What does pro-life mean?
The Jesus we learn about in the bible and on Sundays fought for the little guy. He healed the sick. He made it so that the blind could see and the deaf could hear. He hung out with the dregs of human society and invested his efforts in helping them.
Then, we get to abortion. That’s where we have a bit of a separation. The church preaches that life is sacred whether it is at the beginning or the bitter end. It preaches that all life should be valued whether they be saint or sinner. Obviously, ending a pregnancy doesn’t fall into that paradigm.
Yet, there has always been a tension between the faith teachings of any church and the way a secular society has to be run. It has always been a challenge to keep God in our lives and yet not to intrude on the beliefs of others. A moral law cannot be based on religion alone. It must be backed by common sense, basic human decency, and a universal agreement of its existence.
This is a serious moment in our nation’s history. It demands seriousness on all sides. The Declaration of Independence said we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are God-given rights it said. We were endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. Life is the first and the most basic human right.
However, to call oneself pro-life implies that those that are opposed to a specific viewpoint are anti-life. The reality is that we are talking about one narrow definition of life and one point in the life continuum. The truth is that there are any number of issues and times in our lives when the question of life is paramount. What does it truly mean to be alive? Are there basic human necessities everyone is entitled to? If so, what are they?
If we are entitled to life then it is absolute at every juncture. It is absolute when I commit a crime. It is absolute when we have wars of choice. It is also absolute when I lack the basic necessities of life. It is absolute when I am hungry. It is absolute when I don’t have a roof over my head. It is absolute when I need health care and don’t have insurance. Any conversation about life has to include a discussion about the quality of life. We must agree on a minimal quality of life if we are to call ourselves pro-life.
When one calls for the birth of a child and then offers nothing in support of that child once it is born then they cease to be pro-life. They are pro-birth. There is nothing inherently wrong with that as a viewpoint. You just don’t get to claim a higher moral ground or have sole appeal to a higher moral authority.
If we are to be strict constructionists then we would have to strike down the equal protections clause in the 14th amendment except for those groups specifically named in the constitution. That would include mixed race couples, LGTBQ+ individuals, in addition to those rights of privacy not explicitly stated in the constitution.
As appetizing as that may sound to some, it puts a qualifier on life. Your life is only fully actualized if it fits into this tiny box we defined in 1789 and after the civil war and reconstruction. Otherwise, you are invisible and you do not get to love who you want or be who you want to be.
Most people are well-meaning folks. They really don’t want to hurt anyone and think making such limitations helps those folks. I’m just trying to imagine Jesus of Nazareth saying the same things. I really can’t. In order to keep the faith I do have I refuse to.
One thing that would help women is to have a more robust child support enforcement. Here in Harris County, the judge will send a Sheriff out to get you if you fall behind on child support. I divorced in Bell County, who basically says Good Luck! I had to cobble funds together to sue my ex for non payment. The State Child Support office keeps track of non payment but won’t do anything unless you ask, then you are put on a looonnnggg list, and when it’s finally you’re turn, you STILL have to get an attorney! Women are paid less in this world, have more responsibilities and now have no say in abortion. You gotta know birth control is next!
1the pro-lifers take on the authority without the attendant responsibility as you point out.
2So why aren’t the pro-lifer hypocrites held to account esp. by our media?
By the way, what denomination was Jesus? A trick question?
Most don’t understand the so-called “pro-lifers” don’t act from a concern for human life. If they did, they’d be extremely involved in child welfare efforts, but their actual participation rate is a tad less than the national average (cf the book “Activism and Altruism”).
So, if they don’t care about others’ lives, this suggests strongly that they simply verify Ernest (“Denial of Death”)Becker’s claim that our fear of death would overwhelm us if we didn’t develop strategies to deny it– e.g., religion, philosophy, hedonism…
In their case, their strategy is to engage in an allegory in which abortion is Death, they are God and the fetus is themselves. They feel that if they can “save” a fetus, then a God will save them from death. As they are scarcely equipped with enough resources to deal with their own lives (on average, having less education, being less well off and making less money), they don’t have enough in reserve to help children– while they want the next Ted Bundy to be born, they won’t be his foster or adoptive parents.
3Technically I guess he would be called an Orthodox Jew since I don’t think the reform or Conservative sects existed yet.
4I can remember people actively changing “anti-abortion” to “Pro-Life” so it was “for” something. Just as the pro-abortion side needed a better reframing away from the knee-jerk reaction to anything with “abortion” in label to “Pro-choice.”
Labels may matter, but I agree that if you really feel you are Pro-Life, then why are you not supporting that life more at more than just moment of birth. I mean even if it is only Pro-Birth, there is still a lot of expenses and circumstances that the mother and fetus need before birth.
5There is nothing pro-choice about what is happening. The Republicans are trying to make us all bow to the religious right like the Evangelicals. The book censoring, demonizing librarians, restricting the rights of voters and outlawing medical care for trans youth was just the beginning.
6Their goal is to return women, barefoot and pregnant to the kitchen.
The problem pro-lifers have is when does life begin: 24 weeks, 15 weeks, 1 day, conception. Even if they say conception they are denying the Biblical notion. At creation, Adam and Eve did not possess human life until God breathed the breath of life into their lungs. THUS, human life begins with the first breath. I say this as a ordained hospital chaplain who has watched many people breathe their last breaths and a few their first breaths. The beginning of life is not a mystery. You are not alive until you breathe and when you stop you are dead. Humanity has to try and improve what God has already ordained and we lose every time. Acorns are not oak trees. Ova are not humans.
7What angers me Richard is not where people fall on that continuum. My wife is a biologist and can make a fairly cogent argument for biological life at the point of conception. Whether that life is viable or not is an entirely different question. However, I don’t get angry at those that debate that question.
I get angry when you exclude and ignore all other life issues as if they don’t matter. All of them are tough to grapple with and you have to grapple with them. You have to grapple with whether the sociopathic serial killer deserves to live out his or her natural days or whether the state should put them to death. You have to grapple with how much assistance people should get when they struggle. You have to grapple with whether education and health care should be covered for everyone and how much.
8I’m pretty old. I went to high school beginning in 1959, and I can even remember a time when we didn’t have football on TV on Sundays. Sundays were usually given to broadcasts of church services in the morning and other religious programming in the afternoon. The Southern Baptists produced a lot of programming suitable for Sunday afternoons. They even had a Baptist Hour, IIRC.
I remember one Sunday the Baptist Hour was about a man whose wife had a severe problem with her pregnancy, one that threatened her life. Her doctor told him and her that he could save either the mother or the baby, but not both. So, the man and his wife talked and prayed about it, and she finally told him to save the baby because she had had a good life and wanted the baby to grow up knowing a man as good as he was.
As a naive ninth or tenth grader, I had no idea the doctor was talking to them about aborting the baby. I only figured that out somewhat later. But the Southern Baptist Church didn’t seem to have much of a problem with abortion at that time, at least going by what they had in their Sunday afternoon programming.
Then, as a grad student at Baylor in 1970 or 1971 I joined their student environmental group. Baylor had a kind of play day near the end of the spring semester called Diadeloso, or Day of the Bear. Students played games, had skits, dressed up in funny costumes, and student organizations had tables where people could sign up to join, sign petitions, etc. The environmental group had a petition that called for legalizing abortion as a means of controlling population, and a lot of people signed it. Again, the Southern Baptist Convention didn’t seem to have much of a problem with abortion at the time, as the university’s administration allowed it and asked no questions. In fact, at the time Southern Baptists were pretty fervently in favor of separation of church and state.
Then, when the Supreme Court handed down their decision in Roe, the Southern Baptist Convention put out a statement saying that the issue of abortion was settled. They saw no reason for Americans to fight about it any more.
It was only after the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 that Protestants in America – egged on by Republican politicians that saw a made-to-order wedge issue – saw fit to join the Catholics in protesting abortion. Most people don’t really care all the much about politics, but bring religion into it, as the Republicans have, then Katy bar the door. It was political gold for them.
Alito’s opinion is a de facto respect of an establishment of religion, which the First Amendment expressly prohibits. That the Supreme Court wrote it instead of Congress doesn’t change that.
9Pro-Life is that short way to say “lying ahole psychotic woman haters”
10Here’s yet another interesting ‘equality’ issue that exposes the depth of the ‘old Anglo male’ bias against them thar ‘nasty wimmens’.
Unbeknownst to me, and probably half of y’all, Texass imposes an onerous sales tax on a very basic necessity of –women only–:
Tampon tax repeal is about equality, period:
https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2022/05/04/tampon-tax-repeal-is-about-equality-period/
The Rethugs have opposed removing this discriminatory tax levied –on women only– for years!
A basic feminine-only essential item is deliberately included in the state sales tax regime, unlike most other common ‘essentials’ which escape our rather excessive regressive sales taxes [a whole ‘nuther topic].
Repeal of this tax has been voted down at least three times before over years by the Republicans in Austin. A blatant FU to 50%+ of Texas citizens.
Come on Democrats, beat these sorry-ass sonsabitches over the head with
11no-brainer issues like this until their bleeding carcasses are left in the ditches after election day.
Anybody can make a pretty cogent argument for biological life at the point of conception; however, HUMAN life does not begin at a biological point; it begins only when someone decides to make a humanoid life form into a human.
The fetus is a humanoid life form, but without at least five years of interaction with other humans, it is not going to become even a primitive human. For example, in the documentary, “Secrets of the Wild Child,” the girl who’d been kept strapped to a potty chair for over a dozen years was never able to arrive at an age-appropriate level of speech after her rescue. The few reports of other children allegedly raised by wild animals showed similar grave deficits (in none of the cases was it ever determined at what age the child might have been abandoned to the elements).
Abandon a child at age five, and they are quite likely to survive, but the experience of the Rumanian abandonees shows that they survive at a primitive level– unable to concentrate to study, to learn a job, and so forth. Abandon a child at age seven, and they will survive, almost always by craft and cunning. A twelve-year-old who is abandoned is far more likely to arrive at a high-functioning adulthood.
But to say that a fetus is a human being is a fantasy. Ted Bundy would not have grown up to murder three to five dozen women if somebody in his household had taken seriously the responsibility to make him a human being over his first eighteen years.
12@ Richard #7
Thank you for being a voice of reason.
13The Kids Guide To President Trump.
14Sadly, it’s not a spoof:
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1521677098179563526?s=21
Actually, there’s pretty good evidence to support the notion that psychopathy (just a different term for the older “sociopathy”) like Bundy is based in genetics, not upbringing. You get anti-social with cruel parenting. You get psychopathy when it’s “that boy just ain’t right”.
I find the most compelling argument that “anti-abortion” is not “pro-life” to be the observation that they’re banning abortion, but not assault rifles.
15If you don’t have the right to bodily self determination, you are a slave.
16With respect – you started off with Jesus (who is usually portrayed as a White man) and then went on to the Invisible Being . Not forgetting that *Jesus* died a couple of thousand years ago .
17The psychological profile of surgeons evidently corresponds to that of psychopaths. If so, it’s proof that even psychopaths can be steered (at least somewhat) right.
Bundy had a lot going against him: Ashamed of her, her parents packed her off to the Elizabeth Lund Home in Vermont to bear him. Back home, he was raised to believe his mother was his sister and his grandmother was his mother. His grandfather apparently sexually abused his mother (read Polly Jones’ “Defending the Devil”). By the age of four he was already pretty warped: he put sharp knives in his aunt’s shoe then watched as she tried put it on.
Jones believed he might have been ADD or ADHD. Of course at the time all parents and all teachers knew little and did less about the condition. He never was assessed for behavioral problems.
18I do understand that most around here are not believers and I have no issue with that. The invoking of Jesus and “the invisible being” serves as a reminder that whether you buy into that belief structure or not, that point of view fails on both counts. One of the courses I took in my masters was a religious counseling course. The whole idea was to approach the patient where they were and speak to them in their language. It makes about as much sense to preach to a non-believer about God as it does to argue against a pro-birth position to a believer in a secular human framework. If you speak to everyone in their language you have a fighting chance.
19“If you speak to everyone in their language you have a fighting chance.”
Nick, that’s in theory only. But. When a significant portion of the forced birthers speak gibberish and stubbornly refuse to engage in reasonable dialogue what are the options?
20That’s true and why I said “fighting chance”. It takes some doing to learn the gibberish but once you do you have a chance. In terms of electoral politics I always think in terms of five percent. If you get five percent to change their thinking you have created an electoral tsunami. That in effect was about the difference between 2016 and 2020. It probably was less than that (maybe three percent) but it was significant. If you make similar inroads in 2022 and 2024 it becomes a blowout.
One of the casual benefits of learning the gibberish is that you can convince them that you are one of them and therefore can get an inside look at the other things they plan on doing.
21Look at underlying assumptions and motivations too.
“It wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders..:seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but…because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools.”
https://twitter.com/nhannahjones/status/1521305086282149888
And, related:
“Abbott said Wednesday that Texas would consider challenging a 1982 Supreme Court decision requiring states to offer free public education to all children, including those of undocumented immigrants.”
https://t.co/mkp3oMbw4g
22Nothing has changed.
Over a quarter of a century ago George Carlin made the following remark which is true today.
“Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to 9 months. After that, they don’t wanna know about you. They don’t wanna hear from you. No nothing! No neonatal care, no daycare, no Head Start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you’re pre-born, you’re fine, if you’re preschool, you’re fucked.”
23Of course the fetus is alive. The ovum and sperm that made it were also alive. The issue is, is it at present a legal person? We can argue dogma until we’re blue in the face, but…look, let’s talk about you. Think about your friends, the people at your job, maybe folks you work out with or go to church with. Do you know when the women are pregnant? Of course you don’t, not until they glowingly tell you and maybe ask you to a shower or have cake at lunch or something. But you don’t ask random women. It’s none of your business. (Also illegal.) So if she is pregnant, and if between herself and maybe her doctor and her partner she should decide that she wants an abortion, how would you ever know about that? And why would it be any of your business to know? That is the real issue in this matter. You’ve got to trust a woman to know what is right for her, just like you would like her to trust that you know what you would want. If abortion troubles you, perhaps you could offer support or financial assistance to help change her mind, that is if you should happen to even know about it. But really, something so private is none of anybody else’s business.
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