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.
De-funding Planned Parenthood?
by Rachel MacNair
The concept of the U.S. federal government removing all federal taxpayer dollars from going to Planned Parenthood has been a hot legislative topic recently. It seems to be set aside for now, but is bound to come up again and again. What is there to say from a consistent-life view?
First, withdrawing money from violent institutions is generally a good first step. Planned Parenthood is by far the largest chain of abortion clinics in the U.S., responsible for the direct committing of a large portion of feticides. It’s a major lobbyist in abortion political advocacy in many countries around the world. Whether or not they have illegally sold baby parts is a legal technicality, but that they are responsible for massive violence is clear. Taxpayers feeling revolted about having their money going to Planned Parenthood would, to our minds, be equivalent to taxpayers not wanting their money to go to nuclear weapons and imperial-oriented military expenditures, or to executions.
However, the federal money going to Planned Parenthood doesn’t directly fund abortions – there’s a strict legal prohibition on that – but to other services women of low income need. Much of these are Medicaid payments for perfectly legitimate services. So two objections arise to the above reasoning.
Objection #1: The idea that Planned Parenthood prevents more abortions than it causes because it provides contraception that prevents pregnancies.
In answer, I’m not discussing individual cases, where well-used contraception prevents abortions because the pregnancies never happened. Rather, I focus on what Planned Parenthood’s activity does.
We have a real-world test of this from the Texas panhandle, where Planned Parenthood facilities operated on a large scale. In 1999, five of its facilities closed; in 2001, seven more. Four more shut down later, so by 2008, none remained in the Texas Panhandle. Statistics on the teenage pregnancy rate in those counties show pregnancy rates among those aged 13-17 dropped dramatically. The average rate in the 16 counties started at 43.7 per 1,000 in 1996. By 2002, it was 28.6; by 2010, it had dropped to 24.1.
This isn’t what was predicted by those who admire Planned Parenthood’s work, but the explanation is in the academic literature: it’s called “risk compensation” or “behavioral adaptation.” It’s explained in an article relating condom use to, of all things, seat belts.
Seat belt laws succeeded in several countries in getting more people to wear seat belts – but without impacting the statistics on car injuries and fatalities. If someone who scrupulously follows the speed limit without a seat belt keeps do so after wearing one, then they’re safer. If that person feels because of the seat belt it’s now ok to go much faster, they could make up for the seat belt as far as injuries and fatalities are concerned. Authors of this paper suggest the same thing with condom use –efforts at pregnancy prevention could be “undermined by unintended changes in sexual risk perception and behavior.”
So while careful drivers with seat belts and careful couples with contraception can benefit, the impact of the programs Planned Parenthood offers for pregnancy prevention do not appear to be sufficiently accompanied by carefulness. Better approaches to pregnancy prevention are needed. Reality is more complicated.
Objection #2: Women in poverty need the non-abortion medical services that Planned Parenthood provides, and we shouldn’t to anything to deny them that.
Despite things they’ve said about mammograms, PP owns no mammogram machines and “provides the service” by referring women to other places. For contraception, pap smears, STD testing, and other much-needed services, CL member group Democrats for Life points out that there are thousands of community health centers that provide these, and a common point in advocating the de-funding of Planned Parenthood is that the money would go to those instead.
This is a fine argument in most places. The problem is, what about those pockets where Planned Parenthood is the only provider of these services available within a reasonable distance?
But this goes beyond the question of de-funding. Whenever there are such pockets, it’s telling those women in poverty they have no choice but to go to an organization that is startlingly callous about the lives of their prenatal children. Women should have the right to quality care, and quality care is best provided by people who are sensitive to all of human life and don’t make excuses for its destruction.
Two Strategies
One grassroots approach is to first get definite information on where all those pockets are, and then work with city or state legislatures to make alternatives available. So all women, no matter how poor or how isolated, have the ability to get quality care from community health centers rather than from an abortion advocacy organization.
This service to women in poverty is worthy in and of itself, empowering women who wish to have the alternative. But it also will undermine the argument that women need Planned Parenthood. The organization would become much more clearly redundant and unnecessary for legitimate health care.
This groundwork could make the federal legislation more likely to pass eventually. And it would be a worthwhile project even if the de-funding legislation never passes. Planned Parenthood could be weakened as a matter of noncooperation by the people who can now go elsewhere.
Another strategy is that those who have a goal of de-funding Planned Parenthood could get legislators to offer to double or triple the funds going to the community health centers specifically for women’s health, on the condition that none of the money goes to abortion-providing organizations.
Then the people insisting that money must go specifically to Planned Parenthood would be the ones whose actions were working to cut the funds for women’s health care as a whole.
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For more of our blog posts on nonviolent campaigns about Planned Parenthood, see:
Noncooperation with Planned Parenthood
Finding Alternatives to Planned Parenthood
For the campaign itself — Grassroots Defunding: Finding Alternatives to Planned Parenthood, see:
Difference This Time: Pro-Life Heroism
by Rachel MacNair
With the lethal shooting at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs of November 27, 2015, we in Consistent Life first waited to hear if it were in fact connected to abortion. Once the news was that the shooter had rambled about “baby parts,” then recent news about undercover videos involving those did seem to be the motivation. Our issue of Peace & Life Connections that week went through an intense round of revisions as we grappled with what to say and what not to say.
After all, militant people in the past spoke to the media to justify vigilante action after past shooting incidents. Violence as problem-solver is steeped in our society.
The peace movement in opposition to the American war in Vietnam had the same problem – big time. “Anti-war” bombings killed people. The civil rights movement had to deal with such militants, too, and major riots to boot. So did Gandhi.
When I was trying to adopt a special-needs child, I was initially blocked because a specific person told the social workers that I was inclined to bomb places to express my political views. I know she did this because she bragged about doing it to a friend of mine. So I had to inquire whether it was the peace-movement or prolife-movement activism that got to that stereotype. It was the pro-life. Even the local director of Planned Parenthood at the time knew me and told me she thought this was ridiculous. I was able to persuade the social workers that it was untrue, so I was technically still qualified – but I never did have a child placed with me. So my home is emptier now than it might have been because of this form of bigotry. I feel the injustice of it very personally.
Many of us have been facing the outrage from abortion defenders who want to call this “domestic terrorism,” and we feel a little intimidated about mentioning we’re pro-life. A handful of places in the media are highlighting people who’ve come out with violence-oriented signs; those signs fit their stereotypes.
Yet it’s been years since they found someone to articulate at length a vigilante perspective.
The pro-life involvement in this case was that a pro-life police officer gave his life in protection of the people at the clinic.
Garrett Swasey
Police Officer Garret Swasey, loving father of two and volunteer co-pastor of Hope Chapel in Colorado Springs, was murdered in this shooting spree. This is a case where a pro-lifer was murdered. Not for being pro-life, but because he was a police officer doing his job trying to protect people’s lives. An officer who worked with Swasey, Larry Darnell, reported that Swasey was not merely sent but volunteered to go when hearing news of the shooting.
He’s therefore, by definition, a hero. Thousands attended his funeral.
This is the exact opposite of “terrorism.” Since that term is questionable when no organization was involved, we can be more precise and say it was the exact opposite of being vigilante.
Since many abortion defenders are unaware of this point about Garrett Swasey, they don’t know how utterly inappropriate it is to use his death as a way of furthering bigotry against pro-lifers. We need to do more to communicate this.
If the case were being presented fairly, it would be a way of pointing out how admirable pro-lifers can be, putting their very lives on the line, in the face of horrific and senseless violence.
The Adventures of Prolifers for Survival — Scorned by Mobilization for Survival
Carol Crossed
by Carol Crossed
Mobilization for Survival
Mobilization For Survival (MFS) began in the 1970s and was a diverse network of peace organizations, principally to address nuclear concerns.
Groups were encouraged to join by paying a modest membership fee and agreeing to four principles:
1. Disarming countries of nuclear weapons;
2. Banning nuclear power;
3. Ending the arms race; and
4. Meeting human needs.
MFS grew to roughly 350 member groups, and in the Spring of 1980 they ginned up for a large demonstration
First Contact
Juli Loesch (now Julianne Wiley) called the MFS office to get information on how to join and participate in the demonstration. She spoke to a staff person at Mobilization for Survival named Stephen Zunes. Stephen was only 23 years old and a practicing Quaker when he began working at the national office of MFS in Philadelphia.
Juli Loesch in 1980s
(now Julianne Wiley)
Stephen’s responsibilities centered around organizing Survival Summer. It was modeled after Mississippi Summer (1964) and Vietnam Summer (1967). This is the gathering Juli requested information about from the MFS office. She recalls being sent a “pretty substantial” packet of information.
However, Juli was shocked by its contents. It included a couple of leaflets by “abortion rights” organizations. Juli characterized this as opportunistically exploiting a peace march. How? By promoting that the Three Mile Island nuclear energy accident and its dangers of radiation created a need for lots more abortions, free and on demand, especially for women living downstream in the Susquehanna River watershed.
Juli’s sense of humorous outrage and her passion for justice, coupled with this absurd misuse of peace, were quickly aroused. First, Juli argued, “It was manifestly incoherent thinking that the nuclear industry was wickedly responsible for endangering or damaging babies, but that at the same time, our righteous response was: let’s be sure they all get aborted.”
Secondly, Juli was in the midst of trying to organize a bus full of pro-lifers to come and support this no-nukes demonstration. “They would surely back off if one of our demands was supposed to be ‘yes on abortion, and lots of it’.”
Juli phoned the MFS headquarters and carefully and rationally (and she admits perhaps a tad hotly) voiced her objection to this conflation of incompatible issues.
Juli recalls the conversation:
“OK,” said the person on the other end of the line, “And what did you say your name is?”
“Juli Loesch.”
“And the group you represent is?”
Well, there wasn’t any group. It was just Juli. So on impulse she blurted, “We’re Pro-Lifers for Survival (PS).”
So Juli hung up, cooled down a few degrees, and then thought, “Oh, Lord. Now I’ve got to organize a group.”
MFS Responds
Stephen Zunes
According to Stephen, the MFS Staff was fully aware of the diversity of the member organizations. Some were front groups for organizations whose belief in the four principles were suspect. For instance, the Communist Party rationalized Soviet nuclear weapons and other military policies. There were Jewish organizations that supported Israeli occupation. “The MFS staff were willing to tolerate those differences, but there were some staff and local chapters that wouldn’t tolerate allowing anti-abortion groups.”
The Boston chapter of Mobilization for Survival sent out a letter against PS, saying that all prolifers were “racist, classist, misogynist anti-choice reactionaries.”
Juli was more than miffed. “They had Presbyterians and Physicians for Survival and Polyamorists and Pagans for Survival. But Pro-Lifers for Survival they could not tolerate?”
Strange, she remembers. “MFS was glowing with the urgency to create the broadest grassroots coalition ever for the Survival of the Planet — nothing could be more important than that! But now there’s certain people, potentially certain tens of millions of people, they’d really rather not have in their coalition, the exclusion of whom was more important than the survival of the planet?”
Stephen sought to mediate. He called Juli Loesch to clarify where PS was coming from. Though broadly sympathetic with the consistent pro-life position himself, he didn’t dare push that perspective, but simply called for tolerance and inclusivity within MFS.
The seven member staff were almost evenly divided on the question, with the director, a Lutheran Minister open to accepting PS: “I have an intolerance for intolerance” he said. Given the divisions, however, they would have likely brought it to the full Board, if it could get that far.
A couple local and regional chapters of MFS had already gotten wind of the controversy. Boston, the largest and most active, threatened to pull out of MFS altogether if PS joined. Other groups wrote letters calling for tolerance and diversity.
It was clear that PS’s application was threatening to split the organization. Stephen recalls that not wanting to cause damage to an important peace coalition, Juli, to her credit, withdrew the PS application to join MFS. “It was a classic example of intolerance of Progressives towards those with a consistent pro-life perspective.”
Thus did Pro-Lifers for Survival begin and expand. By 1987, it morphed into The Seamless Garment Network, later renamed Consistent Life. Stephen Zunes is co-editor of our book published by Praeger:
Consistently Opposing Killing:
From Abortion to Assisted Suicide, the Death Penalty, and War
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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
Reminiscing on the Founding Meeting of the Consistent Life Network
Suffering and Injustice Concern Us All
by Vasu Murti
Vasu Murti
Do you feel like you’re being forced to practice Quakerism, because the government does not allow you to own a slave? Did the Quakers impose their morality on the rest of American society when slavery was abolished, or was it social and moral progress for all mankind?
Animal rights should not be solely aligned with a particular political party. Neither should they be tied to a particular religion.
In past decades, the stereotype of “religious vegetarians” was that they are all followers of Eastern religions, believing you might be reincarnated as a cow in your next life if you’re not careful. Now people are gradually becoming familiar with the strands of vegetarianism within Judaism, but many are unaware of the long history of animal advocacy, concern for animals, and vegetarianism in Christianity.
As I told Dr. Richard Schwartz (author, Judaism and Vegetarianism) via email in 1997: arguing as some Christians do that animal rights and vegetarianism are solely “Jewish” concerns is like saying, “It’s only wrong to own a slave if you’re a Quaker.”
No. Suffering and injustice concern us all. Like the abolition of slavery or the emancipation of women, animal rights and vegetarianism are moral absolutes and apply to everyone, including atheists and agnostics.
Richard agreed with me that churches should have animal issues at the top of their agenda as well.
The sad irony here is a lot of liberals see abortion as sectarian, too! They dismiss it as a “Catholic issue” or a fundamentalist Christian issue or say if you’re not born again, you don’t have to be pro-life.
If vegetarianism were solely about “fit” or following a peculiar set of “dietary laws” why would pro-lifers be offended by pro-choice vegetarians and vegans?
They’re offended because they know vegetarianism involves the animals’ right to life, and thus these pro-choicers appear to value animal life over human life under some circumstances.
And issues like animal experimentation, circuses, and fur have nothing to do with diet, eating, nor food, but do involve the animals’ right to life.
Sometimes being lighthearted gets the point across to Christians that vegetarianism is not about “dietary laws” but about the animals’ right to life, like Steve Martin in the ’70s asking, “How many polyesters did you have to kill to make that suit?”
Animal rights activist B.R. Boyd writes in The New Abolitionists (1987):
“Seventy to one hundred million, including lost and abandoned pets, are quite literally injected, infected, mutilated, driven insane, strapped immobile for years on end, blinded, concussed, burned, mechanically raped, dismembered, disemboweled, mutilated, and otherwise violated–often without adequate anesthesia–in order to test shampoos, oven cleaners, make-up, and scientific hypotheses; to advance medical science or personal careers; to develop and test nuclear, biological, chemical, and conventional weapons; or for general scientific curiosity, and because public funding is available.
“Twenty million unwanted pets undergo euthanasia every year and countless others are abused by their owners. Spay-neuter clinics get little or no public funding, while the pet-breeding industry continues to enrich itself by pumping out living, disposable toys.
“Seventeen million wild fur-bearing animals (and twice as many ‘trash’ animals) are mangled in steel jaw traps and 17 million more factory farmed, then gassed or electrocuted, that we may wear furs.
“170 million animals are hunted down and shot to death in their habitats, mostly for sport, often leaving their offspring to die of exposure or starvation.
“Industrial pollution, habitat destruction, and our transportation system kill and maim untold millions, while we kidnap and imprison others for our entertainment in zoos.
“Ten billion animals are killed in America every year; 95 percent of them are killed for food. We force-breed, cage, brand, castrate, and over-milk them, cut off their beaks, horns, and tails, pump them full of antibiotics and growth stimulants, steal their eggs, and kill and eat them.”
“I have no doubt,” wrote Henry David Thoreau, “that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual development to leave off the eating of animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came into contact with the more civilized.”
Like pacifists and/or pro-lifers, vegetarianism, in itself, is merely an ethic and not a religion. As an ethic, vegetarianism, like the pro-life ethic, has served as the basis for entire religious traditions: Buddhism, Jainism, Pythagoreanism, and possibly early Christianity all immediately come to mind. As an ethic, vegetarianism has attracted some of the greatest figures in history: Leonardo Da Vinci, Count Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, George Bernard Shaw, Susan B. Anthony, Sir Paul McCartney, Rosa Parks, etc.
At the end of 2007, shortly before moving to Israel, Pete Cohen of Veggie Jews in San Francisco said to me, “PETA’s not Jewish.”
When I told Jim Frey of Berkeley Pro-Life, a Catholic, that animal issues are secular and nonsectarian and thus applicable to everyone including atheists and agnostics, he said, “Well, just like with abortion.”
Pro-lifers must not play a sectarian game with animal activists. Saying, “your religion says it’s wrong to kill animals, mine doesn’t” is pointless when someone from a differing denomination could just as easily say, “Your religion says it’s wrong to kill the unborn, mine doesn’t.” There are pro-choice Protestant denominations, like the United Church of Christ.
As an animal advocate and a secularist, I’ve never understood the attempts of pro-life Christians to unsuccessfully deflect the issues of animal rights and vegetarianism by depicting them solely as someone else’s “religious belief” which they think doesn’t apply to them.
A lot of people look at abortion that way, too, you know!
Vasu Murti is the author of
The Liberal Case against Abortion
and
They Shall Not Hurt or Destroy: Animal Rights and Vegetarianism in the Western Religious Traditions