I have always been impressed with the way in which the Salvation Army separates its moral preaching as a church from its work among the downtrodden in society. For instance, the Sally Ann church takes historically orthodox views on sexual morality, including related issues such as homosexuality, yet it funds and staffs ministries for AIDS victims. It lays out an ideal while dealing practically with the present reality.
The same is true with an organization like, say, the Union Gospel Mission in Vancouver. The leadership there is, to the best of my knowledge, pretty straitlaced evangelical. Yet they had (and may still have) an outreach to sex trade workers in which my daughter was once involved. Volunteers go to the various street corners in the area taking the prostitutes something to drink and showing them friendship. The idea is that should one of these women (a large number of whom are transgendered) want help of any kind, they would know to whom they could turn (and some do). Marvelous.
I would like to float a trial balloon among YMFR (you my faithful reader). The pro-life movement, to a great degree, is like the church. It takes a strong moral position (abortion is murder), and argues for what it sees as the ideal moral solution (make abortions illegal). Often these groups tie themselves very directly to a church, most often the Roman Catholic denomination.
Public demonstrations are usually directed at a legislature, are highly moral in character, and usually pretty obviously Christian. I participated in just such a demonstration in Victoria earlier this month when I m.c.'d the March for Women's Lives. Virtually all of the speakers were Roman Catholic, two being priests in full battle dress (dog collar, etc). One of the marchers carried a huge picture of the Virgin with child. The march was preceded by a mass (with no Protestant or interfaith equivalent available). The speeches were all pretty good, with two or three of them being very creative, passionate and compelling. A common complaint later was that none of the politicians inside the Legislature dared to show her/his face.
The pro-life movement defines itself as the opposite of the pro-choice movement, which it often labels the pro-abortion movement. Of course, the pro-choice people in turn call pro-lifers "anti-choice" and "anti-woman."
Outside of the pro-life movement, the pro-life profile is seen as follows:
1. Opposed to any choice other than life.
2. Desirous of legislating abortion away.
3. Highly religious in character, particularly evangelical and Roman Catholic.
4. Morally absolutist and intolerant.
5. Pro-fetus but anti-women's rights.
That some of the above is unfair stereotype is true but nevertheless the present reality. It doesn't help that the Roman Catholic Church is carrying additional baggage these days with the many scandals involving priests and little children, or the residential schools.
I won't argue that the moral side must not be taught. In fact, the Protestant churches by and large pay life issues scant heed, or actually take an official pro-choice position; e.g., the Presbyterian Church of Canada. So somebody has to do it.
But what if we were to follow the Salvation Army model? There would be those who, taking the place of timorous preachers, would continue to urge a moral examination of the abortion and euthanasia questions. These folks could continue to call themselves pro-life.
But there would be another group who would deal with the present reality and choose their agenda accordingly. I am using "Society for Informed Life Choices" as a working title. Such groups would deal with the issue in an educational fashion, looking at the array of choices that are available to women, and at the crises that cause women to make one choice or another.
The educational efforts (including research as well as teaching/counseling) would take three forms. One would deal with the actual physical issues; e.g., i. Are abortions safe?; ii. Is there a link with breast cancer?; iii. Fetal development; iv. The various positions on mercy killing and the strengths and challenges of each, etc.
Parties in pitched camps often have a hard time being objective about these matters. For instance, a local college newspaper published a front-page article called The Abortion-Breast Cancer Link is a Myth . When Abbotsford Right to Life held a public meeting on the issue, with a stem cell specialist as speaker, representatives from that college were invited but declined to attend. So much for the inquiring mind.
A second form that this education would take would be philosophical and moral in a more general sense. For instance, one of the big problems that pro-choice activists have with the pro-life movement is that women's rights, as they define them, are incompatible with any restrictions on abortion. Is this valid? Are there other alternatives? What is needed is more than just "because the Bible says so" (or the Pope, etc.). Some people, like Prof. Somerville, are doing this kind of argumentation right now, but much more is needed.
Thirdly, we need analysis of the many factors that make a pregnancy a crisis, and discuss these from the point of view of what makes for good public policy that genuinely supports the sanctity of life. The same thing is needed with respect to euthanasia.
What is my purpose in this? We live in a pluralistic and secular society. The church is one of many competing voices, with no more authority or credibility than any other. In fact, the representatives of the marketplace have far more credibility with right-wing governments than other voices, while organized labour has the socialists' ear.
So I am proposing a kind of "think tank" approach that avoids affiliations and positions that carry so much baggage as to paint them into a corner by definition. This would allow for a broader public reception, I should think, than is presently the case.
Is this an idea with any merit? Please fill out the little survey in the sidebar to give me your ideas. Or email a comment for me to publish.
Thanks.
Friday, 23 May 2008
Friday, 16 May 2008
Talking past each other
Observing the to and fro between the Ken Epp supporters and the Ken Epp denouncers simply serves to illustrate again that the ardent pro-life people and the ardent pro-abortion people simply talk past each other.
Like it or not, the nature of our secular society is such that a woman's rights are tied up with a notion of independence that makes it impossible to see a fetus as of equal personhood. Because genuine Christianity, and a number of other major religions, are communally-focused rather than individually-focused, the pro-choice notion of independence makes no sense to people of faith.
Now this secular view of women's rights is, to some degree, an attempt to address wrongs of the past (and the present) that have victimized women far more then men. This is understandable and laudable. But it has come at a cost.
Over the centuries societies have created various fictions to justify other things that are more important to them. The best examples are the legal fictions that black slaves, women and native North Americans were not persons. All of these inventions were for a purpose deemed to be rational or self-evident within the circles that created them (e.g., a strong economy was more important than the personhood of slaves; or, men are inherently superior to women and must protect them from things that they can't handle or understand--like voting). I suspect that the Sudanese political leaders have just such a fantasy to justify what is happening in Darfur. The widespread popularity of eugenics certainly required such illusionary thinking.
In Canada we have two such fictions. First is the medical one, that a fetus is part of the woman and not distinct from her in any way that matters. That this is nonsensical medically hardly needs to be said, but it is nevertheless widely held. Thus we have pro-abortion advocates parading around with signs saying, "Keep your hands (laws, religion, etc.) off my body." It's the unborn baby's body that is at issue, but to the pro-abortion crowd there is no difference.
The second is the hoary chestnut that the state can decide in its wisdom what human beings are viewed as persons. We have decried this over the centuries, but continue to perpetrate it now in the exact same fashion as did those societies of the past.
To maintain this fiction, a number of very illogical positions have to be taken. They are stated routinely in the Canadian Parliament's Question Period if you could stomach watching it for several days. Often misrepresentations and outright lies are resorted to, particularly when fighting with "enemies", that would be rejected as nonsense should they be used in arguing any other cause. But the ends justify the means apparently, so utter drivel is not only proclaimed but acclaimed.
What we have is the clashing of two world views. Because many pro-life Christians have not grasped the importance of "taking the crisis out of a crisis pregnancy", but have focused almost exclusively on fetal rights, their view will inevitably be rejected outright by their secular "foes". It is unlikely that the secular view will change in the foreseeable future. It's up to the people of faith to begin to exercise the creativity necessary to bring society around. The clergy and other Christians did it in the 19th century with the slaves. Let's do it again.
Let's make it possible to have women's rights and fetal rights. That will take a lot more work than organizing a march, however large. In fact, the focus will have to swing from debating the pro-abortionists (as I said, the two worldviews are watertight and admit to no alterations), to redeeming society in such a way that women will not feel the pressure to resort to abortion.
Isn't redemption what we're all about?
Like it or not, the nature of our secular society is such that a woman's rights are tied up with a notion of independence that makes it impossible to see a fetus as of equal personhood. Because genuine Christianity, and a number of other major religions, are communally-focused rather than individually-focused, the pro-choice notion of independence makes no sense to people of faith.
Now this secular view of women's rights is, to some degree, an attempt to address wrongs of the past (and the present) that have victimized women far more then men. This is understandable and laudable. But it has come at a cost.
Over the centuries societies have created various fictions to justify other things that are more important to them. The best examples are the legal fictions that black slaves, women and native North Americans were not persons. All of these inventions were for a purpose deemed to be rational or self-evident within the circles that created them (e.g., a strong economy was more important than the personhood of slaves; or, men are inherently superior to women and must protect them from things that they can't handle or understand--like voting). I suspect that the Sudanese political leaders have just such a fantasy to justify what is happening in Darfur. The widespread popularity of eugenics certainly required such illusionary thinking.
In Canada we have two such fictions. First is the medical one, that a fetus is part of the woman and not distinct from her in any way that matters. That this is nonsensical medically hardly needs to be said, but it is nevertheless widely held. Thus we have pro-abortion advocates parading around with signs saying, "Keep your hands (laws, religion, etc.) off my body." It's the unborn baby's body that is at issue, but to the pro-abortion crowd there is no difference.
The second is the hoary chestnut that the state can decide in its wisdom what human beings are viewed as persons. We have decried this over the centuries, but continue to perpetrate it now in the exact same fashion as did those societies of the past.
To maintain this fiction, a number of very illogical positions have to be taken. They are stated routinely in the Canadian Parliament's Question Period if you could stomach watching it for several days. Often misrepresentations and outright lies are resorted to, particularly when fighting with "enemies", that would be rejected as nonsense should they be used in arguing any other cause. But the ends justify the means apparently, so utter drivel is not only proclaimed but acclaimed.
What we have is the clashing of two world views. Because many pro-life Christians have not grasped the importance of "taking the crisis out of a crisis pregnancy", but have focused almost exclusively on fetal rights, their view will inevitably be rejected outright by their secular "foes". It is unlikely that the secular view will change in the foreseeable future. It's up to the people of faith to begin to exercise the creativity necessary to bring society around. The clergy and other Christians did it in the 19th century with the slaves. Let's do it again.
Let's make it possible to have women's rights and fetal rights. That will take a lot more work than organizing a march, however large. In fact, the focus will have to swing from debating the pro-abortionists (as I said, the two worldviews are watertight and admit to no alterations), to redeeming society in such a way that women will not feel the pressure to resort to abortion.
Isn't redemption what we're all about?
Thursday, 15 May 2008
Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue
I normally write new things in this blog. I'm still sorting out some of my own thoughts on life issues, and I find the writing process as the best way to think things through.
But today I am reproducing an article I found, you may be surprised to know, at the Pagans for Life website, one that I had not visited before. The article is old (first published in 1992). I borrowed it, and to some degree it made me blue to read it, despite its strong pro-life worldview. We live in a tremendously polarized society with respect to life issues, and rational thought appears to be the victim--a depressing thought to an academic.
At the time this article was written, Bill Clinton was president, having succeeded Republicans George Bush Sr. and Ronald Reagan. Jesse Jackson was still seen as a credible force in political life (he's a bit of a caricature now).
The author, Nat Hentoff, is a distinguished American in many ways, and has retained both his left-wing views and his support for pro-life to this day. You might want to read his bio. I found my old friend Wikipedia to be quite helpful in this regard.
Please read it through to the end. It's a first-rate piece.
Pro Choice Bigots
by Nat Hentoff
This article first appeared in The New Republic (Nov. 30, 1992)
Not too long ago, he was a pro-lifer. He wrote and spoke about the right to life and attacked advocates of abortion rights. "There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life," he would say. "That was the premise to slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation, because that was private and therefore outside of your right to be concerned." He told the story of how he himself had almost been aborted. A physician had advised his mother to let him go, but she wouldn't. Don't let the pro-choicers convince you that a fetus isn't a human being, he warned: "That's how the whites dehumanized us, by calling us niggers. The first step was to distort the image of us as human beings in order to justify that which they wanted to do-and not even feel like they'd done anything wrong."
But as Jesse Jackson decided to run for president in 1984, his fiery pro-life rhetoric suddenly subsided. If being black was a political obstacle, being black and pro-life would raise the odds much too high. Jackson understood that it is hard to be a pro-lifer if you want the support of the left-or just have friends on the left. The lockstep liberal orthodoxy on abortion is pro-choice, as Bill Clinton's election showed and his presidency will reinforce. Dissenters are not tolerated.
Nearly ten years ago I declared myself a pro-lifer. A Jewish, atheist, civil libertarian, left-wing pro-lifer. Immediately, three women editors at The Village Voice, my New York base, stopped speaking to me. Not long after, I was invited to speak on this startling heresy at Nazareth College in Rochester (long since a secular institution). Two weeks before the lecture, it was canceled. The women on the lecture committee, I was told by the embarrassed professor who had asked me to come, had decided that there was a limit to the kind of speech the students could safely hear, and I was outside that limit. I was told, however, that I could come the next year to give a different talk. Even the women would very much like me to speak about one of my specialties, censorship in America. I went and was delighted to talk about censorship at Nazareth.
At the Voice, some of my colleagues in the editorial department wondered, I was told, when I had converted to Catholicism-the only explanation they could think of for my apostasy. (Once I received a note from someone deep in the ranks of the classified department. She too was pro-life, but would I please keep her secret? Life would be unbearable if anyone knew.)
To others, I was a novelty. Interviews were arranged on National Public Radio and various television programs, and I spoke at one of Fred Friendly's constitutional confrontations on PBS. Afterward, men, women, and teenagers wrote from all over the country that they had thought themselves to be solitary pro-lifers in the office, at school, even at home. They were surprised to find that there was someone else who was against capital punishment, against Reagan and Bush, and dismayed at the annual killing of 1.6 million developing human beings. They felt, they told me, that it was absurd to talk blithely of disposing of potential life. These were lives-lives with potential to someday do New York Times crossword puzzles and dig Charlie Parker. That is, if they weren't thrown out with the garbage.
I felt less alone myself. In time, I found other heretics. For instance, the bold, witty, crisply intelligent members of Feminists for Life of America. There are some in every state, and chapters in thirty-five. Many of them came out of the civil rights and anti-war movements, and now they also focus on blocking attempts to enact death penalty laws. They have succeeded in Minnesota. You won't see much about Feminists for Life in the press. When reporters look for pro-lifers to interview, they tend to go after pinched elderly men who look like Jesse Helms and women who wear crucifixes.
On the other hand, not all stereotypes are without actual models. As an exotic pro-lifer, I was invited to address an annual Right to Life convention in Columbus, Ohio. The event was held in a large field. A rickety platform faced the predominantly Christian crowd.
I told them that as pro-lifers, they ought to oppose capital punishment and the life-diminishing poverty associated with the policies of their Republican president. Ronald Reagan, I emphasized, had just cut the budget for the WIC program (federally funded Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children). He and those who support him, I said, give credence to Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank's line: "Those who oppose abortion are pro-life only up to the moment of birth."
From the back of the crowd, and then moving forward, there were growls, shouts, and table-thumping. Suddenly, a number of people began rushing toward the platform. I said to the man sitting next to me, a leader of the flock, that I had not quite decided that this cause was worth dying for.
As it happened, the souls on fire only wanted to say that I was in grievous error about these Christian presidents because I had not yet found God. Indeed, I often get letters from religious pro-lifers telling me that it is impossible for me to be simultaneously an atheist and a pro-lifer. Some of the pro-abortion-rights leaders whom I have debated are certain of the same correlation. No serious atheist, no Jewish atheist, no left-wing atheist could want to-as my fiercely pro-choice wife puts it-enslave women.
Yet being without theology isn't the slightest hindrance to being pro-life. As any obstetrics manual-Williams Obstetrics, for example-points out, there are two patients involved, and the one not yet born "should be given the same meticulous care by the physician that we long have given the pregnant woman." Nor, biologically, does it make any sense to draw life-or-death lines at viability. Once implantation takes place, this being has all the genetic information within that makes each human being unique. And he or she embodies continually developing human life from that point on. It misses a crucial point to say that the extermination can take place because the brain has not yet functioned or because that thing is not yet a "person." Whether the life is cut off in the fourth week or the fourteenth, the victim is one of our species, and has been from the start.
Yet rational arguments like these are met with undiluted hostility by otherwise clear-thinking liberals. Mary Meehan, a veteran of the anti-war movement, tried to pierce this pall of left orthodoxy in a 1980 article in The Progressive:
Some of us who went through the anti-war struggles of the 1960s and 1970s are now active in the right-to-life movement. We do not enjoy opposing our old friends on the abortion issue, but we feel that we have no choice. We are moved by what pro-life feminists call the "consistency thing"-the belief that respect for human life demands opposition to abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, and war... It is out of character for the left to neglect the weak and helpless. The traditional mark of the left has been its protection of the underdog, the weak, and the poor... The unborn child is the most helpless form of humanity, even more in need of protection than the poor tenant farmer or the mental patient.
Meehan's article provoked an extraordinary amount of mail. A few writers praised The Progressive for having enough respect for its readers to expose them to a perspective opposite to the magazine's. But the great percentage of letter writers were furious, indignant that a "left" magazine should print such vicious right-wing propaganda.
Because defending the killing of the fetus is inconsistent with the liberal/left world view in other matters, the abortion rights orthodoxy has relied on extraordinary hypothetical arguments to justify its position in the twenty years since the Roe decision. Take two examples. In 1971, when abortion was legalized in New York state, an editorial on WCBS radio in New York attempted to define abortion as an act of compassion: "It is one sensible method of dealing with such problems as overpopulation, illegitimacy, and possible birth defects," the announcer said. "It is one way of fighting the rising welfare rolls and the increasing number of child abuse cases."
In 1992 the defense has changed. No longer a means of compassion, abortion is now viewed as a form of preemptive law enforcement. As Nicholas von Hoffman writes in the New York Observer:
"Free, cheap abortion is a policy of social defense. To save ourselves from being murdered in our beds and raped on the streets, we should do everything possible to encourage pregnant women who don't want the baby and will not take care of it to get rid of the thing before it turns into a monster....
"At their demonstrations, the anti-abortionists parade around with pictures of dead and dismembered fetuses. The pro-abortionists should meet these displays with some of their own: pictures of the victims of the unaborted-murder victims, rape victims, mutilation victims-pictures to remind us that the fight for abortion is but part of the larger struggle for safe homes and safe streets."
As a sometime admirer of von Hoffman, I take this to be-maybe-his assuming the role of Jonathan Swift in these hard times, but it doesn't matter particularly whether he's serious or not. Those who see abortion as a cost-effective, even humane, way to thin the ranks of the lower orders are not few in number.
Pro-choicers clearly are only interested in their version of the choice in this matter. But why are the liberals among them so immovably illiberal only when it comes to abortion? The male pro-choicers, by and large, consider this to be entirely an issue for women to decide. And the only women they know are pro-choice. If a man has any doubts or subversive ambivalences, he keeps them to himself because should he speak of them, he will be banished from the company of all the progressive women he knows-and any whom he might hope to know.
Pro-choice women are so unyielding because they profoundly believe that without the power to abort at will, they will be enslaved. Once an abortion is wanted, the fetus, as one woman told me, is-to some women-"the enemy within." In the fight not to be enslaved, liberalism is an abstraction.
Accordingly, I am no longer surprised to find myself considered an external enemy. For years, American Civil Liberties Union affiliates around the country invited me to speak at their fund-raising Bill of Rights dinners. But once I declared myself a pro-lifer, all such invitations stopped. They know I agree with them on most ACLU policies, but that no longer matters. I am now no better than Jesse Helms. Free speech, after all, has its limits.
This disdain on the left for anything or anyone pro-life has clearly taken a toll on the political process. Liberal/left politicians who remain true to their philosophy and oppose abortion are virtually impossible to find. Like Jackson, most simply cave in to abortion rights pressure, fearing that no matter how left-leaning they are on other issues, if they come out against abortion they will be branded as right-wing fanatics. Governor Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, a liberal pro-life Democrat, was forbidden from speaking at this year's Democratic convention. And when The Village Voice later offered him a forum in New York to talk and answer questions about whether it is possible to be both liberal and pro-life, he (and I, the putative moderator) was shouted down by pro-choicers. Meanwhile, the president-elect, who has been on both sides of the abortion question during his career, has already pledged to satisfy his pro-choice backers by requiring that any nominee to the Supreme Court be an explicit and public supporter of abortion rights.
I saw Jesse Jackson recently on a train, and we talked for quite a while about George Bush's awful nomination of Ed Carnes to the federal bench. An assistant attorney general in Alabama, Carnes built his reputation on sending people to "Yellow Mama," the state's electric chair. He would replace Frank Johnson, whom Martin Luther King once described as "the man who gave true meaning to the word justice." (A few weeks later Jackson joined the campaign to defeat the nomination. To no avail. Carnes was eventually confirmed.) I then asked Jackson about another form of execution. I told him that in speeches I often quote what he wrote as a pro-lifer. He looked uncomfortable. I asked him if he still believed what he said then. "I'll get back to you on that," he said. He hasn't yet.
But today I am reproducing an article I found, you may be surprised to know, at the Pagans for Life website, one that I had not visited before. The article is old (first published in 1992). I borrowed it, and to some degree it made me blue to read it, despite its strong pro-life worldview. We live in a tremendously polarized society with respect to life issues, and rational thought appears to be the victim--a depressing thought to an academic.
At the time this article was written, Bill Clinton was president, having succeeded Republicans George Bush Sr. and Ronald Reagan. Jesse Jackson was still seen as a credible force in political life (he's a bit of a caricature now).
The author, Nat Hentoff, is a distinguished American in many ways, and has retained both his left-wing views and his support for pro-life to this day. You might want to read his bio. I found my old friend Wikipedia to be quite helpful in this regard.
Please read it through to the end. It's a first-rate piece.
Pro Choice Bigots
by Nat Hentoff
This article first appeared in The New Republic (Nov. 30, 1992)
Not too long ago, he was a pro-lifer. He wrote and spoke about the right to life and attacked advocates of abortion rights. "There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life," he would say. "That was the premise to slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation, because that was private and therefore outside of your right to be concerned." He told the story of how he himself had almost been aborted. A physician had advised his mother to let him go, but she wouldn't. Don't let the pro-choicers convince you that a fetus isn't a human being, he warned: "That's how the whites dehumanized us, by calling us niggers. The first step was to distort the image of us as human beings in order to justify that which they wanted to do-and not even feel like they'd done anything wrong."
But as Jesse Jackson decided to run for president in 1984, his fiery pro-life rhetoric suddenly subsided. If being black was a political obstacle, being black and pro-life would raise the odds much too high. Jackson understood that it is hard to be a pro-lifer if you want the support of the left-or just have friends on the left. The lockstep liberal orthodoxy on abortion is pro-choice, as Bill Clinton's election showed and his presidency will reinforce. Dissenters are not tolerated.
Nearly ten years ago I declared myself a pro-lifer. A Jewish, atheist, civil libertarian, left-wing pro-lifer. Immediately, three women editors at The Village Voice, my New York base, stopped speaking to me. Not long after, I was invited to speak on this startling heresy at Nazareth College in Rochester (long since a secular institution). Two weeks before the lecture, it was canceled. The women on the lecture committee, I was told by the embarrassed professor who had asked me to come, had decided that there was a limit to the kind of speech the students could safely hear, and I was outside that limit. I was told, however, that I could come the next year to give a different talk. Even the women would very much like me to speak about one of my specialties, censorship in America. I went and was delighted to talk about censorship at Nazareth.
At the Voice, some of my colleagues in the editorial department wondered, I was told, when I had converted to Catholicism-the only explanation they could think of for my apostasy. (Once I received a note from someone deep in the ranks of the classified department. She too was pro-life, but would I please keep her secret? Life would be unbearable if anyone knew.)
To others, I was a novelty. Interviews were arranged on National Public Radio and various television programs, and I spoke at one of Fred Friendly's constitutional confrontations on PBS. Afterward, men, women, and teenagers wrote from all over the country that they had thought themselves to be solitary pro-lifers in the office, at school, even at home. They were surprised to find that there was someone else who was against capital punishment, against Reagan and Bush, and dismayed at the annual killing of 1.6 million developing human beings. They felt, they told me, that it was absurd to talk blithely of disposing of potential life. These were lives-lives with potential to someday do New York Times crossword puzzles and dig Charlie Parker. That is, if they weren't thrown out with the garbage.
I felt less alone myself. In time, I found other heretics. For instance, the bold, witty, crisply intelligent members of Feminists for Life of America. There are some in every state, and chapters in thirty-five. Many of them came out of the civil rights and anti-war movements, and now they also focus on blocking attempts to enact death penalty laws. They have succeeded in Minnesota. You won't see much about Feminists for Life in the press. When reporters look for pro-lifers to interview, they tend to go after pinched elderly men who look like Jesse Helms and women who wear crucifixes.
On the other hand, not all stereotypes are without actual models. As an exotic pro-lifer, I was invited to address an annual Right to Life convention in Columbus, Ohio. The event was held in a large field. A rickety platform faced the predominantly Christian crowd.
I told them that as pro-lifers, they ought to oppose capital punishment and the life-diminishing poverty associated with the policies of their Republican president. Ronald Reagan, I emphasized, had just cut the budget for the WIC program (federally funded Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children). He and those who support him, I said, give credence to Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank's line: "Those who oppose abortion are pro-life only up to the moment of birth."
From the back of the crowd, and then moving forward, there were growls, shouts, and table-thumping. Suddenly, a number of people began rushing toward the platform. I said to the man sitting next to me, a leader of the flock, that I had not quite decided that this cause was worth dying for.
As it happened, the souls on fire only wanted to say that I was in grievous error about these Christian presidents because I had not yet found God. Indeed, I often get letters from religious pro-lifers telling me that it is impossible for me to be simultaneously an atheist and a pro-lifer. Some of the pro-abortion-rights leaders whom I have debated are certain of the same correlation. No serious atheist, no Jewish atheist, no left-wing atheist could want to-as my fiercely pro-choice wife puts it-enslave women.
Yet being without theology isn't the slightest hindrance to being pro-life. As any obstetrics manual-Williams Obstetrics, for example-points out, there are two patients involved, and the one not yet born "should be given the same meticulous care by the physician that we long have given the pregnant woman." Nor, biologically, does it make any sense to draw life-or-death lines at viability. Once implantation takes place, this being has all the genetic information within that makes each human being unique. And he or she embodies continually developing human life from that point on. It misses a crucial point to say that the extermination can take place because the brain has not yet functioned or because that thing is not yet a "person." Whether the life is cut off in the fourth week or the fourteenth, the victim is one of our species, and has been from the start.
Yet rational arguments like these are met with undiluted hostility by otherwise clear-thinking liberals. Mary Meehan, a veteran of the anti-war movement, tried to pierce this pall of left orthodoxy in a 1980 article in The Progressive:
Some of us who went through the anti-war struggles of the 1960s and 1970s are now active in the right-to-life movement. We do not enjoy opposing our old friends on the abortion issue, but we feel that we have no choice. We are moved by what pro-life feminists call the "consistency thing"-the belief that respect for human life demands opposition to abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, and war... It is out of character for the left to neglect the weak and helpless. The traditional mark of the left has been its protection of the underdog, the weak, and the poor... The unborn child is the most helpless form of humanity, even more in need of protection than the poor tenant farmer or the mental patient.
Meehan's article provoked an extraordinary amount of mail. A few writers praised The Progressive for having enough respect for its readers to expose them to a perspective opposite to the magazine's. But the great percentage of letter writers were furious, indignant that a "left" magazine should print such vicious right-wing propaganda.
Because defending the killing of the fetus is inconsistent with the liberal/left world view in other matters, the abortion rights orthodoxy has relied on extraordinary hypothetical arguments to justify its position in the twenty years since the Roe decision. Take two examples. In 1971, when abortion was legalized in New York state, an editorial on WCBS radio in New York attempted to define abortion as an act of compassion: "It is one sensible method of dealing with such problems as overpopulation, illegitimacy, and possible birth defects," the announcer said. "It is one way of fighting the rising welfare rolls and the increasing number of child abuse cases."
In 1992 the defense has changed. No longer a means of compassion, abortion is now viewed as a form of preemptive law enforcement. As Nicholas von Hoffman writes in the New York Observer:
"Free, cheap abortion is a policy of social defense. To save ourselves from being murdered in our beds and raped on the streets, we should do everything possible to encourage pregnant women who don't want the baby and will not take care of it to get rid of the thing before it turns into a monster....
"At their demonstrations, the anti-abortionists parade around with pictures of dead and dismembered fetuses. The pro-abortionists should meet these displays with some of their own: pictures of the victims of the unaborted-murder victims, rape victims, mutilation victims-pictures to remind us that the fight for abortion is but part of the larger struggle for safe homes and safe streets."
As a sometime admirer of von Hoffman, I take this to be-maybe-his assuming the role of Jonathan Swift in these hard times, but it doesn't matter particularly whether he's serious or not. Those who see abortion as a cost-effective, even humane, way to thin the ranks of the lower orders are not few in number.
Pro-choicers clearly are only interested in their version of the choice in this matter. But why are the liberals among them so immovably illiberal only when it comes to abortion? The male pro-choicers, by and large, consider this to be entirely an issue for women to decide. And the only women they know are pro-choice. If a man has any doubts or subversive ambivalences, he keeps them to himself because should he speak of them, he will be banished from the company of all the progressive women he knows-and any whom he might hope to know.
Pro-choice women are so unyielding because they profoundly believe that without the power to abort at will, they will be enslaved. Once an abortion is wanted, the fetus, as one woman told me, is-to some women-"the enemy within." In the fight not to be enslaved, liberalism is an abstraction.
Accordingly, I am no longer surprised to find myself considered an external enemy. For years, American Civil Liberties Union affiliates around the country invited me to speak at their fund-raising Bill of Rights dinners. But once I declared myself a pro-lifer, all such invitations stopped. They know I agree with them on most ACLU policies, but that no longer matters. I am now no better than Jesse Helms. Free speech, after all, has its limits.
This disdain on the left for anything or anyone pro-life has clearly taken a toll on the political process. Liberal/left politicians who remain true to their philosophy and oppose abortion are virtually impossible to find. Like Jackson, most simply cave in to abortion rights pressure, fearing that no matter how left-leaning they are on other issues, if they come out against abortion they will be branded as right-wing fanatics. Governor Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, a liberal pro-life Democrat, was forbidden from speaking at this year's Democratic convention. And when The Village Voice later offered him a forum in New York to talk and answer questions about whether it is possible to be both liberal and pro-life, he (and I, the putative moderator) was shouted down by pro-choicers. Meanwhile, the president-elect, who has been on both sides of the abortion question during his career, has already pledged to satisfy his pro-choice backers by requiring that any nominee to the Supreme Court be an explicit and public supporter of abortion rights.
I saw Jesse Jackson recently on a train, and we talked for quite a while about George Bush's awful nomination of Ed Carnes to the federal bench. An assistant attorney general in Alabama, Carnes built his reputation on sending people to "Yellow Mama," the state's electric chair. He would replace Frank Johnson, whom Martin Luther King once described as "the man who gave true meaning to the word justice." (A few weeks later Jackson joined the campaign to defeat the nomination. To no avail. Carnes was eventually confirmed.) I then asked Jackson about another form of execution. I told him that in speeches I often quote what he wrote as a pro-lifer. He looked uncomfortable. I asked him if he still believed what he said then. "I'll get back to you on that," he said. He hasn't yet.
Wednesday, 30 April 2008
ProWomanProLife and other good places to look
Regular readers (all three of you) will have noticed an added feature to this blog. You can now click on to the thoughtful blog ProWomanProLife directly from here. I don't know anyone connected with that particular life site. I don't necessarily always agree with what they say. But I think that they are raising important issues in a far more balanced way than do many other commentators on life issues. So I commend the blog to your attention.
I would have also added the Feminists for Life blog had they provided the necessary feed. Regrettably they don't, so you'll have to look them up for yourselves at http://www.feministsforlife.org/. I urge you to do so.
The site I check every day is Big Blue Wave. It is a self-styled so-con (social conservative) site, and carries all kinds of things, some of which I enjoy and some that I personally have no interest in. But its woman of affairs, Suzanne Fortin, somehow manages to track down the most amazing number of news items from around the world, providing a smörgåsbord of issues to consider. You can pick and choose for yourself which ones are of use to you. There is always something.
Certainly one of the most inspirational life bloggers is Mark Pickup, who lives just south of Edmonton, Alberta. His blog is called Human Life Matters. The title is particularly significant in Mark's case because he suffers from M.S. Here is an excerpt from his blog profile:
I am disabled (triplegic) with advanced multiple sclerosis. As my disability increases I have become interested in discovering Christian meaning in suffering. My priorities are faith, family and sanctity of human life. I will dedicate whatever energies I have left to these things. I am now convinced that if a society does not embrace the sanctity, dignity and equality of all human life (and North American society does not) then any barbarity is possible. A truly civilized society includes in its tender embrace every human life.
To say that he is a good read is to grossly understate the case. Find Mark at http://humanlifematters.blogspot.com/.
Alex Schadenberg is doing some excellent work in the rather gloomy field of euthanasia. He runs an organization out of London, ON called the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and blogs at http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/ Give him a look, if for no other reason than the poor bloke just turned 40 and needs a lift :).
Pro-Life Blogs (http://www.prolifeblogs.com/) is an independent news site that "disseminates unique news and commentary on life oriented issues and events that are ignored or under reported by traditional news sources." It originates in the U.S. but Canadian issues are not ignored. It appears to favour conservative political views.
LifeSiteNews (http://www.lifesitenews.com/) is a Canadian-based news site. It is described as the "portal of news stories about pro-life issues in Canada, the United States and the UK." This site also pulls together a large number of articles and commentary. Its choice of subjects does reflect the Catholicity of its leadership, and it indulges in what I consider a good deal of gay bashing. That doesn't mean you shouldn't check it out for items of interest, however.
For those who want to venture far outside your comfort zone (certainly far outside LifeSiteNews' comfort zone), you might want to look at http://www.plagal.org/, the site of the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians, and its sister site called Christian Gays (http://www.christiangays.com/). I know virtually nothing about either site other than what I picked up lately in a cursory glance at each. But if one wants a different look at familiar issues, there's no better place to start than here.
I also bring to your attention two sites devoted to the trauma that women (and often men as well) experience as a result of abortion. These are Canada Silent No More (http://www.canadasilentnomore.com/ and Silent No More Awareness (http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/).
Finally, I appreciate the integrated worldview of the Consistent Life Ethic people. They take the sanctity of life to what they consider to be its logical conclusion, resulting in the following mission statement:
We are committed to the protection of life, which is threatened in today's world by war, abortion, poverty, racism, capital punishment and euthanasia. We believe that these issues are linked under a 'consistent ethic of life'. We challenge those working on all or some of these issues to maintain a cooperative spirit of peace, reconciliation, and respect in protecting the unprotected (http://www.consistent-life.org/).
For those of you for whom this movement is new, I provide the following information from that invaluable source, Wikipedia:
An important early proponent of the Consistent Life Ethic was Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago, though he did not coin the term. Bernardin and other advocates of this ethic sought to form a consistent policy that would link abortion, capital punishment, economic injustice, euthanasia, and unjust war. Bernardin sought to unify conservative Catholics (e.g., who opposed abortion) and liberal Catholics (e.g., who opposed capital punishment) in the United States. By relying on fundamental principles, Bernardin also sought to coordinate work on several different spheres of Catholic moral theology. In addition, Bernardin argued that since the 1950s the church moved against its own historical, casuistic exceptions to the protection of life. "To summarize the shift succinctly, the presumption against taking human life has been strengthened and the exceptions made ever more restrictive."
In the United States, several organizations have promoted the "consistent ethic of life" approach, including both Catholic groups (e.g., the National Conference of Catholic Bishops), and broader coalitions, such as Consistent Life, founded in 1987 as the Seamless Garment Network. The ethic and its organizational expressions are difficult to define in terms of the conventional U.S. political spectrum, since those who subscribe to the ethic are often at odds with both the right wing over capital punishment, war, and economic issues, as well as the left wing over abortion, embryo-destructive research, and euthanasia.
I would have also added the Feminists for Life blog had they provided the necessary feed. Regrettably they don't, so you'll have to look them up for yourselves at http://www.feministsforlife.org/. I urge you to do so.
The site I check every day is Big Blue Wave. It is a self-styled so-con (social conservative) site, and carries all kinds of things, some of which I enjoy and some that I personally have no interest in. But its woman of affairs, Suzanne Fortin, somehow manages to track down the most amazing number of news items from around the world, providing a smörgåsbord of issues to consider. You can pick and choose for yourself which ones are of use to you. There is always something.
Certainly one of the most inspirational life bloggers is Mark Pickup, who lives just south of Edmonton, Alberta. His blog is called Human Life Matters. The title is particularly significant in Mark's case because he suffers from M.S. Here is an excerpt from his blog profile:
I am disabled (triplegic) with advanced multiple sclerosis. As my disability increases I have become interested in discovering Christian meaning in suffering. My priorities are faith, family and sanctity of human life. I will dedicate whatever energies I have left to these things. I am now convinced that if a society does not embrace the sanctity, dignity and equality of all human life (and North American society does not) then any barbarity is possible. A truly civilized society includes in its tender embrace every human life.
To say that he is a good read is to grossly understate the case. Find Mark at http://humanlifematters.blogspot.com/.
Alex Schadenberg is doing some excellent work in the rather gloomy field of euthanasia. He runs an organization out of London, ON called the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and blogs at http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/ Give him a look, if for no other reason than the poor bloke just turned 40 and needs a lift :).
Pro-Life Blogs (http://www.prolifeblogs.com/) is an independent news site that "disseminates unique news and commentary on life oriented issues and events that are ignored or under reported by traditional news sources." It originates in the U.S. but Canadian issues are not ignored. It appears to favour conservative political views.
LifeSiteNews (http://www.lifesitenews.com/) is a Canadian-based news site. It is described as the "portal of news stories about pro-life issues in Canada, the United States and the UK." This site also pulls together a large number of articles and commentary. Its choice of subjects does reflect the Catholicity of its leadership, and it indulges in what I consider a good deal of gay bashing. That doesn't mean you shouldn't check it out for items of interest, however.
For those who want to venture far outside your comfort zone (certainly far outside LifeSiteNews' comfort zone), you might want to look at http://www.plagal.org/, the site of the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians, and its sister site called Christian Gays (http://www.christiangays.com/). I know virtually nothing about either site other than what I picked up lately in a cursory glance at each. But if one wants a different look at familiar issues, there's no better place to start than here.
I also bring to your attention two sites devoted to the trauma that women (and often men as well) experience as a result of abortion. These are Canada Silent No More (http://www.canadasilentnomore.com/ and Silent No More Awareness (http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/).
Finally, I appreciate the integrated worldview of the Consistent Life Ethic people. They take the sanctity of life to what they consider to be its logical conclusion, resulting in the following mission statement:
We are committed to the protection of life, which is threatened in today's world by war, abortion, poverty, racism, capital punishment and euthanasia. We believe that these issues are linked under a 'consistent ethic of life'. We challenge those working on all or some of these issues to maintain a cooperative spirit of peace, reconciliation, and respect in protecting the unprotected (http://www.consistent-life.org/).
For those of you for whom this movement is new, I provide the following information from that invaluable source, Wikipedia:
An important early proponent of the Consistent Life Ethic was Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago, though he did not coin the term. Bernardin and other advocates of this ethic sought to form a consistent policy that would link abortion, capital punishment, economic injustice, euthanasia, and unjust war. Bernardin sought to unify conservative Catholics (e.g., who opposed abortion) and liberal Catholics (e.g., who opposed capital punishment) in the United States. By relying on fundamental principles, Bernardin also sought to coordinate work on several different spheres of Catholic moral theology. In addition, Bernardin argued that since the 1950s the church moved against its own historical, casuistic exceptions to the protection of life. "To summarize the shift succinctly, the presumption against taking human life has been strengthened and the exceptions made ever more restrictive."
In the United States, several organizations have promoted the "consistent ethic of life" approach, including both Catholic groups (e.g., the National Conference of Catholic Bishops), and broader coalitions, such as Consistent Life, founded in 1987 as the Seamless Garment Network. The ethic and its organizational expressions are difficult to define in terms of the conventional U.S. political spectrum, since those who subscribe to the ethic are often at odds with both the right wing over capital punishment, war, and economic issues, as well as the left wing over abortion, embryo-destructive research, and euthanasia.
Tuesday, 29 April 2008
Women's rights vs. women's rights
It is with genuine fascination that I have been observing this issue of unborn babies being aborted for the simple reason that they are female fetuses. Its practice was condemned yesterday by the Prime Minister of India, who labeled it a "national shame" and called for stricter enforcement of laws designed to prevent doctors from helping parents to get rid of unwanted unborn daughters (National Post, April 29/08, p. A12).
Now I want to say straight up that I don't personally think that this is any more repugnant morally than unborn babies being aborted because they are inconvenient, or disabled in some way, or too expensive, or just plain unwanted. While I have sympathy for some women who feel pressured into aborting, I have none for the act, and utter disgust for the doctors who provide the service.
But what is different about this gender selection issue is that it pits one facet of women's rights against another.
Logically it does not. If we accept the usual rhetoric, unborn babies of either gender are non-persons and therefore of no more moral worth than any other non-human, such as unborn salamanders (with apologies to PETA and Paul Watson).
A pregnant women can drink too much alcohol, or sniff glue, or do anything else that might (and probably will) endanger the fetus' health or life and the law is helpless to intervene--we know this because it's happened. A homicidal maniac can kill the fetus deliberately while also attempting to murder the mother, and be charged with one homicide only, or none at all if the mother survives. And if it were up to the alleged women's rights activists in our Canadian Parliament and their clones in the post-abortion movement, it would stay that way.
But now we have females killing females because they're female. Wow! What a conundrum for those champions of women's rights. Former BC premier and one-time federal Minister of Health Ujjal Dosanjh has condemned the practice as absolutely inappropriate and contemptible.
The CBC has nicely framed the debate (April 2/08):
Speaking to CBC 's The Current, Dosanjh said the tests need to be regulated and a debate launched about whether it's acceptable to have an abortion because of the gender of a fetus.
"The women's' right to choose, for me that's paramount," he said, "[but] I believe we need to make sure that [if] people are aborting simply for gender selection, that is absolutely not supported.
"This is about gender equality. If there is a medical need for these tests, I have no difficulty … to deal with disease," Dosanjh said. "Being a female absolutely is not a disease."
That's also the position of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada which recently said that using abortion to determine the gender of a family's offspring "cannot ethically be condoned in this country."
Medical ethicists say the issue is complicated because Canada's abortion law recognizes a woman's right to choose as paramount. Tim Caulfield, research director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta, told The Current that more research needs to be done into potential links between fetal sex selection and abortion in Canada.
"Anytime you pass a law, you're regulating individual choice," Caulfield said, "and how do you regulate … reproductive autonomy? That's a sensitive issue."
But how can one distinguish between motivations? If a woman's right to choose is paramount, then her motivation should be irrelevant--right? It goes even further. If a woman has chosen to keep the unborn baby, and someone kills that fetus against her choice, the dead fetus should not be viewed as the victim of a homicide. In this sense, we've gone even further than the woman's motivation--or even the woman's personal choice. CHOICE must prevail. Not the woman's personal choice (never mind her motivation), but some societal commitment to CHOICE in the abstract, that not even murder can shake.
So I ask again--on what basis does one fulminate against gender selection? Because it's morally repugnant? I wouldn't disagree with that, but what about all those signs carried by female protesters telling me to keep my laws and my moral values and my religion off her body? Will they now come with an asterisk?
Once we have ventured into the area of judging motivations, or finding some aspect of abortion to be immoral, than the pro-choice movement as we know it has ended. Now everyone will be in some sense anti-choice and anti-abortion--except for those purists who will still argue the old paradigm. I can't wait to see the fight.
Over to you, Joyce.
Now I want to say straight up that I don't personally think that this is any more repugnant morally than unborn babies being aborted because they are inconvenient, or disabled in some way, or too expensive, or just plain unwanted. While I have sympathy for some women who feel pressured into aborting, I have none for the act, and utter disgust for the doctors who provide the service.
But what is different about this gender selection issue is that it pits one facet of women's rights against another.
Logically it does not. If we accept the usual rhetoric, unborn babies of either gender are non-persons and therefore of no more moral worth than any other non-human, such as unborn salamanders (with apologies to PETA and Paul Watson).
A pregnant women can drink too much alcohol, or sniff glue, or do anything else that might (and probably will) endanger the fetus' health or life and the law is helpless to intervene--we know this because it's happened. A homicidal maniac can kill the fetus deliberately while also attempting to murder the mother, and be charged with one homicide only, or none at all if the mother survives. And if it were up to the alleged women's rights activists in our Canadian Parliament and their clones in the post-abortion movement, it would stay that way.
But now we have females killing females because they're female. Wow! What a conundrum for those champions of women's rights. Former BC premier and one-time federal Minister of Health Ujjal Dosanjh has condemned the practice as absolutely inappropriate and contemptible.
The CBC has nicely framed the debate (April 2/08):
Speaking to CBC 's The Current, Dosanjh said the tests need to be regulated and a debate launched about whether it's acceptable to have an abortion because of the gender of a fetus.
"The women's' right to choose, for me that's paramount," he said, "[but] I believe we need to make sure that [if] people are aborting simply for gender selection, that is absolutely not supported.
"This is about gender equality. If there is a medical need for these tests, I have no difficulty … to deal with disease," Dosanjh said. "Being a female absolutely is not a disease."
That's also the position of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada which recently said that using abortion to determine the gender of a family's offspring "cannot ethically be condoned in this country."
Medical ethicists say the issue is complicated because Canada's abortion law recognizes a woman's right to choose as paramount. Tim Caulfield, research director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta, told The Current that more research needs to be done into potential links between fetal sex selection and abortion in Canada.
"Anytime you pass a law, you're regulating individual choice," Caulfield said, "and how do you regulate … reproductive autonomy? That's a sensitive issue."
But how can one distinguish between motivations? If a woman's right to choose is paramount, then her motivation should be irrelevant--right? It goes even further. If a woman has chosen to keep the unborn baby, and someone kills that fetus against her choice, the dead fetus should not be viewed as the victim of a homicide. In this sense, we've gone even further than the woman's motivation--or even the woman's personal choice. CHOICE must prevail. Not the woman's personal choice (never mind her motivation), but some societal commitment to CHOICE in the abstract, that not even murder can shake.
So I ask again--on what basis does one fulminate against gender selection? Because it's morally repugnant? I wouldn't disagree with that, but what about all those signs carried by female protesters telling me to keep my laws and my moral values and my religion off her body? Will they now come with an asterisk?
Once we have ventured into the area of judging motivations, or finding some aspect of abortion to be immoral, than the pro-choice movement as we know it has ended. Now everyone will be in some sense anti-choice and anti-abortion--except for those purists who will still argue the old paradigm. I can't wait to see the fight.
Over to you, Joyce.
Monday, 28 April 2008
Escaping the fundamentalists
I feel like I have spent much of my life running from one group of fundamentalists or another.
In my young days, it was my church upbringing. I do not disparage my little gospel hall's emphasis on gospel preaching and devotion to scripture. And I feel that I experienced some kind of emergence (call it conversion if you like) from one state of being to another during those years. Prior to this foundational change my points of reference were my parents, my school, and while I was not particularly aware of it, my culture. After that change, the Lord's opinion became part of the mix, and the Bible and prayer started to have some real meaning--as much meaning as they can have to a naive and sheltered eleven year old.
But any kind of growth in mature spirituality was stunted by other factors--a very narrow view of the teachings of the Bible, an even narrower understanding of the implications of the faith for one's culture, and a constant focus on personal lifestyle choices as being a prime indicator of spiritual growth. A legalistic understanding of Christianity stood one in far better stead than a questioning, experimenting, and learning approach.
Having completed the MBA and launched off into the business world, I found myself swimming in another fundamentalist pool, that of Canadian capitalism. There was an unspoken (and occasionally spoken) assumption that one would do what made one a good employee at work (no matter how repugnant this might be personally), and to save one's personal morality for private life.
A move to Chicago to attend school gave me another experience with The One Best Way. My American colleagues (who seemed to be hampered by an almost complete ignorance of the rest of the world) could not imagine why I would not prefer to up stakes and move there permanently.
[Quite frankly, I think that I could move permanently to the Oregon Coast, but I digress.]
But I've found this same closed universe mentality in nearly every field of endeavour into which I've ventured. Academics with whom I have spent a good deal of my life seem virtually oblivious to the world outside the ivory tower, where there be Philistines. They have some glimmering of it, depending on their area of specialty, but don't seem to see that something could be learned from it that might change the academic worldview.
Then there are those guardians of our secular souls (if one can use the term soul at all in this context), the politically correct. My heavens (oops, there I go again)--my word, there is fundamentalism!
What has been characteristic of all of these little prisons that I have inhabited in my life are:
1. A dominating and unquestioned worldview.
2. A strong emphasis on rules of behaviour, although these vary completely from context to context.
3. A suspicious and denigrating view of outsiders.
4. An inability to accept criticism.
5. A complete inability or unwillingness to take an arm's length look at their little world with a view to possibly improving it, or even abandoning it.
All that I have ever wanted to do is to think through how things are done, and why things are viewed the way they are, and what might be the best use of resources, and what ought to be the goals of any activity, from a biblical worldview perspective.
For me the Christian faith comprises a set of eternal principles based on the character and will of God, that can be applied very creatively and flexibly to one's place and time; e.g., the family unit, one's view of the place of material life, how one is to steward God's creation, and above all, what are the implications of the sanctity of life.
Now here I am in the pro-life movement, and I find once again that there are fundamentals that are not open to question, at least according to the guardians of the truth. One appears to be that Catholicism rules. Now I share about 90% of my theological beliefs with Catholicism. But that "aberrant" 10% does put me on the outside. For instance, when I attend pro-life conferences, for whatever reason the issue of contraception always seems to come up as a necessary part of the discussion. There is always a mass arranged for us to attend, but I am denied communion at it, despite the fact that I am a Christian and pro-life, because I am a Protestant.
Consider this revealing statement from my friend Suzanne Fortin:
I can see why non-Christians would not want to attend my local Campaign Life meeting. It's Christian-dominated from top to bottom-- from the location (a church) to the opening prayer, to the rhetoric used, to what assumptions people hold about who attends, etc. I can see how that can be very alienating.
On the other hand, if you open it up to people of various backgrounds, you open it up to the advocacy of things you may find objectionable. I know of a non-Christian pro-life activist who is a strong advocate of contraception. As a Catholic, I would not feel comfortable opening the floor to the woman on this issue. And I could see how such a person might feel alienated from a Christian-run meeting.
This sounds exactly like the fundamentalist Protestant criticisms of evangelist Billy Graham. The Bob Jones and John R. Rices and all of the other red neck southern evangelicals would scorn the man because he might have a priest on the platform with him, or someone from a liberal church. They would forbid their students or parishioners from attending the Graham crusades because they might hear something "wrong."
No movement is ever better served by arbitrarily cutting itself off from other points of view. No human being, no human activity, no human understanding is every fully mature, ever completely on track.
[I recognize that for Catholics their belief in the infallibility of the Pope gives them a certain confidence in their opinions on some subjects. It has brought with it, I fear, a complacency and closed mindedness that does them no good.]
My plea to the pro-life movement (at least as Ms Fortin and others define it) to not be so cocksure of your opinions. I find it harder and harder to work with you as you push your agenda on me and on others who are not identical to you. I am all for unity--but not uniformity.
In my young days, it was my church upbringing. I do not disparage my little gospel hall's emphasis on gospel preaching and devotion to scripture. And I feel that I experienced some kind of emergence (call it conversion if you like) from one state of being to another during those years. Prior to this foundational change my points of reference were my parents, my school, and while I was not particularly aware of it, my culture. After that change, the Lord's opinion became part of the mix, and the Bible and prayer started to have some real meaning--as much meaning as they can have to a naive and sheltered eleven year old.
But any kind of growth in mature spirituality was stunted by other factors--a very narrow view of the teachings of the Bible, an even narrower understanding of the implications of the faith for one's culture, and a constant focus on personal lifestyle choices as being a prime indicator of spiritual growth. A legalistic understanding of Christianity stood one in far better stead than a questioning, experimenting, and learning approach.
Having completed the MBA and launched off into the business world, I found myself swimming in another fundamentalist pool, that of Canadian capitalism. There was an unspoken (and occasionally spoken) assumption that one would do what made one a good employee at work (no matter how repugnant this might be personally), and to save one's personal morality for private life.
A move to Chicago to attend school gave me another experience with The One Best Way. My American colleagues (who seemed to be hampered by an almost complete ignorance of the rest of the world) could not imagine why I would not prefer to up stakes and move there permanently.
[Quite frankly, I think that I could move permanently to the Oregon Coast, but I digress.]
But I've found this same closed universe mentality in nearly every field of endeavour into which I've ventured. Academics with whom I have spent a good deal of my life seem virtually oblivious to the world outside the ivory tower, where there be Philistines. They have some glimmering of it, depending on their area of specialty, but don't seem to see that something could be learned from it that might change the academic worldview.
Then there are those guardians of our secular souls (if one can use the term soul at all in this context), the politically correct. My heavens (oops, there I go again)--my word, there is fundamentalism!
What has been characteristic of all of these little prisons that I have inhabited in my life are:
1. A dominating and unquestioned worldview.
2. A strong emphasis on rules of behaviour, although these vary completely from context to context.
3. A suspicious and denigrating view of outsiders.
4. An inability to accept criticism.
5. A complete inability or unwillingness to take an arm's length look at their little world with a view to possibly improving it, or even abandoning it.
All that I have ever wanted to do is to think through how things are done, and why things are viewed the way they are, and what might be the best use of resources, and what ought to be the goals of any activity, from a biblical worldview perspective.
For me the Christian faith comprises a set of eternal principles based on the character and will of God, that can be applied very creatively and flexibly to one's place and time; e.g., the family unit, one's view of the place of material life, how one is to steward God's creation, and above all, what are the implications of the sanctity of life.
Now here I am in the pro-life movement, and I find once again that there are fundamentals that are not open to question, at least according to the guardians of the truth. One appears to be that Catholicism rules. Now I share about 90% of my theological beliefs with Catholicism. But that "aberrant" 10% does put me on the outside. For instance, when I attend pro-life conferences, for whatever reason the issue of contraception always seems to come up as a necessary part of the discussion. There is always a mass arranged for us to attend, but I am denied communion at it, despite the fact that I am a Christian and pro-life, because I am a Protestant.
Consider this revealing statement from my friend Suzanne Fortin:
I can see why non-Christians would not want to attend my local Campaign Life meeting. It's Christian-dominated from top to bottom-- from the location (a church) to the opening prayer, to the rhetoric used, to what assumptions people hold about who attends, etc. I can see how that can be very alienating.
On the other hand, if you open it up to people of various backgrounds, you open it up to the advocacy of things you may find objectionable. I know of a non-Christian pro-life activist who is a strong advocate of contraception. As a Catholic, I would not feel comfortable opening the floor to the woman on this issue. And I could see how such a person might feel alienated from a Christian-run meeting.
This sounds exactly like the fundamentalist Protestant criticisms of evangelist Billy Graham. The Bob Jones and John R. Rices and all of the other red neck southern evangelicals would scorn the man because he might have a priest on the platform with him, or someone from a liberal church. They would forbid their students or parishioners from attending the Graham crusades because they might hear something "wrong."
No movement is ever better served by arbitrarily cutting itself off from other points of view. No human being, no human activity, no human understanding is every fully mature, ever completely on track.
[I recognize that for Catholics their belief in the infallibility of the Pope gives them a certain confidence in their opinions on some subjects. It has brought with it, I fear, a complacency and closed mindedness that does them no good.]
My plea to the pro-life movement (at least as Ms Fortin and others define it) to not be so cocksure of your opinions. I find it harder and harder to work with you as you push your agenda on me and on others who are not identical to you. I am all for unity--but not uniformity.
Friday, 25 April 2008
Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
Those of you in the over 50 crowd that Suzanne Fortin sees as a very different group from her own will recognize that my title is taken from an old Leonard Cohen song that still gets played a lot on the golden oldie stations.
At any rate, Suzanne Fortin (the eminence grise behind Big Blue Wave) has been providing interesting and useful critique of certain thoughts that I have been posting lately. I have quibbles with some of her ideas, and downright opposition to others. But we are definitely in the same hymnbook if not on the same page.
I would like to make the briefest of comments concerning a few of her thoughts posted today. As I'm rushing out in about half an hour, and because I usually take 2 to 3 hours to compose a post, this will lack my usual incisive commentary!!
I think this is the attitude of the over-50 crowd, of amateur pro-lifers. I feel that the younger generation is better prepared and more optimistic.
While not intending to be tactless I'm sure, Suzanne has fallen into a bit of habit of stereotyping some of us outside her crowd as too old and too remote. I've been following this whole issue since long before Morgentaler was making headlines. I was picketing an abortion clinic when Suzanne was still learning arithmetic. I may be 60 now Suzanne, but believe it or not, I can still read, I can still reason, and I am still open to learning. I'm also still waiting with bated breath to see where the young professionals have made a big difference.
In the meantime, I will have to be content with my memories of focusing on the Viet Nam War, environmentalism, sexism/sexual harassment, and consumer rights. Sigh.
We don’t have to convince the pro-abortion activists. Most people are not so dogmatic about abortion that, left to themselves, they will not look at the other side of the coin. We cannot let the pro-aborts define the terms of the debate. We’ve been doing that for too long. I have found that the most effective way for arguing for fetal rights is to simply invoke commonly accepted values and use plain English, logic and good biological science. That’s not right or left. That’s not secular or religious. That’s just smart. People who are not already ideologically committed to the abortion-free-for-all ideology will give your position some consideration if you do this, and some even change their minds.
There is something to what Suzanne says here about the common person vs. the convinced ideologue. But as long as the mass media and the politicians are held captive by the pro-abortionists, Joe and Joan Sixpack will continue to be fed a steady diet of highly distorted material. Here at Abbotsford (BC) Right to Life we have been sponsoring a series of free public lectures on various life issues, the most recent being last night on Robert Latimer and mercy killing. Unfortunately, getting hands on enough money to do the kind of on-the-ground educating that is necessary is extremely difficult.
One must also make a distinction between fetal rights and creating a “culture of life” or a “civilization of love” as Pope John Paul II said. Most fetal rights activists want it. But many do not. They’re not interested in fighting against contraception, pre-marital sex, gay marriage, divorce and other social ills. The pro-life movement has a particular worldview.
Apparently the pro-life agenda, according to Ms Fortin, comprises fetal rights, contraception, pre-marital sex, gay marriage and divorce. I heard one of Suzanne's pro-life professionals speak about the twin evils of abortion and contraception. I would have thought that this was primarily a Catholic perspective. Most Protestant pro-lifers that I know would never put those two together in the same breath.
In addition, I would have thought that a consistent life ethic would include not only fetal rights but, as a minimum, euthanasia, capital punishment, perhaps even peace-making. I would also include poverty, racism, ageism and sexism.
Or is Suzanne reserving the right to define what pro-life means. In my day, it meant a lot more. But oh yeah, I'm over 50 so my views are amateur and no longer relevant (sorry, as a crotchety oldster my sarcasm came leaking out there--terrible habit).
Pro-lifers want not only to promote fetal rights (which is first and foremost) but a whole culture of life. And many pro-life feminists, gays, atheists and socialists do not. It’s an entirely different culture....We need all these people in the struggle for fetal rights, but we need many streams of activity. I don’t think the Christian and non-Christians streams of the fetal rights movement can really gel.
I may be reading more into this than Suzanne meant, but she seems to be distinguishing between Christians and gays, feminists and socialists. If that is so, that is a much bigger stereotype than her view of those over 50. I know a number of lesbians who are feminist, socialist and pro-life, and gays who are similarly pro-life.
Now I know from reading other things that Suzanne has posted that she tends to see feminism in a pretty harsh light. But no one group has the corner on what constitutes feminism. And I would guess that she can't reconcile a person as genuinely having Christian faith and being gay. Sorry Suzanne, you are just wrong if that is what you believe. And is she going to argue that capitalism is Christian? As a business professor I say, Good luck.
Suzanne, you and your young professional friends are doing very good work in the pro-life field. You are the future of the movement, and a good part of the present. But don't disparage the past. Don't allow your mind to be narrowed by your denominational priorities and your stereotypes.
And don't alienate your friends.
At any rate, Suzanne Fortin (the eminence grise behind Big Blue Wave) has been providing interesting and useful critique of certain thoughts that I have been posting lately. I have quibbles with some of her ideas, and downright opposition to others. But we are definitely in the same hymnbook if not on the same page.
I would like to make the briefest of comments concerning a few of her thoughts posted today. As I'm rushing out in about half an hour, and because I usually take 2 to 3 hours to compose a post, this will lack my usual incisive commentary!!
I think this is the attitude of the over-50 crowd, of amateur pro-lifers. I feel that the younger generation is better prepared and more optimistic.
While not intending to be tactless I'm sure, Suzanne has fallen into a bit of habit of stereotyping some of us outside her crowd as too old and too remote. I've been following this whole issue since long before Morgentaler was making headlines. I was picketing an abortion clinic when Suzanne was still learning arithmetic. I may be 60 now Suzanne, but believe it or not, I can still read, I can still reason, and I am still open to learning. I'm also still waiting with bated breath to see where the young professionals have made a big difference.
In the meantime, I will have to be content with my memories of focusing on the Viet Nam War, environmentalism, sexism/sexual harassment, and consumer rights. Sigh.
We don’t have to convince the pro-abortion activists. Most people are not so dogmatic about abortion that, left to themselves, they will not look at the other side of the coin. We cannot let the pro-aborts define the terms of the debate. We’ve been doing that for too long. I have found that the most effective way for arguing for fetal rights is to simply invoke commonly accepted values and use plain English, logic and good biological science. That’s not right or left. That’s not secular or religious. That’s just smart. People who are not already ideologically committed to the abortion-free-for-all ideology will give your position some consideration if you do this, and some even change their minds.
There is something to what Suzanne says here about the common person vs. the convinced ideologue. But as long as the mass media and the politicians are held captive by the pro-abortionists, Joe and Joan Sixpack will continue to be fed a steady diet of highly distorted material. Here at Abbotsford (BC) Right to Life we have been sponsoring a series of free public lectures on various life issues, the most recent being last night on Robert Latimer and mercy killing. Unfortunately, getting hands on enough money to do the kind of on-the-ground educating that is necessary is extremely difficult.
One must also make a distinction between fetal rights and creating a “culture of life” or a “civilization of love” as Pope John Paul II said. Most fetal rights activists want it. But many do not. They’re not interested in fighting against contraception, pre-marital sex, gay marriage, divorce and other social ills. The pro-life movement has a particular worldview.
Apparently the pro-life agenda, according to Ms Fortin, comprises fetal rights, contraception, pre-marital sex, gay marriage and divorce. I heard one of Suzanne's pro-life professionals speak about the twin evils of abortion and contraception. I would have thought that this was primarily a Catholic perspective. Most Protestant pro-lifers that I know would never put those two together in the same breath.
In addition, I would have thought that a consistent life ethic would include not only fetal rights but, as a minimum, euthanasia, capital punishment, perhaps even peace-making. I would also include poverty, racism, ageism and sexism.
Or is Suzanne reserving the right to define what pro-life means. In my day, it meant a lot more. But oh yeah, I'm over 50 so my views are amateur and no longer relevant (sorry, as a crotchety oldster my sarcasm came leaking out there--terrible habit).
Pro-lifers want not only to promote fetal rights (which is first and foremost) but a whole culture of life. And many pro-life feminists, gays, atheists and socialists do not. It’s an entirely different culture....We need all these people in the struggle for fetal rights, but we need many streams of activity. I don’t think the Christian and non-Christians streams of the fetal rights movement can really gel.
I may be reading more into this than Suzanne meant, but she seems to be distinguishing between Christians and gays, feminists and socialists. If that is so, that is a much bigger stereotype than her view of those over 50. I know a number of lesbians who are feminist, socialist and pro-life, and gays who are similarly pro-life.
Now I know from reading other things that Suzanne has posted that she tends to see feminism in a pretty harsh light. But no one group has the corner on what constitutes feminism. And I would guess that she can't reconcile a person as genuinely having Christian faith and being gay. Sorry Suzanne, you are just wrong if that is what you believe. And is she going to argue that capitalism is Christian? As a business professor I say, Good luck.
Suzanne, you and your young professional friends are doing very good work in the pro-life field. You are the future of the movement, and a good part of the present. But don't disparage the past. Don't allow your mind to be narrowed by your denominational priorities and your stereotypes.
And don't alienate your friends.
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