A Friendly Approach
by Richard Stith
I think we should be careful to be positive and praise all the folks who support one of our key issues, while still gently encouraging them to broaden their opposition to violence.
Here’s an example of how I’ve been trying to apply this approach locally. A theater here in town is putting on Keely and Du, a 1993 play considered by pretty much all the reviewers as pro-abortion (an abortion-seeking rape victim, Keely, is kidnapped, handcuffed to a bed for 5 months, and lectured by a male Fundamentalist [and to a lesser degree by her female nurse, Du] on the nature and goodness of life and motherhood). The director even invited the pro-abortion National Organization for Women (NOW) to the first performance, let them distribute literature, and made NOW representatives guests of honor at the opening night party afterwards.
We considered demanding that the theater be consistent and let us distribute pro-life materials (a picture of a 16-week baby, a list of gestational milestones, and the “you are strong” flyer with sources of help that we hand out in sidewalk counseling). Instead, however, we just asked them if we could come into the theater from the bitter cold with our stuff. They said “yes.”
Leafletting at the play, left to right:
Rosemarie Stith, Pat Tuttle, Pat Garcher, and Mike Garcher
Later I wrote the following review, which they posted on their Facebook page:
Hey Mike,
Here is that blurb you asked me to put together to try to draw more people to the play.
Feel free to use it any way you wish.
Since I am known among local pro-lifers for my strong anti-abortion views and activism,
I hope my endorsement will attract those folks in particular.
Best of luck. You guys have just done a terrific job with this play.
Richard
PS Thanks again for letting us distribute our pro-life literature to those coming in the door. I do think it provides a context which allows them to appreciate the drama to an even greater extent.
Clip of Keely & Du from YouTube
NOW has celebrated Keely and Du and pro-lifers have opposed it, I suppose because the playwright presents the chief anti-abortionist as a domineering lawbreaker. But at the same time the arguments against abortion are candidly presented, so I think that disagreeable personage was needed for balance. As a law teacher here in Valpo for over 40 years, I know that you can’t set up a debate with all the arguments on one side. Both debate and drama require tension in order to be powerful, which this play certainly is.
Moreover, underneath the clash over life and maternity, something beautiful slowly emerges: female solidarity in the face of patriarchal oppression. This emerging solidarity doesn’t take sides on abortion. Instead, it gives everyone something hopeful to hold on to at the end of the play.
Protests by the NOW folks and others have now driven us back outside for the final three performances, but I think we’ve made some good inroads into the minds of the staff and of many patrons. The green-haired woman director made a special point of shaking my hand and expressing her deep appreciation for my letter.
I think a scolding approach would have been far less successful.
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For more of our posts by Richard Stith, see:
Equal Concern for Each Human Being, Not for Each Human Issue
Open Letter to Fellow Human Rights Activists
When “Choice” Itself Hurts the Quality of Life
For more posts on similar themes, see:
Defining Reproductive Justice: An Encounter
Progressive Prolifers at the Progressive Magazine 100th Anniversary Celebration
Human Rights & the Right to Life: Reconsidering Conventional Human Rights Activism
by John Whitehead
Respecting people’s human rights should go hand in hand with upholding the consistent life ethic. The concept of “human rights” broadly means those conditions that people can legitimately claim as necessary to living a decent human life. Life itself is one of these conditions, and many human rights documents recognize a right to life. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person” (Article 3).
In principle, the wide-ranging respect for life practiced by advocates of the consistent life ethic should be perfectly compatible with human rights activism. In practice, however, contemporary human rights activism can often promote the destruction of life that consistent life ethic advocates work to stop. We should recognize this conflict and change how we look at the practice of human rights advocacy today.
The UN Human Rights Committee & The Right to Life
Last fall, we witnessed a significant example of how human rights activism, as conventionally practiced, can promote killing. The United Nations Human Rights Committee issued, on October 30, a lengthy “comment” on how to interpret Article 6—which deals with the right to life—of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 6 states that “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” While abortion is not explicitly mentioned, the article, which permits the death penalty under highly qualified circumstances, says that “Sentence of death…shall not be carried out on pregnant women.”
The recent comment interpreting Article 6 contained some very positive applications of the right to life: for example, it identifies the maintenance of nuclear weapons as contrary to that right. Nevertheless, the comment also adopted the grotesque position that respecting the Covenant requires securing access to abortion. It says that states party to the Covenant must not violate “the right to life of a pregnant woman or girl, or her other rights under the Covenant.” The comment then elaborates:
Thus, restrictions on the ability of women or girls to seek abortion must not, inter alia, jeopardize their lives, subject them to physical or mental pain or suffering which violates article 7 [article 7 of the Covenant being “prohibition of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,”] discriminate against them or arbitrarily interfere with their privacy.
States parties must provide safe, legal and effective access to abortion where the life and health of the pregnant woman or girl is at risk, or where carrying a pregnancy to term would cause the pregnant woman or girl substantial pain or suffering, most notably where the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or is not viable…
States parties should not introduce new barriers and should remove existing barriers that deny effective access by women and girls to safe and legal abortion, including barriers caused as a result of the exercise of conscientious objection by individual medical providers.
The comment also urges states to “prevent the stigmatization of women and girls seeking abortion.”
Let’s consider the full meaning and significance of this passage: the UN Human Rights Committee’s comment is affirming abortion as morally acceptable. Nowhere is any right to life of the unborn child acknowledged. The words “unborn,” “preborn,” “baby,” and even “fetus” don’t appear in the comment (the comment does at least condemn infanticide and reaffirm the prohibition on executing pregnant women). Justifying access to abortion on the grounds of “mental pain or suffering” or “substantial pain or suffering” is about as subjective and elastic as such rationales get. The principle could be used to justify abortion for essentially any reason. Moreover, the passage totally ignores how much pain and suffering to women abortion can cause, if they are pressured or coerced into abortion or later regret their decision. The condemnation of “stigmatization” suggests abortion should be not merely legal but socially acceptable. Finally, the comment asserts that not even respect for doctors’ conscientious objections to abortion should stand in the way of abortion access. In short, the passage cannot be explained away as, say, a purely pragmatic effort to avoid women dying from illegal, unsafe abortions. The passage supports abortion.
The comment’s treatment of assisted suicide is somewhat better, as it merely accepts the existence of this practice without endorsing it. After encouraging suicide prevention, especially among “vulnerable” people, the comment states
States parties that allow medical professionals to provide medical treatment or the medical means in order to facilitate the termination of life of afflicted adults, such as the terminally ill, who experience severe physical or mental pain and suffering and wish to die with dignity, must ensure the existence of robust legal and institutional safeguards to verify that medical professionals are complying with the free, informed, explicit and, unambiguous decision of their patients, with a view to protecting patients from pressure and abuse.
Such a position still falls well short of the necessary condemnation of euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Reconsidering Conventional Notions
The Human Rights Committee’s emphatic support of abortion and tacit support of assisted suicide is unusual in how blatantly it inverts the right to life the Committee is supposedly interpreting. In general, however, support of such killing by groups that claim to be protecting human rights is sadly common. Many mainstream human-rights-advocacy organizations have come to advocate for abortion access. The Consistent Life Network has recorded how Amnesty International gave up its prior position of neutrality on abortion and switched to supporting abortion access. Amnesty was even involved in the—tragically successful—campaign to legalize abortion in Ireland. Human Rights Watch and the aid organization Doctors without Borders have taken similar positions.
This giant moral blind spot of human rights advocacy groups is even more striking when one considers that many nations who would be judged as having bad records on human rights (as conventionally understood) are often opposed to abortion or assisted suicide.
Saudi Arabia, for example, is justly condemned for its extraordinary repression of its citizens, executing people for a wide variety offenses. Nevertheless, the Saudi Arabian legal code shows greater respect for the unborn than those of many western democracies or many human rights groups’ ideologies. Abortion is illegal in Saudi Arabia, with exceptions made for the life or physical health of the mother. Egypt, which also has a bad human rights record, goes even further, allowing abortion only to save the mother’s life. Iran, which has the dubious distinction of being one the leading executioners, also legally restricts abortion, allowing it only to save the mother’s life or in cases of fetal impairment. Pro-life activists might criticize such laws on various grounds—the Iranian exception for fetal impairment seems notably ableist, for example—but these laws nevertheless reflect greater concern for protecting unborn humans than the legal interpretations of a UN committee dedicated to championing human rights.
Consider also the example of China, which is rightly reviled by human rights activists and pro-life activists alike for its repressive policies, especially its coercive, abortion-promoting population control. Even China, however, bans suicide, including assisted suicide and euthanasia. In this respect, even one of the world’s most notorious human rights offenders protects lives that the UN Human Rights Committee and many democratic western nations that might endorse conventional human rights activism, such as the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, or parts of the United States, don’t.
My point, I hasten to add, is not that we shouldn’t criticize the human rights records of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, China, or similar nations—we clearly should. As I write this, the Saudi government continues to cause death and suffering both at home and abroad through its war in Yemen. China is currently carrying out a brutal crackdown on its Uighur ethnic minority. We shouldn’t support the flawed, compromised understanding of conventional human rights groups or the no-less flawed understanding of these repressive states. The goal should be laws and public policies that respect lives of all, from conception to natural death. Consistent life ethic advocates should study the examples of countries such as the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Malta, which ban abortion and the death penalty and do not allow assisted suicide.
We should, however, recognize how flawed the conception of “human rights” held by international agencies and NGOs and many western democratic nations is. We should direct our critique equally to these groups and nations and those repressive ideologies and nations that violate human rights as conventionally understood.
Consistent life ethic advocates need to reject the tendency to view contemporary liberal-democratic views of human rights, as embodied by certain western nations and groups such as Amnesty International or the UN Human Rights Committee, as a model that other nations and groups must follow. Replacing the violent repression of a Saudi Arabia or China with the violent permissiveness of the United States or the Netherlands isn’t progress. Let’s work to realize a complete, consistently pro-life understanding of human rights across all nations, ideologies, and cultures.
Roe Anniversary Protests, 2019
by several people who were there
For a mainstream press article on our presence at the March for Life, see “What It’s Like for Secular, Liberal Pro-lifers at the March for Life” in The Atlantic. The Washington Post also included some information from our supporters in their coverage.
March for Life Chicago, January 13
Rachel MacNair & son leafleted about the Grassroots Defunding campaign.
Richard Stith:
Rosemarie (my wife) and I, wearing pro-life T-shirts, wandered among the “pro-choice” counter-protesters. Between their shouts, we sincerely expressed to many, “We’re glad you got to get born.” One responded, “So am I,” to which I said, “Great. That means you’re a little bit pro-life!” Another said nothing at first, but then followed us to say, “I wish you weren’t!”
When we found two folks holding a banner with the words “Democratic Socialists of America,” I told them “I’m a socialist, too.” They asked “Are you for a woman’s right to choose?” I answered “No. That’s individualism. It turns the next generation into private property.” They looked taken aback for a moment, but then they resumed shouting.
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Expo, January 17-18
Rachel MacNair:
We tried a new technique on the Grassroots Defunding campaign – we had an accordion-file with flyers for each individual state. So when people came by our table, we’d ask them what state they’re from, and then give them info from their own state with a summary of the Planned Parenthood centers in their state and the alternatives (on the actual medical services, the non-abortion things PP does) for each PP center nearby. That turned out to be a remarkably successful approach, as being more specific that way was way better than just a general flyer. Yet people definitely understood the general point: PP has the money, and that makes them stronger in the short term – but we as the pro-life movement have the grassroots, and that makes us stronger in the long term. It was fun to see the recognition in people’s eyes as something common to nonviolence theory and peace studies made perfect sense in their own experience.
We also had signs from member group New Wave Feminists for them to take, and those went like hotcakes, so more of the signs held at the March had to do with prolife feminism. We also ran out of our buttons saying “No Abortion, No Death Penalty, No War” – it was so gratifying to see so many people eager to take those, free if they promised to wear them.
D.C. Planned Parenthood Protest, January 17
John Whitehead:
Some of the weekend’s most memorable aspects were small, unexpected moments of human connection. One of these came paradoxically during the tensest episode: a vigil outside the Washington, DC, Planned Parenthood, where pro-life protestors stood a few feet from police and clinic escorts (I was there leafleting for Grassroots Defunding). Father Frank Pavone, a Consistent Life Network endorser, spoke at the vigil. During his remarks, he noted that one of the attendees was the journalist Robin Marty, who is pro-choice. Pavone thanked Marty for writing about abortion and pro-lifers in a fair-minded, respectful way. To witness this moment, in which people on opposite sides of such a divisive, emotionally charged issue could recognize each other’s humanity, was touching.
Democrats for Life Breakfast, January 18
While the Consistent Life Network is a non-partisan group, Democrats for Life is a member group. Their breakfast speaker line-up included Katrina Jackson, Louisiana state representative, who was also a major speaker at the rally for the March for Life. Our supporters, Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa and CJ Williams, also spoke, covering the consistent life ethic.
Top left: Katrina Jackson. Top right: Kristen Day introduces Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa. Bottom: CJ Williams speaks.
Sarah Terzo:
The speakers all emphasized the importance of social programs to help women facing unplanned pregnancies. The director of a crisis pregnancy center emphasized how many of the women who come to the center are referred to government safety net programs, such as Medicaid and housing vouchers. In a question-and-answer period, speakers and attendees lamented the fact that housing is so hard for single mothers to afford and there are so few programs to help them. The fact that Republican politicians cut social programs that are lifelines for women with crisis pregnancies is a huge detriment to the pro-life movement and the cause of helping women in crisis. Herndon-De La Rosa spoke about her own political awakening after she had her son at age 16. She realized that she was able to give birth to her son and parent with the help of her family, but many other young pregnant teens are not so lucky. They need, she realized, social programs to help them when their parents abandon them or simply don’t have the resources to help them. Because of this, she thinks politics will not be the solution to the abortion debate. Instead, pro-lifers have to change hearts and minds to make abortion unthinkable.
Rehumanize Rally
& March for Life, January 18
Top left: Aimee Murphy on the March, dancing as usual; her shirt has a picture of a uterus and says “Weapon-Free Zone.” Top right: We gather for the consistent-life rally.
Bottom: group photo before marching. Left to right, back: Rosemarie and Richard Stith, Bill Samuel, Tom Taylor. Tony Masalonis. Front: Sarah Terzo, John Whitehead, Rachel MacNair
Rachel MacNair:
Signs were creative, as is common in large demonstrations, but it occurred to me afterward that I don’t recall seeing any partisan political sentiments during all that time. There were a couple of vague things about voting pro-life, with no specifics of who that meant. Signs were mainly on the issue, with some identifying the group that was marching, and some that were certainly religious.
The slogan “making babies great again” was not uncommon; it’s not one I would wear because of what it’s based on. But I will say that my pro-abortion anti-Republican father burst out laughing when I told him about it (as did I when I first saw it). At least it’s a sensible sentiment on its own.
John Whitehead:
Probably the best moment for me came during the March when I was assisting Consistent Life Board member Sarah Terzo, who uses a wheelchair. We came to a spot on the sidewalk that was filled not only with police officers but fatigues-wearing soldiers, presumably all there for crowd control. I asked them if we could pass; they were very friendly and obliged by parting to let us through. It was a tiny moment yet seemed symbolically apt: a crowd of men with guns moved out of the way in response to mere words. Could there be a better representation of what we seek to accomplish?
Sarah Terzo:
A pre-March meet up, sponsored by member group Rehumanize International emphasized the theme of the march itself, “Pro-Life Is Pro-Science” with multiple speakers. Being surrounded by so many consistent life ethic supporters, both experienced older supporters as well as vibrant, enthusiastic young people, was a huge mental and emotional boost to me. An article in The Atlantic said that there were over 60 people at the meet up. The coverage was quite positive and it was a great way to kick off the March.
A moment that inspired me at the March itself was when Consistent Life president John Whitehead and I left the main flow of marchers and headed towards the Southeast Neighborhood Library where Consistent Life sponsored a discussion after the March. From a side street, we could see the March go by. We watched as a huge crowd of pro-lifers, seeming to have no end, walked down the street. As with past marches, it was incredibly inspiring to see the massive number of people who turned out. I left the March feeling energized and enthusiastic for the pro-life movement’s future.
Post-March Meet-up, January 18
Bill Samuel:
The group who gathered for a wide-ranging discussion of consistent life ethic issues after the March kept growing as people finished the March and were able to come over to our location. The groups with the most representation were the Consistent Life Network, the American Solidarity Party, and the University of Maryland Baltimore County Students for Life. After the discussion, we all went out for dinner together at a nearby taco place.
Student for Life Conference, January 19
Rachel MacNair (seated) talking to students about the Grassroots Defunding campaign for finding alternatives to Planned Parenthood
John Whitehead:
Another memorable moment came during the Students for Life of America Conference, where Consistent Life had a table. One attendee knew Consistent Life from Facebook. She confided to me that as a “pro-life pacifist” she often felt in the minority and was glad to find like-minded people.
O’Connor Conference, January 19
Speakers on pro-life feminism included our supporters Serrin Foster, Aimee Murphy, and Herb Geraghty. Speaking from the Catholic Mobilizing Network about the criminal justice system and restorative justice, including opposition to the death penalty, were Emma Tacke and Caitlin Morneau.
Women’s March, January 19
Ross Bones-Valentin, Feminists Choosing Life of New York / New York City Regional Director:
Against all odds, our presence didn’t go unnoticed at the Women’s March. A small but determined group of pro-life feminists walked together holding signs in support of life and women. To our surprise, several women came to us with an uplifting “I’m glad you’re here,” and others even asked to take pictures of us. There were cameras, chanting, banners, music and an atmosphere of empowerment and hunger for change.
In the middle of the crowd, we had a very pleasant conversation with a “pro-choice” ob-gyn doctor who was collecting signatures in favor of an Equal Rights Amendment. She expressed the reasoning behind her support for legalized abortion. The doctor claimed “women will die” if left with no choice but to go to illegal abortion clinics. In response, we explained that legalized abortion “addresses” the wrong problem. Instead, we discussed the importance of advocating for all women to have better healthcare and socioeconomic opportunities. Opportunities that free women from confronting situations where abortion appears like the apparent, sensible choice. In the end, we all agreed that feminists need to promote a culture which acknowledges the value and dignity of women; a change that would ultimately make unplanned, ’inconvenient’ pregnancies a thing of the past.
With peace and conviction, we marched. And next year, we’ll be back.
Left: Michele Sterlace-Accorsi. Right: Ross Bones-Valentin
Will for Life – Double Down
by Tony Masalonis and Rachel MacNair
This is an updated and expanded version of an article published in Peace and Life Connections on April 25, 2014.
Euthanasia and the death penalty can be connected by taking a stand against both in your personal life. Opponents of these forms of killing have developed documents that anyone can use to assert that they don’t want to be killed by “medical intervention” or medical neglect, nor have anyone be executed in the event they’re killed by criminal homicide.
The National Right to Life committee (NRLC) has put in the great amount of homework needed to create “Will to Live” documents for the United States. These are alternative versions of standard “living wills” that unlike most of those documents, explicitly indicate a desire not to be euthanized. NRLC presents reasons to take this approach, and downloadable documents for each state in the United States that take into account the differing state-by-state laws. People in other countries should also find this information useful in crafting their own documents that work with the laws of their own nation. The documents are designed to have legal status and to provide real protection to prevent anyone opposed to euthanasia, either in general or for him/herself, from falling victim to this form of homicide.
To stand against the death penalty in a personal way, you can sign the “Declaration of Life”. Originally drafted by the Cherish Life Circle (as shown in this New York Times article), a group founded by a member of the Sisters of Mercy, the Declaration says, “I hereby declare that should I die as a result of a violent crime, I request that the person or persons found guilty of homicide for my killing not be subject to or put in jeopardy of the death penalty under any circumstances, no matter how heinous their crime or how much I may have suffered.”
A number of anti-death penalty groups are promoting the Declaration and have made it available for downloading or copying. These include Unitarian Universalists for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and the makers of the film Where There is Darkness, As can be seen on the last link, the filmmakers are also collecting names of folks who have signed the declaration. Their movie chronicles the true story of Fr. Rene Robert, who signed the Declaration and who years later was murdered. The document was instrumental in keeping the perpetrator from being sentenced to death. Although the Declaration document doesn’t have the same legal weight as Will to Live documents, Fr. Robert’s story shows that it can influence court decisions in a life-saving way.
Naturally, we encourage readers to download/copy and sign both documents. Both authors of this post have signed appropriate versions of both of them. For an added witness to the consistent life ethic, get them notarized at the same time, and keep them together with your will and other related documents as connected “wills for life.” It might give your friendly attorney and notary public something to think about!
Another way to promote these potentially life-saving documents in a consistent-life context would be to make them available as a set at houses of worship and other gatherings of action-minded groups. If possible, have your friendly notary handy.
Though all of us who “execute” these papers hope they’ll never have to be used, they represent a creative way to witness for life and against killing, educate others, and give yourself some comfort that you might someday prevent an unjust death – maybe even your own.
Restellism Exposed: Abortion Opposed by Early Women Physicians
Excerpt from ProLife Feminism: Yesterday & Today. Introduction by Mary Krane Derr, condensed.
Dr. Charlotte Denman Lozier (1844-1870)
Charlotte Denman Lozier graduated from the homeopathic New York (City) Medical College for Women, which outraged conservatives because of its students’gender and its hygiene curriculum. As a student, Charlotte successfully protested Bellevue Hospital’s refusal of clinical privileges to women. After graduation, she joined her alma mater’s faculty, and held office in the Working Women’s Association.
Restellism Exposed
by the Staff of the Revolution
Dr. Charlotte Lozier of 323 West 34th Street, of this city was applied to last week by a man pretending to be from South Carolina, by name, Moran, as he also pretended, to procure an abortion on a very pretty young girl apparently about eighteen years old. The Dr. assured him that he had come to the wrong place for any such shameful, revolting, unnatural and unlawful purpose. She proffered to the young woman any assistance in her power to render, at the proper time, and cautioned and counseled her against the fearful act which she and her attendant (whom she called her cousin) proposed. The man becoming quite abusive, instead of appreciating and accepting the counsel in the spirit in which it was proffered, Dr. Lozier caused his arrest under the laws of New York for his inhuman proposition, and he was held to bail in a thousand dollars for appearance in court.
The [New York] World of last Sunday contained a most able and excellent letter from Dr. Lozier, in which she explains and most triumphantly vindicates her course in the very disagreeable position in which she was placed. It is certainly very gratifying and must be particularly so to Dr. Lozier, to know that her conduct in the affair is so generally approved by the press and the better portion of the public sentiment, so far as yet expressed. The following are only extracts from extended articles in the New York World and Springfield Republican relating to it:
The laws of New York make the procuring of a miscarriage a misdemeanor, punishable by imprisonment for not less than three months, nor more than a year; they define the committing of an abortion resulting in the death of either child or mother to be manslaughter in the second degree. It was this latter crime that Dr. Lozier was asked to commit, and she insists that as the commission of crime is not one of the functions of the medical profession, a person who asks a physician to commit the crime of ante-natal infanticide can be no more considered his patient than one who asks him to poison his wife. Thus Dr. Lozier makes out her case, and seems to prove conclusively that neither law nor professional honor forbids physicians handing over to the police persons who apply to them to commit murder; but that law, professional honor, moral obligation, and social duty all unite in compelling them to thus aid in the punishment of these attempts to procure the slaughter of the innocents. This being so, how does it happen that it has been left for this woman to be the first to perform this duty? The pulpit and the press for months have been ringing with declamations against the frequency of the offence of ante-natal infanticide among the most respectable classes of American society. Has there been no cause for these accusations; or do physicians generally hold opinions of their duty in this matter wholly different from those entertained and acted on by Mrs. Lozier?
And the Springfield Republican says:
A woman physician at New York, Mrs. Dr. Charlotte D. Lozier, took the very unusual step, on Saturday, of having a man and a woman, who had applied to her to assist in procuring an abortion upon the latter, arrested and committed to jail for trial, under the New York statute, which has long been practically a dead letter, but which makes the bare solicitation or advising to commit this crime a state prison offence.
The woman, whose name is Caroline Fuller, first went alone to the office of Doctress Lozier, and on stating her purpose was kindly warned of the sin and danger of such a course, and allowed to depart. But the next day she returned with her paramour, Andrew Moran of Anderson Court House, S.C., and he boldly demanded that the operation should be performed, offering to pay roundly and to shield Mrs. Lozier from any possible legal consequences, should there be a fatal termination. Upon this Mrs. Lozier promptly sent for a policeman, who arrested both Moran and Miss Fuller, though the latter was discharged when brought before the justice for examination. Moran is held for trial, having failed to bribe Mrs. Lozier not to appear against him by offering her $1,000. Moran and Miss Fuller came all the way from South Carolina to have the abortion performed, and Moran’s wife made a third in the party, though one would hardly suppose she would enjoy a trip to the metropolis under such circumstances.
May we not hope that the action of Mrs. Lozier in this case is an earnest of what may be the more general practice of physicians if called upon to commit this crime, when women have got a firmer foothold in the profession? Some bad women as well as bad men may possibly become doctors, who will do anything for money; but we are sure most women physicians will lend their influence and their aid to shield their sex from the foulest wrong committed against it. It will be a good thing for the community when more women like Mrs. Lozier belong to the profession.
—Revolution, 2 December 1869.
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For more of our posts on 19th-century activists, see:
Dickens
From A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens (1843)
Early in the novel, Ebenezer Scrooge is speaking to two men who are trying to solicit a donation to the poor. When he says he’ll donate “nothing,” they ask if he wishes to remain anonymous.
“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned [prisons and workhouses]: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.”’
“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”
“If they would rather die,”’ said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
Much later, Ebenezer Scrooge is speaking to the ghost of Christmas Present concerning Tiny Tim.
“No, no,” said Scrooge. “Oh no, kind Spirit! Say he will be spared!”
“If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race,” returned the Ghost, “will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.
“Man,” said the Ghost, ” if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child.”
From The Chimes, by Charles Dickens (1844)
Dickens wrote several Christmas novellas, not just the most famous one with Ebenezer Scrooge.
Context: Mr. Filer just heard a friend explaining how terrible marriage is to a young couple after they say they’re planning to marry. The young woman’s father is also present. “Such people as those” refers to people in poverty, three of whom are in front of him listening to him say this.
“A man may live to be as old as Methuselah,” said Mr. Filer, “and may labour all his life for the benefit of such people as those: and may heap up facts on figures, facts on figures, facts on figures, mountains high and dry; and he can no more hope to persuade ‘em that they have no right or business to be married, than he can hope to persuade ‘em that they have no earthly right or business to be born. And that we know they haven’t. We reduced it to a mathematical certainty long ago!”
Commentary
Dickens’ Christmas Carol . . . is a polemical work: Dickens was sparring with the laissez-faire capitalists whose influence in industrializing Britain sought to limit concern for the poor to running poor houses and treadmills. . . His other target was Thomas Malthus. Malthus, the intellectual granddaddy of zero population growth, had argued that population increase would inevitably lead to disaster. . . Scrooge gives voice to the elite opinion of his day when, dismissing the businessmen who come to his office seeking charitable contributions, he opines that those who would rather die than go to a poorhouse “had better do it and decrease the surplus population.”
John M. Grondelski, National Catholic Register, December 17, 2011
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For another Christmas literature commentary in our blog, see:
Wages of War, Part 2: How Forced Sterilization Came to Japan
by John Whitehead
See Part 1: The Wages of War: How Abortion Came to Japan
World War II’s devastation of Japan, and the politics of the post-war American occupation, led to the Japanese Diet [parliament] passing the Eugenic Protection Law 70 years ago, in 1948. The law legalized abortion in Japan, with millions of Japanese children being killed in womb over subsequent decades.
The law also legalized a non-lethal but still violent and eugenicist practice: forced sterilization. This aspect of post-war Japanese life confirms the connections, so familiar to defenders of life, between ableism and violence.
Before the War
As she did with the history of abortion legalization, Tiana Norgren describes the history of forced sterilization in Japan in her work Abortion before Birth Control: The Politics of Reproduction in Postwar Japan. Legal forced sterilization largely didn’t exist in Japan before the war’s end. Official government ideology favored increasing the country’s population and discouraged measures that might prevent births. Contraception and abortion were severely restricted during the 1930s and much of the 1940s.
Eugenicists made multiple attempts to pass a sterilization law during this period, partly inspired by Nazi Germany’s policy. These efforts failed in the Diet, however, in the face of opposition from people of different ideological bents. Some opposed sterilization because they favored the state’s official “Give Birth and Multiply” stance, and others opposed it because they thought limiting population would distract from redistributing resources within the society.
The eugenicists came close to victory in 1940, when the Diet passed the National Eugenics Law. The law allowed sterilization for people who had various broadly defined illnesses or disabilities and whose children were likely to have these conditions. The law also allowed people judged not of sound mind to be sterilized on the consent of their parents or spouse—and contained a general clause allowing for sterilization without “the necessary consents” if such an operation was necessary “for the public good.”
Yet this general involuntary sterilization clause was never enforced during the remaining war years. Only about 500 voluntary sterilizations were carried out during the remaining war years and immediate post-war years.
Post-War Eugenic Law
The economic hardships of the post-war years increased Japanese politicians’ interest in population control. The Eugenic Protection Law of 1948 made forced sterilization fully a reality. The law allowed for voluntary sterilization under broader conditions than the wartime legislation, and also included crucial new provisions. Under the new law, applications for sterilization could be made not only by those desiring the procedure for themselves but by physicians who found someone has certain conditions and judge “that in order to prevent hereditary transmission of the disease it is necessary, for the public good, to perform a eugenic operation.”
The conditions that could qualify someone for sterilization fell into five categories:
1) “hereditary mental illnesses”;
2) “hereditary mental deficiency”;
3) “serious hereditary psychopathic disorders”;
4) “serious hereditary physical ailments”; and
5) “extreme hereditary deformities.”
Hereditary mental illnesses were defined as schizophrenia, manic-depression, and epilepsy. Hereditary mental deficiency was defined by vague concepts such as “seriously abnormal sexual desires” and “serious criminal tendencies.” Serious hereditary physical ailments included conditions such as progressive muscular dystrophy and hereditary deafness or hearing impairment.
©ILO/Yoshihumi Ibata, Creative Commons license
The Eugenic Protection Law also had a general provision that a physician could apply to have someone with an unspecified mental illness or “deficiency” sterilized as long as the person’s spouse, parent, or other guardian consented.
A “Eugenic Protection Commission” with jurisdiction in a particular area would decide whether to grant the physician’s application to have someone sterilized. If the Commission granted the application, the person targeted for sterilization had two weeks after notification by the Commission to appeal the decision. However, an objection by the targeted person didn’t guarantee the sterilization wouldn’t be carried out.
American Reaction
The eugenic philosophy in the 1948 law bothered the American occupation authorities, several of whom voiced their concerns. Two years before the law’s passage, one occupation researcher expressed his alarm at eugenic ideas within Japan, which he claimed was “evidence of the profound hold that tribal racism still exerts over the Japanese people.”
The Americans could hardly throw stones, however: forced sterilization had been legally practiced in the United States for far longer than in Japan: in the 20th century, over 30 American states would allow forced sterilization. Over 60,000 people were forcibly sterilized in the United States between 1907 and 1964. People of color were overrepresented among the victims of this practice.
Whether because of the ambivalent American relationship with eugenics and sterilization, concern for population control, or a general desire not to interfere in Japanese politics, the American occupation authorities didn’t prevent the Eugenic Protection Law and its sterilization provisions from being adopted.
Damage Done
Thousands of forced sterilizations were carried out in Japan in the following decades, peaking in the mid-1950s. Roughly 16,500 people were subjected to such sterilizations during the years the law was in effect. Another 8,500 ill or disabled people were sterilized supposedly with their own consent, although subtle coercion may have played a role.
In one case, a 16-year-old woman working as a housekeeper was suspected of having a mental disability and was sterilized in 1963—not only without her consent, but even without her knowledge of what the operation was. When she discovered she had been sterilized, she recounts that “I went to Tokyo to see if I could get the operation reversed but I was told it wouldn’t be possible… They stole my life away.”
In another case, a 15-year-old woman, who may have suffered brain damage because of excessive anesthesia during surgery, was diagnosed with “hereditary feeble-mindedness” and forcibly sterilized in 1972. The woman’s sister-in-law commented that “When she was about 22 or 23 there was talk of marriage, but then when she said that she couldn’t have children then the person who had proposed to her said that they didn’t want to marry her.”
As draconian as the law was, doctors and officials occasionally went beyond it. Proper procedures for approving sterilizations weren’t always followed. The medical condition of the person being sterilized was sometimes falsified to fit the Eugenic Protection Law’s provisions. In an infamous 1965 case, a doctor castrated an institutionalized mentally ill boy without his parents’ permission.
Moreover, ableism could go beyond forced sterilization to forced abortion: about 60,000 disabled women might have been subjected to this practice because of the view that the disabled shouldn’t have children.
Disability Rights Victories
UN Photo/Jan Corash
Over the post-war decades, eugenics and forced sterilization provoked organized opposition from Japanese disability rights activists. These activists and feminists spoke out against the Eugenic Protection Law at United Nations conferences such the 1994 Cairo population conference and 1995 Beijing women’s conference, generating international publicity and pressure on the Japanese government.
Lawmakers set about reforming the law, consulting disability rights activists about the reform. These activists saw their efforts prevail in 1996 when the eugenic, coercive elements were finally removed from the Eugenic Protection Law—which was renamed the Maternal Protection Law.
Under the reformed law, sterilization required the consent of the person undergoing the operation and that person’s spouse, if any. The acceptable grounds for sterilization now became a threat to the mother’s life from childbearing or, if she already had multiple children, a threat to her health from child bearing. (Sterilization was also permitted if the person to be sterilized or the spouse had leprosy and was likely to pass it on to children—stigma and persecution of those with leprosy being a long-standing problem in Japan.)
Disability rights activists won a further victory later in the 1990s. Nichibo, a professional association of ob-gyns, intended to lobby for reforming the law to allow abortion in cases of “incurable and fatal” prenatal illness. Protests from disability rights groups led Nichibo to drop this idea.
Conclusion
Although the Eugenic Protection Law is now gone, the Japanese still deal with its legacy. Whether the government owes compensation to victims of forced sterilization has been the subject of recent debates and lawsuits. The woman mentioned above who was sterilized in 1972 sued the government this year, arguing that the Eugenic Protection Law violated the Japanese constitution. Other lawsuits have followed, and the Diet is currently working on a compensation package for forced sterilization victims, to be considered next year.
Whether the Eugenic Protection law will ultimately be judged to have been unconstitutional from the start remains to be seen. We can hope, however, that survivors of this injustice and disability rights activists will continue to overcome the ableism that made these injustices possible.
We should also, in studying this history, contemplate that Japan, which resisted eugenically motivated sterilization and abortion even when it was a militarist state allied with Nazi Germany, embraced it in the aftermath of wartime defeat and occupation by the United States.
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See Part 1: The Wages of War: How Abortion Came to Japan
For more of our posts relating to disability rights, see:
How Ableism Led (and Leads) to Abortion
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
This is an excerpt from ProLife Feminism: Yesterday and Today. The introduction was written by Mary Krane Derr.
Introduction
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902)
Observing her father’s upstate New York legal practice, young Elizabeth Cady Stanton resolved to overturn the laws denying women control over their economic and family lives, even their bodies. The common-law doctrine of femme couvert defined a married woman’s personhood as incorporated into
Mary Krane Derr
her husband’s and thus civilly dead. Stanton married an abolitionist merchant. Like Lucretia Mott and others, she became inspired by Mary Wollstonecraft and disaffected by the anti-slavery movement’s hypocritical failure to include women as equals. Out of their discontent came the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention. Even while raising her seven children, Stanton fought for “the Cause”—as an editor of the Revolution, a traveling lecturer, a leader of the National Woman Suffrage Association, coeditor (with Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage) of the History of Woman Suffrage (Volumes I-III), and author of the controversial Woman’s Bible.
Stanton decidedly rejected the notion that maternity was women’s only creative power and that every woman had to be a mother. She exulted in her subversive vitality throughout pregnancy and labor, particularly when she had her first daughter:
I have never felt such sacredness in carrying a child as I have in the case of this one. She is the largest and most vigorous baby I have ever had, weighing 12 lbs . . . And yet my labor was short and easy . . . What refined, delicate, genteel, civilized woman would get well in so indecently short a time? Dear me, how much cruel bondage of mind and suffering of body poor women will escape when she takes the liberty of being her own physician of both body and soul!
To women-only groups, she insisted, “We must educate our daughters that maternity is grand, and that God never cursed it, and the curse, if there be any, may be rolled off.” For this she was called a “savage,” a charge she found ridiculous; among Haudenosaunee [Iroquois], childbirth was not deemed impossibly painful and debilitating. In the hope of “rolling off the curse,” Stanton addressed many subjects considered unfit for public consideration: the unfair denial of child custody to divorced women, the limits of patriarchal religion, the desirability of family planning, the suffering that the disease model of pregnancy inflicted upon mothers, and the dire economic and social conditions that compelled so many women to resort to prostitution and to such equally “degrading” (her word) practices as abortion and infanticide. As early as 1854, Stanton publicly called for women’s right to a trial by jury of their own peers in such situations. . . .
She found it “appalling to the highest degree” that “infanticide is on the increase to an extent inconceivable” not only in cities but rural areas like Androscoggin County, Maine, where “there were four hundred murders annually produced by abortion alone . . . There must be a remedy for such a crying evil as this. But where shall it be found, at least where begin, if not in the complete enfranchisement and elevation of woman?”
Infanticide
from the Revolution, January 29, 1868.
The remarkable mortality among natural or illegitimate children is a topic agitating the Press very largely just now . . . The system of boarding them out for slow murder . . . is alarmingly on the increase among the well-to-do….It is impossible to shut our eyes to these facts . . . Where lies the remedy?
—NY Times
In the independence of woman. “Give a man a right over my subsistence,” says Alexander Hamilton, “and he has right over my whole moral being.” When the world of work is open to woman, and it becomes as respectable as it is necessary to happiness for women of the higher classes, as well as others, to have some regular and profitable employment, then will woman take her true position . . .
The strongest feeling of a true woman’s nature is her love for her child; and the startling facts in the above extract, multiplying as they are on every side, warn us that all things are inverted. Objectors cry out to us who demand our rights, and the ballot to secure them, “Do not unsex yourselves.” It is against this wholesale unsexing we wage our war.
We are living to-day under a dynasty of force; the masculine element is everywhere overpowering the feminine, and crushing women and children alike beneath its feet. Let woman assert herself in all her native purity, dignity, and strength, and end this wholesale suffering and murder of helpless children. With centuries of degradation, we have so little of true womanhood, that the world has but the faintest glimmering of what a woman is or should be.
Infanticide and Prostitution
from the Revolution, February 5, 1868.
Social Evil Statistics
The annual inspection report of . . . New York City and Brooklyn, gives the number of houses of prostitution as 523 . . .
—Sun.
Child Murder
. . . The murder of children, either before or after birth, has become so frightfully prevalent that . . . were it not for immigration the white population of the United States would actually fall off . .
—Tribune.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton with Susan B. Anthony
Scarce a day passes but some of our daily journals take note of the fearful ravages on the race, made through the crimes of Infanticide and Prostitution. For a quarter of a century, sober, thinking women have warned the nation of these thick coming dangers, and pointed to the only remedy, the education and enfranchisement of women; but men have laughed them to scorn. Let those who have made the “strong-minded” women of this generation the target for the jibes and jeers of a heedless world repent now in sackcloth and ashes, for already they suffer the retribution of their own folly at their own firesides, in their sad domestic relations. . . .
We ask our editors who pen those startling statistics to give us their views of the remedy. We believe the cause of all these abuses lies in the degradation of woman . . .
Wonder not that American women do everything in their power to avoid maternity; for, from false habits of life, dress, food, and generations of disease and abominations, it is to them a period of sickness, lassitude, disgust, agony and death.
What man would walk up to the gallows if he could avoid it? And the most hopeless aspect of this condition of things is that our Doctors of Divinity and medicine teach and believe that maternity and suffering are inseparable. So long as the Bible, through the ignorance of its expounders, makes maternity a curse, and women, through ignorance of the science of life and health find it so, we need not wonder at the multiplication of these fearful statistics. Let us no longer weep, and whine, and pray over all these abominations; but with an enlightened consciousness and religious earnestness, bring ourselves into line with God’s just, merciful, and wise laws . . .
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For similar posts, see:
Is it Too Late? 1971 Speech of Fannie Lou Hamer
Valentine Friends: Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass
To Save Humanity: What I Learned at the “Two Minutes to Midnight” Conference
by John Whitehead
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists decided earlier this year the organization’s index of probable nuclear and other dangers facing humanity. Tensions between the United States and nations such as North Korea, Russia, and China, among other factors, prompted the Bulletin to move the Doomsday Clock’s hands to two minutes to midnight—“midnight” representing apocalypse. The current status is the closest the clock has been to midnight since 1953, during one of the coldest periods of the Cold War.
The Doomsday Clock’s status, and the underlying threat of nuclear war it reflects, provided the title and motivation for the day-long conference “Two Minutes to Midnight: What We Can Do to Prevent Nuclear War,” co-sponsored by the Consistent Life Network. Held at Goucher College in Baltimore on November 17th, the conference had an array of co-sponsors (including Consistent Life member group Rehumanize International). The organizations Prevent Nuclear War-Maryland, Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Maryland Peace Action Network, as well as the Peace Studies program at Goucher, played the central role in organizing the event. The conference’s talks and workshop examined the current nuclear danger and various strategies for countering it.
I found the event a sobering experience. Conference speakers made clear how dangerous the current world situation is. Many different international flashpoints could ignite a nuclear exchange. Current political trends are towards worsening international relations and fewer controls on nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, peace activists can focus their energies on some specific steps to lessen nuclear weapons’ threat. Speakers and workshop leaders identified several initiatives for activists to pursue.
Current Dangers
The morning plenary speakers were Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, and Dr. Ira Helfand, the co-chair of the Nuclear Weapons Abolition Committee of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Their talks provided an overview of how nuclear weapons might be used and what the consequences would be. The most obvious sources of danger are the United States’ hostile relationships with Russia and North Korea.
Daryl Kimball
Kimball noted that the United States and Russia are on the verge of a major nuclear arms race. The from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which abolished a whole category of nuclear weapons. Although the United States hasn’t yet formally withdrawn from the treaty, Kimball predicted (in a later workshop) that it soon would and that the INF Treaty is now probably unsalvageable. Activists should instead focus on saving the 2010 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) that limits American and Russian nuclear arsenals. START needs to be renewed by 2021, but . If START lapses, then American and Russian nuclear weapons will be almost entirely unregulated and an uncontrolled arms race could result. Current US plans to spend upwards of $1 trillion on nuclear weapons over the next 30 years only add to the risk of an arms race.
The situation with North Korea is somewhat better, with fears of nuclear war having slightly lessened following the Singapore summit between President Trump and North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un. Kimball commented, though, that progress has stalled as both sides wait for the other to take the next step.
Ira Helfand
Helfand’s talk identified other, less-publicized threats. US-China relations are now the worst they have been in 40 years, with the two countries sparring over trade and their militaries veering toward confrontation in the South China Sea.
Further, another conflict that doesn’t directly involve the United States threatens nuclear war. India and Pakistan, which have around 300 nuclear weapons between them, have fought four wars with each other and continue to have a very tense relationship.
More general dangers, not limited to specific countries, also exist. Global climate change could stir up conflict as people compete for stressed natural resources. Nuclear terrorism is also a possibility—especially the danger of terrorists hacking into nuclear-armed nations’ command and control systems to trigger a nuclear exchange.
Helfand also described a nuclear exchange’s consequences. Despite the vivid testimonies and records from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, he emphasized that these don’t prepare us for the destructive power of contemporary nuclear weapons. Using even a relatively few nuclear weapons—in an India-Pakistan war, say—would cause worldwide climate disruption and a . Such a “limited” nuclear war would still mean the end of civilization as we know it. A full-scale nuclear world war would be beyond imagining, with 300-350 million killed in the first day and climate effects causing a new ice age.
That we have avoided such catastrophes for over 70 years is largely a matter of luck—hardly a reliable basis of humanity’s long-term survival. (The same day as the conference, Dr. Helfand published an op-ed for CNN that covered some of these same issues.)
Future Steps
The current dire situation requires action. Several different practical steps for lessening nuclear threats came up during the conference. These steps fall into three broad categories:
Lobbying lawmakers.
The US Congress can take several positive actions, some of which have already been proposed as legislation. As already noted, . Others are changing US nuclear policy (“”), preventing the president from , prohibiting the development of that are more likely to be used, or generally . The status of these measures will be updated when the new Congress, which offers some hope for constructive action, convenes in 2019. Peace activists and organizations can focus their energies on advocacy for them, through emails, phone calls, and—most effective of all—face-to-face meetings with their representatives and senators.
Defunding nuclear weapons.
Ray Acheson
During her plenary talk, Ray Acheson of Reaching Critical Will and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), described the Don’t Bank on the Bomb project. Don’t Bank on the Bomb provides information on which financial institutions do or do not invest in companies involved in nuclear weapons production. Activists can use this information to campaign for banks and pension funds to divest from nuclear weapons production. Such campaigns not only deprive nuclear weapons companies of funds but also create stigma against producing these weapons.
Raising awareness.
Despite growing dangers, anti-nuclear activism hasn’t yet achieved the necessary popular urgency and visibility. Activists need to inform people, whether through talks, movie screenings, op-eds, letters to the editor, or sharing facts through social media. A specific law, treaty, or policy proposal can serve not only as a focus for action but a springboard for talking about the larger issues involved. The new United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which ICAN played a crucial role in creating, is one example: Consistent Life has frequently held vigils outside the White House on behalf of the treaty. The policy program of the Back from the Brink campaign, to which Consistent Life and other conference co-sponsors belong, is another. Back from the Brink had a notable success in Maryland when the Baltimore city council passed a resolution endorsing its program. Peace-minded organizations can also join the Back from the Brink campaign as endorsers.
Sobering yet Encouraging
As I said, the conference was sobering, given both the extreme danger from nuclear weapons and the amount of work still to be done. Yet I also left encouraged. The urgency and clarity of the cause motivates me to do more. The present situation requires us to act on behalf of a just and noble cause: to save humanity.
Note: Video of the Two Minutes to Midnight plenary talks and some workshops are available for viewing on YouTube.
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For more of our posts on nuclear weapons, see:
Nukes and the Pro-Life Christian: A Conservative Takes a Second Look at the Morality of Nuclear Weapons / Karen Swallow Prior
Rejecting Mass Murder: Looking Back on Hiroshima and Nagasaki / John Whitehead
The Reynolds Family, the Nuclear Age and a Brave Wooden Boat / Jessica Renshaw
Gendercide: Millions of “Missing” (Dead) Women
The Gendercide Awareness Project held an art exhibit at the Parliament of the World’s Religions, November 1-7, 2018. Here are photos taken on site by the Consistent Life Network’s vice president, Rachel MacNair.
The description is “a floor-to-ceiling maze that fills almost 2,000 square feet. As visitors pass through, the density increases and the passage narrows, blocking visibility and creating an uncomfortable claustrophobic effect. . . . Arguably, gendercide is the largest atrocity the world has seen, yet few people have any idea of its scale.”
Rachel MacNair
Rachel confirms that she was in tears after going through the exhibit. She’s pictured here in a somber mood before she started to walk the maze.
These charts come from the Gendercide Awareness Project website:
