available at the time they were conceived. With this method, results suggest legalization lowered the reported cases. Legal restrictions on abortion, however, showed unclear results. Carlos Seiglie similarly found abortion access at the time of the pregnancy lowered reports of neglect.
A more targeted approach was taken doing a longitudinal analysis of fatal injury to children in states that have passed regulations such as parental consent, informed consent, and waiting periods. With this approach, they found an association between such regulations and increased injury.
The Case that Abortion Helps Promote Abuse
If the abortion-as-violence hypothesis is correct, it suggests an even more targeted approach. Rather than a society-wide epidemiological investigation, the research question becomes more focused: “Are mothers who have abortions more likely to be abusive to their children?” This approach has been undertaken in several studies . . . In these peer-reviewed studies, the answer is yes.
For example, [Priscilla] Coleman [and colleagues] analyzed 518 women who had been identified by Baltimore Child Protective Services as having abused their children. Researchers compared women with no pregnancy loss, those whose loss was involuntary (miscarriage or stillbirth) and those with induced abortion. The women who had undergone at least one induced abortion were 114% more likely to be identified as having abused their children when compared to women with no loss. Those women who suffered involuntary loss were found to be no more likely to be identified as abusive than women with no pregnancy loss.
Additionally, there is the question of children who rather than being unwanted are super-wanted. Edward Lenoski, Professor of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine at the University of Southern California School of Medicine, conducted a study of 674 children who had suffered battering at the hands of one of their parents and compared them to 500 controls selected from the same emergency room. The comparison showed:
- 91% of the parents of abused children said they had wanted the pregnancy; 63% of the non-abused said so;
- 93% of the parents were married at the time of the birth of the abused child; 60% of the non-abused were;
- the mother of the abused children began wearing maternity clothes at an average of 114 days into the pregnancy, as compared to an average of 171 days for the mothers of the non-abused children;
- The child was named after a parent (usually, father’s name with “Jr.”) in 24% of the abused cases, but only 4% of the non-abused cases.
Source: Lenoski, E. (1980, Winter). A research study on child abuse. Heartbeat, 16-17.
Since these are children for whom abortion was never contemplated, the role of abortion is not covered in this study. The role of “wantedness,” however, is here reversed with the proposal that requiring wantedness of children may, in some cases, increase rather than reduce the risk of child abuse
In those cases where the child is super-wanted, the ready availability of abortion could make things worse by emphasizing the importance of the wantedness of children. Less abuse may accompany accepting children for who they are rather than for who their parents want them to be.
Sexual Abuse
Sexual abuse is in a different category from neglect or physical and emotional abuse, since the problem is clearly not that the child is unwanted, but is wanted for the wrong reason. Seiglie, while reporting findings as mentioned above about abortion availability being associated with less neglect, also reported a positive association of abortion access with sexual abuse.
The pro-life movement is full of anecdotal cases of men who utilized the abortion clinic for the purpose of removing the evidence of their abuse (see, for example, from Feminists for Life). These cases include both adult men who impregnate minors and incest abuse.
In actuality, the law in several countries upholds mandatory reporting to authorities when there are signs of possible sexual abuse of children under a certain age by adults. Pregnancy would certainly qualify as a possible sign of sexual abuse. If medical personnel follow the legal requirement of reporting suspected abuse, then abortion providers are in a unique position to prevent child sexual abuse and allow for its prosecution. If perpetrators knew this would occur, then it could have a powerful deterrent effect on sexual abuse.
Conversely, if medical personnel do not report, then they facilitate the abuse. Adult men who expect non-reporting may be more likely to engage in such abuse.
Scholarly investigation on this point is currently inadequate. It is urgently needed for the prevention of sexual violence toward children.
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For more excerpts from the book, see:
Excerpt – Peace Psychology Perspectives on Abortion: Introduction
Excerpt – Peace Psychology Perspectives on Abortion: Wars Cause Abortion
Pro-Life Voting Strategy: A Problem without an Answer
A reminder: The Consistent Life Network doesn’t necessarily endorse everything said in its blog, since we encourage individual writers to express a variety of views. This is especially so when analyzing elections.
by John Whitehead
With a new electoral season looming before Americans, we’ll no doubt soon hear the latest round of a long-running debate: how should pro-lifers vote?
- Should they vote for candidates (usually Republicans) who express explicit opposition to abortion and may support efforts to restrict legal access to abortion?
- Or should they vote for candidates (usually Democrats) who might not oppose abortion as such but support policies more likely to alleviate the conditions that push women toward abortion?
Granted, in some rare but happy cases, we get candidates who both explicitly oppose abortion and also support policies to counter the pressures for abortion. See, for example, the work of member groups the American Solidarity Party and Democrats for Life and the presidential candidacy of Mark Charles.
These cases are sadly exceptional, however. I’ll therefore consider the more typical political options. Also, for consistent life ethic advocates, of course, many other issues apart from abortion influence voting decisions, but in this post I’ll focus just on abortion. I suspect some of these points are also relevant to other life issues, and of course are also relevant to elections in other countries.
Having heard the argument about pro-life voting strategy many times, I must conclude that while both sides make reasonable points, neither has a very compelling case overall. Voting for either type of candidate has serious limitations, and pro-lifers should recognize this.
Limitations of the Explicitly Anti-Abortion Strategy
The case for explicitly anti-abortion candidates is straightforward. These candidates say they’re opposed to abortion and intend to use legal prohibitions to stop it. Therefore, pro-lifers should vote for them. Such a voting strategy is broadly favored by more politically conservative pro-lifers.
More politically liberal pro-lifers have several criticisms of this approach: First, many politicians who claim to be opposed to abortion are insincere or opportunistically taking advantage of pro-lifers’ concerns to get elected. Once elected, they won’t do anything about abortion. Second, some argue that legally prohibiting abortion is so politically challenging as to be impractical; overturning Roe v. Wade by changing the composition of the Supreme Court is a long, tortuous process for which there’s little prospect of success. Third, some argue that even if it were possible, making abortion illegal is not the most effective way of stopping abortions. A law against abortion would likely be unenforceable and ineffective.
In contrast, these pro-lifers argue for public policies they believe will reduce abortion. These might include targeted efforts to support pregnant women and mothers (for example, countering pregnancy and parenting discrimination in the workforce or providing more and better childcare options) as well as efforts to lower poverty generally (by increasing the minimum wage, say, or expanding affordable healthcare access). They argue that voting for politicians who support these types of policies, regardless of those politicians’ attitudes about abortion as such, is the effective way to stop abortion.
These criticisms of the explicitly anti-abortion voting strategy have merit. The convictions of supposedly pro-life politicians are often questionable and their records often disappointing. Moreover, the persistence of Roe v. Wade after more than 45 years and numerous changes in the Supreme Court, as well as the strong resistance to anti-abortion legislation in many states, points toward the enormous practical challenge of restricting abortion access.
Update, October 20, 2022: A few years after I wrote this piece, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in its June 2022 Dobbs v Jackson case. I admit this decision came as a great surprise to me and certainly upended my 2019 doubts about Roe being overturned.
Granted, much of what I argued here I would still stand by. The commitment of allegedly “pro-life” politicians should often be viewed with skepticism. Legal efforts to restrict access to abortion may still prove very difficult even in a post-Roe country. Legal restrictions may also prove less effective in reducing abortion than public education and programs to support parents and children.
Nevertheless, recent events show that we never know for sure which direction history will go. Our seemingly confident predictions about the pro-life cause or other aspects of the consistent life ethic might well be proved wrong. Let’s keep an open mind about the future and be ready to adapt to changing circumstances.
Certain policies that address poverty and other pressures toward abortion probably do contribute to reducing abortions—and most liberal pro-lifers, especially those who are consistent life ethic advocates, would favor such policies regardless. These are all points in favor of this alternative voting strategy, which might be called an “abortion reduction” strategy.
Limitations of the Abortion Reduction Strategy
Nevertheless, the abortion reduction strategy has a very significant problem. Whatever else being pro-life does or does not mean, it ought to mean you support efforts to persuade people to recognize the right to life of preborn children and the injustice of killing these children through abortion.
Arguing for the humanity of children in the womb and advocating for their right to life so that a critical mass of people come to accept these views is essential to the pro-life position. Granted, not everyone who’s pro-life must necessarily become a full-time apologist for the preborn’s right to life—but they should support the people who are and not undermine their work.
This essential activity of persuading others to recognize the preborn’s right to life is not well served by supporting policymakers or other elites who refuse to recognize this right and condemn those who do. If politicians, officials, corporate heads, and prominent members of the media generally reject the notion that a preborn human has a right to life and endorse abortion as morally acceptable, then that’s a serious obstacle to ending abortion.
Elite support for abortion presents such an obstacle for two reasons:
First, elites can, through the messages they send and rhetoric they use, shape larger cultural attitudes. An elite that recognizes preborn humans’ right to life could promote such recognition in the larger society, perhaps educating the public on matters such as embryology and pre-natal development, what happens in an abortion, nonviolent alternatives to abortion, or the philosophy of pro-life feminism—and the consistent life ethic.
Second, while efforts to make abortion outright illegal may or may not be the best strategy for ending abortion, I can’t imagine how abortion could be ended without at least some public policies specifically targeted at reducing abortion. As mentioned above, these might include public educational campaigns, similar to those against smoking or other health hazards, to make people aware of abortion’s violence. They might also include an extension of measures already effect in some states, such as informed consent or counseling requirements before an abortion and the withholding of public funding of abortion, as through the Hyde Amendment.
Neither targeted policy measures meant to reduce abortion nor a more general effort to shape public opinion toward recognition of the preborn’s right to life seem likely in a society governed by ardently pro-abortion elites. Politicians who have no clear objections to abortion, who affirm “reproductive rights” without qualification, and who enjoy the endorsement of abortion advocates such as Planned Parenthood or NARAL Pro-Choice America seem unlikely to promote greater respect for preborn life.
Such politicians might support policies that reduce poverty or otherwise lessen pressures for abortion. Nevertheless, I find it hard to believe that, without a genuine commitment to supporting the preborn’s right to life, these politicians would do all that’s necessary to reduce abortion to the lowest level possible. Even if some policies they support have a positive effect on the abortion rate, their overall approach is inadequate.
To claim that we can end or even radically reduce abortion without an elite commitment to doing so—to claim, in effect, that abortion will end as a purely unintended by-product of other policies undertaken for unrelated reasons—puts an intolerable strain on credulity. Has any other major social injustice been ended without elites and others in a society coming to recognize that an injustice is being committed?
A Few Practical Conclusions
I would judge both the supposedly pro-life politicians who claim to be pursuing a legal prohibition on abortion and the politicians who are supposedly pursuing policies that will reduce pressures for abortion to fall short of what committed pro-lifers need. Neither the explicitly anti-abortion nor abortion reduction voting strategy seems adequate to me.
For pro-lifers, a clear electoral strategy is lacking. This disappointing situation suggests a few modest but important practical conclusions:
- Pro-lifers should recognize the limitations of both voting strategies and not necessarily always adhere to either one, instead keeping an open mind to trying alternative approaches in different situations.
- For the same reason, we should be humble in arguing for a particular voting strategy and respectful toward our fellow pro-lifers who adopt a different strategy.
- Most important of all, we should direct our criticisms not toward other pro-lifers but toward politicians who fall short of an adequate pro-life stance in either of the ways I’ve identified. People in power are the ones who most need to be challenged when their defense of life is inadequate. And we can reach out to people with whom we agree on other issues and try to bring them to full support of a consistent ethic of life.
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For more of our blog posts on voting:
Elections 2020: Three Consistent-Life Approaches
Abortion on the Ballot (2022)
My Difficulty in Voting: Identifying the Problem
How Consistent-life Advocacy Would Benefit from Ranked-Choice Voting
and see our website:
Win-Lose is a Mirage
by Bill Samuel, Consistent Life Network Board member
As I was taking a morning nature walk, I was thinking of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s insight in Braiding Sweetgrass of people loving the land and the land loving us back. The reciprocity is vital regardless of whether you are comfortable with using the emotional term “love” to describe it. On my nature walks, I think about things like the trees providing us oxygen and the water being essential to our life. For this to continue, we need to exercise care for creation.
I thought about how some people see nature as something to be exploited, not something to be cared for. They look at life from a win-lose perspective. Their view of how to benefit from the earth’s resources is one where they win and the earth loses. As we can see from global climate change and the degradation of the environment, people don’t really win in this win-lose exploitation model. We suffer from our exploitation of the environment in many ways, such as the air being no longer safe to breathe, water becoming polluted and scarce, and climate change disrupting our lives. In the end, it’s not win-lose but lose-lose. The alternative is sustainably using the earth’s resources, which is a win-win proposition.
It occurs to me that this problem of a win-lose perspective applies across the board. In many different contexts, we may try to gain while others lose but it doesn’t work well. We’re interdependent, whether we recognize it or not. The consistent life ethic (CLE) inherently recognizes this interdependence. When we kill or injure another, we don’t win in the long run. We injure the whole, which includes us. The CLE rejects the idea of the “other” who is expendable for our gain.
War is a good example of a situation people see as win-lose when it’s really lose-lose. When we go to war, we’re seeking to win and make the other party lose. The result is an enormous loss of life and disruption on both sides. We can see in the wars waged by the U.S. in recent decades that the countries where they have been waged not only have suffered many deaths and injuries, but their infrastructure and the fabric of their societies has been torn apart. Terrorist organizations point to these effects in recruiting people to serve in their cause, resulting in our security being increasingly endangered. The U.S. has spent $6 trillion on the war on terror, resulting in our lacking the resource to meet our own human needs. These consequences of war affect us in the long-term, not just during the war itself. An objective look at war will not see it as win-lose but lose-lose. Our “victories” are almost always pyrrhic victories. Peaceful means of conflict resolution offer the opportunity for a better life in the long run for both (or more) parties, a win-win proposition.
Racism is another example. When those of one ethnicity seek to dominate those of another ethnicity, they see it as their group winning at the expense of the other group. However, racism has a dehumanizing effect on everyone, including those who are privileged by it. It is a very inefficient system, because it prevents society from benefiting from the full flowering of the gifts and talents of those oppressed. We have seen in our own country’s history other inefficiencies such as unnecessary duplication of systems- for example, separate drinking fountains – because the dominant group doesn’t want others to use the same systems they do. We also see the natural animosities racism produces, causing conflicts which reduce the safety of everyone. A racist system can never be a stable system.
In the U.S. and many other countries, the justice system – both criminal and civil – is based on an adversarial model. This is a binary system which in the criminal system labels a person charged with a crime as either guilty or not guilty and if found guilty, the offender is largely handled with punishment. In the civil system, the court generally rules for one party and against the other. Again, the system is basically win-lose. A restorative justice system, in contrast, looks at the needs of all those affected and finds a course of action which is best for the whole community. Such a system generally provides a much better outcome for the victim, as well as helping the offender to be restored to becoming a positive member of the community. In the civil system, it recognizes that sometimes both parties played a role in a bad outcome rather than it being a binary right-wrong situation. It can therefore address the needs in a more holistic manner.
Abortion is another instance of a win-lose perspective. The mother and her baby are assumed to have opposite interests, and the interests of one must be chosen over the other. However, in our society normally the mother-child bond is considered one of the strongest and most loving there is. What causes the reversal of this assumption in situations where the mother would consider aborting her child? Is the father abandoning them both, pressuring her to abort, or being abusive? Does her employer fail to provide for the needs of pregnant women and mothers? Are doctors or social workers pressuring her? Is she being abandoned or pressured by her birth family? Do childcare and other resources seem inadequate? Most of these factors show a heartlessness towards both mother and child. The rights and needs of both tend to go together, rather than compete with each other.
We can apply this principle to other areas of life. What we need is to recognize our interdependence and work together for the common good, rather than seeking to benefit ourselves through punishment and exploitation of others and the created world. The more people, governments, and institutions embrace this approach, the better off we all will be. This is the point of the CLE.
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For more of our posts from Bill Samuel, see:
Does the Consistent Life Ethic Water Down Life Issues?
Supporting the Dignity of Every Life
Brown v. Board of Education and Me
Peace & Life Referendums
by Rachel MacNair
For updated information starting January 6, 2020, see this constantly-updated website:
The original post was published September 3, 2019, and revisions were added until January 6, when the website took over the function
A reminder: The Consistent Life Network doesn’t necessarily endorse everything said in its blog, since we encourage individual writers to express a variety of views. This is especially so when analyzing elections.
It used to be that when people said campaign season started on Labor Day (first Monday in September), they meant the Labor Day of the year of the election. But in the U.S. our election season has become so long that there are media remarks about the 2020 season starting in earnest now. Certainly, many referendums being put on ballots by initiative petition are already in full swing as far as gathering signatures (and could use help).
I think consistent-lifers have a special contribution to make on referendums. We have insights that can be valuable to the public dialog and education.
Also, there are fellow peace and justice activists who think abortion opponents are in an opposing camp, and of course we aren’t. So activism on referendums could be part of our work to break stereotypes with them and with the media.
And there are fellow prolifers who think we exist to give pro-abortion Catholic politicians a pass on the suppose grounds that “while they may be bad on abortion, at least they’re better on other issues.” This has always been backward, of course; we instead challenge such politicians on their inconsistency. But still, we also challenge politicians who oppose abortion to also consistently oppose other violence. Many of us aren’t as enthusiastic for candidates that other pro-lifers are excited about. Being active on referendums is a way to participate in policy through elections.
We’ve given information about such referendums in previous years in our weekly e-newsletter, Peace & Life Connections, but perhaps more can be done. With some creative juices flowing, we consistent-lifers may find some more marvelous opportunities to offer insight and education through the web, social media, and in our communities.
This list was mainly collected from Ballotpedia for U.S. states; local measures aren’t up yet. There will be some added as legislatures put measures onto ballots, and others subtracted if they get insufficient signatures. Referendums in other countries are also of interest, of course, and I invite people to send us information on them.
Links are included for the sponsoring organizations when I think passing the referendums would advance the goals of the consistent life ethic. I encourage people in those states to consider being active in getting those on the ballot.
I also include referendums I’d like to see get a strong “no” vote. Defeating objectionable referendums is as important as supporting worthy ones. Defeating them by larger margins is better than defeating them by smaller margins, in order to set the tone for what society finds acceptable. I don’t provide links to supporters on those. It’s too early for them to have opponents.
If the creative juices flow and you have ideas or want to write more on any of the topics addressed by these referendums, or if you’re aware of positive or negative information that would be helpful to share with the consistent-life community, then add comments below on this blog page or e-mail them to weekly@consistent-life.org.
Potential Ballot Measures – U.S. States
To Be Decided November 3, 2020
Abortion
Colorado
The Colorado 22-Week Abortion Ban (gathering signatures). Sponsored by Due Date Too Late.
Florida
Added 11.20.19: Human Life Protection Amendment (gathering signatures). Sponsored by Protect Human Life Florida
Kansas
The Kansas Supreme Court has decided that the Kansas state constitution gives an abortion “right,” so Kansans for Life is sponsoring a drive to have the legislature put a state constitutional amendment on the ballot. The signatures on the petition aren’t for directly putting it on the ballot, but for persuading legislators to do so. This allows Kansans to sign online.
Louisiana
Katrina Jackson
Added 09.19.19: Louisiana No Right to Abortion in Constitution Amendment. Called by supporters the Love Life Amendment. It adds to the state constitution: “To protect human life, nothing in this constitution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion.” Promoted by the Louisiana Pro-life Amendment Coalition. Definitely on the ballot, absent a court order otherwise, as it was passed by the state legislature. It was sponsored there by Katrina Jackson, a Democrat.
Michigan
Michigan pro-life groups are divided on these two measures; since I’m only offering information rather than taking a position, I simply offer the information on both.
The Michigan Fetal Heartbeat Abortion Ban Initiative (gathering signatures). Sponsored by the Michigan Heartbeat Coalition.
The Michigan Dismemberment Abortion Ban Initiative (gathering signatures). Sponsored by Michigan Values Life.
Missouri
There had been a plan to put a “veto” measure on the ballot to overturn a pro-life law passed by the Missouri state legislature. But such measures have a 90-day deadline and the planners gave up.
The Missouri Medicaid Expansion and Planned Parenthood Funding Initiative (gathering signatures). Filed by a private individual. In addition to Medicaid expansion it provides for the state of Missouri to replace federal funds that Planned Parenthood has lost. There’s another effort for Medicaid expansion without this feature, currently collecting signatures.
Washington
The Washington Parental Notice for Abortions Performed on Minors Initiative (gathering signatures). Sponsored by Parents and Students Protecting Minors (PSPM).
Assisted Suicide / Euthanasia
Florida
Added 11.20.19: Human Life Protection Amendment (gathering signatures). Sponsored by Protect Human Life Florida (covers both abortion once a heartbeat starts and euthanasia, though explicitly excludes the death penalty)
Death Penalty
So far, no referendums on this topic have been found.
War
War is never directly on the ballot, of course, but there are occasionally issues related to war that could be suitable for our attention.
Arizona
The Arizona Prevent Mining at Oak Flat Initiative (gathering signatures). Sponsored by Save Oak Flat. Section 3003 of the National Defense Authorization Act 2015 allowed for the copper mining of Apache land of cultural and religious value; the idea was to swap other land for this land that’s to be mined, but the Apache were never asked. Much of the copper would be used in military equipment, which is one reason it went into the military procurement bill.
Missouri
Missouri No Removal of Historic Memorials without Legislative Approval Initiative (gathering signatures). Submitted by state Republican officials. Called the “Right to Remember” amendment, it would prevent localities from making democratic decisions about such things as war memorials, or even changing names of schools and streets named after war participants. This is not merely glorifying war, but compelling people to do so after they’ve objected. When it’s a Civil War memorial honoring the Confederacy or its officials, an element of racism may also be present.
= = = =
While gun control in general is beyond our purview, having military-style weapons available to civilians can be regarded as a war – the mass shootings are mini-wars, and often based on similar reasoning to war. Three relevant referendums in two states:
Florida
Florida Ban on Semiautomatic Rifles and Shotguns Initiative (gathering signatures). Sponsored by Do Something Florida
Oregon
Oregon Ban on Assault Weapons Initiative (gathering signatures). Submitted by a private individual.
Oregon Constitutional Right to Own Semiautomatic Firearms Initiative (gathering signatures). Submitted by two private individuals.
Racism
While referendum sponsors don’t admit to racism, the possibility of racism on the part of at least some supporters exists when offering policy against immigrants. Given the cruelty and lethality of current immigration policy, we need to continue taking action. This last July, Kendra Stanton Lee wrote an op-ed entitled The “Pro-Life” Movement Is Silent about Children Dying at the Border. Just a week later, she said instead: I Called the Pro-lifers Silent. Then I Heard Them Roar.
These two measures would add to the cruelty and danger, so if they get on the ballot I think we’d do well to explain what’s wrong with them from a life-affirming point of view.
Massachusetts
Massachusetts Prevent Sanctuary Cities Initiative (gathering signatures). Submitted by state Republican officials.
Missouri
Missouri Cities Required to Cooperate with ICE Initiative (gathering signatures). Submitted by state Republican officials.
And for some clean-up of racism bequeathed by U.S. history, two similar measures:
Nebraska and Utah
Added 09.19.19: The state legislatures of Nebraska and Utah have placed state constitutional amendments on the ballot. Where their constitutions have sections prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude, there are exceptions for those duly convicted of a crime. The amendments would delete that exception.
Poverty
Oklahoma has enough signatures validated to put a Medicaid expansion initiative on the ballot; Missouri is currently gathering signatures.
Florida and Idaho have possible minimum wage increase initiatives, and Missouri might have one that would allow localities to raise the minimum wage without the state legislature preempting this.
A War on the People: A Review of One Child Nation
by John Whitehead
Draconian Measures
To curb population growth and supposedly promote national prosperity, China’s ruling Communist Party in 1979 launched an effort to ensure most Chinese parents would have only one child. For roughly the next 36 years the authorities would enforce this One-Child Policy through measures that included intense propaganda, forced sterilizations and abortions, punishments for disobedient households, and perhaps even kidnapping illicit “extra” children. The documentary One Child Nation illustrates the impact of these draconian measures by telling the stories of an array of people affected by them. Interviewees include officials responsible for upholding the One-Child Policy, parents who abandoned their children or had a child taken away by authorities, and human traffickers who dealt in such children.
Adding to the One Child Nation’s power and poignancy is its focus on how the One-Child Policy affected the family of Nanfu Wang, the documentary’s co-director and narrator. Having been raised in China before moving to the United States, Wang returns to her native country to ask relatives about their experiences of the policy. The stories are sobering. An aunt gave up an infant daughter to human traffickers. An uncle abandoned his baby daughter in a market—no one claimed her, however, and the child died. Her immediate family was comparatively lucky: Wang’s parents benefited from an exception to regulations and were allowed to have a second child after her, as long as they waited five years. (Nevertheless, she remembers being embarrassed by the presence of her younger brother, as her family departed from the national ideal.)
Wang also speaks to locals in her family’s village, with notable stories of their own. A former village official recalls having a family’s house demolished as punishment for not accepting sterilization. A former midwife admits to having carried out sterilizations, abortions, and even infanticides. At a higher governmental level, an important member of China’s family planning apparatus freely acknowledges the practice of forced abortion as part of the One-Child Policy but professes no regrets.
Much of One Child Nation’s final third is devoted to untangling connections between family planning regulations and international Chinese adoptions. Drawing on the work of the group Research-China.org and the journalist Peng Jiaoming, the filmmakers present evidence of state-sponsored human trafficking. In some cases, children who weren’t permitted under the One-Child Policy may have been forcibly taken from their families by government officials and given to orphanages that would then put the children up for adoption under the fiction that they had been abandoned. In effect, some in China may have directly profited from the One-Child Policy by selling children on the global market.
Connections
For a consistent-life-ethic advocate, One Child Nation illuminates the many ways injustices and threats to life are connected. A major theme running through the documentary is how the One-Child Policy’s effects were shaped by a widespread preference for sons over daughters. The fact that the children given up by Wang’s aunt and uncle were both daughters is hardly coincidental. Wang’s mother recalls that when she was pregnant with her second child Wang’s grandmother produced a basket in which they could abandon the second child, if it were another girl. Indeed, as the filmmaker wryly notes, her given name, which literally means “man pillar” (as in “pillar of the family”) was chosen for her before birth in the hopes she would be a boy. As these and other details show, the One-Child Policy’s effects weren’t distributed equally but fell especially hard on those already discriminated against: sexism and population control fed each other.
Other connections among threats to life appear in the language used by interviewees. The midwife who killed children before and after birth refers to herself as an “executioner.” This same midwife also notably shares with some executioners and war veterans the characteristic of being haunted by her actions. She explains how she changed her practice to helping men and women struggling with infertility and does other charitable deeds to make up for her enforcement of the One-Child Policy. Meanwhile, the high-ranking family planning official, while apparently not haunted by her actions, justifies them by likening them to killing in war, invoking the oft-used slogan of “fighting a population war.” In her narration, Wang comments that this war on population growth turned into a war by the Chinese regime on its own people.
To be sure, One-Child Nation doesn’t accept the consistent-life-ethic by explicitly recognizing preborn children’s right to life. Toward the end, Wang criticizes American efforts to restrict abortion access, characterizing both such efforts and the One-Child Policy as attempts to limit women’s freedom. Nevertheless, the frequent references to violence and killing in connection to abortion give a very different impression
Art
The documentary’s most remarkable interview is with the artist Peng Wang While exploring garbage dumps, the artist discovered the bodies of aborted children, in bags labeled “medical waste.” He created a series of photographs and paintings of these dead children and even preserved some of the bodies in jars, which he displays during the documentary. These bodies and the resulting artwork convey the humanity of the One-Child Policy’s smallest victims, regardless of the filmmakers’ intentions. Indeed, the children’s remains seem to have made an impression on the filmmakers, as footage of one aborted child is used in the opening credits, significantly intercut with footage of a Chinese military parade. This editing choice memorable illustrates the theme of a “war on the people.”
One Child Nation is valuable for how it gives the injustices of the One-Child Policy human faces. Indeed, some of the documentary’s most affecting moments literally do this, with the camera holding for a long time on someone’s face even while she isn’t speaking, allowing her emotions to play out in real time.
Limitations
Despite its strengths, One Child Nation has notable limitations.
The focus is almost entirely on personal stories, with minimal historical, political, or social context given. No academics or other specialists in China or demography are interviewed. This makes the full significance of the documentary’s anecdotes harder to understand. We see footage of Wang arguing with her mother about the One-Child Policy, with the mother justifying the policy by invoking China’s past poverty. But is there any basis to this justification? Did the One-Child Policy contribute to China’s more recent economic transformation and relative prosperity? Or were the two largely coincidental? For that matter, was the One-Child Policy even necessary to slow population growth or would birth rates have fallen in China over the past 40 years regardless? The documentary presents little evidence either way.
Also, despite the emphasis on sexism and son-preference, One Child Nation says nothing about one of the policy’s most dramatic effects, the prevalence of sex-selective abortion and China’s resulting massive gender imbalance. Further, while forced abortion is mentioned several times, no women who were subjected to this violence are interviewed (although one scene implies the filmmakers might have been under political pressure not to speak to such women).
A final important omission is that the documentary doesn’t consider how the One-Child Policy relates to the repressive nature of the larger Chinese Communist regime. Wang laments the fatalism of her relatives and other interviewees, who act as if they had no choice but to accept the policy. Yet in a one-party state with limited political freedoms, precisely what does she think her family or other Chinese should have done to resist? Perhaps some means of resistance were open to them, yet the documentary doesn’t elaborate on what they might have been.
These questions aren’t merely academic. The Chinese regime continues to impose its will on the people in draconian ways, as we see today in Xinjiang or Hong Kong—or for that matter in continued population control policies. The One-Child Policy may be gone, but the government continues to set limits on children. Placing the One-Child Policy’s history in the context of a broader analysis of Communist Party rule would be useful to human rights activists in China and elsewhere.
Finally . . .
Despite the omissions, One Child Nation is a powerful expose of one of the great injustices of our time. It deserves to be widely seen, especially by advocates of the consistent life ethic.
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For posts on similar topics, see:
The Wages of War, Part 1: How Abortion Came to Japan
Wages of War, Part 2: How Forced Sterilization Came to Japan
Gendercide: Millions of “Missing” (Dead) Women
Abortion and Violence against Pregnant Women
Abortion and Violence Against Pregnant Women
by Martha Shuping, M.D.
Dr. Martha Shuping
This is based on a handout Dr. Shuping made for widespread use; she sent it to us and we adapted it with her approval. Martha Shuping is a psychiatrist, and wrote several chapters of the book Peace Psychology Perspectives on Abortion, edited by Rachel MacNair.
Intimate Partner Violence
Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) occurs so frequently during pregnancy that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommends screening for violence “at the first prenatal visit, at least once per trimester, and at the postpartum checkup.”
IPV and seeking abortion: “The prevalence of IPV was nearly three times greater for women seeking an abortion compared with women who were continuing their pregnancies.”
Reproductive coercion is a form of IPV in which the male partner uses threats and coercion to enforce his decision regarding the pregnancy outcome (see this article). This can include “forcing a female partner to terminate a pregnancy when she does not want to, or injuring a female partner in a way that may cause a miscarriage” (says ACOG).
An example of reproductive coercion: Valarie Luckenbihl was repeatedly beaten by her partner, Timothy Kindle, who admitted he was trying to terminate the pregnancy. The unborn child died at 22-24 weeks gestation. Kindle was charged with felony assault (see an account here).
A systematic review of 74 studies from all over the world confirmed that intimate partner violence is associated with abortion, and even more strongly associated with repeat abortion. “Women seeking a third abortion were more than 2.5 times as likely to have a history of . . . violence than women having their first abortion.” The editors stated: “Overall, the researchers’ findings support the concept that violence can lead to pregnancy and to subsequent termination of pregnancy, and that there may be a repetitive cycle of abuse and pregnancy.”
Though some women are pressured to abort, others have abortions without telling their partner. But since repeat abortions are even more highly associated with IPV, the abortion doesn’t solve the problem, but perpetuates it. In the U.S., about half of all abortions are repeat abortions; this is similar in many countries.
Screening for violence and coercion during pregnancy and offering resources helps women stop the violence without feeling that she must end of the pregnancy. The study of 74 studies stated that women are rarely screened for violence during pregnancy, but that women say they would welcome this.
Rachel MacNair and Martha Shuping at Students for Life table, January 2018.
Intimate Partner Homicide
Homicide is a leading cause of death during pregnancy. (See articles listed below). In the majority of cases, the murderer is the woman’s intimate partner.
One example is Niasha Delain, who was stabbed to death on Oct. 25, 2008, the day her son Aidan was due to be born. The child’s father, Derrick Redd, was convicted of the murder. He told police he was angry with Delain because she refused to have an abortion. (see stories on the arrest and conviction).
Another example is Tiffany Gillespie, who was killed, along with her unborn child, by Aaron Fitzpatrick. He killed her because of the pregnancy and was convicted of first-degree murder of Gillespie, and third-degree murder of the unborn child (see stories on the arrest and conviction).
“Death records alone identify only a fraction” of these homicides during pregnancy. Poor data collection methods lead to underreporting.
Full articles of interest:
American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Committee on Underserved Women. (2013). ACOG committee opinion: Reproductive and sexual coercion. Committee Opinion (Number 554). Washington, DC: American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Bourassa, D., & Berube, J. (2007). The prevalence of intimate partner violence among women and teenagers seeking abortion compared with those continuing pregnancy. Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology Canada, 29, 415–23.
Chang, J., Berg, C.J., Saltzman, L.E., & Herndon, J. (2005). Homicide: A leading cause of injury deaths among pregnant and postpartum women in the United States, 1991-1999. American Journal of Public Health, 95(3), 471-477.
Cheng, D., & Horon, I.L. (2010). Intimate-partner homicide among pregnant and post-partum women. Obstetrics & Gynecology, 115(6), 1181-1186.
Coyle, C. (2016). Intimate partner violence. In R. MacNair (Ed.), Peace Psychology Perspectives on Abortion (pp. 9-15). Kansas City, MO: Feminism and Nonviolence Studies Association.
Hall, M., Chappell, L.C., Parnell, B.L., Seed, P.T., Bewley, S. (2014). Associations between Intimate Partner Violence and termination of pregnancy: A systematic review and meta-analysis. PLOS Medicine.
Horon I.L. (2005). Underreporting of maternal deaths on death certificates and the magnitude of the problem of maternal mortality. American Journal of Public Health, 95(3), 478–482.
Horon, I.L., & Cheng, D. (2005). Underreporting of pregnancy associated deaths. American Journal of Public Health, 95(11), 1879.
Horon, I.L., & Cheng, D. (2011). Effectiveness of pregnancy check boxes on death certificates in identifying pregnancy-associated mortality. Public Health Reports, 126(2), 195-200.
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For more from the book, Peace Psychology Perspectives on Abortion, see:
Excerpt – Peace Psychology Perspectives on Abortion
Excerpt — Peace Psychology Perspectives on Abortion: Wars Cause Abortion
On a similar topic, see:
Does Socially-Approved Killing Increase Criminal Homicide?
What Does It Mean to Be Inconsistent?
Julia Smucker
by Julia Smucker
CLN President John Whitehead recently put a question to fellow consistent-lifers: does it necessarily make sense to call people “inconsistent” for not fully adhering to the consistent life ethic (CLE)? After all, the reasons people give for approving of some forms of killing and disapproving of others often follow their own internally consistent logic. John provided the following examples of common distinctions made by people objecting to the CLE:
“A fetus isn’t sufficiently developed to have consciousness, so killing a fetus by abortion isn’t morally equivalent to executing or killing in war someone who has been born and is conscious.”
“Helping someone kill themselves isn’t the same as other types of killing because assisted suicide is done with the person’s consent while other forms of killing involve coercion.”
“Executing a murderer isn’t the same as abortion or assisted suicide because the murderer is genuinely guilty of a terrible crime, while those other forms of killing involve killing innocents.”
None of these arguments are consistent in opposing killing, which is what we CLE advocates often mean when referring to “consistency” as a kind of shorthand for the CLE itself. They are, however, consistent with the speakers’ stated criteria of consciousness, non-coercion, and innocence. To John’s point, then, we risk talking past those who raise specific objections to the CLE when we call people inconsistent for not adhering to principles they haven’t expressed.
On the other hand, inconsistencies do sometimes arise with life and peace principles as they are expressed. For example, in certain pro-life circles, especially Christian ones, one commonly hears phrases such as “sanctity of life” and “conception to natural death.” Sometimes these phrases are used with all the robust commitment to the CLE that they imply, but other times they’re invoked by people who vehemently defend many unnatural deaths between birth and old age. Similarly, among those who talk about principles of nonviolence in absolute terms, or about particular concern for the weak and voiceless, some truly apply these principles without exception, while others explicitly exclude vulnerable prenatal lives, even while otherwise making a point of connecting issues.
In such cases, where exceptions are made within language that wouldn’t seem to allow for exceptions, it’s not incorrect to note inconsistencies. Being strongly familiar with different milieus in which both of the above types of no-exceptions language are used, and having often used them that way myself, I’ve also heard them applied inconsistently, often enough to cause me much frustration.
I often want to say, “Do we really believe human life is sacred from conception all the way to natural death or not? If the answer is yes, why wouldn’t we protest all violent, unnatural deaths with equal fervor – and why especially would we ever cheer some of them?”
Or, “Do we really believe in absolute nonviolence or not? If we accept the termination of a human life at any stage of its existence, our opposition to violence isn’t absolute after all.”
Even when people express internally coherent reasons for opposing some forms of violence while supporting others, in practice the rationales aren’t always applied with total consistency. Someone whose primary moral criterion is innocence could logically be firmly opposed to abortion but generally favor war and the death penalty. And the same person, by the same criterion, should be gravely concerned about possible indiscriminate killing in war or wrongful executions. Even if this criterion is only applied to the unborn by virtue of their complete and unassailable innocence, it should provoke as much concern for unborn lives dismissed as “collateral damage,” miscarriages resulting from domestic abuse, or mistreatment of pregnant migrants in detention centers (whose unborn children, at least, cannot reasonably be accused of breaking any laws), as for those killed directly by abortion.
Likewise, someone concerned about coercion may be against most violence with an exception for assisted suicide, but should still be disturbed by the possibility of anyone being coerced into accepting it, and should be at least as concerned with safeguarding against abuse as with making euthanasia available. On the flip side, approval of uncoerced killing would logically allow one to be undisturbed by any suicide, yet few (thankfully) would go that far. And if consciousness or development is the criterion for a life worth sparing, this could raise serious questions about its application to those with mental impairment or developmental abnormalities.
This doesn’t mean we should assume everyone who makes exceptions to the CLE fails to follow their own reasoning to its logical conclusions. Rather, even rationales with exceptions can be used as starting points to nudge people toward less approval of violence. Perhaps requesting clarification on others’ positions in a dialogical way, and expanding on the implications of their own stated reasons for opposing specific kinds of violence, can raise questions about accepting other kinds in understandable ways.
In other words, whether or not it’s accurate to call someone’s position inconsistent (which in some cases it is, though not all), it’s probably more persuasive to start with reasoning that’s consistent with their framework.
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For more of our blog posts from Julia Smucker, see:
The Price of Violence: When Dehumanizing the Vulnerable Hurts One’s Own Causes
Amnesty International’s Blind Spot
Defining Reproductive Justice: An Encounter
The Redemptive Personalism of Saint Oscar Romero
Media Stories on Abortion Access
“Everybody Else in the World Was Dead”: Hiroshima’s Legacy
(compiled by John Whitehead)
The American atomic bombing of Hiroshima was 74 years ago today, August 6th. To mark the anniversary, we share stories from bombing survivors, in Japanese hibakusha (“bomb-affected people”).
Hibakusha Stories
Sadako Sasaki, the young girl who died of leukemia (probably caused by the atom bomb) after completing her 1,000 crane origamis, 1955
Dr. Michihiko Hachiya was at home that morning, which was “still, warm, and beautiful. Shimmering leaves, reflecting sunlight from a cloudless sky, made a pleasant contrast with shadows in my garden as I gazed absently through wide-flung doors opening to the south . . .
“Suddenly, a strong flash of light startled me—and then another. So well does one recall little things that I remember vividly how a stone lantern in the garden became brilliantly lit…
“Garden shadows disappeared. The view where a moment before all had been so bright and sunny was now dark and hazy.” (Hiroshima Diary)
Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, a widowed seamstress with three children, was in her house when “everything flashed whiter than any white she had ever seen…[T]he reflex of a mother set her in motion toward her children. She had taken a single step (the house was 1,350 yards, or three-quarters of a mile, from the center of the explosion) when something picked her up and she seemed to fly into the next room over the raised sleeping platform, pursued by parts of her house.
“Timbers fell around her as she landed…everything became dark, for she was buried…She rose up and freed herself. She heard a child cry, “Mother, help me!,” and saw her youngest—Myeko, the five-year-old—buried up to her breast and unable to move. As Mrs. Nakamura started frantically to claw her way toward the baby, she could see or hear nothing of her other children.”
Mrs. Nakamura “crawled across the debris, hauled at timbers, and flung tiles aside, in a hurried effort to free [Myeko]. Then, from what seemed to be caverns far below, she heard two small voices crying, “Taskukete! Tasukete! Help! Help!” (John Hersey, Hiroshima)
A first-grade girl tried to help her mother, who was trapped under their house’s burning wreckage:
“I was determined not to escape without my mother. But the flames were steadily spreading and my clothes were already on fire and I couldn’t stand it any longer. So screaming, ‘Mommy! Mommy!’ I ran wildly into the middle of the flames. No matter how far I went it was a sea of fire all around and there was no way to escape.
“So beside myself I jumped into our [civil defense] water tank. The sparks were falling everywhere so I put a piece of tin over my head to keep out the fire. The water in the tank was hot like a bath. Beside me there were four or five other people who were all calling someone’s name.
“While I was in the water tank everything became like a dream and sometime or other I became unconscious…
“Five days after that [I learned that] Mother had finally died just as I had left her.” (Quoted in Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb)
Mikio Inoue remembers “We were walking along the streetcar line at the foot of Hijiyama. Wherever we went we saw dead horses and bodies lying here and there. The remaining fires were giving off a lot of smoke. Not a soul was in sight. It was when I crossed Miyuki Bridge that I saw Professor Takenaka standing at the foot of the bridge. He was almost naked, wearing nothing but shorts, and he had a rice ball in his right hand. Beyond the streetcar line, the northern area was covered by red fire burning against the sky. Far away from the line, Ote-machi was also a sea of fire.
“That day Professor Takenaka had not gone to Hiroshima University and the A-bomb exploded when he was at home. He tried to rescue his wife who was trapped under a roofbeam but all his efforts were in vain. The fire was threatening him also. His wife pleaded, ‘Run away, dear!’ He was forced to desert his wife and escape from the fire….
“His naked figure, standing there before the flames with that rice ball looked to me as a symbol of the modest hope of human beings.” (from Unforgettable Fire: Pictures Drawn by Atomic Bomb Survivors)
A five-year old girl recalled that
“The whole city…was burning. Black smoke was billowing up and we could hear the sound of big things exploding…Those dreadful streets. The fires were burning. There was a strange smell all over. Blue-green balls of fire were drifting around. I had a terrible lonely feeling that everybody else in the world was dead and only we were still alive.” (Quoted in Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb)
Yasuko Yamagata remembers “[The morning after the bombing] I started from school toward the ruins of my house in Nobori-cho. I passed by Hijiyama. There were few people to be seen in the scorched field. I saw for the first time a pile of burned bodies in a water tank by the entrance to the broadcasting station. Then I was suddenly frightened by a terrible sight on the street… There was a charred body of a woman standing frozen in a running posture with one leg lifted and her baby tightly clutched in her arms. Who on earth could she be?” (from Unforgettable Fire)
More hibakusha stories are available online.
Hiroshima’s Legacy
People have drawn notable lessons from the Hiroshima bombing and the additional nuclear bombing of Nagasaki on August 9th:
“Reference was made to my agreeing that abortion is taking a human life, which it is. However, let us remember that war is also legalized killing, that the pilot that dropped the atom bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima killed human life. He got medals for it. We bless our troops when they go into battle to kill human beings, so that the taking of human life…is not a strange behavior in a society.” (Dr. Frank Behrend, whose practice included abortions).
“Presidents, members of Congress, and other leaders have made life or death decisions that resulted in thousands of deaths. Some of these decisions – such as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – are justified by many Americans, even if many deaths occurred…Somehow we can tolerate our leaders making life or death decisions affecting many lives when they are faced with difficult situations such as international aggression. We find understanding and empathy for them if they make a mistake – even if their decision brings death to other human beings, yet we don’t want to let a woman make a decision affecting only her own life and the life within her.” (Beverly Wildung Harrison, Christian ethics professor, Union Theological Seminary)
“How do we know our own identity? By limits; by boundaries; by law; by order. And I think we lost all of these at 8:15 in the morning August the 6th 1945 when we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. That bomb blotted out boundaries of life and death, civilian and the military; and trust among nations. And so abortion from that point on is defended on the ground that one may do whatever he pleases.” (Archbishop Fulton Sheen, “The Approach of Midnight”)
“[The atomic bombing’s] proponents even now justify it primarily . . . not by denying the intention of killing the innocent, but by reference to casualties prevented, a consequentialist justification. . . . [thus passing over] the subsequent history of our nation, a history that includes further acts of indiscriminate killing during the Vietnam War, a standing resolution to destroy the Soviet Union if it were first to attack us with nuclear weapons, and the eventual adoption by the nation in its domestic affairs of death as a solution to be embraced for its consequences—before birth, as in abortion or human embryo destructive research—or at the end of life, in [Physician-Assisted Suicide] and euthanasia. These are, sadly, natural choices for a country swayed by consequentialist justifications; the way to those choices was paved by the literally catastrophic choice to destroy Japanese cities (as before them, German cities) for the sake of military gain.” (Christopher O. Tollefson, “On the Dangers of Thanking God for the Atomic Bomb”)
“I was sitting in the wrong end of a police wagon the first time I questioned nuclear weapons . . .
“We had been protesting abortion. I was thinking about nuclear weapons because a couple of those in the bus were peace activists who had long rap sheets from years of anti-war protests. I, on the other hand, was a Republican-voting, independent Baptist church-attending, conservative-leaning, law-abiding (well, until now) kind of Christian. I was awed—and grateful—that these peaceniks would join the likes of me in common cause against another kind of violence. My new friends adhered to the ‘seamless garment’ philosophy, also called the consistent life ethic, one committed to the protection of all human life, whether from war, poverty, racism, capital punishment, euthanasia, or abortion.” (Karen Swallow Prior, “Nukes and the Pro-Life Christian”)
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For more from John Whitehead on similar topics, see:
Rejecting Mass Murder: Looking Back on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The Wages of War: How Abortion Came to Japan
See Karen Swallow Prior’s article in our blog, with a link to the full article:
Nukes and the Pro-Life Christian: A Conservative Takes a Second Look at the Morality of Nuclear Weapons
Activists, Beware: Burnout is a Very Real Danger
by Rachel MacNair
Part 2 of 2 posts responding to Ward Ricker’s essay, “Prolife – Not.” Here’s Part 1.
Ward Ricker’s main point is: haven’t pro-lifers been ineffective because we’ve sent mixed messages? Mainly, we’re proclaiming an abortion to be the murder of an innocent child, and yet our behavior shows we’re not taking it that seriously. We’d drop everything to pull people we can see out of a burning building, after all. So why are we so cheerful and nice about it, when at the same time, we’re asserting this is mass slaughter?
Philosophy: Our Musings
I copy here comments responding to Ward’s point from other members of the Consistent Life Network board of directors and advisory board:
Carol Crossed:
I believe Ward’s words are insightful. I recall when a bunch of 40+ were arrested at the Pentagon with Daniel Berrigan in 1995 on the 50th anniversary of Hiroshima Nagasaki. We were on this bus being taken away to the detention center and we were chatting and laughing. This woman stood up and said something to the effect that can we not be reflective? Do we really treat this as a picnic outing? The bus fell silent. After a few minutes, Berrigan said in his deep slow way, well, she has a point. Are we doing this because we want to feel good, or are we doing this because we have just witnessed evil?
Richard Stith:
. . . If your social view is in general perceived to be that of the Establishment or at least be winning, you can be as angry and mean and hateful as you like and you won’t suffer for it. But if your social movement is perceived to be non-Establishment or even to be losing ground, you have to be extra-extra nice in order to be heard. That is why most anti-slavery people in the north were not fire-breathing abolitionists. They couldn’t show rightful outrage against slavery and still be respectable. . . .
The bottom line strategically and tactically for us is this: We should never neglect to state and show the full horror of abortion while at the same time being hopeful and friendly. That’s tough to do. So we should be tolerant of fellow pro-lifers who err in one direction or the other.
Lisa Stiller:
I’m having trouble with this whole discussion, as it’s like saying you have given up on opposing war because protestors aren’t angry enough. Or given up opposing the death penalty because opponents are too calm.
If you don’t oppose violence because you don’t like the way people are opposing it, you really don’t oppose violence. It’s about the concept and morality of opposing killing. Nothing else.
Philosophy: My Musings
My first reaction is that I would in fact drop everything and focus on a woman who was considering an abortion, if I saw it as possible I could prevent it. Sidewalk advocates, of course, put themselves deliberately in that situation all the time. Yet the last-ditch effort when an abortion process is already in motion isn’t as good as getting there long in advance, so the woman never considers abortion or so that she tells those people trying to pressure her into one to quit bugging her. So all the nonviolent and honest actions of the entire pro-life movement are needed. But those are all long-term, constant, steady – not an immediate emergency.
I would make a comparison to how the media extensively covers mass shootings, which only happen now and then. Yet currently many times as many people will have been killed in Yemen that same day. And every day. There’s a war there. Wars don’t get the day-to-day coverage that an isolated incident does. When something that would be an emergency if it happened only once becomes commonplace, then opposing it becomes part of your lifestyle.
And there’s never been a time in history when there weren’t massive numbers of killings. Feticide and infanticide have been common in most places throughout history, as have wars, executions, and lynchings, to name a few. Anyone in any historical period who cared about people not getting killed has always had to include that opposition as part of her or his lifestyle.
Which leads us to what happens when opposing killing must be a life-long commitment.
Psychology: Burnout
Burnout has three components:
Emotional exhaustion — feeling overwhelmed by emotional demands. Ward’s argument that we should treat the constant killing as a constant emergency is bound to provoke this.
Depersonalization — development of a detached, callous response. So, as an example, when a client complained about not having Christmas presents for her children, the social worker snapped at her to go shoplift something – a markedly unhelpful response, and a sign of burnout. And Ward similarly snaps at fellow pro-lifers. He makes valid points and illustrates them with pertinent experiences, but we’ve all had those frustrations. As I said in Part 1, all social movements have the problem of being less effective than they could be, because they’re run by human beings. When the response isn’t to try to improve that problem but to drop out of the movement, that’s a sign of burnout.
Feeling of reduced personal accomplishment —and reduced social movement accomplishment. Given the high stakes, the sense that we’re just not getting anywhere is a sign of burnout.
What I see is that Ward has offered a recipe for burnout, and then unsurprisingly shows that he’s suffering from it.
Ward, you haven’t asked my advice, but this I offer anyway: you need a good long break, which you should regard not as stopping work on the movement but replenishing yourself for the long haul.
Then, when ready to get back in, follow the advice for everyone below. I think you’d be especially well equipped to address your concern that the balance of atheists in the pro-life movement is insufficient. Atheists are obviously better suited to appeal to other atheists than non-atheists are.
For Everyone: Avoiding and Coping with Burnout
These are the basics, as those studying the problem (mainly, Christina Maslach) have figured out:
1. Work smarter, not harder. As when going uphill, it’s better to shift gears than to use more gas.
a. Set specific, realistic steps.
When a step is done, one can see that progress has been made. The final goal may be years, decades, or perhaps centuries away. Define accomplishments in concrete terms. Have daily, weekly, or monthly goals that can reasonably be done in that time frame.
b. Do the same thing differently.
Avoid ruts. Find what can be varied, and experiment with what’s effective. The change may improve effectiveness, and can be abandoned if not.
c. Take breaks and rest periods.
In addition to needed relaxation, this gives a chance to get some mental distance to get some perspective, to see things more coolly.
d. Take a “downshift.”
Not a full break, but doing other aspects of the work. Do paperwork or read; organize files; do some cleaning.
2. Caring for Oneself. The best way to help others is to be in good shape.
a. Accentuate the positive.
Finding the good makes the bad less overwhelming.
b. Small talk is important.
It may be irrelevant, but helps people manage.
c. Ask for positive feedback.
d. Know yourself.
Be in tune to inner feelings.
e. Use relaxation techniques.
The best to use is the one that fits you well.
f. Use humor.
It helps you keep perspective and lifts spirits.
Yet all this is exactly what goes against Ward’s point: how can we be humorous when babies are being killed? How can we relax and engage in small talk? What positive things don’t pale in comparison to the horror of it all? Doesn’t that communicate that we don’t really believe what we say when we say it’s massive slaughter?
But the results are in: those of us who use these techniques to keep ourselves sane are still working, and Ward has dropped out. The very fact that he feels the need to drop out shows the inadvisability of his approach.
Burnout is something all activists on every issue need to be aware of. We need to take care of ourselves – not for selfish reasons, but because it makes us more effective. We’re in it for the long haul.