Reminiscing on the Founding Meeting of the Consistent Life Network
by Carol Crossed
Twenty-nine years ago, March 1987, Consistent Life was born. Patti Narciso and Scott Rains, directors of ProLifers for Survival, affectionately called PS, were the spiritual parents of what was to become and is today, the consistent life ethic movement.
It began as The Seamless Garment Network. Former PS coordinator Mary Rider returned from graduate school to help Scott and Patti, and about 25 people were invited to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, compliments of a LifeWorks grant. The purpose of the gathering was to determine the fate of ProLifers for Survival, an organization that connected the issues of war and abortion. The inspiration for PS had grown out of the discord of single issue politics at a conference of Mobilization for Survival in Washington DC in 1980. MfS was an anti-nuclear war network of more than 65 organizations which was unable to agree on PS becoming a member group.
I still do not know who gave the LifeWorks grant. So being on the Chapel Hill invitation list was like being in an Agatha Christi novel. I heard that Rachel MacNair was invited and that’s all it took for me to mark the 3 days on my calendar. She was an heretofore affinity mate, albeit an anonymous one, from my first experience with her writings about how feminism and abortion rights was a disconnect.
I discovered other luminaries in the peace and justice movement that weekend: Fr. Joseph Nangle, the missionary from Peru who had introduced me to liberation theology in the late 70’s; Ken Maher, a Quaker and conscientious objector; Mary Meehan, anti-Vietnam War activist and author; Catherine Holderread Passmore, Mennonite and film producer; Andy Lipscomb, leader with the Committee of Southern Churchmen. Andy, in his thick Georgia drawl, kept saying profound things, like ‘PS is a keeper’. Juli Loesch, founder of PS, kept us laughing with stories about how she hosted anti-war discussion groups which she called nuclear Tupperware parties.
What began as an intimidating experience for me, ended as a bonding of brothers and sisters who reached down inside my soul and brought up a vision so powerful that my life would never be the same. I was not changed. It’s just that they exposed for me who I was all along and said that was okay.
It wasn’t until we were about ready to go home that The Seamless Garment Network was birthed. The 2 days of discussion were the labor pains necessary for us to realize that it wasn’t enough to be only against the violence of war and abortion, but we needed to expand into the issues of economic injustice, capital punishment, the arms race, and euthanasia. Just like you can look at a child and know its name, we knew our name with not a vote, but with a burst of applause: The Seamless Garment Network. We wrapped ourselves into the cloak of seamlessness, embracing a holistic ethic without political fragmentation or ideological division.
We added racism to our mission in 1993, in response to Rodney King and racial violence. And in 2002, we changed our name to Consistent Life: a Network of Peace, Justice and Life. It was more than our not wanting to answer those numerous solicitations to the Garment Workers Union of America. The name change unraveled the complexities of maneuvering an explanation about symbolism to explain our identity.
We were not and are not a symbol. Today we are over 200 organizations that live and breathe connectedness. We give groups and individuals permission to come out of the stereotypical shadow of partisanship. We allow them to come into the light of social wholeness.
Photo above: Front Row: Cathryn Passmore, Ann McCarthy, Carol Crossed, Rachel MacNair, Scott Raines. Middle row: Martha Yonke (?), Julie Loesch (now Julianne Wiley), Kathy Hayes (?), Faye Kunce, Mary Rider, Mary Meehan and (?). Top row: Kathy H. or Martha (?), Ken Maher, Andy Lipscomb, Joe Nangle, Jack Smalligan, 2 unknowns.
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For more blog posts on the history of the consistent life ethic, see:
First Stirrings in Connecting the Life Issues
The Consistent Life Consensus in Ancient Christianity
Ancient Roots of the Consistent Life Ethic: Greece
The Adventures of Prolifers for Survival: Scorned by Mobilization for Survival
Celebrating the Life of Daniel Berrigan
Daniel Berrigan died April 30, 2016, just days before his 95th birthday, from natural causes. We celebrate the long life of this effective consistent-life advocate. Most famous for his long-lasting anti-war activism and many books and poetry on peace and social justice, we always knew him as a dear friend.
Dan and Consistent-Life Activism
Dan was involved in two direct actions in upstate New York that involved both abortion clinics and military weapons facilities. The group was Faith and Resistance, an organization that had an annual pilgrimage to killing centers near Rochester. Berrigan was the keynote for two of these pilgrimages, May 1989 and October 1991.
Carol Crossed reports: “I knew Dan through our mutual nuclear disarmament civil disobedience on the 40th and 50th anniversaries of Hiroshima/Nagasaki. In the fall of 1988, I visited him unannounced at his apartment in New York. He wasn’t home, and so I sat outside his door for several hours, waiting for him to show up. Upon his return, he said he had been visiting AIDS patients at the hospital and asked me to come in for a cup of tea. With trepidation, I asked him if he would lead a Faith and Resistance pilgrimage, protesting a military center and an abortion center on the same day. He said he wondered why he hadn’t been asked before, and quietly said as he sipped his last drop, ‘It’s just my cup of tea.’”
Carol continues: “Within the next two years, Dan sat in at Highland Hospital, Rochester NY, the Seneca Army Depot in Romulus NY, at Planned Parenthood and at the Federal Building in Rochester NY. At the sites, Dan spoke about the spirituality of geography: being present where killing was occurring was necessary to absorb the evil.”
October 27, 1991, Daniel Berrigan sits in to protest Planned Parenthood abortions, soon to be arrested for doing so. Photo from Rochester’s “City” newspaper.
Berrigan Remembrances Include his Consistent Stand
A lengthy obituary in the National Catholic Reporter says: “Berrigan received criticism from the political left for his pro-life views. He was a longtime endorser of the ‘consistent life ethic,’ and he served on the advisory board of Consistent Life, an organization that describes itself as ‘committed to the protection of life, which is threatened in today’s world by war, abortion, poverty, racism, capital punishment and euthanasia.’ “I have always made it clear,” Berrigan said in the America interview, “that I am against everything from war to abortion to euthanasia.”
In their obituary on May 1, 2016, Crux magazine noted: “Despite his image as a radical leftist, Berrigan was also an outspoken opponent of abortion. During a 1984 talk at a Catholic parish in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Berrigan denounced what he called a ‘theory of allowable murder’ in contemporary society. Christians should have no part in ‘abortion, war, paying taxes for war, or disposing of people on death row or warehousing the aged,’ Berrigan said on that occasion.”
Crux followed up the next day in a May 2 Crux article on how he embodied the “cultural revolution” of Pope Francis: “nowhere does Berrigan write his theology more clearly than in the area of the consistent ethic of life. Through his activism and writing, Berrigan was abundantly clear that this consistency meant opposing the ‘culture of death’ universally on a range of issues as diverse as war, the death penalty, euthanasia, poverty, and abortion. Why? Precisely because he didn’t consider those to be diverse issues at all. They all dealt with killing God’s creatures. That, Berrigan said in the bluntest way possible, is a sin.”
Quotations from Daniel Berrigan
Reflections (Amherst, Mass.), vol. 2, no. 4 (Fall 1979), 1-2.
I come to the abortion question by way of a long, long experience with the military and the mainline violence of the culture, expressed in war . . . So I go from the Pentagon and being arrested there, to the cancer hospital, and then I think of abortion clinics, and I see an “interlocking directorate” of death that binds the whole culture. That is, an unspoken agreement that we will solve our problems by killing people in various ways; a declaration that certain people are expendable, outside the pale. . . A decent society should no more have an abortion clinic than the Pentagon.”
Signing a 2007 online petition in opposition to Amnesty International’s move to endorse abortion as a “right”:
My moral conviction on abortion and the rights of the unborn are more serious than “a point of view” . . . It’s as close to my conscience as war and the death penalty.
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See the poem Daniel wrote entitled “The Seamless Garment“
Book Review: Defenders of the Unborn
by Carol Crossed
Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-life Movement before Roe v Wade is one of the few books about abortion that I read without dozing off within the first 15 minutes. Maybe this is because I know very little about the movement in the 1960s and 70s. My days were absorbed with petitions and rallies that addressed opposition to the war raging in Southeast Asia. Vietnam was a household word, not abortion. The 1973 Supreme Court Decision, on the other hand, sounded like a comedic line from a The Capitol Steps performance: Roe v. Wade are the two ways to cross the Potomac.
Author Daniel K. Williams, an Associate Professor of History, University of West Georgia, painstakingly writes an objective candid account of the pro-life movement and, in the early chapters, the pro-choice movement. Peppered with statistics which would usually make reading difficult, Before Roe juxtaposes them with critical narrative that shapes the direction of the discussion.
Because Defenders mainly discusses abortion’s early years, when the Catholic Church led the struggle, it can be seen as a history of the Catholic Church’s involvement with defending the unborn. And since the Catholic Church’s public position on issues other than abortion was embedded in a broad scope of human rights, particularly the poor and workers’ rights, the book is steeped in portraying a left wing bent to early pro-life politics.
Historically, much of the Church’s opposition to contraception grew out of Roosevelt’s New Deal politics; it was naturally partnered with human dignity and a living wage. Bishops warned that born and unborn disabled children were threatened by a gross perversion of human rights and the natural law. This liberal Catholic and Democratic constituency was the precursor to pre-Roe abortion opposition, and continued through much of the 1970s, even after Roe was decided.
A Gallop poll in 1969 reported that a full 46% of Republicans favored legalizing abortion. However, only 35% of Democrats favored it. This pre-Roe Republican support for abortion was played out in state legislatures escalating abortion legality. In Colorado, a Democrat was the leader in opposing Republican abortion support. In Connecticut, it was a Republican governor who advanced abortion support. In North Carolina, a conservative legislature backed opposition to unborn rights.
Reagan’s years as California’s governor could be described as tormented on the issue. Many conservatives who supported him wanted to repeal protection for the unborn. That was contrasted with a liberal Democrat whose statement for unborn protection was coupled with opposition to the Viet Nam War and the death penalty.
Despite the rocky road of the Catholic Church’s conflation of anti-birth control and abortion, the pro-life movement leadership was generally left-leaning. This trend expanded in the late 1960s when the right-to-life campaign divorced itself from sectarian language and infused the movement with the social justice flavor. This move provided the opening some pacifist evangelicals needed to publicly connect their anti-war passions and broaden the scope of human rights.
After Roe, the Catholic Church’s role began to publicly fade as the movement pushed to include more women and evangelicals. But it was too little too late for Democrats and social-justice Catholics when in 1979 organizations like the National Right to Life endorsed Ronald Reagan for President. This began the slide from Democrat to Republican, from liberal to conservative.
The epilogue is a brief history of the 1990s: the Supreme Court struggle, the rise of the Christian right, and how the liberal pro-life leaders tried to maintain their relevance through groups like Feminists for Life and Democrats for Life. Williams’ research presents astounding statistics. For instance, 1/3 of all abortions happen in California and New York, the states with the fewest restrictions. Another number: by 1991, Operation Rescue reported 40,000 arrests from anti-abortion sit-ins.
For this latter statistic, Williams uses what could be seen as a biased source. This is a small offense, considering that the book is an otherwise dispassionate account of the nation’s most volatile cultural issue today. It also provides reflection for consistent life ethic followers:
Have we already been where we are trying to go?
Who the Law Targets
by Rachel MacNair
In recent news [in April of 2016], a candidate known for incoherence and failure to understand the basics on a wide range of policies showed these tendencies yet again. He said women who had abortions (if it were banned again in the U.S.) should be punished for getting them. Many abortion defenders, to fit their stereotypes, pounced on this statement as the “real” thinking of pro-lifers. Other news sources reported honestly that both sides in the abortion debate were upset by the remark (Gwen Ifill cheerfully said it was one of the few times the two sides agreed with each other). The candidate did retract the statement saying only the abortionist would be punished, having discovered this is what pro-lifers wanted him to say (and proceeded to contradict himself again later, as is his custom).
The discussion this event stimulated has led to two questions we need to be clear on:
- How can pro-lifers really think abortion is the killing of an innocent child if they don’t want the kind of punishment that ordinarily goes with criminal homicide? Don’t they show they don’t really mean it by saying the mothers shouldn’t be punished?
- If the answer is that pro-lifers regard women as also being victims of the abortionist, isn’t that insulting to the dignity of women and the choices they make?
The Moral Case
The fact is that a large portion of pro-lifers are women who’ve had abortions. The rest of us know such women and have given them a sympathetic ear. Large portions of the movement are given to programs of therapy dealing with post-abortion emotions. The evidence for women being traumatized by the abortion, and being surprised to discover so, is widespread.
Sure, there are women who will never show any such signs, and resent the suggestion that they might. There are others that resent it now but will show such signs of trauma later.
Many abortion clinics push women through a quick assembly-line process, make their money, and move on to the next customer. Pro-lifers are the ones spending our volunteer time doing the lengthy and wrenching task of cleaning up the emotional wreckage they leave behind. So of course the idea that the legal case goes against the money-makers would seem obvious to us.
The Practical Legal Case
Unborn children, though equal in value to everyone else, are different in one huge practical way: the only people who know they exist are their mothers and anybody their mothers tell. With the rest of us, if we were killed our absence would be noticed. And unlike those of us with larger bodies, tiny bodies are easily disposed of without ringing alarm bells.
Accordingly, the person who will most want the mother to be accused is the abortionist. If the mother stands accused, then she’s an accomplice. She’ll plead the Fifth and never testify against the abortionist. She’s often the only witness. Hence, no case at all.
Another point about unborn children is that the death rate in miscarriage is still depressingly high. If mothers were punished for abortions, then it would follow that spontaneous abortions (the medical term for miscarriages) could be investigated to see if they were actually induced. This is a horror story. It’s been bad enough that women suffering after a miscarriage have been treated callously (“don’t worry about it, dear, you can always try for another”). The last thing a grieving woman needs is to have the legal system butting in.
The Consistent-Life Case
Yet abortion, when illegal, has another feature different from the average criminal homicide. Most homicides are done by single individuals, or occasionally by a well-defined small group of co-conspirators, who do their best to hide the fact that they did it, knowing that condemnation is harsh. Abortion shares with executions and war this feature: a large number of participants.
Would we entirely blame the people who directly kill someone in an execution when they wouldn’t have done so but that a judge ordered them to, based on a jury’s decision? Would we entirely blame the judge and jury who are following laws passed by legislators? Entirely blame legislators who are responding to what their constituents want? The responsibility for killing in executions is widespread.
As for war, governments deliberately put people in situations where, as combatants, they’re supposed to kill other combatants. If they’re draftees, how morally responsible are they, and why are they less innocent than non-combatants? But suppose soldiers did eagerly sign up for the task, having been assured it was for noble purposes, only to find out later they’d been lied to? How responsible are the people in government when they have constituents pushing for a war? How responsible are the money-making lobbyists, when the war wouldn’t be available as a money-making opportunity at all unless a large enough group of non-lobbyists said it was? All these people do have moral culpability. But none of them holds it alone.
So in the case of abortion, what about all the people that pressure the mother? If the father of the unborn child beats or threatens to beat her, we can hold him legally accountable. But suppose he only threatens to abandon her, thus leaving her in dire economic straits? We can’t make that illegal, and yet he’s morally culpable in the baby’s death because of what he did. What about the boss who insists? The pastor who advises a wife to do what her husband wants? The parents of a pregnant teenager or woman insist? The baby’s father’s parents? The school counselor who makes arrangements without even asking? The impregnating pedophile who schedules the appointment to cover his crime?
And in executions, war, and abortions, what about all the people who offer the view that violence is a good way of solving problems? They therefore help make violence happen that wouldn’t have otherwise.
Unlike criminal homicide, for which society-wide disapproval is clear, when killing is socially approved (whether legal or not), there are large numbers of participants. Countries where abortion is quite illegal now still have surreptitious ones arranged by someone other than the pregnant woman herself, not regarding her opinion on the matter as relevant.
The moral responsibility for the death of that unborn child is far more widespread than just the child’s mother. The concept of “choice” lays all the responsibility at the foot of the pregnant woman – thus letting everyone else off the hook.
We don’t buy it. Legal or illegal, the responsibility for the deaths of those children falls on many participants. As with war and executions and every other issue of socially-approved deliberate killing, it’s the hearts and consciences of all those participants we need to reach.
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For more of our blog posts on abortion and the law, see:
Why the Hyde Amendment Helps Low-Income Women
What Studies Show: Impact of Abortion Regulations
My Ideas for Post-Roe Legislation
People Are So Much More than their Circumstances
by Lisa Stiller
Lisa Stiller at the Religious Education Congress
I recently had the awesome opportunity to attend the Religious Education Congress, an annual gathering of about 40,000 Catholics that come from all over the country and descend upon Anaheim, California. The event has grown from a conference aimed at religious education instructors to one that has something for everyone – social justice, meditation, spiritual practice, theology, and dance and song.
It was at this conference last month that my commitment to Catholic Social Teaching (CST) really became more than just an abstract “respecting the dignity of all people”- something that sounds good, something that feels good. I am a convert to Catholicism; one of its main attractions was CST, which its adherents call the church’s best kept secret.
CST’s core teaching is about the inherent dignity of the human person and his/her right to life, at all stages, from conception to natural death. In support of this, it teaches us that every person, on the basis of being a human being made in the image of God, is entitled to certain basic “goods,” which work to uphold his/her dignity and to support the “right to life.” These include food, health care, housing, employment, fair pay, clean water, etc.
Therefore, the providing for the “common good,” for the well-being of all (especially the poor and vulnerable) is also at the heart of CST; politically, policies that support the provision of those things that contribute to providing human dignity. Similarly, policies that promote peace and a chance for all to participate in the community also support the inherent dignity of the human person and the right to life.
So, intellectually and even intuitively, this all makes perfect sense. I did my RCIA (Rite of Catholic Initiation for Adults, the one to two years of classes and masses that adults have to go through to become Catholic) 20 years ago at that rare church in Las Vegas with a priest who lived and breathed social justice. CST was at the center of most of our weekly discussions. But last month, the teachings took on real meat, real meaning. It took three speakers to open my eyes to the true meaning of the truths behind the social teachings of the church.
I’ve heard Sr. Helen Prejean speak many times; she is an incredibly human, compassionate, and dedicated person. At the same time, amid her talks about horrible crimes, horrible conditions that death row and all prisoners endure, horrible court procedures that condemn innocent people to death, she manages to inject humor. Stories she has told before all come out sounding different each time she tells them. At the end of her talk at the Anaheim conference, after recounting stories about death row inmates that she has walked the journey with, including details about their crimes, St. Helen reminded us that despite their crimes, these were still “children of God.” As such, each had inherent human dignity.
Richard Carlberg (left) and Sr. Helen Prejean (right) at the RE Congress
She asked, “Where is the dignity in the death of Patrick?” This is the death row inmate who Dead Man Walking is based on. Even those who have “committed a horrible act should not have their dignity taken from them.” We concentrate on the crime of the death row defendant, making it easier to “put a monster to death” than a human being. It is this defining of a person by his/her crime, the dehumanization of those incarcerated, that allows us to turn our back to the humanity of the imprisoned. These people are more than their crimes, Prejean said. And they want to be seen as more than their crime.
Fr. Greg Boyle spoke at a workshop on his work with gang members, and how he is able to see the humanity in each. He told us how the young men and women he works with are so much more than their past. “I don’t believe that people are their worst mistakes,” said Javier Stauring, a former gang member who is now working to create peace in areas dominated by gangs. He encouraged listeners to “be there for someone going through a challenge,” to look beyond their crime, their addiction, their appearance, and give them “space to tell the stories of their pain.” In other words, to speak of who they really are.
Quoting from Desmond Tutu, Boyle added that there are “monstrous acts, not monsters.” “There are no evil doers – only human beings who carry more than the rest of us.”
Sister Kathleen Bryant, who works with women who have been trafficked, also reminded her audience that sex trafficked survivors want desperately to be seen as more than sex trafficking victims. Two survivors told stories of how they fell victim to sex traffickers, how long it took for them to make it out, how people never saw or heard them, and how they suffered the bias and rejection common to many sex trafficked survivors. They were “unseen,” and when they finally got out, struggled for acceptance as someone other than how their past defined them. Even in the church. “Survivors are more than survivors,” said one.
Walking out of that last session, I realized that although I had just heard three different stories, they could have all been speaking with one voice. Catholic Social Teaching centers on the dignity of the individual, the inherent dignity of the individual. Human dignity remains intact in spite of people’s decisions, actions, the tragedies they fall victim to. It transcends them.
I thought about how easy it is to assign a person an adjective, as opposed to assigning their actions an adjective. To protect that human dignity, to assure it, the church calls for us to advocate for the common good – especially for the poor and vulnerable. Sr. Helen and Fr. Boyle reminded us that the Gospels preach care for the poor and the oppressed, and that Pope Francis has taken up that call. I thought of how the “victims” or “survivors” of incarceration, gangs, sex trafficking all called for the same things: education, jobs, a way out of the poverty that worked to such them back into the streets. Those things that we are called to advocate for, as they are essential to human dignity.
Seeing the human person, not the crime, the action, the victim. People are so much more than their circumstances. And I realized that if I can do the hard work of seeing this in people, than it follows that all people, no matter what they have done or where they have been, have the same right to life that human dignity dictates. From conception to natural death.
Gives some more depth, and new insight, into what the Consistent Life Ethic is all about.
A Historical Success Story: Duels
by Rachel MacNair
Within Consistent Life we’ve had long discussions about which issues to include when brevity is needed, and we often expand to related issues when writing at length. But there’s one form of socially-approved killing we’ve never seriously contemplated adding to the list: duels.
This is of course because they aren’t socially approved any more. They haven’t been for a long time. We’d add the issue if there were a move to legalize or otherwise approve them. This is not anticipated.
Yet the practice used to be so prevalent that anyone with access to U.S. currency can see a portrait of a man who was killed in a duel on the $10 bill: Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, was killed by Aaron Burr, the third Vice President. Hamilton participated despite being opposed to duels on moral grounds. This was after they were out of office, and Burr never got into office again, but it shows the grip that “defending honor” had on those with high prestige.
This was in spite of the fact that duels were illegal at that point. And the punishments were harsh. One would think the natural consequences of a duel would be punishment enough, since an individual going into a duel is in more danger of death than an individual going into the average battle.
But in some places there were laws saying the winning party would be hanged and both parties would lose all their property. Legal disapproval couldn’t have been clearer. And undoubtedly there were far fewer duels as a result. But they still happened.
German duel in 1830 (public domain, PD-1923)
The 18th-century equivalent of consistent-life advocates did oppose duels. William Wilberforce, best known for his work in helping end slavery in England, but also active on a host of compassion issues, noted that duels were a major sin of the upper class. He said this was a sin of which almost every male in the class was guilty, because even if they never actually engaged in a duel, they always stood ready to.
Duels had quite a grip on the upper class mind. Legislative prohibition didn’t end them, though it probably helped. Growing social disapproval similarly helped, but more was needed.
The very heart of the belief in dueling as a solution to disputes comes from a sense that there is an “honor” that needs defending to the death, and to the death is how to defend the honor. Perhaps there was also a residual idea of the medieval trial-by-ordeal, whereby God would see that the person who was in the right won; in that case, a man who was sure he was in the right thought of the duel as less dangerous than it was.
Both of these ideas dissipated over time, as “honor” became something to defend by writing an irate letter or standing up to make a cogent argument. The idea that God stood behind either of the dueling parties lost its believability.
Besides, the growing norm of freedom of speech made insults easier to simply dismiss on the grounds that people had a right to say foolish things. The idea that honor was defended by killing someone became more bizarre.
So we have a historical success story. Legislative prohibitions and social objections were both quite necessary but also insufficient. Time was needed for them to work.
But perhaps the final necessary condition was that the underlying roots of the ideas driving the problem virtually disappeared. The problem then disappeared with them.
That can serve as a lesson for all the other issues of violence we oppose today. We need to work on all angles, and especially the underlying ideas that drive the violence.
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Note added 03.16.17: An even more alarming connection to U.S. currency: on the $20 bill, Andrew Jackson participated in many duels, and actually killed a man in a duel before he was elected president. He was never convicted of murder since, though illegal, duels were still regarded as matters of honor. It didn’t hurt his bid for the presidency.
Women with Disabilities Speak
(compiled by Rachel MacNair)
Alison Davis wrote in a classic article for the journal Disability and Society:
Feminists, though accustomed to fighting for the emancipation of women, are failing to address this incongruous situation, and the double discrimination faced by women with disabilities. This is partly due to the fact that they regard abortion as an unequivocal “right.”
I will argue that far from being a right, abortion underlines women’s oppression and is counter-productive to women in general, and to disabled women in particular.
Source: Women with disabilities: Abortion and liberation. Disability and Society, 2(3), 275-284, (1987).
In her personal story on the web site of the American Psychological Association, psychologist Erin E. Andrews writes:
When I found out I was pregnant, I was overjoyed, but also apprehensive. I am a congenital triple amputee who uses a power wheelchair for mobility. I was less concerned about the effects of my disability, and more concerned about the attitudes of others toward my pregnancy. As a rehabilitation psychologist, I am well aware that women with disabilities face barriers to reproductive health and that social biases exist which portray women with disabilities as asexual, infertile, and incapable as mothers.
Source: Andrews, E. E. (2011, December). Pregnancy with a physical disability: One psychologist’s journey. Spotlight on Disability Newsletter.
Bertha Alvarez Manninen writes in Disability Studies Quarterly:
Although I self-identify as pro-choice, I do believe certain instances of abortion can be classified as, in Judith Jarvis Thomson’s words, indecent. . . . In particular, I am concerned with cases where fetuses that had been thus far welcomed and loved by their respective community are suddenly regarded as candidates for abortion simply because they may have been diagnosed with a disability. That is, I am worried about cases where disability is deemed sufficient grounds for dehumanizing a being who had been, up until that point, embraced.
Source: The replaceable fetus: A reflection on abortion and disability. Disabilities Studies Quarterly, 35(1). (2015)
Martha Saxton:
While today’s feminists are not responsible for the eugenic biases of their fore-mothers, some of these prejudices have persisted or have gone unchallenged in the reproductive rights movement today. Consequently many women with disabilities feel alienated from this movement. On the other hand some pro-choice feminists felt so deeply alienated from the disability community that they have been willing to claim, “The right wing wants to force us to have defective babies.” Clearly there is work to be done. . .
The fact is, it is discriminatory attitudes and thoughtless behaviors, and the ostracization and lack of accommodation which follow, that make life difficult. The oppression, one way or another, is what’s most disabling about disability. . .
But many parents of disabled children have spoken up to validate the joys and satisfactions of raising a disabled child. A vast literature of books and articles by these parents confirm the view that discriminatory attitudes make raising a disabled child much more difficult than the actual logistics of their unique care. . .
How is it possible to defend selective abortion on the basis of “a woman’s right to choose” when this “choice” is so constrained by oppressive values and attitudes? . . . For those with “disability-positive” attitudes, the analogy with sex-selection is obvious. Oppressive assumptions, not inherent characteristics, have devalued who this fetus will grow into.
Source: Disability rights and selective abortion. Conference: Gender and Justice in the Gene Age. (2004).
Ashley Asch makes the case that pro-life and pro-choice agree on in an oft-cited article:
In order to make testing and selecting for or against disability consonant with improving life for those who will inevitably be born with or acquire disabilities, our clinical and policy establishments must communicate that it is as acceptable to live with a disability as it is to live without one and that society will support and appreciate everyone with the inevitable variety of traits. . . . If that professional message is conveyed, more prospective parents may envision that their lives can be rewarding, whatever the characteristics of the child they are raising. . . . If the child with a disability is not a problem for the world, and the world is not a problem for the child, perhaps we can diminish our desire for prenatal testing and selective abortion and can comfortably welcome and support children of all characteristics.
Source: Asch, A. (1999) Prenatal Diagnosis and Selective Abortion: A Challenge to Practice and Policy. American Journal of Public Health, 89(11), 1649-1657.
Should Abortions be Illegal?
by Bill Samuel
In 2014, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, 84,041 rapes were reported in the United States. It is well known that many rapes are not reported, so the actual incidence of rape is greater than that.
Rape is a felony in every jurisdiction in the United States, and has been for a very long time. So does the incidence of rape prove that making it illegal is a failure and should be abandoned in favor of rape reduction strategies?
It would be hard to find anyone who would make that argument. But most would agree that making a law is not enough by itself. We also need to address the causes of rape. In recent decades, there have been many efforts along this line. However, they are not seen as alternatives to criminalization, but as complements to it. To the contrary, at the same time there have been efforts to strengthen the criminal laws against rape.
Now this multifaceted approach to address the problem of rape in our society is not controversial and in fact is generally accepted. But this is not true with regard to all other social ills. In particular, it is not true regarding abortion.
We frequently hear people saying that laws against abortion are not advisable because some would continue to have abortions even if they were illegal. Some say we should abandon legal strategies in favor of abortion reduction strategies involving such things as supports for pregnant women. Often people’s motives for skepticism about legal restrictions are good. Hardly anyone wants to punish women for actions often taken out of desperation. However, most legal restrictions on abortion are not designed to punish mothers.
Abortion reduction efforts are, in fact, critical. We need to address the reasons why people have abortions. There are numerous public policies and nonprofit sector programs that can be helpful in addressing the desperation many women feel when they learn they are pregnant. And most of them have very important additional benefits, both to the individuals involved and the society at large, as well. We should indeed be working hard to see these put in place.
The problem comes when people approach the question of legal strategies and other abortion reduction strategies in an either/or manner. There is no real conflict between these strategies. Both affect the incidence of abortion. They are, in fact, complementary. I believe there is a synergistic effect when you move forward on multiple approaches to an issue at the same time.
So I implore all those that are seeking to protect the unborn to avoid either/or formulations and not to attack those who are concentrating on different ways to work for life. I ask those focusing on legal restrictions on abortion not to attack those emphasizing other strategies as not really being pro-life. I ask those emphasizing other approaches not to attack those emphasizing legal restrictions. We are all needed in the effort to get all human life treated with dignity and respect.
Bill Samuel was President of Consistent Life at the time of writing. This post is adapted from one originally published on his personal blog on November 11, 2008.
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For more of our blog posts on abortion and the law, see:
Why the Hyde Amendment Helps Low-Income Women
Guns and Abortion: Extremists Resemble One Another
by Carol Crossed, Consistent Life Board member
Carol Crossed
At his press conference about gun control, President Obama was clear and uncomplicated: The Constitution protects the right to bear arms. But some restraints on our freedom are necessary to protect innocent people.
This should carry weight with Republicans since this is the same argument they make to Democrats about abortion rights. Even the most ardent supporters of both guns and abortion do not deny this intellectually honest reality: the byproducts of these constitutional rights are dead bodies.
Both abortion rights supporters and proponents of gun ownership tirelessly lobby to prohibit any reasonable restrictions. Polls demonstrate public support for limits, like the sale of assault weapons, and parental consent and informed consent for abortions. Fearing the slippery slope, no compromise can be broached by these extremists. Lobby industries are quick to remind us that they don’t purport to force anyone to own a gun or to have an abortion. Gun shops and abortion clinics, according to these defenders, should be accessible for those who want one.
Women are the marketing pawns in this sorry scenario of choice. The language both industries employ is nearly identical. Preying on women’s fears, a National Rifle Association ad reads, “A gun is a choice women need to know more about and be free to make. The NRA is working to ensure that the freedom of that choice always exists.”
However, the Journal of Public Health reports that if a handgun is in the house, women are five times more likely to be killed. Likewise, females are the gender of choice in sex-selective abortions. This preference for male children has created a severe ratio imbalance in some countries.
While many NRA-supporting Republicans and Planned Parenthood-supporting Democrats point fingers at one another, the only winners are lobbyists and legislators. Pro-gun rights and pro-abortion rights groups rank highest in political action committee (PAC) money raised and spent for lobbying, and to elect legislators to support their all-or-nothing agenda. The 2012 Federal Election Committee reports 7,000 PACs. The NRA ranks 15th, with $21 million to protect gun owner rights. EMILY’s List ranks fourth with $57 million to protect abortion rights.
Accurate information about violence is less likely to incite violence than it is to reduce violence. Martin Luther King Jr. said speaking the truth creates necessary tension to force social change. It is not meant to challenge the powerless to incite.
At a vigil after the shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic, a rally sign said, “Guns and abortion stop a beating heart.” There’s an opinion with something to offend everybody.