The History of Framing the Arguments
by Jim Kelly
This is one part of Jim’s presentation at the Consistent Life Network 30th anniversary conference. The second part is Common Ground, and the third one will be published later.
The origins of the modern pro-legal abortion movement do not lie in feminism. In her 1963 classic The Feminist Mystique Betty Friedan does not even mention abortion, much less consider it a necessity for women’s equality. The late historian Mary Krane Derr has documented that early 18th and nineteenth century suffragists’ writings regularly referred to abortion as “ante-natal murder” and even as “infanticide.” In her March 14, 1875 speech Susan B. Anthony included abortion as one of the evils perpetrated by men against women. An article in Anthony’s newspaper The Revolution presciently urged “We want prevention not merely punishment. We must reach the root of the evil, and destroy it.”
So, if not feminism, what was the contemporary start of the movement to legalize abortion, and how did they frame their arguments?
The first organized support for legalizing abortion came from the eugenics and population control organizations. In 1922, the American Eugenics Society was founded and by 1931, 27 states enacted sterilization laws to remove those “unfit” to reproduce. Paul R. Ehrlich’s 1965 bestseller was entitled The Population Bomb. A commitment to zero population growth included support for legal abortion.
The first prominent call for not reform but repeal of the abortion laws was made by Lawrence Lader who titled his 1971 book Breeding Ourselves to Death. Lawrence Lader was a co-founder of what was then called the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws and it was Lader who persuaded Betty Friedan that the newly formed National Organization for Women (NOW) should endorse abortion.
This provoked considerable conflict within NOW. There was no referendum and many delegates resigned. Four years later (1971) some chapters unsuccessfully tried to remove abortion from NOW’s “Bill of Rights for Women” because they found it impeded their work on other crucial women’s issues (day care, medical insurance, neighborhood schools, etc.)
The most prominent and mainstream abortion opposition social movement organization is the National Right to Life Committee, with membership in all states. In the September 1974 edition of its National Right to Life News, editor Janet Grant characterized legal abortion activists as upper-class elites. “The rich,” she editorialized, want to ‘share’ abortion with the poor. But ‘sharing’ stops when it comes to wealth, clubs, and neighborhoods. In the same issue, Donna M. Sullivan asked, “Are social pressures now geared more to getting rid of poor babies than assisting their mothers with economic problems?” The March 1974 edition found it ironic that some congressmen were arguing that abortion lowered welfare costs when Congress had spent “billions to wage a war in Indochina.” How did the Democrats lose these folks?
These right-to-life feminists are not just anecdotal exceptions. Sociologist Granberg reports studies of both pro-life and pro-choice movements in a 1978 article, “Pro-Life or Reflections of Conservative Ideology?” and expressed surprise about the clash between the empirical data and pre-research expectations. Granberg found that 56% of National Right to Life leaders opposed capital punishment, as contrasted to only 28% of all American adults. 71% disagreed with the idea that “the US should be ready and willing to use military force if necessary to assure our access to important resources, such as oil, which are necessary to our way of life.” Later studies found that while pro-choice respondents scored high on “liberal” rights issues, such as opposition to censorship and sex education, they scored lower than abortion opponents on “economic liberal” items that asked about government spending on social programs, such as housing and food stamps, higher minimum wage, and fairer taxation. How did the Republicans get these folks?
While it now appears predictable that committed legal abortion opponents find their political home in the Republican Party and legal abortion advocates in the Democratic Party, the historical fact is the exact opposite. Democrats for Life, despite what the organization says on its home page, was not founded in 1997. That’s when it was re-founded.
Early abortion opponents placed their political hopes entirely in the Democratic Party. Typical is the dramatic example of Ellen McCormack, the housewife leader of the Long Island, New York “Women for the Unborn” who, knowingly quixotic, succeeded in obtaining enough registered voters to place her name in the 1975 Democratic primaries in 20 states. She qualified for matching federal funds for her primary campaigns and had her name placed in nomination for President at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, getting 22 delegate votes. In my interview with her, she said there was no possibility that the Republican Party, the party of big business and big profits, would interest itself in “saving unborn babies.”
While Reagan did succeed in having the Republican platform committee write in the promise to repeal Roe, the way it proceeded remains highly illuminative. In her “insider’s” account (The Republican War Against Women, 1996) Tanya Melich reports that most of the Republican delegates viewed Reagan’s courting of antiabortion activists as a shrewd tactic to add numbers to a declining Republican-affiliated party base. The delegate vote on the Reagan amendment was scheduled after midnight and the debate was limited to four speakers. Melich claims that there were sufficient pro-choice delegate voters to overturn the amendment but the convention chairman, John Rhodes, a Reagan ally, called for a voice vote and then simply declared a majority vote in favor of reversing Roe. What is far more certain is that polls of those delegates showed the vast majority didn’t favor a Roe reversal.
Reagan staffed his administration with many publicly known anti-abortion activists and selected Supreme Court replacements that many felt were likely to reverse Roe. Still, during no Supreme Court confirmation hearings did any Republican nominee explicitly or unambiguously challenge the validity of Roe.
All seven of the original Roe signers are gone and Republican presidents have nominated replacements for six of the seven. Four of these six (John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy), while finding permissible—under its “without undue burden” criteria—state efforts to encourage childbirth over abortion, reaffirmed in its 1992 Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey the Roe decision and, importantly, the significance of precedence for the Courts.
So Democrats for Life, even if wondrously successful, is but a small, though necessary, step in the ongoing effort to grasp the meaning of the opposition to abortion. The routine sociological and media framing of abortion is that it is a conservative counter-movement. Few understand its core radicalism.
While in time the disentanglement of abortion social movement organizations from the increasingly unrewarding political alliance with Republican fiscal conservatives, and the movement’s gradual turn to a consistent ethic of life, will facilitate some incremental political linkages to a growing Democrats for Life, this represents but a necessary step in a return to the movement’s originating radical core principles that a resort to violence in any form is a negation of the human good.
And no principle and no term, especially in foreign affairs, is more alien to nation state sovereignty than “nonviolence.”
The rest of our series of blog posts from presentations at our 30th anniversary conference in August, 2017:
The History of Framing the Arguments (Jim Kelly)
The Vital Need for Diversity (Sarah Terzo)
Making the Case for Peace to Conservatives (John Whitehead)
My Difficulty in Voting: Identifying the Problem (Monica Sohler)
Common Ground (Jim Kelly)
The Mind’s Drive for Consistency (Rachel MacNair)
See the list of all our blog posts, put in categories.
Reflections on the Charlie Gard Case
by John Whitehead
The legal battle over the treatment of Charlie Gard, a gravely ill baby in the United Kingdom, recently ended. Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, and the Great Ormond Street Hospital disagreed over whether to pursue an experimental medical treatment. The parents had wished to pursue the treatment, while the hospital wished to instead shut off the ventilator allowing Charlie to breathe. Charlie’s death was the likely result. Charlie’s parents gave up their efforts on July 24. Charlie’s condition had deteriorated too far for the treatment to offer them hope. The ventilator was withdrawn July 28, and Charlie died.
Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children
Charlie’s case attracted international attention and generated a surprising degree of controversy among pro-life opponents of euthanasia/assisted suicide, some of whom disagreed about the correct course of action in this situation (see the varying assessments of Jana Bennett, Charles Camosy, Simcha Fisher, Austen Ivereigh, Michael Redinger, and the Anscombe Bioethics Centre). These differing opinions were understandable given the case’s complexity. My own judgment is that Charlie’s parents should have been allowed to pursue that experimental treatment. The right course of action was by no means obvious, however, and neither side was necessarily approaching Charlie’s treatment in a way pro-lifers should wholly support.
Charlie’s Situation
Charlie’s medical situation was described in the first major court ruling on the case, on April 11. Charlie, born August 4, 2016, was diagnosed with infantile onset encephalomyopathic mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome (MDDS). This condition is extremely rare: an expert said Charlie’s case is one of only six pediatric cases she’s encountered. Infant onset is still rarer. Charlie’s condition had left him without the ability to move his arms or legs, open his eyes, or breathe on his own. He was dependent on a ventilator to breathe, and was deaf. Tests didn’t show signs of responsiveness, interaction, or other normal brain activities. Charlie also began, to suffer from seizures, indicating brain function deterioration.
Charlie’s parents learned of nucleoside therapy from Dr. Michio Hirano, an American professor of neurology at Columbia University Medical Center. It’s apparently had some success with a related mitochondrial disease, TK2. Yet it’s never been tried on humans or animals with Charlie’s condition . Dr. Hirano said it’s “very unlikely that [Charlie] will improve with that therapy.”
Moreover, Dr. Hirano and the expert representing the hospital agreed Charlie’s condition was likely terminal. Hirano commented “I think he is in the terminal stage of his illness. ” The hospital expert said Charlie’s seizures suggested death might be six to nine months away.
The court found in favor of the hospital’s application to remove the artificial ventilation and provide palliative care only, with Charlie’s death likely to follow. Charlie’s parents continued their challenges through the British court system and to the European Court of Human Rights. The courts consistently found for the hospital and against Charlie’s parents, before the parents finally gave up their legal efforts on July 24.
European Court of Human Rights
Principles for Defending Life
Appropriate pro-life principles should guide medical care for disabled or seriously ill people:
- Intentionally killing someone who is sick or disabled to end that person’s suffering constitutes euthanasia and must be rejected. Intentionally aiding someone in killing herself or himself out of the same motivation constitutes assisted suicide and must also be rejected.
- These types of killing can be direct, such as giving someone a lethal overdose, or can be more indirect: depriving someone of water or food, for example.
- Depriving someone of life-saving medical care can also be a form of euthanasia or assisted suicide.
- Preventing euthanasia or suicide by medical deprivation doesn’t mean patients must always pursue every possible treatment. Someone might justifiably refuse a treatment because it’s too painful, invasive, expensive, or has too little chance of benefit. A terminally ill patient might refuse a burdensome treatment that will only delay (now inevitable) death.
A Question of Intent
Given both Charlie’s condition and these principles, what would have been appropriate? Reasonable arguments could be made for different approaches. Because multiple doctors thought Charlie’s condition might be terminal and the therapy unlikely to work, foregoing the therapy and removing the ventilator could be justified: the therapy was futile and the ventilator merely delayed inevitable death, possibly causing Charlie pain. Nevertheless, an argument could be made for the opposite approach. While unlikely to work, nucleoside therapy doesn’t appear to be inherently inhumane or painful , and keeping Charlie on the ventilator long enough at least to try the therapy could be justified.
Another consideration is the question of intent. Regardless of which approach was adopted, what was the rationale? The question is important because of a subtle distinction in why certain medical decisions might be made. This distinction was highlighted by Charles Camosy, a theology professor at Fordham University and Consistent Life Network endorser. His analysis and the statement of the Anscombe Centre, a Catholic bioethics organization (cited above) both inform my comments below.
To decline further medical treatment or remove life-sustaining equipment because they’re burdensome to the patient and don’t offer enough benefit is an acceptable choice. What isn’t acceptable, however, is to do so because the patient’s life is judged, for whatever reason, to be no longer worth preserving.
This unacceptable approach to medical care is sometimes defended by use of that slippery phrase “quality of life.”
Judging a person’s life to be of such low quality as not to be worth maintaining is wrong. Such a rationale opens the door to lethal discrimination against people with chronic illness or severe disabilities. Someone’s life has value even if that person is immobile, dependent on machines, unconscious, or in pain. Withholding or withdrawing medical treatment because a person’s life is deemed not worth preserving would qualify as euthanasia. Distinguishing between euthanasia and the legitimate refusal of burdensome or futile treatment, while difficult, is necessary.
Therefore, the April 11 ruling on Charlie’s case is disturbing. The judge, Mr. Justice Francis, cited previous court rulings. One held “it is not in the interests of the child to subject it to treatment which will cause it increased suffering and produce no commensurate benefit”—a reasonable stance. Another held the need to prolong life “may be outweighed if the pleasures and the quality of life are sufficiently small and the pain and suffering or other burdens of living are sufficiently great”—a far more problematic position
A doctor whose opinion on Charlie’s condition was solicited said, “sadly, Charlie’s life is therefore limited both in quality and quantity and there is no reasonable prospect for recovery.” Francis characterized the doctor’s opinion: “in his view, the severity of his condition is such that it could be argued that Charlie would derive no benefit from continued life.” A similar view came from the hospital’s recent statement: “since his brain became affected by [his particular condition], Charlie’s has been an existence devoid of all benefit and pleasure. If Charlie has had a relationship with the world around him since his best interests were determined, it has been one of suffering.” These statements raise serious concerns about whether the choice of foregoing therapy and removing Charlie’s ventilator was made for the right reasons.
What complicated matters further—and prevented this from being merely a contest between a “right” and “wrong” approach—was that Charlie’s parents appeared to accept the notion that his quality of life didn’t justify preserving his life. In the April 11 ruling, Chris Gard said “We would not fight for the quality of life he has now . . . We truly believe that these medicines will work. After three months we would want to see improvement and, if there wasn’t, we would let go. This is not the life we want for Charlie.” In the statement Charlie’s parents made announcing the end of their legal efforts, they commented “He still responds to us, even now, but after reviewing the recent muscle MRI it was considered that Charlie’s muscles have deteriorated to the extent that it is largely irreversible . . . Were treatment to work, his quality of life would now not be one which we would want for our precious little boy.”
While Charlie’s parents, the hospital staff, and the judge might simply have been imprecise in their language, these statements leave the impression that none of the parties involved approached Charlie’s case with entirely correct principles in mind.
Teaching about Respect for Life
If we grant that either pursuing nucleoside therapy or foregoing it and removing Charlie’s ventilator could be justified, then Charlie’s parents should have been permitted to decide. Their parental rights should have taken precedence if there were no clearer reasons to prefer one course of treatment over the other. By refusing the parent’s wishes even in the face of their legal challenges—and obvious emotional torment— the hospital acted wrongly.
Nevertheless, both Charlie’s parents and the hospital made statements suggesting neither were guided by respect for life regardless of disability or illness. To view the case as a clear-cut struggle between those who championed life and those who didn’t may be an oversimplification.
One important lesson may be that to prevent another Charlie Gard case, pro-lifers not only need to consider reforms of laws or hospital policies, but also clearer public education on what principles and approaches to medical treatment are consistent with respecting life.
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For a more general blog post on how to tell when euthanasia happens, plus connections to other consistent-life issues, see:
Figuring out Euthanasia: What Does it Really Mean?
Abortion and War are the Karma for Killing Animals
by Vasu Murti
Vasu Murti
In the tradition of offering a wide variety of consistent-life views, Vasu Murti offers a Hindu perspective, also using Christian and secular reasoning. This was originally written as a comment to our recent post, War Causes Abortion.
Abortion and war are the karma for killing animals. The reincarnationist strategy for ending the abortion crisis is that we cease to kill animals.
Pythagoras warned: “Those who kill animals for food will be more prone than vegetarians to torture and kill their fellow men.”
Thomas Tryon’s lengthy The Way to Health, Wealth, and Happiness was published in 1691. Tryon defended vegetarianism as a physically and spiritually superior way of life. He came to this conclusion from his interpretation of the Bible as well as his understanding of Christianity.
Tryon, a Christian mystic, wrote against “that depraved custom of eating flesh and blood.” The opening pages of his book begin with an eloquent plea for mercy towards the animals:
Refrain at all times such foods as cannot be procured without violence and oppression, for know, that all the inferior creatures when hurt do cry and fend forth their complaints to their Maker…
Be not insensible that every creature doth bear the image of the great Creator according to the nature of each, and that He is the vital power in all things. Therefore, let none take pleasure to offer violence to that life, lest he awaken the fierce wrath, and bring danger to his own soul.
But let mercy and compassion dwell plentifully in your hearts, that you may be comprehended in the friendly principle of God’s love and holy light. Be a friend to everything that’s good, and then everything will be a friend to thee, and co-operate for thy good and welfare.
In The Way, Tryon (1634-1703) also condemned “Hunting, hawking, shooting, and all violent oppressive exercises.” On a separate occasion, he warned the first Quaker settlers of Pennsylvania that their “holy experiment” in peaceful living would fail unless they extended their Christian precepts of nonviolence to the animal kingdom: “Does not bounteous Mother Earth furnish us with all sorts of food necessary for life?” he asked. “Though you will not fight with and kill those of your own species, yet I must be bold to tell you, that these lesser violences (as you call them) do proceed from the same root of wrath and bitterness as the greater do.”
George T. Angell, founder of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said, “I am sometimes asked, ‘Why do you spend time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is cruelty to men?’ I answer: ‘I am working at the roots.’”
“The vegetarian movement,” wrote Count Leo Tolstoy, “ought to fill with gladness the souls of all those who have at their heart the realization of God’s Kingdom on earth.”
English vegetarian Henry Salt said: “When we turn to the protection of animals, we sometimes hear it said that we ought to protect men first and animals afterwards… By condoning cruelty to animals, we perpetuate the very spirit which condones cruelty to men.”
∞
“Although I may disagree with some of its underlying principles,” writes pro-life activist Karen Swallow Prior, “there is much for me, an anti-abortion activist, to respect in the animal rights movement.” She goes on to write:
Animal rights activists, like me, have risked personal safety and reputation for the sake of other living beings. Animal rights activists, like me, are viewed by many in the mainstream as fanatical wackos, ironically exhorted by irritated passerby to “Get a Life!”
Animal rights activists, like me, place a higher value on life than on personal comfort and convenience, and in balancing the sometimes competing interests of rights and responsibilities, choose to err on the side of compassion and nonviolence.
∞
The fate of the animals and the fate of man are interconnected. (Ecclesiastes 3:19) A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada said in 1974:
We simply request, “Don’t kill. Don’t maintain slaughterhouses.” That is very sinful. It brings a very awkward karmic reaction upon society. Stop these slaughterhouses. We don’t say, “Stop eating meat.” You can eat meat, but don’t take it from the slaughterhouse, by killing. Simply wait (until the animal dies of natural causes) and you’ll get the carcasses.
You are killing innocent cows and other animals – nature will take revenge. Just wait. As soon as the time is right, nature will gather all these rascals and slaughter them. Finished. They’ll fight among themselves – Protestants and Catholics, Russia and America, this one and that one. It is going on. Why? This is nature’s law. Tit for tat. “You have killed. Now you kill yourselves.”
They are sending animals to the slaughterhouse, and now they’ll create their own slaughterhouse. You see? Just take Belfast. The Roman Catholics are killing the Protestants, and the Protestants are killing the Catholics. This is nature’s law. It is not necessary that you be sent to the ordinary slaughterhouse. You’ll make a slaughterhouse at home. You’ll kill your own child–abortion. This is nature’s law.
In a 1979 essay entitled “Abortion and the Language of Unconsciousness,” contemporary Hindu spiritual master Ravindra-svarupa dasa (Dr. William Deadwyler) explains Srila Prabhupada’s words in terms of a secular slippery slope argument, familiar to pro-lifers:
A (spiritually) conscious person will not kill even animals (much less very young humans) for his pleasure or convenience. Certainly the unconsciousness and brutality that allows us to erect factories of death for animals lay the groundwork for our treating humans in the same way.
In the March 1982 issue of Back to Godhead, another contemporary Hindu spiritual master, Srila Hridayananda dasa Goswami (Dr. Howard Resnick), comments on this shortcoming of the anti-abortion movement:
Insisting that human life begins at conception, the anti-abortion movement seeks to shock us into the awareness that abortion means killing – killing a human being rather than an animal, a bird, an insect, or a fish.
Thus although the movement calls itself “pro-life,” it is really “pro-human-life.” Its fudging with the terms “life” and “human life” reveals a disturbing assumption: that nonhuman life is somehow not actually life at all, or, if it is, then it is somehow not as “sacred” as human life and therefore not worth protecting….
If the pro-life movement can become part of a broader struggle to recognize the sacredness of all life…then undoubtedly it will attain great success.
No lay practitioner of bhakti-yoga nor ordained (initiated) with lifelong vows can take a stand against the killing of the unborn without simultaneously taking a stand against the killing of animals for food, clothing, sport, etc.
∞
In his 1987 booklet, The New Abolitionists: Animal Rights and Human Liberation, subtitled, “An introduction to the ascendant animal rights movement, framed in the historical context of human emancipation and explained in the terminology of progressive thought and politics,” B.R. Boyd similarly writes:
With more and more people sensing connections between the looming global violence of environmental collapse and thermonuclear war, on the one hand, and our various “localized” or specific violences of child abuse, sexual assault, class exploitation, etc., on the other, the message of the animal rights movement echoes an ancient Chinese Buddhist saying:
If you wish to know
Why there are disasters
Of armies and weapons in the world
Listen to the piteous cries
From the slaughterhouse at midnight
Whether viewed spiritually as karma or in secular, psychological terms as the natural result of our individual and collective psychic numbing to the suffering we inflict, it does seem that our violence comes back to haunt us — as we have sown, so are we reaping — and that the roots of our ecological and nuclear dilemma reach deep into our history and our psychology.
It seems increasingly clear that a thoroughgoing solution to the big problems we face will require a radical change in many of our ways of thinking and feeling and being in the world. Radical ecofeminism and some other holistic perspectives are teaching us that an integral part of that change lies in learning to balance our intellect — including clear-headed analysis, which is essential — with our emotions, integrating head and heart, and developing circular and complete relationships with the earth and her creatures, as contrasted with the separated, linear patterns and the absolute primacy of intellect over feeling and intuition that seem to typify Western patriarchal thinking.
In the April 1995 issue of Harmony: Voices for a Just Future, a consistent-life magazine, Catholic civil rights activist Bernard Broussard similarly concludes:
our definition of war is much too limited and narrow. Wars and conflicts in the human kingdom will never be abolished or diminished until, as a pure matter of logic, it includes the cessation of war between the human and animal kingdoms.
For, if we be eaters of flesh, or wearers of fur, or participants in hunting animals, or in any way use our might against weakness, we are promoting, in no matter how seemingly insignificant a fashion, the spirit of war.
∞
The “might makes right” mentality that makes abortion possible begins with what we humans do to other animals.
Animals are like children. If you can’t see toddlers as persons, how will you ever see zygotes and embryos as persons?
Again, Pythagoras warned: “Those who kill animals for food will be more prone than vegetarians to torture and kill their fellow men.”
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See the list of all our blog posts, put in categories.
Vasu Murti also wrote our blog post Suffering and Injustice Concern Us All
He’s the author of The Liberal Case against Abortion and
They Shall Not Hurt or Destroy: Animal Rights and Vegetarianism in the Western Religious Traditions
War Causes Abortion
by Rachel MacNair and Catherine Coyle
This is a condensed version of Chapter 4 in Peace Psychology Perspectives on Abortion. References are in APA style – authors in parentheses, full citation at the bottom.
Left: Rachel MacNair. Right: Catherine Coyle
War as an Instrument of Unchosen Abortion
In an article entitled “Abortion and War,” Emanuel Charles McCarthy (2011) points out what is obvious upon paying attention to the point:
Emanuel Charles McCarthy
As I read the triumphant headlines in the newspapers day after day—“U.S. Pounds Iraq from Air”—and saw the pictures of missiles streaking into Iraq, I could not help but hear the silent screams of all the little Iraqi children in utero who were having their lives ripped from them. The lucky ones were the ones who took a direct hit. The ones, who were aborted because of percussion, vibration or because of the terror, trauma, malnourishment and/or exhaustion visited upon their mothers by war, would probably have suffered less agonizing deaths at the wrong end of a suction machine in an abortion clinic. . . . Modern industrial war, once unleashed, produces an instant Auschwitz for the unborn—that’s fact, not conjecture. Mass abortions are the necessary and one hundred per cent inevitable consequence of modern war. (McCarthy, 2011, p. 1- 2)
To cite a specific case to show how this works within the dynamics of war, Jon Lee Anderson, a writer for The New Yorker, said in a March 24, 2003 interview with Charlie Rose on Rose’s PBS show: “My driver, a sweet Iraqi man, was bitter today because one of his daughters suffered what he called an involuntary abortion during last night’s bombing due to fright. She was 3 to 4 months pregnant.” This was by way of illustrating how Iraqis who opposed Saddam Hussein might nevertheless turn against the United States if the destruction became too great.
War as a Pressure for Abortion
There is very little empirical study of war as a pressure for women to abort pregnancies that would have been desired in the absence of war. There has been some documentation in news reports that indicate this has occurred; for example, The Washington Post (Pomfret, 1993) reported that Srecko Simic, chief of obstetrics at Kosevo hospital, did a study there and found that during the siege of Sarajevo there were three abortions for every pregnancy carried to term, with rates of prematurity, stillbirth, and death within seven days of birth also skyrocketing.
Mary Meehan
Mary Meehan (2012) wrote a magazine article with cases indicating how this dynamic works:
In 2007, Iraq’s Red Crescent Society reported that over one million Iraqis had been displaced by violence or the threat of it. ABC News, covering the Red Crescent report, said many pregnant women in that situation were having abortions “because they are unable to get medical care for themselves and their unborn.” (Meehan, 2012)
She also points to a case reported in The Washington Post:
[A] 33-year-old woman . . . said she struggled for weeks, trying to decide between her religion and her love for children on the one hand and her inability to support a newborn baby on the other. Finally she went ahead with the abortion.
The Catholic mother of two said she spent the night crying and praying . . . “I would never do this in peacetime and God knows I wanted that child, but there is no food for him in my house,” she said. “There is nothing. What could I do?” (Pomfret, 1993).
Rape as a Weapon of War
Rape of thousands of women has been used as a weapon of war throughout history – a strategic decision to spread terror and humiliation (Moore, 2010). As Jina Moore summarizes:
Rape has been a consequence of military defeat for millennia. But in the last 20 years — from Bosnia to Rwanda, from Colombia to the Democratic Republic of Congo — sexual violence against women, and sometimes even against men, has become a strategic military tactic designed to humiliate victims and shatter enemy societies. And increasingly, governments presiding over peaceful countries are using mass rape in deliberate and targeted campaigns to spread terror and humiliation among political dissenters, often during election seasons. The strategic use of rape has been recognized by international courts as an act of genocide and ethnic cleansing. (Moore, 2010)
Massive rapes will likely lead to feticides and infanticides, both voluntary and pressured, among those impregnated. There will also be numerous suicides among such women. The whirlwind of war harms many people who are never counted in the battle casualties.
One study investigating the psychological consequences of rape in the wars following the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s contained quite a bit of information about women who were impregnated by the rapes (Loncar, Medved, Jovanovic, & Hotujac, 2006). Out of a very large population of refugees (1,926), they focused on the 55 women who confirmed having been raped.
Unsurprisingly, they did find that there were many negative and intense aftereffects. Rape normally has such an impact. Additionally, in the case of rapes within war, the normal kinds of post-rape therapeutic interventions were rendered unavailable by the war itself.
Of the 55 women, 29 got pregnant; this rate of over half is well out of bounds of the portion of women who get pregnant by rape outside of war circumstances. The authors have no explanation for this, but one possibility is that those rape victims who get pregnant may be much more likely to admit to being raped. The pregnancy makes the rape harder to deny and makes the event much more firmly established as a completed trauma.
Of the 29 impregnated, 17 had an induced abortion, which means that 12 did not . . . authors found that the strongest predictor of the outcome of deciding on an abortion was suicidal thoughts and impulses.
Implications for Meeting Women’s Needs and Rights
The most obvious implication for anyone in the field of peace psychology is that we should prevent all wars. Falling short of that, however, there are still things that can be done.
UN Resolution 1820 does give governments, legal counsel, and grassroots activists a basis upon which to act. As with all high-sounding rhetoric, it does require much work on the ground to make it happen.
United Nations peacekeepers in theory help prevent wars, or prevent further outbreaks after wars have mainly wound down. Accordingly, they get immunity from prosecution, to keep local governments from interfering with their work by bringing unfair charges. However, women and girls in war-torn areas are vulnerable. Sometimes, because of extreme poverty, they sell sexual favors. There is also outright rape. As a result, a campaign has been launched with the specific goal of removing legal immunity for sexual exploitation and assaults committed by U.N. Peacekeepers, called Code Blue.
All women who have been sexually exploited are traumatized and need psychological support ranging from tender loving care to professional counseling. Some of the women will have had abortions or go to the extreme of infanticide, and their reactions to this will vary according to cultural beliefs and individual predilections. Some of the women will give birth to the children and place them for adoption, and their psychological aftermath can vary depending on whether this was a well-facilitated international adoption (there are an ample supply of eager adoptive parents) or whether government blocking of adoption is part of the war situation. Yet others will choose to give birth to and raise their own children. However, the background of hatred in which the child was conceived may require special attention for compassionate care of both mother and child.
Post-war reconciliation: The need to ease tensions after a war, both for the people involved and to prevent another round of war, is always especially difficult. It is even more complicated if rape was used by one ethnic group against another. When people regard “rape-babies” or “scum-babies” as worthy targets of their prejudice, it adds fuel to the ethnic tensions commonly causing the problem in the first place. Emotions will be raw on this point, whatever options the women and their families choose. They will need to be taken into account in the post-war reconciliation efforts in which peace psychology excels.
References
Loncar, M., Medved, V., Jovanovic, N. & Hotujac, L. (2006). Psychological consequences of rape on women in 1991-1995 war in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Croatian Medical Journal, 47(1), 67-75.
McCarthy, E. C. (2011). Abortion and war. Retrieved from http://www.centerforchristiannonviolence.org/data/Media/Abortion_and_War.pdf
Meehan, M. (2012, January 16). In harm’s way: Children, born and unborn, trapped in wartime. America: The National Catholic Review. Retrieved from http://americamagazine.org/issue/5126/article/harms-way
Moore, J. (2010). Confronting rape as a war crime: Will a new U.N. campaign have any impact? CQ Researcher, 4(5). Retrieved from http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqrglobal2010050000
Pomfet, J. (1993, August 12). Besieged Sarajevo, no place for a baby. The Washington Post, A-18.
United Nations (2008). Resolution 1820. Retrieved from http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/CAC%20S%20RES%201820.pdf
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For more of our blog posts dealing with psychology, see:
Violence Bolstered by Professional Contradictions
The Creativity of the Fore-closed Option
Excerpt – Peace Psychology Perspectives on Abortion, Introduction
Our next post, Abortion and War are the Karma for Killing Animals, was originally written as a comment to this post, but was lengthy enough to make its own post.
Abortion Doctor Says: We are the Executioners
by Sarah Terzo
Sarah Terzo
Pro-choice author Magda Denes, Ph.D., interviewed abortionists and clinic workers for her book In Necessity and Sorrow, Life and Death inside an Abortion Hospital. Surprisingly, many of the abortionists she interviewed admitted that they were terminating life.
One abortionist made it very clear that he knew he was killing. He speaks first about how strange it was to be treating premature babies and helping them survive while at the same time killing preborn babies of the same age elsewhere through abortion:
You have to become a bit schizophrenic. In one room you encourage the patient that the slight irregularity of the fetal heart is not important – that she is going to have a fine, healthy baby. Then in the next room you assure another woman on whom you just did a saline abortion, that it’s good that the heart is already irregular… She has nothing to worry about, she is not going to have a live baby.
The abortionist then describes how doing late-term abortions was easier for him because he started doing earlier abortions and “worked his way up” to the later ones. Because he was used to killing younger children, he was able to desensitize himself, which helped him progress to killing older children. These older babies actively reacted to his attempts to kill them.
At the beginning we were doing abortions on smaller fetuses… And the kicking and heartbeat did not manifest itself as much. I think if I had started with 24 weekers right off the bat, I would’ve had a much greater conflict in my own mind if this was the same as murder or not. But since we started off slowly with 15-16 weekers, the fetus just never got consideration. Then gradually, the whole range of cases started to become larger. All of a sudden, one noticed that at the time of the saline infusion, there was a lot of activity in the uterus. It wasn’t fluid currents. It was obviously the fetus being distressed by swallowing the salt solution and kicking violently through the death trauma. You can either face it, or turn around and say it’s uterine contractions. That, however, would be repressing, since as a doctor you obviously know that it is not.
He is speaking about saline abortions, an abortion method that was frequently used in the 1970s and ’80s but is less common now due in part to the large numbers of babies who were born alive, including Melissa Ohden. In this type of abortion, the abortionist injects a toxic saline solution into the mother’s womb, which slowly poisons and kills the child. It can take hours for a baby to die this way.
The abortionist says he never tells the women that their babies are struggling for their lives:
Now whether you admit this to the patient is another matter. Her distress by unwanted pregnancy is to be the primary consideration, ahead of any possible consideration for the fetus.
Then he makes the big admission:
“We just have to face it. Somebody has to do it. Unfortunately, we are the executioners in this instance.”
This abortionist compares himself to a person who kills convicted criminals. He casts himself as an executioner in order to justify his actions.
In making the comparison, the abortionist is saying that yes, he is killing, but the killing is acceptable. In our society, we don’t view those who execute criminals as murderers. It is, we say, justifiable killing.
The abortionist is able to tell himself that he isn’t the only one killing; executioners kill criminals all the time. If there was no capital punishment in America, and the value of life was always respected, would it be harder for the abortionist to justify his actions? There are many arguments against the death penalty, but one of them is that a nation that accepts the killing of criminals is more likely to accept the killing of other groups of people. The institution of capital punishment opens the door to further violence, because it makes killing, at least in some circumstances, acceptable. If we can kill undesirable adults, why not kill undesirable fetuses?
If our nation took a strong stand against taking human lives, even those of criminals, would it make abortion less acceptable? In the way that killing small babies made it easier to kill large babies, does the acceptance of the death penalty lead to the acceptance of other types of killing?
Violence tends to beget violence, and having the death penalty affects society in subtle ways. In this case, it has given an abortion doctor an excuse, a rationalization that makes it easier for him to end unborn human lives.
This is just one more reason to oppose the death penalty, one among many. The possible execution of innocent people, the unjustness of taking a human life for reasons other than self-defense, and the way legalized killing affects society- these are all reasons to oppose capital punishment.
The truth is, all life is valuable. A consistent life ethic leaves no human being out.
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See the list of all our blog posts, put in categories.
Breaking Stereotypes in Fearful Times
by John Whitehead
John Whitehead
Several incidents of terrorism that occurred in the United Kingdom this spring—the suicide bombing of a concert in Manchester, two attacks in London by men using trucks and knives—have understandably received much attention and provoked much horror and outrage. Along with such appropriate responses as sympathy for the victims and their families and anger at the perpetrators, the terrorism has also elicited negative responses. Because the terrorists were motivated by a strain of ISIS-affiliated Islamic extremism, some people have reacted by attacking Muslims generally. US President Donald Trump renewed calls for a ban on people from six Muslim-majority nations being allowed into the United States. Negative attitudes toward Muslims have prompted violent incidents such as a man harassing a Muslim woman in Portland, Oregon and killing the men who tried to protect her or an attack on worshippers at a London mosque that killed one man.
Given such a backdrop of terrorism provoking further terrorism, as well as religious stereotyping, certain important facts about Muslims and violent incidents such as the recent UK attacks need to be remembered. Bearing this stereotyping-breaking information in mind can prevent responses to terrorism from being marred and undermined by bigotry.
Islam contains traditions that discourage terrorism and promote limitations on violence.
While Islam is not formally pacifist and holds that violence can be justified (a characteristic it shares with most major religions and notable secular ideologies such as Marxism), Islamic tradition contains elements that encourage the restraint of violence. The Qur’an, the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad, and the interpretations of Islamic jurists offer support for limitations on the conduct of soldiers in war. Such limitations directly contradict the indiscriminate violence of terrorism.
A Qur’an passage reads “Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors” (2:190). Some scholars interpret this passage as meaning that Muslims can validly fight against enemy combatants (such as soldiers) who are directly engaged in waging war but not non-combatants such as children, women, or the elderly.
In the same way, a hadith (a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad) states “Do not kill an elderly [person], or a child, or a woman.” Muhammad gave more detailed instructions on conduct in war when he told his troops, before battle, “In avenging the injuries inflicted upon us molest not the harmless inmates of domestic seclusion; spare the . . . female sex; injure not the infants at the breast or those who are ill in bed. Refrain from demolishing the houses of the unresisting inhabitants; destroy not the means of their subsistence, nor their fruit-trees and touch not the palm.”
Later, Abu Bakr, the first Khalifah (successor to Muhammad as leader of the Muslim community), commanded his army “Do not mutilate the dead, nor to slay the elderly, women, and children. Do not inundate a date palm nor burn it. Do not cut down a fruit tree, nor to kill cattle unless they were needed for food. Don’t destroy any building. Maybe, you will pass by people who have secluded themselves in convents; leave them and do not interfere in what they do.”
Various Islamic jurists have laid out differing rules of war, but the notion that certain people, particularly women and children, should be classified as non-combatants and protected from harm is a common theme. The notion of treating wartime captives (what today we would call prisoners of war) well is reflected in the Qur’an’s passage “And they feed, for the love of God, the indigent, the orphan and the captive” (76:8). Muhammad also stated “I command you to treat captives well.”
More recently, some Muslims took a stand against the most indiscriminate killers of all, nuclear weapons. In the 1980s, at the height of the Cold War arms race, Inamullah Khan, secretary-general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), condemned such weapons, saying “Nuclear weapons are not weapons of war. They are instruments of mass extermination.” Khan endorsed “universal and non-discriminatory” nuclear disarmament. Major General Rahim Khan, a retired Pakistani military officer, wrote a similar critique of nuclear weapons at this time and also called for disarmament. Muhammad Munir, a law professor at the International Islamic University, interprets Islamic tradition to reach the conclusion “the use of nuclear weapons and WMDs is totally prohibited in the Islamic [laws of war].”
Last, and perhaps most directly relevant to contemporary concerns about terrorism, 126 Muslim scholars and leaders signed in 2014 an “Open Letter to Al-Baghdadi.” Addressed to the head of ISIS, known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the letter is a lengthy condemnation of the terrorist organization for departing from Islamic tradition. The letter condemns ISIS for killing innocents, emissaries (such as journalists and aid workers), prisoners, and fellow Muslims, as well as abusing the concept of jihad. The letter’s condemnation of ISIS’ killing Muslims points to another important consideration.
Muslims are the main victims of extremist groups such as ISIS or Al Qaeda.
A review of ISIS-linked terrorist attacks that took place outside Iraq and Syria between June 2014 and July 2016 reveals a striking statistic. The majority, by far, of people killed in the attacks came from Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt, Libya, Niger, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. Not all the victims were Muslims (some were tourists or members of religious minorities) but many were—indeed, several attacks took place outside mosques. A similar study of al Qaeda attacks between 2004 and 2008 concluded that the “overwhelming majority of [al‐Qaeda] victims are Muslims living in Muslim countries, and many are citizens of Iraq, which suffered more al‐Qa’ida attacks than any other country courtesy of the [al-Qaeda in Iraq] affiliate.” The May bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed 150 people and may have been the work of a Taliban-linked group, also shows that extremists have no reservations about killing fellow Muslims.
The significant Islamic traditions that support restraint in war and respect for non-combatants, as well as the practical realities of terrorism’s devastating effects on Muslim communities, should act as powerful antidotes to the dangerous “Muslims as terrorists” stereotype. Moreover, such traditions and realities show that those wishing to counter terrorism should make common cause with Muslims in that struggle.
The Reynolds Family, the Nuclear Age and a Brave Wooden Boat
Note: This is the text of Jessica’s talk at the June 17, 2017 Ban the Bomb March in Los Angeles.
Jessica Renshaw
I want to tell you a story—a true, personal story. (To save time, I’ll just tell you I’m 73!)
I was one year old when nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Six years later our family moved to Hiroshima. My father, Dr. Earle Reynolds, was a scientist. The Atomic Energy Commission sent him to study the effects of radiation on children exposed to the bomb.
For 3 years, Dad studied 4,800 children. In his spare time he built a 50-foot yacht named Phoenix of Hiroshima. In 1954 Dad submitted his findings on the dangers of radiation to the Atomic Energy Commission. Then our family sailed the Phoenix around the world. Three young yachtsmen from Hiroshima went with us. This was only 9 years after our countries had been at war with each other.
We sailed around the world for 3-1/2 years. Two of our Japanese crew flew back to Hiroshima but Niichi Mikami stayed with us. When we reached Honolulu in 1958, we were looking forward to sailing home to Hiroshima.
But the United States was testing nuclear weapons in the Pacific. Our government had just issued an injunction forbidding American citizens to enter that zone. It covered 390,000 square miles of ocean. We had to sail through that area to get back to Japan.
The same Atomic Energy Commission which had hired Dad to find out the dangers of radiation was in charge of testing nuclear weapons. My dad had written up his findings that radiation causes cancer and is not healthy for human beings. He knew that added radiation from each nuclear test was poisoning the world’s air and seas for decades to come. But the Atomic Energy Commission had suppressed Dad’s findings so they could assure the American public that nuclear tests are safe.
My father the scientist became my father the activist and our pleasure cruise became one of protest. In 1958 I was 14, my brother Ted was 20. Our family and Niichi Mikami chose to sail the Phoenix into the test zone as a protest against nuclear testing. Dad was arrested, tried and convicted of trespass. Our government would later blackball him so he never got a job in his field again.
In 1961 we sailed to Nakhodka, USSR to protest Soviet nuclear testing—a normal American father, mother, 23-year old son, 17-year old daughter, a yachtsman friend and two cats. By this time we had letters and telegrams from hundreds of survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, appealing for a nuclear ban. We had a good talk about peace with the captain of the Soviet Coast Guard boat which stopped us. But he refused to take the appeals. He turned us away.
Back in Japan, we felt we had made no difference. My mother, Barbara Reynolds, felt a responsibility to get the appeals to the leaders of the world. On Christmas Day, 1961, she sat in the Hiroshima Peace Park, at the foot of the monument dedicated to the children killed by the atomic bomb. She fasted and prayed there all day, appealing to the God she did not yet know personally — for wisdom to know what to do with all the appeals of the hibakusha, the bomb survivors.
The answer came: the hibakusha themselves must take these appeals to the world! With the city’s blessing, my mother accompanied two survivors on a Peace Pilgrimage to the leaders of the nuclear nations and to the United Nations. Then she accompanied 25 of them, from both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on a World Peace Study Mission. When my mother died, the grateful hibakusha erected a monument to her in the Peace Park—their Ground Zero.
The Phoenix of Hiroshima, the brave wooden boat that took us into the Pacific test zone and to the USSR, is now at the bottom of the Sacramento River. Many people are trying to raise and restore her as a historic artifact, a piece of history. That website is phoenixofhiroshima.org.
Now, finally, we have hope. The United Nations is considering a ban on nuclear weapons. The children my dad studied when I was a child myself are in their 70s, 80s and 90s. They are coming to the UN with an appeal signed by nearly 3,000,000 people expressing their own unique, single, heartfelt message: Don’t let what happened to us happen again anywhere to anybody!
Let us stand in solidarity with the hibakusha: No more Hiroshima! No more Nagasaki!
Editor’s Note: When Jessica Renshaw first contacted us, she said:
“My life . . . has been devoted to two major causes: pro-life and anti-nuke . . .
I have two pro-life books out: GIANNA: Aborted and Lived to Tell About It and a novel, Compelling Interests. I have one anti-nuclear book out, To Russia with Love, about a protest voyage by yacht our family made in 1961, and have just published another one, The Reynolds Family, the Nuclear Age, and a Brave Wooden Boat.
I felt such relief, like two parts of me merged and were made whole, when I found your website! My causes really are just two consistent aspects of my concern.”
Rehumanize International at the New York City June 17 March
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For more of our blog 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
Nuclear Disarmament as a Social Justice Issue
“An Inferno That Even the Mind of Dante Could Not Envision”: Martin Luther King on Nuclear Weapons
A Global Effort to Protect Life: The UN Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons
“The Affairs of a Handful of Natives”: Nuclear Testing and Racism
Lethal from the Start: Uranium Mining’s Danger to the Most Vulnerable
Would Nonviolence Work on the Nazis?
by Rachel MacNair
While it took time to realize the extent of the Nazis’ brutality, the night of November 9-10, 1938, gave intense warning that Jews were in great danger. Hundreds of synagogues and thousands of businesses were attacked with sledgehammers. Several dozen Jews were killed, in what became known as Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. People around the world were shocked.
Beyond words of outrage, one obviously necessary action to protect people and to protest most strongly was for countries to take in Jewish immigrants. U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt asked Congress to allow those already in the U.S. on visas to stay; it would be inhuman to return them. But he didn’t ask for the quota to be raised to allow more in.
Members of the Heldenmuth family board the SS St. Louis in Hamburg harbor
In May of 1939, the transatlantic liner St. Louis with 937 mostly Jewish passengers set sail from Hamburg with permission to land in Cuba. The permission was revoked, and all but 28 were denied entry. They begged for entry into the United States as they passed Miami and were denied. Most were sent back to Nazi Germany.
After Kristallnacht, Brazil actually added an immigration requirement of a baptismal certificate dated before 1933, a Christian document no Jew would have.
The question of whether nonviolence works with people as vicious as the Nazis runs up against this basic point: at the beginning, when the problem was clear enough and the numbers of people killed were in the dozens rather than the millions, the nonviolent approach needed was simple, clear, and insufficiently tried.
But while it’s all very well to point out that things should be nipped in the bud, what can be done when things have in fact gotten out of hand?
When the Nazis took over Denmark, Danes organized a Freedom Council. Though there was some sabotage, the Council found through experience that massive nonviolence worked better. When staging strikes brought more bloody action from the Germans, workers would go to work but then leave early, claiming the curfew made them need to tend to their gardens.
The most dramatic and clearly successful part of the Danes’ resistance to the Nazis was the rescue of Danish Jews. The Nazis arranged to start arrests at 10 PM on Friday night, October 1, knowing that Jews were likely to all be home for Rosh Hashanah. But the Danes got a warning that this was the plan. They sent word around so quickly that all the Jews went into hiding in hospitals, people’s homes, and other places.
So a German order on October 2 said all non-Jews must turn Jews in. Organizers decided to send the Jews across the lake to Sweden, which the Nazis had not yet reached. During the night about 7,200 people, almost all the Jews of Denmark, were smuggled onto anything that would float.
They all made is safely to the Swedish shore. Then came word that the Swedish king, being afraid of the Nazis, was refusing to give them asylum. But Niels Bohr, winner of the 1922 Nobel Prize for physics, had Jewish ancestry on his mother’s side and had escaped to Sweden already. He sent word to the king that if the refugees were turned in to the Nazis, he would turn himself in with them. The king immediately allowed the refugees in.
The Bulgarian king and parliament, on the other hand, went along with the Nazis and proposed a “Law in Defense of the Nation” that would basically outlaw Jews. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church and many Bulgarians flooded them with letters not to pass it, but they did anyway. The plan was to begin by deporting 20,000 Jews. But on May 24, 1943, there was a huge demonstration. It began with a rally at a synagogue in Sofia and turned into a large march. The march was broken up by clashes with the police. But government officials were alarmed, and the deportations never happened. The cattle cars remained empty. The saving of Bulgarian Jews was a massive nonviolent action by the Bulgarian people.
Nonviolence in defense of Jews also occurred in the very heart of the Nazi empire: “Rosenstrasse” was the name of the street in Berlin where this remarkably effective protest happened. The Gestapo picked up Jewish men in Berlin who had non-Jewish wives. The wives demonstrated outside their husbands’ prison and demanded their release. They were persistent.
Gestapo headquarters were close by. A machine gun could have wiped the women out. They never fired. Instead, the government negotiated and let the men go. This wasn’t a trick; most were found to be still alive at the end of the war. (This protest is dramatized in the movie Rosenstrasse).
Left: from the movie. Right: Part of the memorial “Block der Frauen” by Ingeborg Hunzinger
These are a few examples; many more could be cited – we haven’t even started on the trouble that the Nazi leader Quisling had in Norway. And of course thousands more Jews were saved by brave souls through an underground railroad.
But the consistent-life mind will naturally be curious about more than war and genocide. How did it build up into such a monstrosity?
Jurist Karl Binding and psychiatrist Alfred Hoche published a book in 1920 called Life Unworthy to be Lived, which helped set the ball rolling. Euthanasia of disabled people was rampant in the hospitals of Germany before the concentration camps were set up, and eugenics that kept the “undesirable” people from reproducing had advanced to widespread abortion by the time the principle was extended to the idea that being Jewish (or Roma/Gypsy, or homosexual, or a member of another group viewed as inferior in Nazi ideology) constituted a disability to which the same “medical treatment” of death should apply.
For years now, the Nazis have served as a lesson about opposing violence: protecting the innocent and vulnerable – unborn and recently born children, people with disabilities, targeted minority groups of any kind – is not only inherently worthwhile, but is crucial to preventing escalation. Genocides don’t come full-blown. They start out small and grow. To stop large horrific slaughters, we most oppose the killing of any human being. If the most vulnerable are protected, then the rest of us are safer too.
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For posts on similar topics, see:
The Darkest Hour: “Glorifying” War?
Self-Defeating Violence: The Case of the First World War
Finding Common Ground on and Learning from World War II
The Civil War Conundrum, 150 Years Later
What Do Men Have to Say on Abortion?
by Rachel MacNair
Every once in a while the charge comes up that since men can’t get pregnant, they shouldn’t have any say on public policy on abortion.
This is a rather odd position, inasmuch as no pregnancy every occurred without male participation somehow. And the behavior men have in response to their own start at fatherhood can have a huge impact on how the mother sees it.
Nevertheless, the idea is prevalent that abortion is a “woman’s rights” issue and therefore only women should be active on it.
One response consistent lifers have made is an analogy: women aren’t drafted, but still have a right to a say on public policy regarding conscription.
But when I’ve dealt with this question in public speeches, I’ve found this short answer to be remarkably effective: “My experience is that when men get all worked up over the fate of little tiny babies, it improves their character.”
That generally brings a chuckle, and no further argument.
But I’d like to turn the argument around. I propose that it’s the so-called “pro-choice” men that actually need to have trepidations about asserting their viewpoint. Because they’re the ones that have to assure us they really do mean that they see abortion as a “woman’s right,” and not as a remarkably self-centered, male-centered way of saying they’re entitled to have women as sex objects that can be vacuumed out and re-used.
I have a set of limericks I wrote on this, years ago. This one was based on an actual remark overheard in a male state legislator’s office in New York:
Oh, how grateful we are to the Court
Giving women the right to abort
If abortion weren’t lawful
Just imagine how awful –
For the men, who must pay child support.
And this one was based on the knowledge that the Playboy Foundation was a major contributor to abortion supporting organizations, the meaning of which seemed to slip right past the people in those organizations:
To keep legal abortion secure
Contributions from Playboy were sure
Then it happened one day
One receiver said – hey!
We’re not certain their motives are pure!
And then we have this one based on a photo I saw. The wording of the sign was different, of course, since I was making mine fit a limerick, but the meaning was the same:
“Keep your laws off my body – no ban!
This is my body – I make the plan!”
Said the sign, plain to see
Please explain it to me
Why the person who held it’s – a man?
(or please answer this quiz:
Why is her body his?)
More recently, we have the following tweet from an outfit that seriously ought to have known better: “The Daily Show” which used to be Jon Stewart’s show and is now Trevor Noah’s. It’s a comedy show that uses the daily news as its subject matter and has a clear liberal bent. The tweet did raise quite an on-line ruckus. It was in response the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) decision in the summer of 2016 knocking down the abortion clinic health regulations in Texas (note the number of likes on the bottom line after the heart):
The male-centered, irresponsible, and incredibly callous approach in this tweet startled a lot of abortion defenders.
But they were startled only because they have blinders on, with their “women’s rights” rhetoric. The only thing unusual about that tweet was that someone actually said explicitly in public what’s more commonly a private attitude.
Men who are willing to work hard to help out with babies – especially those they helped create, but also other people’s – these aren’t the men who need to worry about saying what they think about abortion. Men whose callousness towards those babies might also be similar to the callousness toward women they have sex with – those are the men who need to be careful about what they say on the topic.
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For more of our blog posts on men and abortion, see:
No Combat Experience, No Opinion: Parallels in Pro-bombing and Pro-choice Rhetoric
“The Daily Show” Doesn’t Do Its Homework
Activists Reminisce: An Oral History of Prolifers for Survival
Excerpt from Chapter 12, Consistently Opposing Killing
Note: This comes from a conference call done for a chapter in the anthology, Consistently Opposing Killing: From Abortion to Assisted Suicide, the Death Penalty, and War, published by Praeger.
Juli is Julianne Wiley (also known as Juli Loesch); Rachel is Rachel MacNair. Mary Rider was also on the call.
The last meeting of Prolifers for Survival was the first meeting of the Seamless Garment Network; we have since changed our name to the Consistent Life Network. The excerpt starts with the beginning of Prolifers for Survival.
Juli: As I remember, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident happened in March, 1979. In May they did a huge anti-nuclear march and we went to that. We had talked with or had a beer with people in the peace movement we knew were prolife, and got about nine of us to hand out about 50,000 leaflets.
Mary Meehan: It was a good beginning, and people were friendly.
Juli Loesch / Julianne Wiley, in 1980s
Juli: It was great. It was a beautiful day, and a couple of the pro-abortion peaceniks came up and sort of listlessly told us that we weren’t allowed to leaflet. We remarked that we hadn’t seen the newspaper that morning, and hadn’t realized that the Bill of Rights had been rescinded. They sort of said, “oh, you assholes,” and walked listlessly away. That was 1979, and was the anti-nuclear power movement mostly.
But then Reagan became president in 1980, and the Left switched into an anti-nuclear weapons movement again. I felt energized by that, because to me nuclear weapons and abortion were perfect bookends, symmetrical images of each other. They both involved a frank commitment to targeting innocent targets, and they both depended on the calculated willingness to destroy them deliberately. Looking at it from a reasonable definition of murder – the deliberate killing of innocent persons – it was to me not debatable. I mean, it was not like nuclear power which had calculable risks that could be compared against other risks. Or even conventional war, which can have degrees of limitation, which makes a just war preferable to an unjust peace. The two issues struck me as being so absolute they set up a kind of a north and south pole, a whole magnetic force that drew in a lot of other issues because of the clarity of those two.
Rachel: But the Mobilization for Survival of Boston didn’t see it that way. I remember when Prolifers for Survival tried to join the Mobilization for Survival. The Boston Chapter sent out a letter, very exercised about the prospect. Do you remember that?
Juli: Oh yes, they offered to dismantle the entire Mobilization for Survival if we contaminated them by our membership. They were willing to destroy their movement rather than allowing in this tiny prolife entity. Evidently they thought pro “choice” was more important than survival of the planet.
Rachel: I remember at the time thinking the Communist Party has front groups that are members of this coalition. The whole point of having a coalition is that you set aside disagreements on other things to focus on the one thing.
Juli: Exactly. I would have been willing to march beside hot and cold running Trots [Trotskyites] to stop the nuclear arms race. But that kind of latitude was not permitted.
Mary Meehan
Mary Meehan: Well, there was a debate at the Mobe [Mobilization for Survival] convention in Pittsburgh, remember that? Later they let me write a little piece against their taking a position on abortion at all, and someone else wrote one saying they should. I think we did at least get some people to take another look at it. I guess they never accepted PS as a member. Or did they?
Juli: Oh, no.
[Co-editor Stephen Zunes notes: There were then over 200 member organizations, which makes the upset about PS’s application all the more ludicrous. Also, my recollection – I was on the national staff of Mobe at the time and was PS’s strongest advocate among them – was that Juli withdrew their application rather than split the organization, so the application was neither formally accepted or rejected.]
Rachel: I remember a memorable line from the Boston letter: all prolifers are “racist, classist, misogynist, anti-choice reactionaries.” We set it to music and put it on T-shirts: “Another Racist, Classist, Misogynist, Anti-choice Reactionary for Peace.”
Juli: Yes. The sad thing is when that faction of the Left sinks its fangs into the peace movement, they sink their fangs and claws and suck the life out of it. They take the peace camp and the peace T-shirts and peace sandals and put them on. So you think you have a peace movement, and what you really have is a raving Left movement that’s dressed itself up to look like a peace movement. Because the people who have really thought long and hard about the spiritual, psychological, and social requirements of nonviolence are repelled by them, and yet those are the people who ought to be the peace movement.
Mary Meehan: I saw the anti-war march in Washington last weekend, and I saw some of the same hard-edge stuff that’s always bothered me. But I also saw some very deeply committed, and probably decades-long-committed, peace people.
Rachel MacNair, in the 1980s
Rachel: What hops to my mind is how many peace movement people wouldn’t consider the prolife movement because of how turned off they were by people like Jerry Falwell, Jesse Helms, and George Bush.
Juli: Oh sure. Most people, myself included, when you look at a complicated problem, start off by seeing where your friends are. Because you trust them. There’s nothing wrong with that. Your friends are honorable and intelligent people, and you consult them to see what they believe in. But that turns into a camp or culture of the Right or a camp and culture of the Left, not based on real thinking or real dialog – just a desire to move with your particular herd. Us against them, which arouses the most pleasurable, pervasive, and vile passions.
Rachel: And is exactly what the peace movement knows better than to do.
Juli: Yes. It was wonderful to have an organization like Prolifers for Survival for a while that tried to respect both of those cultural camps, and understand them, and listen to them, and to act winsomely – is that a word?
Mary Meehan: It is, a good one.
Juli: To act winsomely towards both sides to talk about serious issues that concern all of us in our hearts and souls.
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See the list of all our blog posts, put in categories.
For more of our blog posts on Actions and Adventures, see:
The Adventures of Organizing as a Consistent Lifer
Violence Bolstered by Professional Contradictions
Mourning After & Hoping for the Future, We Call for a Consistent Life Texas!
My Day at the Democratic National Convention
Adventures as a Delegate to the Democratic Party Convention
Progressive Prolifers at the Progressive Magazine 100th Anniversary Celebration