Nat Hentoff, Rest in Peace
One of our earliest endorsers, Nat Hentoff passed away January 7, 2017 at the age of 91. The photo to the right comes from when he appeared as one of four interviewees in our video from the 1980s, back when we were still the Seamless Garment Network, which is why the video was called The Seamless Garment. (The seamless garment and the consistent life ethic are the same thing).
He was a writer for the Village Voice and frequently had pieces in such places as The Progressive magazine. He was especially well-known for his free-speech absolutism, including writing a delightful book called Free Speech for Me, But Not for Thee. Listing a variety of places where speech was censored not by government but by intolerance, pro-life feminists and consistent-lifers had their stories told.
It startled his progressive friends (and wife) when he became pro-life. It lost him some writing gigs, but he stuck to his principles.
It happened because he was shocked by the Baby Doe cases, in which infanticide of babies with disabilities was advocated by means of denying needed medical care. The care would have been offered a non-disabled child. The child’s death was the goal.
Nat came to realize that feticide for the same reason was just as much an outrage. Then he reasoned that feticide for any other reason wasn’t acceptable either. People in the circles he ran around in were quite startled. We were delighted to have a good friend.
In October of 1986 he gave an excellent speech explaining his views, now a consistent-life classic, called The Indivisible Fight for Life.
He also wrote about his experiences in an excellent piece called “Pro-Choice Bigots: A View from the Pro-life Left”
We encourage everyone to read the full articles on-line. To give you a taste, here are quotations of his which we ran as the Quotation of the Week in our short weekly e-newsletter, Peace & Life Connections:
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From The Indivisible Fight for Life, 1986:
I remain an atheist, a Jewish atheist . . . For me, this transformation started with the reporting I did on the Babies Doe. While covering the story, I came across a number who were convinced that making it possible for a spina bifida or a Down’s syndrome infant to die was the equivalent of what they called “late abortion.” These infants were born. They were entitled to at least the same rights as people on death row – due process, equal protection of the law. So for the first time, I began to pay attention to the “slippery slope” warnings of pro-lifers. And I began to find out, in a different way, how the stereotypes about pro-lifers work. When you’re one of them and you read about the stereotypes, you get a sort of different perspective.
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From “You Don’t Have to Believe in God to Be Prolife,” U.S. Catholic, March 1989, 28-30.
A primary objection, I was told, to the seamless-garment approach was that it would dilute the anti-abortion message, and that was more important than any other because the unborn were being killed right now . . . I understand the point, but the anti-abortion movement would be stronger if it had more members — members across the spectrum of American politics, religion, and no religion . . . It’s worth remembering that even if the Supreme Court does in the years ahead add more restrictions to abortion and even if it were to reverse Roe v. Wade, the abortion battle would continue. All the more so if Roe v. Wade were overturned because then each state would have to decide whether or not it would permit abortion.
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After reading the above, John S. Walker added the following tribute:
Nat Hentoff was far more than you stated in your response to his passing at age 91. For as long as I can remember Nat Hentoff advocated for the liberation of black people in America from white tyranny. Most of us felt this in his uncanny knowledge and advocacy of black music and the artists who performed. From 1946 until 1980 his essays, criticisms, liner note forays were stimulating, enticing and visceral; always keen enough to reveal the essence of the music both melodically and political. Like Mr. Hentoff, I , too was hypnotized by the music of Charlie Parker.
Self-acclamations of atheism mean very little when such a life is guided by principle and the belief of human justice. So we bid adieu to another crucified Jew. May he now enjoy his renewed acquaintance with Mr. Parker, John Coltrane and all the others who praised God with their music.
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A Tale of Two Cruises
by Rachel MacNair
The National Review is a magazine founded by William F. Buckley in 1955 to give intellectual heft to conservatism. The Nation is a magazine that was founded in 1865 as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator and it offers progressive thought. Each of them regards the other as being on “the other side” – the Right and the Left.
Both held post-election Caribbean cruises that were one-week seminars digesting where we are now because of the elections. Both hold these seminar cruises annually, but timed this year’s to be after elections results were known. They were three weeks apart, and both had around 350 passengers participating.
And I, being as perverse as I am – or to say it more positively, being the bridge-builder sort – went on both of them. When it had reason to come up, I told people on each that I was also going on the other, and the reaction was usually positive and sometimes led to interesting conversations.
Being with the same cruise company, they were quite similar in format. There were some trivial cultural differences – The Nation gave t-shirts to all registrants, and I don’t think that idea even occurred to the National Review (NR) people. Most of what the speakers said was about what you’d expect if you read the magazines they write for.
Seminar Panels
When processing the election, NR panels focused at length on what they thought was wrong with Hillary Clinton. They were pleased with Trump winning, though they had opposed him during the primaries, because that meant Clinton was defeated. The Nation, on the other hand, focused at length on why Trump might have had any appeal, and got to a few remarks about Clinton herself later on. But one theme about Clinton was common to both groups: that her elitism had been a turn-off.
They have different takes on opposing racism, though both clearly do. Both had a good portion of non-whites among the speakers on their panels, and as far as I could tell both had an entirely white audience. On the NR panels, Jonah Goldberg did a several-minute diatribe against the Alt-Right, saying that while NR does like to do coalitions among various kinds of conservatives, the Alt-Right people were too far beyond the pale. He got enthusiastic applause.
Euthanasia never came up. When the death penalty came up in conversation, I was the one mentioning it. The difference on abortion, though, was substantial.
For NR, they held an entire session on the topic. The person introducing it noted that there were differing opinions on this in the audience – a comment made in no other session – but the session focused entirely on explaining the pro-life case. It was a straightforward educational session. But it was one that could have been held ten years ago just as well; it didn’t discuss current news or movement strategy.
Then there was hardly any comment on the issue at all in the other sessions. Not even on the question of why Clinton narrowly lost, where a good case could be made, at least at the level of speculation, that her extreme abortion views had an impact. Those views weren’t listed among the things that they found wrong with her.
The Nation sessions, on the other hand, mentioned the issue fairly frequently in its euphemistic terms, “reproductive rights” and so on. These were peppered throughout the comments, added to lists of what would need to be defended, with remarks based on the assumption that everyone agreed (and I never found any evidence otherwise, except for me). Yet in those main sessions, I don’t recall hearing as much as an entire paragraph on the topic, and usually not even a full sentence. It was frequent, but it was shallow.
The Nation staff did encourage me to put out some consistent-life handouts on a table with other handouts near the main sessions, since they were encouraging participation and spread of ideas. A handful of each of the three I put out were taken, and of course I don’t know how many were read and then put back down again.
Rachel MacNair with parrot friends, shore excursion in Honduras
Small Group Discussions
For NR people, individuals and small groups were usually eager to discuss the finer points of the pro-life view, I being well-practiced in that and have written books on the topic. I told them I was trying to get the peace movement to understand the pro-life view, because if any people should understand nonviolence to unborn children, peace movement people should. In addition to abortion itself, trying to squelch alternative views are unhealthy for the peace movement. So I was helping to strengthen the peace movement with the pro-life work. This generally made sense to people, and those who did want to discuss peace movement ideas had it framed for them to make more sense.
With The Nation cruise, on the other hand, I could be quite chatty on other issues, but had to tread lightly when abortion came up. I did essentially get accused of heresy at one point (my word, not hers) and told to shut up. That’s likely with that group, but I was pleased it was only once. Others were much friendlier.
I’ll end with my favorite conversation, because it fit so well. At a lunch table I overheard a man saying how hypocritical it was for Republicans to say they cared about unborn children and then let them die in wars. I went over and they welcomed me into the discussion, as was custom, and I re-iterated the point: unborn children in war don’t even need to take direct hits, but are harmed by the very vibrations of bombs. Then I acquainted them with the consistent life ethic, where pro-lifers included opposition to war and war opponents were pro-life. Having ascertained I was pro-life – framed just right – they asked a series of questions. What about this situation, what about that situation? I easily answered and they went on to the final one: what about overpopulation? I said if we were going to kill human beings for that reason, wouldn’t it make more sense to kill those adults causing the problems? Little tiny babies weren’t the ones causing problems. They immediately picked up on that. Starving people in India weren’t the ones responsible for any “overpopulation” problems, and how much did the average American waste? While they were on a roll on that topic, I excused myself. My work on that occasion was done. That’s the most satisfying kind of conversation.
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The Tragedy of Carrie Buck: A Review of Imbeciles by Adam Cohen
Mary Lou Bennett
by Mary Lou Bennett
In his 2016 book, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck, Adam Cohen recounts one of America’s great miscarriages of justice—the Supreme Court’s 1927 ruling in Buck v. Bell. This dark moment in history upheld a statute instituting compulsory sterilization of those deemed unfit “for the protection and health of the state.” The ruling allowed for Carrie Buck, a perfectly normal young woman, to be sterilized.
The sad road that delivered her to this fate was strewn with influential men in positions of power who falsified information and continually conspired against her to meet their own agenda, be it to satisfy career goals or quench a growing desire to save the nation from what they perceived to be a growing threat posed by “defective people.” Whatever the case, their ugly efforts resulted in an 8-1 decision against Carrie; the lone dissenter was Judge Pierce Butler, a Catholic. Justice Oliver Wendell Homes Jr. coldly declared that Carrie should indeed be sterilized because “three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
With painstaking detail Cohen acquaints the reader with the history of the eugenics movement and the large following it had with many notables of the time. Through five mini biographies, Cohen introduces Carrie herself and the multiple difficulties she faces throughout her life.
Cohen also introduces the respected, highly influential lawyers, doctors, and judges seeking to use her in their quest to make government sterilization of “undesirables” the accepted law of the land. In this way, Cohen gives the reader an honest, accurate portrayal of Carrie, while examining the motivation driving the men who want her sterilized.
Imbeciles is hard to put down once you begin reading it. This is especially true for someone like me, who admittedly, had little idea of the magnitude of the injustice brought about by the eugenics movement. It was thoroughly unnerving to learn that so many intelligent and highly regarded individuals could manipulate facts and tirelessly dedicate themselves to a cause that would strip a poor, unprivileged woman of her rights.
When Dr. Priddy, Director of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, wanted to determine if a new law authorizing the sterilization of the intellectually disabled for the purpose of eugenics would pass a legal challenge, he chose Carrie Buck as a suitable candidate to further his cause. But as Cohen gives biographies of the views of each man seeking to sterilize Carrie, it quickly becomes evident that those passionate about eugenics were not content with sterilizing a small number of people like Carrie. Rather, one leading eugenicist, Harry Laughlin, believed that to “save the nation from the threat posed by ‘defective’ people, there would need to be millions of sterilizations.” Indeed, various races and ethnicities were seen as inferior and there was a clear desire to diminish them from American society, along with any, like Carrie, who were considered “feebleminded.”
It made me shudder to learn that one of Laughlin’s friends, Madison Grant, a fellow American eugenicist, wrote theories about racial superiority and the need for dealing with the weak that greatly influenced the Nazis. One of Grant’s books was even found in Hitler’s personal library and Hitler is said to have written Grant a “fan letter.”
Imbeciles offers great insight into a troubling time in American history. It manages to successfully serve as an intellectual account of history, as well as an intimate case study of a young woman treated unjustly by those in a position to help her. It leaves the reader continuously asking how such events could have happened less than one hundred years ago and why more people didn’t vehemently speak out against such injustice. Ultimately, it is an excellent piece of literature and a must-read.
Cohen’s book will undoubtedly speak to the heart. Hopefully, people will read it, talk about it, and become resolute in their conviction to fight for the underprivileged that have no voice.
Additional comment from Carol Crossed:
Today, we are less likely to sterilize the poor or the insane or the criminal. We abort them. We try to convince them it’s their right. Graciela Olivarez, as a Carter appointee to the President’s Commission on Population and the American Future, said “The poor cry out for justice and we respond with legalized abortion.”
Additional comments from Rachel MacNair:
An older book on the Buck v. Bell case is Three Generations, No Imbeciles, by Paul A. Lombard, published in 2002. It also tells the tale well, emphasizing that the “three generations of imbeciles is enough” remark was not merely cruel, but in this case, inaccurate. This book in some spots relates the case to Roe v. Wade in what we would see as the wrong direction – Buck as an attack on reproductive rights and Roe as a defense of them. But it’s a good read for more thorough knowledge of the case, and also has some of the complete documents.
Carrie Buck was involuntarily institutionalized by her foster parents in order to cover up the fact that her pregnancy was caused by their nephew raping her. But the fact that she had had a baby made her a prime target for men who wanted a test case for their eugenic ideals. Adding to the tragedy, she was kept away from baby Vivian, whom she loved dearly, and who died of measles at the age of 8. Vivian was the only child Carrie was ever allowed to have.
Buck v. Bell has never been overturned. But Cohen’s book (and Lombard’s as well) are clear denunciations of it. And all of the reviews I’ve seen are sympathetic with the books’ point of view: that this is an exceedingly shameful chapter of history.
I hope that one day, Roe v. Wade will be put in the same category. So it’s a good idea to study the past to see what might work well for the future.
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See the list of all our blog posts, put in categories.
For more on Carrie Buck and the Supreme Court, see our blog post:
The Good Grandma
by Bill Samuel, President, Consistent Life Network
This Thanksgiving, a story about a Mesa, Arizona, grandmother named Wanda Dench went viral on the Internet. Wanda had texted family members about coming over for Thanksgiving dinner. One grandson had changed his number, which was now owned by 17 year old Jamal Hinton of nearby Phoenix.
When Jamal received the text, he didn’t know who it was from. When he texted back, Wanda said she was his grandma. They then exchanged photos, verifying that the text was not sent to the intended recipient. But Jamal then asked, in jest, if he could still get some dinner. Wanda replied, “Of course you can. That’s what grandmas do…feed everyone!” Jamal had dinner with Wanda and her family, and everyone had a good time.
A grandson of Wanda’s said he was not surprised by her invitation to Jamal, because they always had an open door policy. To me, Wanda symbolizes the Good Grandma. The Good Grandma welcomes the variety that comes with families, and the loved ones and friends of later generations. The Good Grandma isn’t concerned about the color of their skin, their background, their politics, their nationality, their religion or lack of it, the way they dress, or any of these things. She values each person and welcomes them all. And if there’s a surprise guest; well, there’s always room for one more. Her heart won’t allow her to turn anyone away.
I’m a pretty simple person. Sometimes more sophisticated CLN Board members lose me when they’re explaining their values in sophisticated philosophical language. To me, the things we’re against are natural byproducts of a simple understanding that all human beings are connected. In some sense, we are all family, whether we recognize it or not. So I want the best for all of my brothers and sisters. And certainly it is unthinkable to kill any of them.
It reminds me of a conversation I had decades ago with five-year-old Maria, whose mother I was dating. She asked me if they were killing little children over there in Vietnam. I had to admit to her that they were. “That means they can come over here and kill little kids like me, doesn’t it?” was her response. Her question helped move my commitment to peace from my head to my heart. I realized in my gut that a child on the other side of the world was just as precious as the one I knew and loved who was sitting beside me.
The consistent life ethic isn’t hard to understand. It’s as simple as a good grandma and recognizing that we are all family.
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Our Experience with Overturning Terrible Court Decisions
by Rachel MacNair
Several US Supreme Court decisions have been horrifying. What lessons can we learn from history?
Dred Scott v. Sandford, 1857
Dred Scott was an enslaved man who petitioned the Court for his freedom and that of his wife and their two daughters, because they had been moved to a state without slavery. Chief Justice Roger Taney infamously wrote that Blacks were “so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”
Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson Scott
Consequences? The foreseeable one was that African Americans continued living under cruel slavery laws, and free states couldn’t help them. Unforeseen was that this decision is commonly seen as one of the events that led to the US Civil War (1861-1865), the bloodiest war in American history.
Overturned? Yes, by the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, in 1865. Being only eight years later, this was remarkably quick. But this was due to the Civil War, so it’s not a good model for quick resolution of bad court decisions.
Also, quasi-slavery practices (sharecropping, vagrancy laws, debt peonage, lynching) were established and widespread for a century. So the amendment didn’t really resolve the problem, though it was a help and worth celebrating.
Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896
Homer Plessy was 7/8 European descent and 1/8 African descent. By the standards of the time, this made him colored, and his state of Louisiana had passed a racial segregation law. Challenging the part that applied to trains, he deliberately bought a first-class ticket and boarded to challenge the law. The Court ruled against him with the idea that “separate but equal” was constitutional.
Homer Plessy
Consequences? The foreseeable one was that segregation laws were more firmly established. This also strengthened various forms of mistreatment of Blacks and Hispanics, the lethal forms of which included lynching and deaths through deliberate medical neglect.
Overturned? Yes, by the Court itself, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in 1954 – that is, 58 years later. Court-favored segregation laws lasted a long time.
Once Plessy was overturned, desegregation efforts still brought violent reactions from a large portion of the population. The decision allowed for further action to bring the change about, rather than being a direct cause of change by itself. A major social movement using nonviolent action – the Civil Rights Movement – plus government action over the course of well over a decade were required to make true progress. Lethal forms of racism (as well as non-lethal forms) still need to be countered today.
Buck v. Bell, 1927
Carrie Buck desperately needed the Court to keep her from being involuntarily sterilized. The reason she was sent to an institution by her foster family was that the foster parents’ nephew had impregnated her through rape. This gave her baby Vivian, but also led to powerful men seeing her as an immoral breeder and therefore a perfect test case for eugenic sterilization laws. The Supreme Court upheld the decision to forcibly sterilize Buck. Justice. Oliver Wendell Holmes said “three generations of imbeciles is enough” – the three generations are pictured below.
But Carrie was average in the few years of school she was allowed to attend, and showed every sign of functioning well throughout her life. Vivian was only a baby at the time of the case, but once she later went to school, she did well. This doesn’t matter, of course, since people who actually are well below average in intelligence are as valuable as anyone else. But being so sloppy with the facts is a recurring theme in eugenics.
In a 1921 letter, Holmes had expounded on his eugenic philosophy by saying it would require “restricting propagation by the undesirables and putting to death infants that didn’t pass the examination.” This eugenic reasoning for infanticide would be one of the currents for the tidal wave of feticide that the Court would unleash in 1973.
Carrie Buck with her mother Emma Buck; her baby Vivian
Consequences? The foreseeable one was that the eugenics movement had a major victory and cruelly imposed involuntary sterilization on thousands of Americans. At the Nuremberg trials in Germany, Nazis who had carried out over 375,000 registered forced sterilizations defended themselves by citing this case. It had been used as a model for their program, whose ideas were foundational to the Nazis’ massive euthanasia program and the Holocaust.
Overturned? No. However, it merely allowed laws rather than requiring them. The laws of 30 of the 32 states that had them are formally repealed, in a wave mainly from the 1960s to 1980s, and the laws are no longer invoked in the remaining two. Therefore, it’s commonly seen as outdated now, and public opinion is mainly against eugenics. Sterilizations without consent are still reported happening under the radar in scattered places, and especially in “population control” programs.
Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, 1973
These companion cases, decided the same day, had a major difference from the above cases. Instead of the court deciding against the plaintiff, the plaintiff’s legal argument prevailed, knocking down abortion restrictions in all 50 states.
But for Sandra Cano, being the plaintiff of Doe v. Bolton was a technicality. She acquiesced to the lawyers to get help in getting her children back out of foster care. She was immediately horrified at the decision. Norma McCorvey, on the other hand, the plaintiff in Roe, was very pleased at first. She spent years promoting Roe and even worked in an abortion clinic. But in 1995, she had a change of heart, and is now quite active in the pro-life movement. She wants the decision which bears her pseudonym to be overturned.
Jane Roe” – Norma McCorvey and “Mary Doe” – Sandra Cano
Consequences? Most clearly, millions of unborn babies have been killed. For more on how abortion relates to other kinds of socially-approved killing, see any consistent-life literature; for more on how it hurts women, see any pro-life feminist literature. Targeting of unborn babies from racial minorities, those with disabilities, and fetal females for elimination has sabotaged the assumption that all people in such groups should be treated with respect.
Overturned? No, and it still has widespread support in the population. This is the only one on this list that isn’t widely recognized as a horror story. Yet.
Conclusion: Dealing with Roe v. Wade
Pro-lifers have of course been eager to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision since the second it was announced. Here are four approaches:
A constitutional amendment, as with Dred Scott. This requires much more of a societal consensus than we now have.
The court overturning itself, as with Plessy. This has been the main anti-Roe strategy, to work to elect presidents who will appoint Justices to overturn it.
Update 06.24.22: Dobbs v. Jackson showed that this method of overturning Roe turned out to work after all, despite the twists and turns of all these decades. Comments below have been edited by deleting what’s outdated; added words are in blue.
But when thinking of this possibility, this is crucial to understand: when Plessy was overturned by Brown, many years of intense work for desegregation had to follow. There was a passionate backlash. That is the case with overturning Roe. Far too many people see such overturning as something wrong with the Court, rather than something wrong with Roe.
The decision working its way to irrelevance, as mainly happened with Buck v. Bell.
This is still all necessary. Several states will continue to promote abortion for some time, and between travel for abortions and medication abortions, the only way to stop them will be to reach hearts and minds.
This is where the grassroots excel. Fortunately, the pro-life movement has known all along how to be effective this way, with pregnancy help centers, post-abortion therapy, public education, protesting, raising scandals, and more.
This is also where the consistent life ethic excels. While single-issue pro-lifers in the U.S. have focused on a situation where abortion was mainly illegal (yet widely practiced) and in one fell swoop was legalized everywhere, consistent-lifers are familiar with how several different social movements work. We’re active in more of them.
Activists against all kinds of socially-approved violence have observed that there’s no magic button – no amendment, court decision, or legislation – which will solve the whole problem.
In the case of war, the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 outlaws it. We see how well that turned out. It has a positive place in the long-term struggle against war, but it certainly wasn’t a magic button.
Update: Also, in the case of nuclear weapons, the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has been ratified and went into effect January 22, 2022. So nuclear weapons are now against international law, but that obviously hasn’t by itself solved the problem.
It’s up to us to make that social change happen. Get to work!
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For more of our blog posts on abortion and the law, see:
Why the Hyde Amendment Helps Low-Income Women
For more of our blog posts post-Roe, see:
Reflections on the Alito Draft Leak of May 2, 2022
My Ideas for Post-Roe Legislation
Post-Roe Stats: the Natural Experiment
The Parable of the Bridge
by Carol Crossed
There was a village and a river ran through its center. Every day at 4:00 people would go to the church to pray for those who were drowning in the water.
The farmers put aside their plows, the students put down their books, the mothers took their children by the hand and they would go into the church to pray.
This went on for years, and a wise person came along and was so impressed with the faithfulness of these people, but said, “Why don’t you also go to the edge of the water and pull the people in who are drowning?”
So every day at 4:00 the farmers put down their plows, the students put aside their books, and the mothers took their children by the hand, and some went into the church to pray and others went down to the river. Some made inner tubes. Others had the idea of teaching swimming lessons.
This went on for many years, until a wise woman came along. She marveled at the dedication and steadfastness of love of neighbor. But she had another idea: “Why don’t you go upstream and find out why these people are in the water?
These are the 3 ‘p’s of ministry: the Priestly, the Pastoral, the Prophetic. The priestly is our spiritual life together. The pastoral is charitable works of mercy: our soup kitchens, crisis pregnancy centers, drug and alcohol addiction programs, and other direct charities. We see face to face the poor we serve. We dry them off and see their smiles.
Going upstream is the prophetic approach.
Justice always asks the question why. Does the bridge need repair? Are there too many people on the bridge? Why are so many going hungry? Why are parents, by aborting their children, throwing them overboard? Why is the military’s budget so high that it takes from social programs? Why is it killing people, including civilians, in drone warfare? Why are the elderly and the disabled at greatest risk for assisted suicide?
Could it be that we are running across the bridge with reckless abandon, intent to get to the other side, and others are in our way?
It’s my lifestyle, my body, my life. There are too many children in the world, too many single moms, we are taxed out of sight. Keeping prisoners on death row is expensive, so let’s have fewer levels of appeal. Let’s throw them overboard.
But while we are up on the bridge asking the question “why,” we cannot be blind to the people falling overboard. What do we do? We involve ourselves in the peace and nonviolent movements of justice: We build human guard rails on the bridge and we work for laws that will build guardrails. We stand on the sides of the bridge and hold signs that say “Stop Drone Warfare!” at Griffiss Air Force Base rallies. “Don’t abort your child” at the 40-days for Life Vigils. “Assisted Suicide: Another name for killing!” at the State Courthouse.
There are all sorts of people holding signs on the edge of the bridge: the progressive, the conservatives, the religious, the humanists. Because of our differences, huge gaps in the guardrails exist because we do not join hands. Your-issue-is-not-my-issue breaks the chain on the bridge and people fall overboard. Do we not threaten our own vulnerable group because the guardrail is not continuous? Can we drop our fears and work together, no matter if the person we want to save is a refugee from Syria, or an aborted child, or a person on death row? The consistent life ethic challenges us to go beyond our ideologies and love all human beings.
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See the list of all our blog posts, put in categories.
For more blog posts written by Carol Crossed, see:
The Creativity of the Foreclosed Option
by Rachel MacNair
Worf, from Wikipedia
In an episode of Star Trek, The Next Generation, the Klingon Worf was in an accident leaving him paralyzed. According to Klingon tradition, this meant he should commit ritual suicide. He was intent on doing so.
The doctor was appalled. She tried to research Klingon physiology to find treatment, but Klingons had no advice to give. Since they always committed suicide on such occasions, they had no information.
Various creative things were tried for allowing him to live and function with dignity even if not with full use of his legs. Finally, the doctor found a procedure which cured him. Solutions could be found because one option – the option of suicide – was, in the doctor’s mind, foreclosed.
When a specific option is unavailable, others must be sought. Medical breakthroughs, along with treatment options and other caring options for those with disabilities, require that the option of suicide be off the table.
Once a violent solution is on the table, it precludes the development of alternatives. Violence as a problem-solving technique has the apparent advantage of being quick and efficient. One need only ignore the long-term aftermath and other negative impact on society.
Nonviolent alternatives must take more care, attention, resources and time. They have obvious advantages in the long run. But the short-term consequence is more work.
This leads to the ironic outcome that foreclosing an option, taking it off the table, means more options available, rather than fewer.
Vegetarians, for example, who foreclose the option of eating meat, actually have more variety in their diets than those eating standard fare. There’s no reason in theory why those who eat meat can’t also eat the variety of vegetarian options. Often they do. But excluding meat seems to open up creativity in the diet.
Those who oppose abortion have a much more extensive and complex set of services offered through pregnancy help centers, maternity homes, mentoring, and government social services than the relative simplicity of the abortion clinic.
In the case of war, those who by definition foreclose it as an option entirely – pacifists – have offered a wide array of ways of dealing with problems of violence and injustice: conflict resolution, diplomacy, solving problems when they’re still small and haven’t yet blown up in violence, and a wide variety of other approaches. People inclined to resort to weapons are less likely to be creative in finding alternative ways of resolving problems. Those who oppose war must come up with such alternatives.
Therefore, creativity is another of the side-effects of assertive nonviolence. In the psychology of creativity, this is called “divergent thinking.” Many possible solutions are generated when people don’t limit themselves to the obvious or conventional.
Sharon Long: My Personal Pro-Life Journey
by Sharon Long
Sharon Long in the early years
I am a liberal. I believe in a comprehensive government funded social welfare network, national health insurance, more spending on foreign aid, a reduced military budget. I am also a liberal Jew. I believe in a symbolic interpretation of the Bible and support women’s equality within Judaism.
I am also a right-to-lifer and have been very active in fighting to make abortion illegal and to prevent women from having abortions for close to thirty years.
My opinion of abortion first developed in my 10th grade health class, about a year after the Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion nationwide. After learning inaccurate information, I decided that a fetus became a human being at about 12 weeks of pregnancy. Therefore, abortion on demand should be permitted before then. I could not understand why I saw “Abortion is murder” bumper stickers or why another student wanted to start a pro-life group in my high school.
However, I began doing some volunteer work in a local veteran’s hospital and I began to think about what gave life meaning and purpose. Did I believe that the people for whom I was caring, so debilitated mentally and physically, as well as so dependent, truly had lives worth living? Later, I worked summers as a nurse’s aide in a nursing home and continued debating these questions within myself.
In the summer after my sophomore year in college, while working at a nursing home, I was fortunate to find at my small town library two of the books that have made the most impact on my life. One was In Necessity and Sorrow by Magda Denes, a psychologist observing what went on in an abortion clinic. The book provided graphic descriptions of aborted fetuses as well as interviews with the women having abortions, most of whom felt forced into the abortion because of circumstances. The other was Aborting America by Dr. Bernard Nathanson, an atheist gynecologist of Jewish ethnicity. He was the medical director of one of the first free-standing abortion centers in the country and had also been a leader in the abortion rights movement. He described how he had become pro-life through his study of fetal development and ultrasound in a very dispassionate and rational way that made sense to me. I continued to wonder where the line could be drawn in fetal development as to when a human life became a person. I also wondered when in the continuum of human life did a human being stop being a person?
I viscerally knew that the lives of my nursing home patients had meaning and purpose. My patients, regardless of how “useless” they might be in the eyes of society or even their own eyes, were of infinite value and worth, that is, they were sacred by virtue of being human.
I asked myself, if I believed in personhood at the end of life, then logically what should my belief be as to the value of the fetus?
The answer was clear. If life that was debilitated and dependent at the end of life was sacred then human life at its beginning must also be sacred. A fetus, regardless of the value conferred upon it by others, had to be a person.
I became a reluctant pro-lifer.
I could hardly believe it myself. I was liberal and hip. I went to a feminist women’s college. How could I not believe that a woman had a right to control her own body under all circumstances, and that the right to control one’s own body was the right on which all other rights were based, as I was told over and over? How could I be so politically incorrect?
In my junior year of college 1979 I went to Costa Rica where I first heard about liberation theology, which combined Catholic theology with a Marxist economic analysis. I will never forget the college debate between the feminist group on campus and the Catholic group. The Catholic debater said immediately that this was not about theology. The issue to be debated with feminists was not about whether fetuses had souls.
Instead, the issue was about whether abortion helped women advance in society. The debater explained that abortion does nothing to solve any social problem or advance the rights of women in any way. What it does do is enable society to maintain the status quo by forcing women to kill children rather than require social, economic, and political change to enable society to support them.
I thought, “That makes so much sense!”
While in Costa Rica I worked in a refugee center during the Nicaraguan civil war where I saw pregnant women who would not consider abortion. They considered having a baby as an act of defiance against oppression– that although they were refugees, they were still entitled to have children and extend their legacy.
Although it may have been more politically correct to be a pro-life progressive in Costa Rica it remained a problem when I returned to the U.S. I stayed in the closet about my pro-life beliefs until I was 25 and saw what abortion was doing to my friends. I saw how trapped they felt into having abortions and the lingering grief afterwards.
After this happened several times I decided that I was through with being politically correct. I called the National Right to Life Committee and said that I was a liberal but I was pro-life–was there anything out there for me? The person on the other end of the line chuckled as she referred me to Feminists for Life.
FFL sent me pamphlets that blew me away, especially those by Rosemary Bottcher and Elise Rose explaining how abortion maintains women’s oppression in society and does nothing but maintain the status quo. Rather than meeting the real needs of women and children we offer abortion. I asked myself, “Where have you, that is, Feminists for Life, been all my life?”
I also went to volunteer at the city’s crisis pregnancy center. I said to the middle-aged rosary-toting ladies that I lived with my boyfriend and used birth control but that their cause was my cause and I was with them. After some discussion among themselves (I later found out) they said, “Welcome aboard,” for which I will always be grateful.
Soon the right-to-life movement and pro-life feminism became the center of my life. I involved myself with many pro-life organizations, some progressive, some not. I wrote and spoke on pro-life feminism at every opportunity. I traveled all over the country attending conferences. I joined the executive board of Feminists for Life. I volunteered at crisis pregnancy centers. I contributed thousands of dollars and hours to the pro-life movement. Most of my close friends were pro-lifers. I bored my family by talking about it so much.
I also became a caseworker in child support enforcement. Although I could have earned double the salary as a nurse, I believed that I was preventing abortion. In addition, I was empowering women by enabling women to fight for the resources they needed to care for themselves and their children.
I frequently felt culturally alienated in many pro-life circles, sometimes very painfully so, but I have found in general that pro-lifers are more tolerant of progressives than progressives are tolerant of pro-lifers.
My romantic life was another story. I felt compelled to tell men immediately that I was pro-life. I knew that this was not just theory. My refusal to have an abortion should I be faced with an unplanned pregnancy would have very serious implications in a relationship.
Needless to say, I had many boyfriendless times in my life. Men with whom I might otherwise have a lot in common were frightened by someone who would not consider abortion as a backup. Even the few who were privately sympathetic did not want to be associated with a public right-to-lifer.
Why was I willing to make such sacrifices? Why did I stay so involved in the movement? I was angry. I became furious at ads for abortion that I believed preyed on the panicked and the vulnerable. I saw the genocide of the unborn that was happening in my own country and how it was directly caused to the exploitation of women and the impoverished.
However, through the years my anger slowly began to cool. Maybe it was my weariness with the constant stories I heard about women’s economic and relational oppression in my child support enforcement job. Maybe it was the lack of success pro-lifers were having in the political arena of my state (New York). Maybe it was that on the national level we seemed to be only putting out fires and treading water. Maybe it was the shift to the right of some of my beloved pro-life organizations. But eventually my anger turned to resignation.
Although I had known all along that pro-lifers’ only real enemies were the economy and the culture, I had believed that the law would act as teaching tool. A change in the law would help change the culture and force economic and social welfare policy changes which would empower women to have and raise their children.
Initially I, along with many others, had fought like crazy because I believed that time was running out. I knew that the longer that abortion remained legal, the longer it would become entrenched in our culture. It would therefore become difficult to decrease abortion even if it did become illegal.
I believe that time has now run out, at least in the northeast United States. Making abortion illegal will not make it unacceptable in the short or even in the long run anymore. Just changing the law at this point in time will not substantially decrease abortion.
I now believe that the abortion fight should be handled like the fight against smoking, also another important pro-life issue. It took a massive thirty-year advertising campaign, still ongoing, along with every possible support, such as free smoking patches and support groups, as well as gradual legal restrictions, to reach the point where smoking has become abhorred in our culture. The only way to end abortion is to follow the same strategy.
If we enabled women to have real choices, choices that do not pit their survival against the survival of their children, very few would choose abortions. This will require a massive investment in government services and a very focused and aggressive advertising campaign. Neither political party right now has the will to do this. However, if we work with others who are interested in human and economic rights issues, and especially those who wish to empower women and poor people, we may have a chance.
Ultimately the root cause of abortion is alienation, which sociologists define as powerlessness. After close to thirty years in the pro-life movement I have spiritually come full circle, reuniting with my progressive community. By uniting with everyone, including those who disagree with us, to empower women and achieve a more just society, we will liberate not only pregnant women but ourselves as well.
Editor’s note: Part of this article is slightly revised and republished from The American Feminist with permission from Feminists for Life of America. All rights reserved.
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For more blog posts on personal journeys, see:
Supporting the Dignity of Every Life (Bill Samuel)
Nukes and the Pro-Life Christian: A Conservative Takes a Second Look at the Morality of Nuclear Weapons (Karen Swallow Prior)
Coming to Peace and Living a Consistent Life After Military Service
Off the Fence and Taking My Stand on Abortion (Mary Liepold)
On Being a Consistent Chimera (Rob Arner)
Movie Review: Mothers and Daughters
by Mary Bennett
Mothers and Daughters boasts an impressive ensemble of stars, including Susan Sarandon, Sharon Stone, Christina Ricci, Courtney Cox, Mira Sovino, and Selma Blair. It features interconnected stories based on the theme of motherhood – complete with the trials, heartache, and rich reward that accompany it.
Rigby Gray (Selma Blair) is a photographer whose voice narration attempts to serve as a connective element throughout the movie. Gray is a single photographer who’s at a career high when she finds herself pregnant and alone, recently dumped by her boyfriend who decides to give his marriage another try.
As a single immersed in her career, Gray initially turns her thoughts to abortion, feeling it is her best option. She has a consultation with her doctor and decides to schedule an abortion, only to discover that she is not able to go through with it. Her decision leads to much introspection, giving her a refreshed spirit and enabling her to reexamine her estranged relationship with her own mother, whose health is deteriorating.
The unconditional love a mother feels for her child is never questioned in the movie. This, coupled with the fact that Gray, though pregnant at an inconvenient time and under less than ideal circumstances, decides to keep her child, make this a movie worth watching. However, the movie could have been much more effective and imprinted a longer-lasting impression on the minds of viewers, had there been fewer relationships to follow, and less melodrama to offer distraction.
Ultimately, the fact that Hollywood decides to have Blair’s character embrace her pregnancy (at a time when far too many women choose to terminate) is enough to elicit a recommend for Mothers and Daughters. Yes, much could be improved, but by watching the movie, the audience is reminded of the fragility of life and the rewards that come from respecting life, even when, or perhaps especially when, it seems the most somber and difficult.
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See the list of all our blog posts, put in categories.
For a short list of movies intentionally about nonviolence, see a past holiday issue of our weekly updates, Peace & Life Connections. Our Advisory Board member John Whitehead has written an article on movies with anti-war themes in Peacemaking for Life.
Other movies covered in our blog posts:
Hollywood Movie Insights (The Giver, The Whistleblower, and The Ides of March)
The Darkest Hour: “Glorifying” War?
Movies with Racism Themes: Gosnell and The Hate U Give
How Black Panther Promotes a Consistent Life Ethic
Anyone who wants to offer a movie or book review from a consistent-life viewpoint for us to consider for publishing, see the guidelines at the bottom of the list of all our blog posts.
Why the Hyde Amendment Helps Low-Income Women
by Rachel MacNair
In the US, the 40th anniversary of the Hyde amendment’s first passage was September 30, 2016. The amendment is a legislative provision that taxpayers, especially through the Medicaid program, don’t pay for most abortions. Medicaid provides health care for low-income people and goes state-by-state, so when the amendment passed, some states immediately stopped funding, but others continued funding abortions on their own.
Here are several reasons why the impact of the Hyde amendment has been positive:
Abortion funding helps promote racism.
Social worker Erma Clardy Craven points out:
“It takes little imagination to see that the unborn Black baby is the real object of many abortionists. Except for the privilege of aborting herself, the Black woman and her family must fight for every other social and economic privilege.”
(Hilgers, Thomas W. & Dennis J. Horan, eds. 1972. Abortion and Social Justice. New York: Sheed & Ward)
One of the abortion doctors she has in mind, Edward Allred, was quoted in the San Diego Union, October 12, 1980:
“When a sullen black woman of 17 or 18 can decide to have a baby and get welfare and food stamps and become a burden to us all, it’s time to stop. In parts of South Los Angeles, having babies for welfare is the only industry the people have.”
Dr. Allred’s aversion to government subsidies did not prevent him from accepting millions in California tax dollars for his abortion practice.
Abortions may cause poverty.
(For a longer explanation including references, see Studies Suggesting Induced Abortion May Increase the Feminization of Poverty)
An increased feminization of poverty – that is, poverty in which women are a larger portion of those afflicted – coincides remarkably closely to the period of increasingly legalized abortion.
Some argued that the availability of abortion should help avoid this phenomenon, with women not losing jobs due to childbirth and having no burdens of child care. But with the pattern worsening during the period when there was an upsurge in abortions, abortion has at the very least been inadequate at solving the problem.
Instead, abortion may be contributing to the problem. Through an increase in broken relationships, psychological difficulties, and substance abuse, a practice which is performed exclusively on women may put them at greater economic disadvantage.
The many studies that show a correlation between abortion and a reduction in women’s economic well-being don’t prove a clear causation. Some argue the causation is in the other direction. It’s not that the abortions cause the difficulties, but that problems with unhealthy sexual relations with men, domestic violence, and similar challenges may cause both the abortions and the subsequent problems that are correlated with them.
However, another causal factor must be taken into account: how much does the ready access to abortion cause the problems of exploitational sexual attitudes and self-righteous denials of responsibility by men?
Medicaid funding of abortion causes abortions.
One study from the research arm of Planned Parenthood showed that women on Medicaid in states which don’t fund abortion in their Medicaid programs have an abortion rate 1.6 times higher than women of higher income. So it’s likely that poverty leads to more abortions, a point that few would be surprised by.
But the same study reports the abortion rate in states with Medicaid funding is 3.9 times higher for women on Medicaid.
As mentioned above, after the Hyde amendment passed, several states stopped funding abortions right away, but others continued to fund abortions for low-income women. This set up a natural experiment: states that had abortion funding one year and didn’t the very next year could be compared to states that kept abortion funding the same.
A review of 38 studies on the impact of Medicaid funding over the years essentially showed that in those states which stopped such funding, both abortions and childbirths went down. In other words, the abortions that didn’t happen because of the lack of funding were not on the whole replaced by women continuing the pregnancies; many of them were replaced by couples taking more care about becoming pregnant.
The assumption behind Medicaid funding has been that pregnancies occur whether or not funding is available, so funding only determines whether those pregnancies continue or not. However, the impact of funding doesn’t appear to be as neutral as people are assuming. This leads to the next point:
Medicaid funding of abortion means government subsidizing of male domination in sexual relationships.
Most of the time, when a person engages in behavior that could lead to a need for a medical procedure, that same person is the one that goes through the procedure. If I don’t brush my teeth, I’m the one who gets cavities. Even if cavity-filling is free of cost in money to me, I’m motivated to avoid it because of the cost in time and unpleasantness.
The same applies for a woman who engages in behavior that can lead to pregnancy. Yet it doesn’t apply to the man who engages in the same behavior. He’s not the one that has to go through surgery.
If he knows the government will take care of the monetary cost, then sex is free to him. It’s government-subsidized. This won’t matter in situations where women have strict control over their own sex lives, but can be devastating in those situations where men have more control or ability to pressure for sex.
Medicaid funding of abortion means government participation in pressure and coercion of women.
From high school counselors and social workers to family members and the unborn child’s father, it’s often true that other people have decided what’s good for a pregnant woman, and aren’t interested in her participation in that conversation. As long as the abortion is government-subsidized, their ability to pressure her – or give her insufficient time to think it over – becomes all the greater.
For more on connections of poverty and racism to both abortion and the death penalty, see chapter 7 of Consistently Opposing Killing: From Abortion to Assisted Suicide, the Death Penalty, and War, published by Praeger in 2008.
For more on the impact of various kinds of abortion restrictions – not only in the US, but world-wide – see Chapter 15 of Peace Psychology Perspectives on Abortion.
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For more of our blog posts on abortion and the law, see: