The Dignity of Life
Another thought brought to you by Nick Caraway –
The Carraways are a proud Irish family. In the grand Irish tradition we have been Catholic going back generations. In fact, Patrick was my patron saint for confirmation. My wife’s was Brigid. Those are the two patron saints of Ireland. Maybe some things are meant to be. Imagine my surprise when I saw the right to lifers ooze into our church’s mass mailers this past week. I always thought that tax exempt status required you to stay out of politics. I guess I was wrong on that front.
What’s more disturbing is that these pro-life groups are going against what the pope has said when it comes to abortion as it relates to other issues. Abortion isn’t the only issue that Catholics should be voting on. Heck, it isn’t even the only life issue that Catholics should be voting on. Somehow, Joe Biden (a good Irish Catholic himself) understands this. So, let me lay it out there for all of the non-Catholics and non-believers our there.
Life is continuum. It begins at conception and ends at natural death. At every stop in between, that life is due its dignity. Yes, that remains respecting the dignity of the unborn. It also means respecting the dignity of every human being as soon as it is here. That means feeding the poor, clothing the naked, healing the sick, and even sparing the life of those that have done the very worst things in society. It means we don’t send our kids off to fight wars of choice. It means we don’t put kids in cages. It means we welcome refugees as our Lord and savior was once a refugee himself.
If anyone knows anything about Joe Biden, they know if he is not pro-abortion. I don’t know a single person that could be called pro-abortion. Abortion is a grueling choice I’m thankful I don’t have to make. All the pro-choice crowd wants is for government to play no part in making that choice. It should be up to women. It should involve their doctor, their family, and maybe even a person of faith. It shouldn’t involve some old, white guy in Washington or Austin.
Meanwhile, I can’t help but think my Catholic brothers and sisters were duped somewhere along the way. I’m not for abortion. I think it is the wrong choice nine times out of ten. It also isn’t my body. It isn’t the opposition to abortion that’s the problem. It’s the willingness to throw aside other issues that should be more important to us. This isn’t a zero sum game. One candidate in this race checks off the vast majority of issues Catholics hold dear. One candidate has virtually no checks except for one. My choice is clear.
Well said sir
1Best answer ever on late term abortion is from Buttigieg:
https://youtu.be/nlHe6omKw3M
2The so-called “pro-life” movement is a dysfunctional self-help program. Its unnoticed hallmark is the gap between what they say about how much they care about human life and how little they actually do for it.
They focus on abortion because it’s so much easier to be a so-called “pro-lifer” than it is to raise a child ($260,000 will get one through high school; anything less means trusting more to chance for a successful outcome).
Ernest Becker as a GI liberating Buchenwald wondered why people would cling to life in such inhumane conditions. He summarized his thoughts in his book, “Denial of Death,” concluding that our knowledge of its inescapable oblivion would paralyze us if we did not developing coping mechanisms to repress it: religion, philosophy, addictions and so forth.
The so-called “pro-life” movement is such a mechanism– an allegorical battle in which abortion is Death, the fetus is the anti-abortionist, and the anti-abortionist is God. If the latter can “rescue” the fetus from abortiion, it gives the latter stronger hope that God will preserve them from the oblivion of death.
More immediate confirmation is sought by working to be seen as a hero. Becker wrote, “Heroism is the reward society confers when the person meets the price society specifies.” This is why the members of the dysfunctional self-help movement keep portraying themselves as heroes and labeling the tabula rasa of fetuses with the most alluring attributes. It’s an easy way to shore up one’s belief that one will live forever in memory like Caesar, St. Augustine or the Marquis de Sade.
Meanwhile, of course, for the existence of parents who can’t or won’t care well for their child, the next Ted Bundy, Adam Lanza or Eileen Wuornen slouches toward adulthood….
3Hi, Nick, I’m pro-abortion, just as I am pro every other form of health care whose wise and correct use maximizes the chance that people can make healthy families together.
4One of the forms of life most overlooked by the forced-birth lobby, because pretending that pregnancy and childbirth are easy and safe for all the participants is essential to their platform, is maternal mortality. Texas has the highest rate of maternal death in the US, and the US has the highest rate in the developed world, and that rate is rising, when maternal deaths are falling almost everywhere else in the world. (Neonatal and infant mortality In the US are scandalously high, too.) And don’t get me started on the racial differentials. Pro-choice California is the only US state with a statewide maternal health project, and falling maternal mortality as a result. So California is much more pro-women’s-lives than anti-choice Texas.
In addition, 30-40% of all conceptions fail with no intervention at all, and I decline to believe that God is “killing people” every time this happens.
With these exceptions, bravo to your wider conception of the kind of life to be in favor of. If the forced-birth lobby was really pro-life, as opposed to pro-woman-control, its members would support universal sexuality education, free access to the whole spectrum of reproductive health services (from contraception through abortion and beyond) for all, and economic support for pregnant people and poor families – to name a few interventions that have been proved effective. But they don’t. Biden’s Catholic, but he supports most of the most useful steps to take to get more healthy families. More than enough for me.
Msb, well said. Wyatt Earl, I agree; Buttigieg nailed it.
It’s not a choice; it’s the most difficult decision a woman may ever have to make.
5I believe the following is from someone who is actually “pro-life” as opposed to the forced-birthers who claim to be pro-life.
“I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact,I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.
6-Sister Joan Chittister”
Msb’s final paragraph covers what I was going to post. The so-called anti-abortion/pro-life lobby is more about controlling women than it is about saving babies.
I can speak of abortion from experience, and I can tell you right now it was a sad experience, and the thought of “What if things had been different?” never goes away.
7Outstanding opinions expressed here. One of the things that makes me go hmmmmmmm is that the so called pro-lifers for the most part are also pro-death penalty. But when you’ve gotten used to having it both ways now that the government and tax exempt religious corporations have been in bed with each other for so long, I guess it’s considered God’s will.
8All you have to do is ask a pro-life, anti-abortionist is this question:
9How many abortions have you stopped by agreeing to adopt and raise the fetus at it’s birth?
The only answer needed is a numerical answer!
A quote from the book What Do We Do With Evil, by Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar from NM: Voters in the US who focus on a single issue, such as abortion or the economy, often ignore other major and related problems like poverty, racism, misogyny, the gun culture, and our de facto welfare for the rich, which allow them to flourish and go unrecognized and unquestioned. Our attention is diverted from the social or structural sins that we do not want to see, or the powers-that-be do not want us to see.
10Thank you for the thoughtful responses. I think what is saddest is that the church used to have a program it called the “Gabriel Project”. Some individual parishes might still have it, but the church at large stopped funding it. Essentially, it offered counseling, financial support, and emotional support for unwed women that had become pregnant. It offered help with pre-natal care, getting much needed supplies like diapers, food, and other supplies, and with counseling.
Ms. Carroway and I were talking last night. My wife was scared in the first six months of our daughter’s life. She was a new mother that didn’t know the ropes. We had financial means, my mother was available in the area, and obviously we were married. Imagine all the women that have none of those things. Our parish never bothered to check up on her. Never had anyone visit just to see how she was doing. Never asked if she (or we) needed a break. Needless to say, we joined a new parish, but these are basic things that seem to be dropped as soon as the child is born.
11They are not anti-abortion. They are anti-abortion for anyone else.
The issue is about power. In their minds, the world is full of promiscuous people having unrestrained sex which they are jealous of. They are terrified that is what their children will do because everyone else is doing it. They think girls are trained by socialist liberals to have sex as much as possible and if they happen to get pregnant get an abortion to escape the consequences. Remember how Limbaugh described Sandra Fluke? That’s what his audience believes and that’s why he aired that.
So they want to punish everyone who is not having sex except under their exact stipulated conditions. They want to punish in every way they can. In their worldview describe above denying abortions does that. As does eliminating access to contraception, denying marriage rights to the gays. All of it is that they want power to vent their sexual frustrations on everyone else.
They are in fact sick people who convinced themselves that they are virtuous.
12That’s why mansplaining is fraught with perils, Nick. Stick with questioning the forced birthers about all their hypocrisy and fantasies of power over women, and leave the medical decisions to the patient and their doctor.
13In 1975 I was in a dental assisting program that partnered with the dental school at USC in California. We were given a tour of their anatomy lab where the dental students were dissecting cadavers. On one table was the torso of a young (23 yrs.) woman who had committed suicide because she was three months pregnant and was afraid to tell her parents. Roe v. Wade had been decided barely a two years earlier so perhaps this girl didn’t even consider it an option. Or perhaps she thought it would be better to die anyway out of shame for what happened. I’m sure her family would have wanted her to live, but she felt this was the only choice open to her. This is just a small example of what women have to face every day even now.
I used to attend a Lutheran church until things started getting political. I remember the pastor talking about women choosing abortion out of “convenience.” That did it. I will not be mansplained about a topic that no man could ever really understand. And yes, I was an unmarried pregnant teen at one time, so I know whereof I speak.
14I certainly wasn’t attempting to mansplain anything dealing with abortion itself. If there was any explanation intended it was about the teachings of the church which some people might be unfamiliar. I apologize if anyone thought i was attempted to mansplain.
15Nick, you didn’t “attempt” mansplaining. You flat fell into the trap. It happens to the best however carefully executed, so no need to apologize, but apology accepted and thank you. Your sincerity isn’t in question, it was the word choices.
We do not know if that is true 1/100 or 1/1000 about a decision that is not ours to make. Something something in the judge ye not waters there.
16“Mansplaining” is a term women use to denigrate men. It doesn’t speak well of those who use it.
If you don’t accept something, explain exactly what’s wrong, instead of taking a cheap, lazy shot.
Womansplaining is also bad. Sex is not wisdom.
17One cannot be anti-abortion and also be anti-birth control. It has been demonstrated time and time again that abortion rates fall when people have access to accurate sex education AND access to affordable birth control.
I have heard arguments that birth control is just another form of abortion. Someone please explain to me how using a form of birth control that eliminates ovulation, and thus sperm penetration, and thus fertilization, is a form of abortion. These arguments are made by people trying to impose their religious beliefs and/or their misogyny on the rest of us.
Nick, if you feel that abortion is wrong 9 times out of 10, please, feel free to carry your baby to term and deliver it. And don’t tell women that the abortion they are considering after ALWAYS agonizing about it must be delayed for additional weeks to THINK – like the woman hasn’t already – as so many [generally male] legislators are considering, if they haven’t already forced it on us.
18Ormond Otvos, deny it or reject it, but mansplaining is every much an unfortunate reality as whitesplaining, when either is used to to even inadvertently dismiss the concerns of any citizen or group of citizens who have been systemically denied their constitutional rights. Think of it not as “shorthand” but the 2×4 sometimes necessary to keep a conversation on track.
Here’s the deal, whether it be Vatican I, II, or whatever comes of out the Vatican or the American Council of Cardinals, Westboro Baptist Church, or any other religious institution, we’re going over the cliff every time there’s a breach in the separation of church and state. Consider the 14th Amendment as the arbiter of when one person’s opinion encroaches on another person’s rights.
19Nick, I didn’t mean to imply that you are telling women to wait and think. It’s just that I heard on the radio yesterday yet another male legislator say that he was not really anti-abortion, but we needed legislation to make women wait and think. That stuff absolutely infuriates me and sends me instantly into rant mode.
20Now, I got you. I will apologize for people that think I’m judging their choice. I won’t apologize for my beliefs. I am firmly pro-choice in the sense that it should be a choice left to the individual. It doesn’t mean I have to support the choice itself in all instances. Without getting into it, I know people that have had the procedure done and it was never used as a form of birth control. I think that’s a myth perpetuated by the pro-birth (I like that term) crowd.
Whether I oppose any individual abortion is clearly a hypothetical. What I think is clear is that abortion is clearly a moral quandary that has any number of points where individual and individual situations can differ. I’ve never understood a black and white perspective on just about anything.
It also should be said that anyone that would condemn anyone for any choice they make is not really practicing a Christian attitude. In terms of mansplaining, I get it and get that some men do it. My statement is a statement of opinion. Anyone is free to disagree with it and it doesn’t mean I hold any greater knowledge than anyone else.
21Treehugger and Jane have thrown me for a loop. No, they haven’t really but they’ve made me think about articulation more thoroughly. I suspect I’m in a similar position as Biden which is the main reason I brought all of this up. It is possible to be against abortion in most circumstances and unequivocally for a woman’s right to choose. Those are not mutually exclusive. I’m not for forced waiting periods or any of the other tricks legislatures are trying to pull. I don’t think anyone comes to this decision lightly and my statement that I am against it in most circumstances comes with the understanding that I can’t possibly understand all the issues involved.
22treehugger @18 & 20, thank you for the breath of life and the rope you threw out there, before I slipped down the gravel of mansplaining with Nick and Ortmond. All I really know about birth control is sweating a possible failure of birth control during our HS and college years before we were ready to start our family. Marriage, two planned sons and a vasectomy later, my worries are over, but not my empathy for others who are still in the worry stage. As for the forced birthers, the most repugnant of whom are the “no exceptions” types who write legislation about something they know even less than I do minus the empathy. With thanks I will leave the economic and other associated issues that arise when women are not allowed the freedom and control over their own medical issues to you, NARAL Pro-Choice, and Planned Parenthood for all the facts.
23Uh Nick, you’re blaming Jane for me. So before I rant into a tax the churches until they comprehend the separation of church and state, I’ll leave you to treehugger’s capable command and articulation of the facts.
24I have to admit that last response confused me some. My beliefs may be questioned, but I’m not sure where I’ve gotten facts wrong because all I did was articulate beliefs.
25Nick,
Jane &PKM = me.My turn to be confused.
For the sake of discussion, how does one form beliefs without facts?
26Is it a fact that God exists? Faith exists are doesn’t exist independent of facts. Morality also is primarily based on beliefs and not facts. Murder is wrong. Stealing is wrong. These are opinions.
27They are widely held opinions but still opinions. in a similar way, belief in whether abortion is right or wrong and under what circumstances is not an issue of fact. It’s based on belief. Now, there are facts surrounding the nature of most abortions but a statement of belief about the morality of abortions themselves is not based on facts primarily. That’s why it’s a difficult issue.
28I really worry about the people who want to force a waiting period, limit abortions to certain weeks of pregnancy, or require judicial approval. I grew up before Roe v Wade and lost a friend who got gestational diabetes and died while the court discussed whether or not she should be allowed an abortion at 5 months. I had a 10 year old die in my, and other, arms because she was impregnated by her influential father who convinced the court that she was a slut who got pregnant by someone else and that the doctor didn’t give the truth when he said that the child was too small to carry to term but would be suffocated by the large uterus not giving enough room for her lungs to breath in enough oxygen. Unfortunately, the doctor was correct. I am glad that I never faced the decision to have an abortion or not, but I dread going back to the days when control of abortion was not in the hands of women and their doctors.
Also, three cheers to all who noticed that the right to life does not end at birth. On that basis and the appropriate commandment, I am firmly against the death penalty.
Thanks for letting me rant. I needed to.
29False equivalency, Nick. First, there are medical facts that determine abortion. Then there are a host of laws and Constitutional rights that state that our opinions or beliefs have no place in between the patient/doctor privilege. To argue otherwise is to say I should have consulted Amy Coney Barrett instead of a doctor before having a vasectomy. Do we really want to open an avenue for fanatics to determine our medical care? Give the forced birthers an inch on abortion, then expect a flood of their unreasonable demands on other medical issues. We’ve already seen with COVID-19 where the delays caused by conservatives to stem cell research have significantly impacted the ability to produce vaccines in the volume needed.
30I grew up in the Baptist church and got my M.S. at Baylor, the nation’s largest Baptist university, in 1971. Baylor had – probably still has – a day in early May called Diadeloso, or Day of the Bear. It comes near the end of the semester to give the students a day to hang out, play, and generally have a good time.
Diadeloso in 1970 came less than two weeks after the first Earth Day, and a group of environmentally concerned students tried to get other students to sign a petition demanding legalized abortion as a means of slowing population growth, and Baylor University had no problem with that.
In other words, the Southern Baptist Convention had no problem with abortion in 1970. That only came after the conservatives took over the convention in the late 70s and decided to make common cause with other denominations to affect electoral outcomes. It has always been a political calculation for them.
31The fact that Roe v. Wade exists is a fact. What it says is also fact. The idea that women have a right to privacy in terms of what they can do with their body is an opinion. It’s an opinion I share by the way, but it’s still an opinion. It’s why it’s called a legal opinion and a majority opinion.
When someone says the decision should be between a woman and her doctor, the operative word is should. It’s not must or can’t. It’s phrased as an opinion. Again, it’s an opinion we all share, but it’s still an opinion.
I didn’t go into hypotheticals dealing with the health of the mother. The vast majority of people agree that should be legal, but even then there’s that pesky word: should. When going to a doctor you are seeking a medical opinion. They even call it getting a second opinion. Our condition has certain symptoms that would be facts but adding it all up it is still an opinion as to the course of treatment. It’s an educated opinion, but still an opinion.
So, we go round and round based on opinion we mostly share. What I will acknowledge is that my personal feelings about abortion only matter if the individual seeking the abortion wants my opinion. I certainly don’t harass anyone or demand they hear me. My opinion is no more important than anyone else’s. I just feel fortunate enough to share it here.
32Hi Nick, thanks for a well considered short essay on a problem that is a moral minefield! I told my mother that Catholics could not be single issue voters during one of our towering arguments when I was in my teens or early 20s (Mama is 84 now and I’m going to be 57, and we still have towering arguments; I haven’t learned much, I guess). I was raised in a pro-birth family, but as a free American, I can’t see how one can force any other free American to have their personal decisions circumscribed and bounded by any belief system but their own, whatever my moral ambivalence or conviction may be about their decision and action. What is “wrong” to me may not even be an issue on someone else’s radar, and I am not the arbiter of all decisions (this was my thought process, more or less). This is what scares me about Barrett, she will be the arbiter handing down edicts that affect MY everyday life based on HER beliefs, whatever drivel she spouted to the committee.
33The Church painted her brocaded butt into a corner on the day that Paul IV declared that abortion was murder, and started this 50-yr war, sigh. A most egregious example of mansplaining!
Being pregnant is not an “opinion.” No woman is just a “little bit pregnant” or “let’s wait and see what another doctor says” like it was a case of psoriasis. Either she is or she isn’t and she has to deal with it. It’s just incredible to me that men can sit back and opine about what they think women should be able to do with their own bodies! While she’s spending the next nine months with her condition very visible to any onlookers (who aren’t shy about commenting on it either) what about the guy? He gets to carry on with his life and not have his body impeded or opined about in any way. Ugh.
34Nick, I know you are trying but the point so many are trying to make is that abortion is not a moral issue for everyone. It’s not a moral issue for me at all it’s a health care/life timing decision. The only thing you can say without it being another instance of mansplaining is that you will not have abortion. That’s it, you don’t get to choose unless you are directly involved and as a man you have input but not the final decision. Her body, her decision.
My body, my decision. That’s it. Debate over. Maybe its a moral issue for me maybe it isn’t that is entirely up to me.
If you want to talk about it more, talk about supporting women who are pregnant with the appropriate health care and then supporting the families regardless of the shape that family takes. Talk about educating young people about sexuality and all the possible outcomes so they can make informed decisions and make sure they have access to the tools to help support these decisions.
35Wow, good discussion. Arguing his view solo, I hope Nick doesn’t feel he’s subjected to a pile-on, though that might be an actual effect.
Thanks to all, but especially SueG for pointing out the effects of recriminalizing abortion (note that this would drive abortion back underground, not eliminate it): dead women and girls, including rape and incest victims. The forced-birth lobby shows little interest in those. Before abortion was legalized in Ireland, a healthy young woman, Savita Halappanavar, got pregnant as her first attempt to start a family with her husband. When she started to miscarry at 17 weeks, she unfortunately went to an Irish hospital, whose staff obeyed current Irish law, which weighed the life of her non-viable fetus equally with hers. Savita became the icon of the legalization movement in Ireland, because her caregivers let her spend a week in pain, infection and convulsions, during which she and her husband pleaded for an abortion, until she died. That’s torture, IMO. If she had received standard miscarriage care, including abortion, Savita might well be raising several children with her husband. But she isn’t.
Nick, I’m sorry to hear that “ Ms. Carroway and I were talking last night. My wife was scared in the first six months of our daughter’s life. She was a new mother that didn’t know the ropes.” This doesn’t have to happen. Other developed countries, such as the UK, include regular visits to new mothers/parents at their homes by health visitors, professionals who monitor and assist the health of baby and mother, including mental health. Finland provides not only health visitors but a substantial box of baby food, clothes and supplies, to everybody with a new baby. Denmark offers up to a year’s paid leave for either or both parents of new babies. If the US were serious about the lives of pregnant people, new parents and babies, it could do as much.
Sorry to go on at such length, everybody. Women’s health and welfare are not only vital to them but also key to the health of families and communities, and the economic and social development of countries. And I get steamed at how little this matters in the discussion in the US.
36It can be as simple as this: if you are against abortion, keep your damn pants zipped. Some of the all time bleeping nastiest people I have ever met are the bible thumping anti abortionists who also seem to have extraordinary baggage when it comes to race, gender, poverty, climate and everything else that falls into the A to Z category. The pro-choicers in my area outnumber the other faction and do more to actually, really try to make the life that comes after birth better. And frankly, thats the hardest part.
37First of all, I would like to thank everyone for their thoughts and for responding respectfully. I know this is a hard and emotional topic. Secondly, I’d like to point out that we are more in agreement than not. If you reread the post you’ll see I’m more in favor of focusing on other issues that affect people while they are living.
I think people got hung up on my statement that I opposed abortions personally under most circumstances. That doesn’t mean I’m in favor of limiting choice. It also doesn’t mean I’m in favor of forcing that opinion on anyone that has to make that decision. If we want fewer abortions in the U.S. (which we seem to have under Democratic presidents) there are ways to do that without oppressing anyone.
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“If you want to talk about it more, talk about supporting women who are pregnant with the appropriate health care and then supporting the families regardless of the shape that family takes. Talk about educating young people about sexuality and all the possible outcomes so they can make informed decisions and make sure they have access to the tools to help support these decisions.”
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I agree with all of this and was actually saying that throughout. I include myself in this statement, but I think we can all do a better job of listening to each other. We are mostly saying the same things, but getting caught up on some phrases that stick in our craw.
If you have not read the story by Heidi Peters and her husband, Sen. Gary Peters, about their experience, do so. It’s in Elle and I saw Peters on Maddow’s show.
When I was in high school (1964) our religion teacher was a young priest who spent little time on abortion but much on the rather rare question: if a doctor has no choice but to save the mother or the child, what is his Catholic teaching?
Although he never said what the answer was it was clear that he would advise saving the mother. (I have often wondered if he stayed in the priesthood when that revolution came in the late ’80s.)
As a 17-year-old that seemed reasonable. I did not then know about Semmelweis’s experiences at the Vienna lying-in Hospital. And until this week I did not know that Semmelweis’s (and the mothers’) experiences were
being replicated in Detroit in the late ’80s.
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BFSMan @31 It was not just that the Baptists did not object to Roe. They explicitly welcomed it.
39