Not Panicked / Always Panicked
by Rachel MacNair
I was visiting a large Quaker Meeting for Worship in January 2025, just days into Donald Trump sending a lot of heads reeling with his initial set of executive orders and actions. We Quakers (Friends) are the type of folks especially inclined to be upset about many of those. This was expressed by some who spoke. They were worried. They were freaked out.
So here’s the message I gave:
Back in 1972, when I was 13 and 14 years old, I had a lot of angst over the American war in Vietnam. I worked hard for George McGovern for president, thinking that would help end the war. But Richard Nixon won by a landslide. The war would continue, and I was distraught.
If you had come to me the day after the election and said, “Here’s how we’re going to do it. In less than two years, he’ll resign from office in disgrace.” I would have said, “I enjoy the impishness of the idea. But let’s do be realistic.”
Friends laughed a bit at this point, knowing that’s exactly what happened. I went on to say that ever since then I haven’t worried about the trajectory of events. I’ve observed that things go off the trajectory so often. I intended to maintain my faith that over the course of time, kindness is stronger than cruelty.
I think the Trump administration is far more likely than most to come up with surprising events. It’s practically designed for it. “Being realistic” doesn’t preclude as much as it used to.
Biden
Part of why I wasn’t as freaked out as other Friends is that I had a lower opinion of the Obama-Biden-Harris set of actions. I was horrified about the re-imposition of money pushing abortion internationally. I knew several thousand babies would be killed because of that funding, along with a long list of other things those administrations did or would do to promote abortion.
But when many of my fellow Quakers understood Harris to be the “lesser evil” between the two, I think many were succumbing to our system’s fixation on discerning which of two candidates is less bad. That lends itself to minimizing what’s wrong with the one you decided on. In the case of Biden, I un-minimize a bit:
- Modernization of nuclear weapons continued, when instead eventual elimination should be the focus.
- Obama used weaponized drones in Afghanistan, bombing wedding parties, terrifying children, and giving the civilian population a constant sense of danger. See Pro-Life Means Anti-Drone in The American Conservative.
There was also ample corruption in the Afghan government that further eroded the population’s trust in it. By the time of the U.S. withdrawal, the situation had essentially been set up to be a disaster. Afghan soldiers abandoned their weapons and the Taliban re-took the country.
While the drones were striking, we pointed out that the strategy was not only astonishingly cruel but markedly stupid. The fairly predictable end result shows that. The Taliban and the corrupt officials are mainly to blame, but those were a given, and they weren’t dealt with well.
- We can blame Russia for the war in Ukraine; there would be no war if they stopped. But the Obama administration had a tepid response when Russia invaded Crimea back in 2014, at a time when non-military options for a stronger response were known to the administration. Biden’s belligerency at some times mixed with insufficient opposition at other times was a major bungling. Harris made clear she wouldn’t have changed how she approached it.
- We can blame Hamas for its horrific October 7 attack. We can blame the current Israeli government for its long-standing policies that hurt Palestinians and its response that killed thousands of children and others. But the U.S. sending weapons to Israel and otherwise tolerating the war has been dealing badly with a bad situation. Peace activists have spent the last year asserting our outrage at this.
In February 2020, Rachel adds a stone to the growing peace mosaic on the Gaza Strip wall, which can be seen at one spot by the people stuck inside, showing them support for their plight.
Most peace activists will agree with my bullet-point assessment above. But they tend to forget about all that when election time rolls around. We can’t contemplate evil so much when we’re trying to make the case that one candidate is lesser about it.
Trump
Trump is deliberately “flooding the zone” with highly objectionable policies in rapid-fire succession. As a consistent-lifer, with the criterion of which ones might get people killed, I’d currently give these ones the highest priority:
- The cut-off of humanitarian aid in U.S.A.I.D. will result in many dozen deaths at least even if the aid gets restored soon. For example, already paid-for medicines treating HIV – they can prevent pregnant women from giving the disease to their preborn children. But without it, a large portion of the children die before turning two. This is covered in The New York Times opinion piece: As Fellow Pro-Lifers, We Are Begging Marco Rubio to Save Foreign Aid.
- Immigration policy was especially cruel in the first Trump administration and bids fair to be again. Some of the cruelty will stick, and some will be inflicted and then walked back, perhaps to be inflicted again.
- Medicaid and SNAP (food assistance) are both essential services. Proposed massive cuts – especially when the purpose of the cuts is to fund more military, greater cruelty to immigrants, and tax cuts for the rich – can foreseeably be predicted to increase abortions. It will also lead to the deaths of unborn children and other people through inadequate medicine and food. See our post Social Programs to Help the Poor are Pro-life.
- There’s already been a lot of bungling on foreign policy which could be pernicious if wars result or are exacerbated. The February 28 Oval Office public shouting match between Trump, Vance, and Zelenskyy springs to mind, and that was just part of Trump using the talking points of an aggressor and war criminal. I also think of talk about clearing out Gaza for a real-estate deal, and of starting up fresh new belligerency with Panama and Greenland and Canada that weren’t even on our radar before. All these situations are volatile, so by giving specifics this paragraph will be the most quickly outdated one of this post. We can count on Trump to come up with new ones and don’t know how long he’ll stick with these.
The one area where Trump is the lesser evil is on abortion, and as I’ve explained before, I fear there will be all kinds of damage there, too. His heart isn’t really in it. He works on it for transactional reasons, and when the transactions change, so will he. This can be seen by abortion opposition being badly watered down in the Republican platform last year.
Consistent lifers who work with our fellow peace activists all the time know full well that he makes being persuasive harder.
graphic from our member group Rehumanize International
Conclusion
My feelings are that the Trump administration, while having some good points, is mainly stomach-churning. But also that the Harris administration would have been stomach-churning. We can’t get out of stomach-churning by looking at who gets elected in an only-two-options system.
But who knows what will happen? As I said before, Nixon resigning wasn’t on the table early on. Also, he did get some good things done – the Environmental Protection Agency, opening to China, etc.
Trump has said he’d like to cut the military budget in half. I don’t believe that’s a serious proposal, but I’ve never in all my life heard a U.S. President say that before. And he’d like to be the grand person who gets denuclearization talks going with Russia and China. Again, that may be part of a narcissistic delusion. But I’m not about to rain on his parade if he tries.
As I learned back in my teens, trying to predict the future by looking at current trajectories turns out to not be all that realistic.
Predicting that this president will do some admirably good things and some stunningly terrible things is a safe prediction, so long as we don’t specify which good and bad things. It’s been true of pretty much every president the U.S. has ever had.
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For more of our posts on voting and politics, see:
Trump Sabotaging the Pro-Life Movement
Political Homelessness is Better than a Wrong Political Home
Pro-Life Voting Strategy: A Problem without an Answer
How Consistent-life Advocacy Would Benefit from Ranked-Choice Voting
The Deserving and Undeserving Poor vs. the Worthy and Unworthy of Life: How Both Major Political Parties Pick and Choose Who They Help and Whom They Kill
Dorothy Day and the Consistent Life Ethic: Rejecting Conventional Political Paradigms
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For updated information on an aspect of elections we can get behind, see our project website:
Preborn Babies, Infants, and Government Programs
by Sarah Terzo
A recent study looked at food insecurity and government benefits among pregnant people in the United States. Researchers determined that 14% of their sample was “food insecure,” meaning they couldn’t afford enough to eat.
These were all people who weren’t receiving government assistance through SNAP or WIC, two programs that provide food for the poor.
Food insecurity was associated with:
- gestational diabetes,
- preeclampsia,
- preterm birth, and
- neonatal intensive care unit admission.
Gestational diabetes can threaten the lives of both mothers and babies. Prematurity can lead to infant death and disability.
Preeclampsia will kill the pregnant person if the pregnancy isn’t ended . Pro-life groups have pointed out that doctors don’t have to kill a baby directly in these cases but can induce labor rather than performing an abortion.
But if preeclampsia occurs before viability, as it often does, the baby gets a death sentence either way. Whether the child dies by dismemberment in an abortion procedure or is born and suffocates due to prematurity, she dies. And either way, it’s a horrible death.
The study didn’t directly address infant mortality, but prematurity is a risk factor both for infant death and long-term disability.
In cases where the mother was receiving SNAP or WIC, most of the effects of food insecurity were eliminated. Mothers receiving SNAP or WIC were less likely to have premature babies and less likely to develop gestational diabetes. Their babies were more likely to be healthy and not need to spend time in the NICU.
In fact, the babies of pregnant people receiving SNAP or WIC were just as healthy as those of wealthier women. Only the babies of poor women not receiving SNAP or WIC suffered higher rates of prematurity and complications.
Government assistance led to healthier children and less prematurity. Children born from mothers who have enough food to eat have a much better start in life.
This really isn’t a surprising finding.
But the U.S. House of Representatives is poised to pass a budget resolution package which includes drastically cutting SNAP. This will inevitably lead to more food insecurity, which will leave preborn babies at greater risk of prematurity and NICU stays after birth, as well as increase the prevalence of gestational diabetes. More food insecurity means more complications for pregnant people and babies.
If we are concerned about abortion, we should be concerned about this. A baby who dies in the NICU is just as dead as one killed by abortion.
All preborn babies are valuable. All babies have a right to life and a right to have the best start in life.
The children of poor mothers aren’t exempt. And the pregnant woman’s poverty is never the child’s fault.
What Will the Proposed Cuts to SNAP Mean?
Right now, Republican House members are working on a budget that seeks to cut $230 billion from SNAP.
- Lower Monthly Amounts
The average monthly SNAP benefit is already very low. It’s $129 per person per month. The proposed cuts to SNAP would make this amount even lower.
Think of the last time you went grocery shopping. Could you buy a month’s worth of groceries for yourself for $129? Could you afford to feed your family on that?
The $230 billion in cuts would make this amount even lower.
- Work Requirement
The other proposed change is a work requirement. A single mother would have to prove she is working in order to get SNAP. If she can’t, she can only collect SNAP for one month out of a year for a maximum of three years.
What single mother can afford to feed her children on $129 for an entire year?
And if she’s providing child care to her own child directly rather than paying someone else to, doesn’t that mean she’s already working, and working at something society should value greatly?
Lack of Affordable Childcare
While ideally, people should work, many single mothers can’t work because of a lack of childcare services. A mother with an infant can’t simply leave her baby home alone while she works.
As of 2018, some 51% of Americans lived in what is known as a “childcare desert.”
In childcare deserts, there is either no access to childcare facilities or the number of children is three times higher than the spaces in childcare facilities. These women can’t access childcare at all. If they aren’t lucky enough to have a friend or family member to watch their baby while they work, they cannot work.
Even in areas where childcare options are available, they are often unaffordable.
According to one government website, childcare is becoming less available and its cost is going up.
The National Database of Childcare Prices reported on childcare costs in 2,360 U.S. counties. Their report:
shows that childcare expenses are untenable for families throughout the country, and highlights the urgent need for greater federal investments, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
A full-time job at minimum wage pays roughly $15,080 a year. The average cost of childcare for an infant varies based on where one lives. But the median amount ranges from $7,461 to $15,417.
At the very least, a mother with an infant working for minimum wage would pay 49% of her income in childcare. And in some cases, the cost of childcare would exceed her yearly income, meaning that if she were to work, she would actually lose money.
Things are even more dire for a single mother who already has another child. The cost of daycare for a toddler is nearly as expensive as that for an infant. Among preschool-aged children, childcare prices per child ranged from $6,239 to $11,050.
If a woman has both an infant and a toddler, her childcare costs would range from $13,700 to $26,467 a year- impossible to pay on a minimum wage salary. Even many single mothers earning above minimum wage wouldn’t be able to afford it. Don’t forget that these mothers must also pay rent and utilities.
Difficulty Documenting Work
What if the single mother or pregnant person is working? She has to prove it through submitting paperwork.
The Office of Temporary Assistance, which administers SNAP, is very slow in processing paperwork. When I submitted my application for food stamps, it took six months for it to be processed. I survived with the help of friends and family and also contacted a food pantry. The food pantry wasn’t able to give me much help because they didn’t have enough donations to cover the needs of the community.
Sarah Terzo
At the time, I was working. I just wasn’t making enough money to afford food. SNAP administrators made it very, very difficult for me to document my income, which was a requirement to prove eligibility.
I provided my bank statements for an entire year and my tax return. They could easily have seen, from these documents, how much money I was making. But they refused to accept either of them as proof of income.
Instead, I had to contact Live Action and get them to write a letter verifying the amount of money they paid me going back six months. Whoever wrote the letter had to go to the bank, get it notarized, and mail it to me. The letter had to be on official letterhead.
This was a huge inconvenience for them, and I hated asking. They were willing to do it for me, however. They sent me the letter – and the Office of Temporary Assistance rejected it. Why? Because it wasn’t signed. They never told me it had to be signed.
I had to ask Live Action to do it all over again. Write the letter, get it notarized, and put it in the mail – this time signed. For the whole time I was on food stamps, they had to do it every year.
I was very lucky they were willing to do that for me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have gotten SNAP. How many employers would go through all that inconvenience?
(I also had to reveal to them I was collecting SNAP. That was information I would’ve preferred to keep private.)
None of that was necessary. The office had my tax return and my bank statements, which clearly showed my income.
These are the kind of hoops a pregnant or parenting woman would have to jump through to prove she is eligible to receive SNAP. The application process is bad enough. She would have to go through another whole level of paperwork.
A Brief Overview of SNAP
Many people believe that those collecting SNAP are lazy people who refuse to work. Actually, 51% of people receiving SNAP work full-time. The elderly make up 18.3% of recipients. And 28% of adults under 60 who received SNAP in 2015 were disabled. In 2019-2020, 65% of households receiving SNAP contained children.
The tiny percentage of nondisabled, non-elderly adults receiving SNAP who aren’t working full-time include those employed part-time and mothers of young children who can’t afford childcare.
Nearly everyone on SNAP who can work does work. Work requirements will only hurt the people, like caretakers, who can’t work.
What You Can Do Right Now
For those of us living in the U.S., write to your legislators and tell them not to cut SNAP benefits. This letter will also encourage them not to cut Medicaid, which provides health insurance for many poor single mothers and their children. It will only take you a few clicks of the mouse to do this through this link. Writing to your U.S. Senators would also be timely now.
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For more of our posts on governmental social services, see:
Social Programs to Help the Poor are Pro-life
SNAP Cuts? More Poverty, More Abortion
Home of the Brave? A CLE Response to City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson
The Impact of Family Caps on Abortion
Why the Hyde Amendment Helps Low-Income Women
Seeking an End to a Catastrophic War: The Ukraine War after Three Years
by John Whitehead
The Ukraine-Russia war will soon enter its fourth year. The war has become, in one sense, a relatively static conflict, with neither the Ukrainian nor Russian forces advancing dramatically and battles being fought over very small pieces of territory. However, in another sense, the war has changed significantly over time by becoming ever more costly and dangerous as it continues to claim lives, cause suffering, and escalate to greater levels of violence. The need for a ceasefire is greater than ever today.
The State of the War
Following Ukraine’s 2023 counter-offensive, the initiative in the war shifted to the Russians. From late 2023 to the present, Russian forces in eastern Ukraine have been advancing very slowly. Russia also still occupies a small part of northern Ukraine, close to the city Kharkiv. In August 2024, the Ukrainians responded to Russian advances in the east with an incursion from northern Ukraine into Russia’s Kursk region. The Russians were subsequently able to regain some territory but have not pushed the Ukrainians out of Russia altogether.
While the situation on the ground may well change, at present the war is set in a pattern reminiscent of western Europe in World War I: the two sides face each other along an over 1,000-kilometer front that shifts only marginally over time.
The War’s Toll
Precisely how many people have been killed in the war to date is unknown. Both Russia and Ukraine likely exaggerate the other side’s losses while playing down their own. A rough sense of the scale of the war’s losses can be discerned, though.
In December, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the war began in February 2022. An estimate by the Russian media website Mediazona, based on open-source data such as obituaries, placed the number of Russian soldiers killed in 2024 alone as at least 31,481. The total number of Russian military personnel killed since the war began is presumably much higher.
In January, United Nations deputy human rights chief Nada Al-Nashif reported that more than 12,300 civilians, including 650 children, have been killed in Ukraine during the war—and these numbers are likely underestimates. Civilians have been killed both close to the frontlines and far from it, with Russian bombing being a significant cause of death. Almost 7 million Ukrainians have been forced by the war to flee their country.
Ukrainian civilians are also suffering from repeated Russian attacks on their country’s energy infrastructure. Russia has attacked Ukraine’s power grid over 1,000 times since the war began and these attacks escalated in 2024. A major attack in late November 2024, for example, left millions of Ukrainians without power. The attack left the city of Kherson without electricity and the city of Zhytomyr without power or water.
Because of the assaults on its energy infrastructure, Ukraine is in a precarious position. Since the war began, Ukraine has gone from a net exporter of electricity to Europe to a net importer, and it is currently struggling to pay for these imports. In the middle of winter, Ukraine is currently unable to supply the country’s full energy needs, with residential blackouts being frequent. Household electricity was out almost 40 percent of the time in December. Continued attacks on the energy infrastructure will likely only worsen this severe deprivation.
scene of wartime devastation in Ukraine
The war has also involved the use of weapons that are not only lethal in the current conflict but have longer-term consequences. Both sides have used cluster bombs and land mines. These weapons have already caused harm—over 1,000 people in Ukraine have been killed or injured by cluster bombs since the war began—and will continue to cause harm for years, even after the war ends.
Both cluster bombs and land mines can remain active and unexploded in the ground for years, posing a continuing threat to people’s lives long after the wars that originally put them in place have ended. Because of these weapons’ long-term dangers, much of Ukraine’s land has been effectively blighted. Almost a quarter of Ukrainian land may be contaminated with explosives, including perhaps 10 percent of arable land
This contamination of land seriously damages Ukrainian agriculture, one of the country’s most important economic activities. Further, the effects of the damage to agriculture go beyond Ukraine. The disruptions wrought by the war have strained global food supplies, as both Ukraine and Russia are major grain exporters. Prior to the current war, nearly 90 percent of Ukrainian wheat exports went to food-insecure countries in Africa and Asia. With so much Ukrainian farmland contaminated by explosives that it may take decades and tens of billions of dollars to clean up, global food supplies will likely be affected for a long time even if the war ends today.
The most dangerous weapons connected to the Ukraine war, though, are ones that have not yet been used, namely nuclear weapons. Because the war has pitted nuclear-armed Russia against the nuclear-armed United States and NATO, Ukraine’s leading supporters, the threat of possible nuclear war has hung over the Ukraine conflict from the beginning.
The nuclear threat moved closer to becoming reality this past November. That month, the United States and United Kingdom gave Ukraine authorization to use long-range American- and British-made missiles to strike targets within Russia, which the Ukrainians did.
Russia responded to the Ukrainian missile strikes by striking a Ukrainian city with a longer-range missile that, although it carried conventional explosives, could be armed with a nuclear warhead. The choice of weapon was clearly meant to be a demonstration of what the Russians could potentially do to retaliate.
Seeking a Ceasefire
These extraordinary costs and dangers make ending the war imperative. US President Donald Trump has expressed an interest in trying to negotiate an end to the war and apparently has already spoken by phone to Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Zelenskyy.
We shall have to see what becomes of future negotiations. At present, though, how to end the war diplomatically is far from clear. The Institute for Peace & Diplomacy recently sponsored a symposium in which various experts offered ideas on this topic. Informed partly by that symposium, I will offer a few tentative ideas of my own.
The central challenge to negotiating an end to the war is that, because Russia is currently in a stronger position than Ukraine, Putin’s government has little incentive to withdraw from the Ukrainian territory Russia has already occupied. Fighting has manifestly not gained back this land, and negotiations are not likely to either. Nevertheless, because of how costly the war has been to Russia, Putin at least has an incentive to stop the fighting.
Given this situation, a plausible ceasefire deal would involve Ukraine withdrawing its forces from Russia’s Kursk region in return for Russian withdrawal from around Kharkiv and freezing the conflict along its present lines. The ceasefire could be followed by a gradual reduction in both Ukrainian and Russian military forces along the current frontline and the two countries’ borders, with the frontline eventually becoming an internationally monitored demilitarized zone. To provide Russia an additional incentive, this demilitarization process could be accompanied by gradual relief of international sanctions.
If the demilitarization process is successful, the United States and NATO can then provide what Russia has been seeking throughout this conflict: a written guarantee that Ukraine will not be admitted to NATO.
Such a resolution would hardly be satisfactory since it means responding to Russia’s invasion with concessions. Nevertheless, I don’t see a realistic alternative. This resolution would at least stop the killing and suffering and offer an opportunity for the Ukrainians to begin to rebuild their country.
Those of us who wish to support the Ukrainian people can consider donating to humanitarian groups working in Ukraine, such as Catholic Relief Services and Mennonite Central Committee. People can also donate to the Halo Trust, which works to clear explosives from Ukrainian land.
We should also all mourn the tremendous suffering and loss of life caused by three years of this catastrophic war.
Ukraine countryside
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For more of our posts on the war in Ukraine, see:
A Catastrophe Decades in the Making: The Russian Invasion of Ukraine
A Hidden Cost of the Ukraine War: How Russia’s Invasion Encourages the Spread of Nuclear Weapons
Looking Beyond Anti-Imperialism: A Response to Some Arguments about the Ukraine War
Not Your Pawns: A CLE Examination of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict
For more of our posts on war in general, see:
The Preferential Option for Nonviolence in Just War Theory
Gaza War: Outrageous and Foolish
A Personal Reflection on a Just War
The Civil War Conundrum, 150 Years Later
The Preferential Option for Nonviolence in Just War Theory: Opportunities for Just War & Pacifist Collaboration
by Thad Crouch
The Disagreements
At the 25th anniversary conference of the Consistent Life Network in 2012, the new, young, rising star, Aimee Murphy — of the then one-year-old Life Matters Journal — gave a speech. When it ended, a seasoned CLE activist aggressively laid into Murphy’s opposition to “aggressive war” rather than taking a pacifist position against all war.
A decade earlier, a year after the 9-11 terrorist attack and mere months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the youngest member of Pax Christi Austin (a chapter of an international Catholic non-violence organization) urged fellow members to support a presentation using Just War Ethic arguments against the invasion at an interfaith peace event. The membership adamantly opposed him, despite his arguing that it would be faster, easier, and more practical than attempting to convert pro-war Austinites into nonviolence advocates within the available time frame to mobilize them against an impending war.
Among life-long committed leaders of the CLE, debates over active nonviolence or pacifist positions vs ones allowing for wars described as just, defensive, or non-aggressive can become intensely heated. But there’s at least one important criterion of just war theory that, when applied as rigorously as intended, points to significant common ground on which pacifists and just war theorists can work together to promote nonviolence in practice.
Just War Doctrine
The Christian version of Just War doctrine began with Augustine of Hippo, a philosopher who converted to Christianity shortly after it became the Roman Empire’s official religion. Augustine saw war as a tragedy that occurred in a sinful world that, under certain circumstances, could be needed to protect life and restore order. As he pondered circumstances in which Christians might morally participate in war, he found criteria from Marcus Tullius Cicero, a first- century Roman senator and philosopher – though Augustine disagreed with Cicero’s idea that impugned honor could justify war for Christians.
The most important criterion of Just War for this discussion is:
Last Resort: To justify engaging in war, all other bloodless means to resolve the conflict must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.
The Opportunity: Just War’s Preferential Option for Nonviolence
The requirement that bloodless means must be found to be ineffective before “just war” can apply means a preferential option for nonviolence.
That means that those who don’t know about active nonviolence are unqualified to declare just war.
In order to apply and implement just war doctrine, one must understand the power of nonviolence. To effectively apply the just war theory, persons, religious bodies, and governments must have acuity with understanding, applying, and implementing the power, the effectiveness, and the limits of nonviolence. Those who equate nonviolence with being passive are unqualified to discuss just war theory.
They must also understand the limits of violence as a problem-solver.
New Knowledge of Nonviolence
Eons of history are filled with examples of nonviolence that have proven effective. For example, there’s the overthrow of British rule in India/Pakistan; the Solidarity Movement in Poland; and the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt.
Gene Sharp’s three volume set, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, 1973, lists 198 nonviolent tactics. In his 1992 book, Engaging the Powers, Walter Wink lists over ninety examples of effective nonviolent actions spanning from Before the Common Era to 1991. Peter Ackerman and Jack Duvall go into great detail about around 40 cases in A Force More Powerful.
Yet something both newer and more convincing has happened than a list of nonviolent tactics that can work with a list of successful historic nonviolent examples: a study.
In the award-winning Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, Erica Chenoweth & Maria J. Stephan go beyond listing nonviolent victories and tactics. They apply statistical analysis to 323 conflicts involving more than a thousand active participants that attempted both violent and nonviolent means to either overthrow an illegitimate dictator or oust a foreign military occupation between the years 1900 and 2006. Here are just a few of their findings:
Nonviolent campaigns were twice as effective as violent ones, with violent campaigns victorious 25% of the time and nonviolent ones 50% of the time.
- Nonviolent campaigns were eight times more likely to result in democracies five years after conflicts than armed insurrections.
- Violent campaigns are significantly more likely to relapse into civil war within 10 years than nonviolent campaigns.
Erica Chenoweth explains this in a one hour and twenty minute video.
The 21st Century New Opportunities to Apply the Old
If we marry the centuries-old Preferential Option for Nonviolence with these new statistics, then new possibilities arise:
Consider that it becomes much more difficult to show that 198 bloodless options to resolve conflicts have been exhausted or shown to be impractical or ineffective when in at least the two examples of ousting dictators or occupying armies are more likely to succeed by organized strategic campaigns of adaptable nonviolent tactics than by warfare.
Consider that any person or committee with legitimate authority to decide that nonviolent means are impractical or ineffective must now be educated in the application of effective organized strategic, adaptable, campaigns making the use of 198 nonviolent tactics before choosing violent tactics.
Consider that any persons that are entrusted with authority to possibly decide that nonviolent means have been found impractical or ineffective are now unqualified to do so if they do not possess a proven acuity to apply effective organized strategic, adaptable, nonviolent campaigns to real world conflicts.
Consider that nonviolent peace activists have new 21st Century opportunities within the Just War Preferential Option for Nonviolence to teach these tactics and strategies to Just War adherents and legitimate government authorities.
Consider that now those who want to advocate for rigorous adherence to Just War principles can learn and apply these proven nonviolent tactics and strategies to resolve more conflicts nonviolently without renouncing their option to Just War, and thus, make war rarer and rarer over time.
Consider all the conversations possible between Just War advocates and nonviolence-only advocates that can be mutually beneficial.
Consider with whom you can engage in that conversion this year.
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For more of our posts on applying nonviolence, see:
Making a Nonviolent Revolution: Review of Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know
Culture of Conscience: Would You Pay Taxes that Fund Abortions if Hyde and Helms were Repealed?
Applying Pacifist Insights to Abortion
Confronting MAID: Misleading Language
This is a companion piece to Confronting MAID: Is it Autonomy?
by Ms. Boomer-ang
Project Censored observes that on some issues, the most commonly-heard voices “distract our attention from what we really need to know” and “keep us focused on minor or misleading parts of the story,” while “the important things…continue moving forward largely free from journalistic scrutiny and public debate.” This frames crucial public issues in ways that “marginalize critical and grass roots perspectives, shield the powerful from scrutiny, and discourage the public from understanding the deeper forces that are shaping their lives.”1 Whether the writers realize it or not, this applies to much discourse related to Medical Aid in Dying (MAID). Unfortunately, the misleading language is so pervasive that even some people speaking against MAID use it without realizing it can weaken their argument. Could confronting the language help keep the idea of living until one’s body dies naturally thinkable?
- We hear that “Laws against MAID force people to go to another jurisdiction to get killed.” But what about people going to another state or country to avoid death-hastening? The most-accessible media leaves the impression that that never happens. But in 2023, when a surgeon told a Canadian woman with abdominal cancer to consider MAID, she got treatment in Baltimore. Would this have been possible if Maryland had already had MAID by then? I don’t know what the woman will do if her cancer recurs. But this story shows what people now have to do to stay alive.
- We hear that MAID adds end of life options, but doesn’t it also take options away? For example, doesn’t it allow care facilities, doctors, and insurance companies to drop alternatives to death-hastening for people in certain conditions?
Some “heroic” efforts to prolong life put so much strain on the body that an individual could live at least as long without them. But what about letting nature take its course, supplemented when needed by help keeping clean, eating, dressing, doing enjoyable activities, and sometimes breathing? Are these tossed out with the “heroic” efforts?
Additionally, doesn’t the availability of MAID change people’s conception of what is appropriate and possible?
- We hear that MAID allows doctors, family members, and friends to stay with a patient until the end. But this implies that the availability of MAID allows the above people, many of whom would have stayed with the patient until the end before, to abandon or threaten to abandon the patient, if they stay alive beyond a certain point.
- The observation that, at least initially, a disproportionate number of people submitting to MAID have been white and not poor has been used to assure us that MAID won’t threaten people for being minority and poor. Actually, it tells us more about pressures within upper-class and upwardly mobile families, communities, and identity groups. Are these groups less likely to tolerate a member in certain physical conditions staying alive? Identity group and family can be at least as important as finances in determining life/death decisions.
- The observation that most people who “choose” MAID have insurance is used to assure us that MAID does not threaten people for lacking insurance. Actually, it says more about insurance policies. Having insurance doesn’t mean having all necessary insurance coverage.
- We hear assurances that in jurisdictions allowing MAID, under 5% of deaths occur that way. But what about boasts that death-hastening policies are “incredibly successful” and “popular”? Could the 5% refer to only the deaths following a strict Voluntary MAID protocol and the actual percent of deaths that are medically hastened be noticeably higher? Even a report written to assure euthanasia was rare acknowledged that in 1990 only about 23% of intentional medical killings were by voluntary euthanasia or “assisted suicide.” The others were by involuntary euthanasia or intentional overdoses of pain-control drugs.2
- Will the idea of a doctor who will not kill become, in most people’s minds, as ridiculous as a soldier who is unwilling to kill? How will the number of people that a typical doctor kills in a year compare with the number of people that a typical soldier kills in a lifetime of combat?
- Calling any religious or secular group that opposes MAID “oppressive” and “reactionary” doesn’t acknowledge groups that have become even more strictly uncompromising in favor of MAID.
- MAID advocates claim there is “no abuse” in places that allow it. But what about pressure to submit to death-hastening on people considered unworthy of staying alive? In fact, the word “abuse” is in danger of being flipped. Will helping a death-eligible person stay alive, even at that person’s request, be classified as abuse of that person? Is staying alive in certain conditions considered abuse of one’s loved ones?
- Though debates about whether depression alone makes a person MAID-eligible shouldn’t be ignored, they can detract attention from the quiet building of a consensus that death hastening is the only response to certain other conditions.
- Examples of people submitting to MAID because of economic desperation don’t necessarily turn people against death-hastening. Such examples can cheer some euthanasia supporters that their laws are working. Therefore, in addition, we need to publicize cases of people risking homelessness, bankruptcy, exile, and/or family disownment for continuing to reject MAID.
- Calling MAID an individual’s personal choice diverts attention from when it is blatantly not. Once euthanasia is legal, doctors can kill patients against their unambiguous requests. One woman reportedly was afraid to go to a hospital because of the danger of euthanasia, but her doctor assured her he would guard her. The woman went to the hospital, and when her doctor went home for a rest, another doctor walked into her room and killed her.3 Some victims fight or try to escape their killers. They’re subdued by sedatives. When someone calls MAID the individual’s choice, why do we not bring up cases like this?
- We hear that in a MAID jurisdiction, if you don’t agree with the doctor’s, care facility’s, or insurer’s policy toward death, you can switch. But are doctors and facilities that participate in death-hastening required to give patients on request a list of doctors who do not? Are insurance companies required to reimburse a person who goes out of state to find a non-MAID doctor?
When abortion was imposed, organizations of pro-life gynecologists sprang up. Are equivalent organizations being created for medical specialists who will not participate in MAID? Crisis pregnancy centers sprang up to help people carry pregnancies to term, even against their families’ wishes. Are there shelter homes for people who wish to stay alive comfortably, even against their families’ wishes?
For such shelters, hospice is no longer an appropriate name. Cancer patient Charlotte Allen has observed, “The hospice movement has historically opposed anything that smacked of euthanasia,” but that was before February 2007, when the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) came out for death-hastening, or at least “studied neutrality” on it. Neutrality implies there is room for hospices that let people live until their body dies naturally. But Ms. Allen pointed out that there are hospices that, when they cannot directly kill somebody, terminally sedate them. Like abortion clinics, many hospices are in the business of ending lives.
Before my state imposes MAID (probably soon), I want to line up non-participating doctors (whether in or out if state) to go to. I asked two pro-life organizations if they had a list of such doctors, and they did not. I asked a clergyman of a denomination known to oppose euthanasia, and he did not. Nor does he know anybody with my concerns. Now I don’t know where to turn.
In fighting against MAID, should not one try to steer distracting or misleading discourse back to a path that helps the public understand important aspects of the topic?
NOTES
- John C Collins, Nicole Eigbrett, Jana Morgan, and Steve Peraza, “The Magic Trick of Establishment Media: News Abuse in 2027-18.),” Censored 2019,(New York: Seven Stories Press, 2018), pp. 119-120.
- Wesley J. Smith, Forced Exit, Times Books (Random House), 1997, pp. 98, 99″
- Ibid., p. 101
=========================================================
For more of our posts on euthanasia, see:
Figuring out Euthanasia: What Does it Really Mean?
Confronting MAID: Is it Autonomy?
Euthanasia by Poverty: Stories from Canada
How Euthanasia and Poverty Threaten the Disabled
What’s Cruel for the Incarcerated is Cruel for the Terminally Ill
Assisted Suicide as the Next Roe v. Wade: Time to Pay Attention
Assisted Suicide is Inequality, Just Like All Legal Violence
Aftermath of State Ballot Initiatives
by Tom Taylor
The Maryland ballot this past November, similar to ballots in several other states, included a referendum in which Maryland residents voted on a proposed amendment to enshrine abortion in the Maryland state constitution. As a Maryland resident and Consistent Life Ethic advocate, I was extremely disappointed that voters approved the amendment. Similar amendments passed in six other states. Voters in three states, thankfully, offered a ray of hope by defeating referendums on the issue.
Going forward, my hope is that voters will come to regret passage of these ballot initiatives, and thereby encourage momentum for change. Adoption of these amendments severely limits the ability of lawmakers to respond to evolving medical knowledge and changing circumstances related to maternal health and fetal development. Legislators need flexibility in drafting laws that best serve the needs of their states’ residents and reflect up-to-date medical knowledge and advancements.
Restricting Legislators
These amendments place a significant constitutional restraint on elected representatives’ flexibility to enact such laws in response to medical advances and also on their ability to add new standards, including health and safety protections for women or other safeguards, related to changing developments.
The restraint arises because an amendment to the constitution becomes part of the fundamental framework of state law, takes precedence over other laws due to its higher legal status, and is very difficult to repeal. As part of the state’s fundamental law, it submits all future legislation to a standard of “strict scrutiny” based on the constitutional provision.
When courts adjudicate a statute passed by the legislature, they typically give deference to the legislature as long as the statute passes a “rational basis” test, meaning that it is considered a reasonable law. Further, the statute can be amended, replaced, or repealed through subsequent legislative action as facts, circumstances, or public opinion change.
With a constitutional amendment in place, courts give priority consideration to the foundational document over any rational basis test applied to the statute passed. The practical result is to put a chilling effect on legislatures’ willingness to enact new laws. Any legislation that is passed is likely to be subjected to legal challenge, unlikely to pass the “strict scrutiny” standard that courts apply to constitutional provisions, and therefore unlikely to survive court review.
Responding to New Medical Discoveries
Medical research and technology continually reveal new knowledge about pregnancy and fetal development. Already, fetal surgery can occur as early as 16 weeks, and a web search of articles and studies about pregnancy discloses the rapid and complex fetal development that occurs from the very beginning of gestation. The human body undergoes more change before birth than at any other stage of development.
To cite an example, recent research shows that sensory development begins in utero, well before birth. Babies’ development in the womb includes sensing the world around them as well as the necessary physical changes that will enable them to function following birth.
This sensory development plays an important role in infant attachment to the mother. It also initiates the process of learning about the postnatal world the new-born will inhabit after birth. The research indicates that the fetus is responding to the external world long before birth. Further research and medical technology development are likely to reveal even more knowledge that will call for appropriate responses.
There also is an urgent need to improve maternal health during pregnancy, especially for women in vulnerable groups. Ongoing study is likely to reveal new knowledge that will improve maternal health outcomes as well.
Approval of the Maryland amendment and similar amendments will severely restrict the ability of legislators to enact fitting measures in response to such new developments in fetal and maternal healthcare. However, Consistent Life supporters can continue to serve an advocacy role within this legislative landscape by engaging legislators and the public about emerging evidence in fetal and pregnancy research.
Responsibility to Entire Living World
From a consistent life point of view, these advocacy arguments also can be approached (and strengthened) through an ecological perspective that links protection for the preborn with protection of nature. Damage to nature also is at odds with consistent life principles, and environmental protection is an issue that resonates with many citizens and legislators.
Humanity enjoys a reciprocal relationship with the entire living world and is called to responsibility and good stewardship of this relationship. In Maryland, legislators have honored this reciprocity by enacting significant legislation for environmental protection and stewardship.
It behooves society to also think of preborn, developing lives as part of the living world and this reciprocal relationship. Respect for our natural heritage calls us to be good stewards of the human birth process as well. Just as the seeds of food crops and garden plants go through stages of development underground before emerging, developing human life experiences myriad stages of complex development before birth.
It is our duty as human beings with responsibility for the entire living world to exercise good stewardship in the process of human development leading to birth. And let us emphasize that every currently living person once existed at these early stages.
Future Steps
Moving forward in response to the Maryland amendment and similar measures, let us stay engaged in advocacy with our legislative representatives to honor this wisdom of reciprocity and responsibility within the natural human development process.
Let us look for opportunities to plant seeds and create momentum for change in the legislative process. Let us work to foster a sentiment of good stewardship of developing life in its earliest stages within our legislative bodies. Let us highlight the need for flexibility to address new developments and knowledge about pregnancy, maternal health, and fetal development. Let us lobby for appropriate measures along these lines. Voices in advocacy can change the narrative.
Pointing to the connection between nature and ecology and the natural progression of human conception, development, and birth offers a different perspective and channel for dialogue on the abortion issue. It raises issues of consistency between care for the environment and care for the vulnerable, preborn members of the natural world. In this way of thinking, protecting the preborn is consistent with protecting the natural world and its land, water, air, forests, habitat, and biodiversity. We can call on citizens and their elected representatives to seek full protection for both the preborn members of the natural world and all of its ecological resources.
In the wake of ballot initiatives, the advocacy group AAPLOG (American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists) suggests supportive actions such as:
- Defending existing regulations still in place that may face legislative or judicial challenges arising from passage of ballot initiatives.
- Pushing for better data reporting on abortion numbers and associated complications as a common-sense public health measure that provides full and accurate health statistics. Data collection can reveal issues and deficiencies of care that will need to be addressed and demonstrate the need for regulations and safeguards. AAPLOG states that, in the United States, such reporting is generally not adequate to provide meaningful conclusions. The state of Maryland does not publicly report this information at all.
- Advocating for and supporting local pregnancy resource centers to make life-serving options widely known in communities and reduce the factors that contribute to abortion decisions.
- Advocating on legislation at the federal level.
Authentic witness can still change hearts and minds and lead to eventual changes in the law. Consistent Life principles can continue to shine a light and offer a guideway that leads society toward a life-affirming path that honors the natural world in its fullest sense.
“Become Nonviolent Towards All Life”
For signposts along this route, we can point to two notable champions of consistent life principles who also exemplify humanity’s reciprocal relationship with nature – environmental activist Wangari Maathai and farmworker leader Cesar Chavez.
Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, opposed abortion and founded the Green Belt Movement in Kenya with the dual purpose of empowering women and girls and reforesting land. Chavez, who embedded nonviolence principles in the farmworker movement, asserted: “Only when we have become nonviolent towards all life will we have learned to live well with others.” During his leadership, United Farmworker health clinics did not allow abortions, and Chavez adopted a vegetarian diet out of concern for animals.
We also can look to the words of Albert Schweitzer, noted for his Reverence for Life philosophy: “Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace.”
Legislative action can align with these sentiments as well.
=============================
For ongoing coverage of upcoming referendums, see our website: Peace and Life Referendums
For more of our posts, see:
Presidential Election 2024: Consistent Life Perspectives
Summary of Results: Peace & Life Referendums 2024
What History Shows: The Consistent Life Ethic Works for Pro-life Referendums
Stewardship and the Consistent Life Ethic
Confronting MAID: Is it Autonomy?
by Ms. Boomer-ang
Referring to Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) as an individual’s autonomous action can divert discussions to when autonomy is desirable and away from whether MAID really gives the patient/victim autonomy.
MAID requires the cooperation of other people. Autonomy implies self-initiation. But how many fatal prescriptions are first suggested or initiated by the patient/victim’s family, friends, medical staff, social workers, caregivers, insurance companies, or Artificial Intelligence? How often are people who have not requested or agreed to MAID presented with a fatal prescription, with at least some of the necessary signatures, possibly including one made electronically on their behalf? Euthanasia policy scholar Wesley J. Smith has noted, “Studies show families rather than patients generally decide when the time has come for euthanasia.”1 When must an individual take active steps to avoid MAID?
Many terms that are used to degrade staying alive in certain conditions relate to the effect on other people. Concepts like “undignified” (implying shameful and disgraceful), “irresponsible, “selfish,” “immature,” “burdensome,” “occupying organs that could benefit someone else,” and “squandering heirs’ money” can pertain to responsibility. Is not submitting to death-hastening out of a sense of responsibility or duty the opposite of autonomy?
Unassisted suicide is an autonomous action. So is foregoing medical attention for months or years until one dies naturally. But actively speeding death is as interventionist as extraordinary efforts to prolong life. If the majority of non-sudden deaths are hastened, it will be living until one’s body dies naturally that will be the autonomous action.
Claims that laws against MAID laws are examples of government intrusion into personal lives can divert the discussion into the appropriateness of any government intrusion. Actually, the discussion should be about what intrusion by the government or equivalent is appropriate for.
Are not most of the people whom anti-MAID laws interfere with those who want an individual dead? Such laws protect the individual from these people, as well as from care facilities and insurers who find it more profitable and efficient to have them dead.
Don’t laws allowing MAID give free rein to these people to pressure, bully, and shame the individual into accepting death-hastening? Don’t they allow care facilities, caregivers, and insurers to set policies of killing, expelling, and/or overcharging anybody with certain conditions in certain circumstances? That these are private entities doesn’t make their policies any less intrusive or any less strict than government laws.
And in places where medical facilities are part of government services or heavily supported by the government, the facility’s deciding to kill a person is government intrusion to cause death.
Don’t pro-MAID laws give justification to claim that to live until one’s body dies naturally, or to stay alive in certain conditions, is unpatriotic, sinful, obscene, cowardly, the equivalent of not paying taxes, or “just not done”? That to want to stay alive in certain conditions is a clinical sign of “irrationality”?
Will many people, from policymakers to caregivers to the general public, think the only alternates to quick MAID are “slow” death-hastening, like terminal sedation and medication mini-overdoses? Will even many who reject quick MAID feel anything that smells of life-maintenance is “wrong” or “looks bad”?
Doesn’t the availability of MAID change people’s conception of what is appropriate and possible?
NOTES
1Wesley J. Smith, Forced Exit: The Slippery Slope from Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder. Times Books (Random House), 1997, p. 103
===============
For more of our posts on euthanasia, see:
Figuring out Euthanasia: What Does it Really Mean?
Euthanasia by Poverty: Stories from Canada
How Euthanasia and Poverty Threaten the Disabled
What’s Cruel for the Incarcerated is Cruel for the Terminally Ill
Assisted Suicide as the Next Roe v. Wade: Time to Pay Attention
Assisted Suicide is Inequality, Just Like All Legal Violence
Claims About Third-Trimester Abortions
by Sarah Terzo
Abortion supporters often say that abortionists only do third-trimester abortions when there’s a serious risk to the pregnant person’s life or health.
One example is from pro-abortion politician Pete Buttigieg. In an interview, he was asked, “Just to be clear, you’re saying that you would be okay with a woman well into the third trimester deciding to abort her pregnancy?”
At first, Buttigieg tried to evade the question, saying, “Look, these hypotheticals are usually set up in order to provoke a strong emotional response —”
The interviewer cut him off with the claim that 6,000 abortions a year happen in the third trimester. I’ve seen this statistic before, but I haven’t been able to find its source.
Buttigieg responded by pointing out that this makes up just 1% of all abortions, and the crowd applauded.
He then said that these cases involve wanted babies whose mothers have already named and bought cribs for them. Third-trimester abortions, he claimed, are only done for families that:
get the most devastating medical news of their lifetime, something about the health or the life of the mother that forces them to make an impossible, unthinkable choice.
And the bottom line is, as horrible as that choice is . . . that decision is not going to be made any better, medically or morally, because the government is dictating how that decision should be made.
Again, this led to applause from the crowd.
However, this is not true.
Why Third-Trimester Abortions Aren’t Done to Save the Mother’s Life
In this video, a former abortionist explains how third-trimester abortions are done.
The abortionist injects poison into the preborn baby to kill him or her before inducing labor or otherwise removing the child intact. To get a live birth, the steps would be exactly the same, except the injection wouldn’t be done. The doctor could dilate the cervix and remove the baby or induce labor. This would result in a living child rather than a dead one.
To turn a third-trimester abortion into a delivery, all the doctor has to do is not give the injection. The direct act of killing the baby in the womb is what separates a third-trimester abortion from a birth.
In a third-trimester abortion, the abortionist slowly dilates the cervix over the course of three days. A woman whose life is in danger would have to endure three extra days of being pregnant. In contrast, a doctor could end the pregnancy immediately with a cesarean section, resulting in a living child. Or he or she could induce labor.
A quote from a 1998 article in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association referring to pregnancies in the third trimester states:
Except in extraordinary circumstances, maternal health factors which demand termination of the pregnancy can be accommodated without sacrifice of the fetus, and the near certainty of the independent viability of the fetus argues for ending a pregnancy by appropriate delivery.1 (emphasis added)
Studies Reveal the Reasons Third-Trimester Abortions Are Done
Two studies reveal why late-term abortions are done.
The first study was done by pro-abortion researchers Diana Greene Foster (who later worked on the infamous Turnaway Study) and Katrina Kimport. The study concerned the reasons people seek abortions after 20 weeks and included women who aborted in the third trimester of pregnancy.
The authors state:
[D]ata suggest that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment . . .
They gave a breakdown of the following reasons (some women chose more than one):
- 45% didn’t know they were pregnant.
- 40% had trouble deciding whether to have an abortion.
- 20% disagreed with the father of the baby about whether to have the abortion.
- 38% didn’t know where to go for the abortion.
- 27% had difficulty getting to the abortion facility.
- 65% had difficulty raising money for the abortion and related costs.
- 41% had difficulty getting insurance coverage to pay for the abortion.
One example was a woman who had an abortion at 28 weeks while her boyfriend was in jail. She waited until he was incarcerated because she wanted to keep the abortion a secret from him.
A more recent study (2022) focused just on third-trimester abortions. It found that the reasons given for third-trimester abortions were the same as those given for earlier abortions.
Again, there was no pro-life bias. The pro-abortion group ANSIRH (Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health) funded the study. ANSIRH describes itself as “Providing the evidence you need to advance reproductive well-being.”
It says of the study’s results:
The reasons people need third-trimester abortions are not so different from why people need abortions before the third trimester.
The study gives no detailed breakdown of women’s reasons or any concrete numbers. It found that people have abortions in the third trimester for one or more of the following reasons:
- They didn’t know they were pregnant earlier.
- They had difficulty arranging an abortion.
- The baby had a health problem or disability.
None of the women in the study aborted for any reason related to their own health. They were all physically healthy and in no danger from pregnancy.
The study mentioned four cases where the baby had a disability. This was 14.3% of the total. However, the study wasn’t clear whether these were the only cases.
One woman was homeless. The abortion facility took her money, killed her baby, and sent her back to the streets with no intervention or help. She was still homeless, and now has a late-term abortion on her conscience.
Another woman discovered her pregnancy early but “took no immediate action toward obtaining an abortion.”
This woman had been sexually assaulted in the past, though that wasn’t the cause of her pregnancy. Kimport claims the emotional trauma of the past assault was the reason she didn’t arrange an abortion until the third trimester.
One woman couldn’t afford an abortion and started prenatal care. Then, her (now) ex-boyfriend got a work bonus, and she had an abortion in her third trimester.
All the women in the study aborted because they didn’t feel they could cope with a baby or simply didn’t want the child. While their reasons may have seemed serious to them, they weren’t any different from the reasons people seek earlier abortions.
Statements from Doctors who Specialize in Third-Trimester Abortions
Further evidence comes from third-trimester abortionists themselves.
Abortionist Warren Hern, who specializes in third-trimester abortions, gave the following interview:
Interviewer: Do you ever get any women in their second half of the second trimester or in the third trimester that say they have no medical problems, they just don’t want the baby? They change their mind? Would you do it?
Hern: Well, of course, if a woman doesn’t want to be pregnant, there’s no justification for forcing her to continue the pregnancy.
Interviewer: Okay, has that happened?
Hern: That happens all the time.
Hern has repeatedly said that because women can die from pregnancy complications, every pregnancy threatens their lives and, therefore, abortion is always medically justified.
Shelley Sella is another abortionist who does third-trimester abortions. In an article in the Irish Times, a reporter who interviewed her says:
The women Sella treats fall into two categories: those who discover foetal abnormalities; and those with healthy, viable babies whose maternal circumstances mean they could not cope with the baby.
She gives the example of one mother of three whose husband was killed in a car accident while she was in her third trimester. She didn’t feel she could raise her children and the new baby alone, so she had an abortion. Now, besides grieving for her husband, she has to deal with the loss of his nearly full-term baby.
A healthy, 16-year-old girl, also in the third trimester, chose abortion even though her parents, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend’s parents wanted her to have the baby. Sella killed the healthy, viable child.
When asked about whether adoption would’ve been appropriate in this case, Sella stated that adoption “causes lifelong trauma and psychological problems.”
Another third-trimester abortionist, Susan Robinson, said of her patients:
Women whose fetuses have terrible abnormalities are a lot easier for people to understand. The husband and wife want to spare their baby whatever suffering that baby would have.
Then there’s the group of women who didn’t know they were pregnant. They were told they were not pregnant for one reason or another and they are just as desperate.
Some people really don’t discover their pregnancies until the third trimester. In a previous article, I quoted abortionist Susan Poppema, who described a woman who came to her abortion facility nine months pregnant and in active labor. The woman had come for a routine exam and didn’t know she was pregnant.
Advertising Third-Trimester Abortions
Some abortion facilities openly advertise third-trimester abortions on their websites. These facilities welcome pregnant people from all around the United States who want to abort in the third trimester.
Here are some examples:
================================
For more of our posts on the reality of abortion, see:
Christmas Carols
Solstice: December 21
Christmas: December 25
Hanukkah: this year, sundown December 25 – sundown January 2
Kwanzaa: December 26 – January 1
New Year: January 1
1500s: A Haunting Song
The Coventry Carol, 1534
Traditional
With a haunting melody, it’s about Herod’s massacre of babies. See our holiday issues on the Massacre of the Innocents.
O sisters too, how may we do
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we sing,
“Bye bye, lully, lullay”?
Herod the king, in his raging,
Chargèd he hath this day
His men of might in his own sight
All young children to slay.
That woe is me, poor child, for thee
And ever mourn and may
For thy parting neither say nor sing,
“Bye bye, lully, lullay.”
1800s: Traditional Carols
O Holy Night, 1843 / 1855
Written in French by Placide Chapeau / Translated into English by John Sullivan Dwight
Dwight added this third verse, which made it popular among abolitionists of the time:
Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His Gospel is Peace
Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother
And in His name, all oppression shall cease
There’s also a story which may or may not be true but at least has made the rounds. In the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, on Christmas Eve the French troops sang this uplifting song (French version, of course) across the trenches during a truce in hostilities.
It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, 1849
Written by Massachusetts pastor Edmund Sears
The poem was written with violent revolutions in Europe and the recent war between the United States and Mexico in mind, accounting for anti-war sentiment throughout. This was most explicit in Verse 3:
Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, 1864
Written on Christmas day by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Edward K Hermann gives the full story with a performance of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
Longfellow had suffered personal tragedy, but this was also written with the U.S. Civil War raging and uppermost on his mind.
I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play
And mild and sweet their songs repeat
Of peace on Earth, good will to men
And in despair I bowed my head
“There is no peace on Earth, ” I said
For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on Earth, good will to men
Then rang the bells more loud and deep
God is not dead, nor doth He sleep
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on Earth, good will to men
1900s: Modern Takes
Do You Hear What I Hear?, 1962
Words by Noël Regney, music by Gloria Shayne, husband and wife
“Pray for peace people everywhere”
This carol was written at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis and was a response to the dangers of nuclear annihilation. There were double meanings throughout. ““A star, dancing in the night, with a tail as big as a kite” could be the Star of Bethlehem, but authors were thinking of a nuclear missile as well.
From The Atlantic:
“In the studio, the producer was listening to the radio to see if we had been obliterated,” Regney once explained. “En route to my home, I saw two mothers with their babies in strollers. The little angels were looking at each other and smiling.” This inspired the first line of the song: “Said the night wind to the little lamb . . .”
Happy Xmas (War is Over), 1969
by John Lennon
In the middle of the American war in Vietnam and the movement to stop it, along with the Civil Rights movement, Lennon wrote a song that’s explicit about opposing war and racism. As with much of good poetry, it applies to other historical periods as well and so remains commonly sung today. Verse 2:
And so this is Christmas (War is over)
For weak and for strong (If you want it)
The rich and the poor ones (War is over)
The road is so long (Now)
And so happy Christmas (War is over)
For black and for white (If you want it)
For yellow and red ones (War is over)
Let’s stop all the fight (Now)
Christmas In the Trenches, written before 1984
Written by John McCutcheon
McCutcheon was inspired to write this about the 1914 Christmas Truce, when soldiers up and down the line of trenches in Europe took Christmas a little more seriously than their superiors did. A good version with story: Christmas in the Trenches (1984). McCutcheon clearly wrote it well before then, since he refers to reactions from men who experienced the Truce when he sang the song in concert.
Also on the same topic:
Pipes of Peace with Paul McCartney.
Celtic Thunder offers Christmas 1915. They have the wrong year, but the art still has the spirit of it.
A movie dramatization: Joyeux Noel
And our own blog post on it: The Christmas Truce of 1914
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This is a list of holiday editions of our weekly e-newsletter, Peace & Life Connections.
In 2023, we covered Kwanzaa.
In 2022, the topic was the Christmas Truce of 1914, when World War I soldiers up and down the line treated each other as friends rather than enemies for the holidays. (Also the same content in a 2022 post.)
In 2021, there was a somber topic, but one appropriate to the season: the Massacre of the Innocents, and its role in quotations and art that oppose massive violence of all kinds. (Also the same content in a 2021 post.)
In 2020, given what was most on people’s minds at the time, we covered Pandemics Related to Christmas. (Also the same content in a 2020 post.)
In 2019, we showed Christmas as a Nonviolent Alternative to Imperialism.
In 2018, we detailed Strong Women against Violence – Connected to the Holidays.
In 2017, we covered Interfaith Peace in the Womb.
In 2016, we discussed how “The Magi were Zoroastrians” and detailed how good the Zoroastrians were on consistent-life issues. The ancient roots of the consistent life ethic run deep!
In 2015, we had a list of good holiday movies with consistent-life themes – check it out for what you might want to see this season. We also had information on Muslim nonviolent perspectives.
In 2014, we offered a quotation from a lesser-known Christmas novella of Charles Dickens and cited the treatment of abortion in the Zoroastrian scriptures.
In 2013, we shared several quotations reflecting on Christmas.
In 2012, we had a couple of quotes showing the pro-life aspects of two prominent Christmas tales: A Christmas Carol with Ebenezer Scrooge, and the movie It’s a Wonderful Life. We also quote from John Dear about Jesus as peacemaker and Rand Paul about the 1914 spontaneous Christmas Truce; he then related it to the culture of life.
In 2011, we covered the materialism-reducing “Advent Conspiracy” and offered two pieces of children’s art: a 1939 anti-war cartoon called “Peace on Earth,” and the anti-war origins of “Horton Hears a Who,” whose tagline – “a person’s a person, no matter how small” – is irresistible to pro-lifers.
In 2010, we showed “It’s a Wonderful Movement” by using the theme of what would happen if the peace movement and the pro-life movement hadn’t arisen. We also had quotes from Scrooge (against respect for life) and a Martin Luther King Christmas sermon.
Abortion and the Christian Bible: A Consistent-Life Perspective
by Fr. Jim Hewes
Biblical Foundations on the Sanctity of Life
While the Bible may not explicitly address every modern issue, its teachings provide a framework that values life at all stages. There’s a difference between something that is unbiblical (contrary to biblical teachings) and something non-biblical (not found specifically in the bible).
For example, Jesus never directly mentions abortion. Jesus also never speaks specifically about nuclear deterrence or stem cell research. But Jesus offers a clear framework of compassion for understanding the sanctity of life.
There are key biblical passages which demonstrate that God has complete dominion over human life. Then there is the overarching principle that children are a blessing (“Children are a gift from the Lord. Babies are a reward.” Psalm 127) – counter-cultural for the time.
Jesus also pays special attention to those who are unwanted, rejected, despised, insignificant, on the margin, the least of our brothers and sisters, as the pre-born are so often treated today.
Problematic Passages and the Value of Life
One of the passages in the Hebrew Scriptures, Deuteronomy 21:18-21 is problematic if not scandalous if taken literally, without further biblical understanding including Tradition.
If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not listen to his father or mother, and will not listen to them even though they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders at the gate[a] of his home city, where they shall say to the elders of the city, “This son of ours is a stubborn and rebellious fellow who will not listen to us; he is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all his fellow citizens shall stone him to death. Thus, shall you purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel will hear and be afraid.
While some biblical passages, can be troubling if interpreted literally, they must be read in the context of Jesus’s teachings. For example, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus elevates the commandment “You shall not kill” by teaching that even harboring anger toward another can be spiritually harmful (Matthew 5:21-22). His message underscores a profound respect for every life.
Another example is in Exodus (21”22-25):
When men have a fight and hurt a pregnant woman, so that she suffers a miscarriage, but no further injury, the guilty one shall be fined as much as the woman’s husband demands of him, and he shall pay in the presence of the judges. But if injury ensues, you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
Some argue that this passage implies unborn life is of lesser value. However, the Bible’s overall message emphasizes the sanctity of all human life. The Israelites wrote this text before today’s scientific understanding of human development. While they lacked the tools of modern biology, their reverence for life is clear. It wasn’t written to be a textbook in embryology or perinatology, so at that time one could not fully know who the pre-born exactly was, where today we have a “window to the womb” with ultrasound.
Whether the Bible is prescriptive or not on abortion, it’s descriptive about the value of life, including condemning strongly the cultural practice of child sacrifice. The Bible is the word of God, but in the words of humans. It is neither exclusive nor limited, but there are numerous passages in the Bible about the value of life within the womb and the reverence for that life.
The Value of Life in the Womb
The Bible contains verses that reflect God’s intimate involvement in the creation of human life, especially in the womb. For instance:
- the prophet Isaiah declared, “The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb, he named me” (Isaiah 49:1).
- In Jeremiah, God affirms, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you” (Jeremiah 1:5).
- Psalm 139 further captures the depth of God’s role in human creation: “You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:13-14).
In the New Testament, when Elizabeth hears Mary (who is pregnant) Elizabeth responds: “the infant leaped in her womb” (Luke 1:41), illustrating the presence of life and joy even before birth. Similarly, Jesus, the Word made flesh, and experienced every stage of human development, affirming the continuity and value of human life from the very beginning.
This continues after Jesus in the writings such as of St. Paul: “But when [God], who from my mother’s womb had set me apart and called me through his grace, was pleased” (Galatians 1:15)
Jesus’s Teachings on Life and Value
Jesus is the clearest and fullest revelation of who God is and who we are. The very Word of God, Jesus, was made flesh within the womb of Mary and from that moment he was fully human, experienced every stage of human development; first as a zygote, then as an embryo, and a fetus.
At no point would one ever hold that the Word of God made flesh was not a person in any part of his pre-natal existence. God affirms that there’s present a person in His only Son before and after birth, as well as affirms every one of us also in our same journey within and outside our mothers’ womb.
There isn’t any passage in the entire Bible that makes a distinction between an embryo and a fetus, or if the pre-born child is viable or not. It’s an unbroken chain, where all are loved and valued by God.
While Jesus doesn’t specifically discuss abortion, he presents a clear framework for understanding the value and the sanctity of human life. Jesus frequently speaks on the importance of caring for those who are marginalized or vulnerable, showing special compassion for “the least of our brothers and sisters.” This respect for life extends to the vulnerable unborn, who are also equally deserving of protection.
Jesus also promised that the Holy Spirit would guide the Christian community, even on issues not directly addressed in Scripture: “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth” (John 16:12-13). This assurance helps Christians navigate contemporary ethical questions, including abortion, through the principles established in Scripture, and Tradition.
It is this all-powerful God who has created the entire universe becomes a tiny, helpless, vulnerable pre-born person within Mary’s womb. So, human beings, at whatever stage of development, are always image bearers of God their creator, which is not earned or achieved, but a gift of God.
Abortion, on the other hand, is an act of violence that intentionally and directly disrupts the chain of existence that God has planned for everyone. This is why the psalmist states: “I kept from violence because of your Word.” (Psalm 17:4)
For “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching and for showing people what is wrong in their lives. It is useful for correcting faults and teaching how to live right. Using the Scriptures, the person who serves God will be ready and will have everything he needs to do every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
The importance of biblical influence is reflected in Pew Research, where 2/3 of adults with children and 62% of adults without children who read scripture at least once a week would make abortion illegal in all or most cases.
So, these Bible passages remind us that when we openly and prayerfully encounter the world through the lens of the Word of God and speak the divine truth, we will really know about the value of each precious life, created in the image and likeness of God.
Early Christian Views on Abortion
The second generation of Christians definitely could be counted on to faithfully preserve and follow what their parents were taught directly by the apostles, including on the issue of abortion, developed in the Roman culture. Romans practiced widely both abortion and infanticide, treating children like disposable property. The early Christian Community strongly condemned both acts of violence.
In The Didache, an early Christian text, it is clearly stated: “You should not kill the fetus by abortion or destroy the infant already born.” This reflects the early church’s unwavering stance on the sanctity of life. This was directly opposite to society’s view at this time, which saw this life as property of the parents (which many still do today). An overwhelming number of other early Church theologians carefully examined the methods, motives, and morality surrounding abortion. They unanimously described all abortions as a heinous sin,
Conclusion: A Call to Protect Life
There’s a consistent theme, a pattern of meaning over and over in the entire Bible, a trajectory or thrust in the Bible as a whole, about a God who values and loves each human life, both outside and within the womb. We don’t need to be fully formed to be loved by God. As we reflect on these teachings, let us reaffirm the Bible’s enduring call to respect and protect every life, both born and unborn, made in the image and likeness of God, truly God’s daughters and sons.
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For more of our posts from a Christian perspective, see:
The Consistent Life Consensus in Ancient Christianity
Nukes and the Pro-Life Christian:
Fratelli Tutti – Consistent-Life Excerpts
December 28: The Day of the Massacre of the Innocents
For more of our posts from additional religious perspectives, see:
Why the Interfaith Approach is Important
Abortion and War are the Karma for Killing Animals (Hinduism)
Breaking Stereotypes in Fearful Times (Islam)
The Consistent Life Ethic and Traditional Tantra (Hinduism)
Ancient Roots of the Consistent Life Ethic: Greece