I am sick and tired of listening to the Religious Right whine about abortion and even more sick of watching their toadies in congress screw around with our budget so as to advance that agenda. They claim they want to have a dialog on abortion and then they let a moron like Jon Kyl, ® Arizona stand on his hind legs just like a human being and vomit out crap like 90% of Planned Parenthood’s budget is spent on abortion. And then his staff comes out and says, he didn’t think we were going to expect facts. Of course not, we like to be lied to. Numbers are facts, you idiots, how can you have a dialog with people who are either too stupid to breathe on their own or flat out liars?
In case you’re wondering, Planned Parenthood spends 3% of it funds on abortion and all of that comes from donations. None of it comes from taxes, which would be illegal.
Just for a moment let’s try to take a rational look at the abortion problem and try, (I know how hard this is for those in a faith based culture) to be logical. After all, it was God, so the true believers claim, who gave us this miraculous ability, which he denied to all his other creatures. Accepting this premise, it would be foolish of us not to use it.
First, nobody is for abortion, at least no sane person. For or against, however, are black and white positions and nothing in life is that simple. It’s because we, as a society, have tried to dumb down all our considerations, so as to make them understandable to those least able to think, that we have gotten into many of the problems we face today. Yes or no are only answers to: ”do you have to go to the bathroom.” They are grist for the mindless mill, answers for those who cannot grasp the subtleties that exist in more serious problems.
So I say again. No one is for abortion but there are circumstances that mitigate that answer and this is where we get into trouble because my mitigating circumstances are not necessarily yours. Space does not allow me to investigate each set of possible mitigating circumstances and vet them for importance or possible exclusion and that is not the point I’m trying to make here anyway.
The fact of the matter is, there are enough women who have enough mitigating circumstances to create a hell of a lot more abortions than there need to be and that’s really the problem. It’s a problem that we can solve, but one that we have thus far, avoided assiduously.
Why is that? I don’t know. I mean logically I do but I don’t read minds, so I don’t understand why people who have a decided objection to a specific practice (abortion) do everything in their power to make that practice occur as often as possible.
Let’s start by asking how does one prevent abortion. Not getting pregnant is the obvious answer but like most obvious things it’s too simple because pregnancy is the result of intercourse and intercourse is the result of the second (maybe the first) strongest urge of all species on earth. Species can only continue to exist through propagation. Only the will to live is supposed to be stronger but there are times when even that order comes into question.
Okay, so we have this powerful, God given, if you wish, urge to procreate but we also, in this modern age, have any number of reasons not to and that’s the problem.
Now if I were the wife of an ex-president I would simply proclaim, “Just say no!” but we all know how well that worked the last time it was used so being an inventive species we have come up with a number of viable solutions to the pregnancy problem, all of which, enter the scene before the abortion thing rears its ugly head. We have sex ed classes, condoms, diaphragms, IUDs, daily pills, morning after pills, men can get a vasectomy, women can get their tubes tied, all kinds of ways to stop pregnancy. Great, you say, we got it licked. And that’s where it starts to get really weird because for some illogical reason the very people who are most against abortion are also against doing anything to prevent it. Is that nuts, or what?
I’m going to try to take a look at this phenomenon, which is wholly illogical and more than a tad bizarre, but to do it we have to first identify who these people are that don’t want abortion but don’t want to do anything about its causes. The clearest picture seems to indicate three groups: Roman Catholics, Evangelical Christians and the unaffiliated illogical. Yes, the core of opposition to both the act of abortion and the prevention of the necessity of abortion pretty much comes from the same place, organized religion. Before we go any further, let me state, unequivocally, that this piece is not about religion bashing. That would take at least 4000 pages and I just don’t have the space. But there can be no doubt that organized religion is at the heart of the abortion problem, not only because of its absolutist and uncharitable stand that no abortion is allowable but also because of its ridiculous stand that the prevention of pregnancy is also not allowable except through abstinence, a position that is not only impractical but farcical and ludicrous because it brings the concept of sin into an equation in which no one is sinned against. Not unless you believe that conception starts with ejaculation.
To explore the two parts of the problem we will start with the abortion itself. No, no one wants them. Yes they are sometimes thought to be necessary. Between these two statements there is a world of degree and again, to explore these various scenarios would take much more space than this article allows. So let’s just go to one extreme. In St. Joseph Hospital and Medical Center, a Roman Catholic Hospital in Phoenix, a pregnancy was recently terminated in a 27 year old mother of four who the doctors decided would almost certainly have died if the operation had not been provided. Sister Margret McBride of the hospital’s ethics committee approved the decision.
The result of these actions was that Bishop Thomas Olmstead, stripped the hospital of its affiliation with the diocese, in effect excommunicating the hospital because it saved a woman’s life.
The not so good bishop, obviously a big fan of Mercenaries whose favorite slogan, “kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out, ”fits this scenario perfectly. Is this extreme? Sure. Does the Bishop think so? Obviously not, that’s the problem.
But, you say, Olmstead was operating under church law. I know the Church has laws. Just as surely I know those laws, despite what we were taught as children, are not written in stone. Even in my, brief, by historical standards, lifetime, many of the church’s most fundamental laws have been changed, usually for practical, rather than canonical purposes. I was at a funeral mass two weeks ago and watched as the priest handed the host to worshipers who then put it into their own mouth. I remember as a young alter boy, (no priest ever abused me) that if a host ever touched anything but the priest’s hand and the worshiper’s lips the priest had to come out on his knees and clean any area it had touched. It was a monumental faux pas. At the above mentioned communion I watched as one parishioner took the host from the priest and put it in his pocket. IN HIS POCKET! Sometime’s you’re just not hungry. Or maybe he was saving it for a later time of stress, when he might need a spiritual boost.
The point is, that a time when the Church is expending enormous resources on a new liturgy for the mass, something the faithful needs like a hole in the head, they might investigate a more charitable way to deal with a really serious problem like abortion, because nothing is written in stone.
But let’s get to the real problem, prevention. Pregnancies are going to happen, sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident. Keeping their number to an absolute minimum is achievable and should be our goal. For Catholics the opposition to contraception is based in church rule. Again these rules have changed so much over the years that when applied to something important they mean almost nothing. I can remember when eating meat on Friday was a mortal sin. Now it’s approved dining. So the Catholic concept of sin as it applies to preventive contraception is ridiculous because of the principle of greater good. I mean if you really believe that you’re taking the life of a child in an abortion, then anything you do to prevent that from happening is a good thing not a sin. Ergo all forms of contraception are good because they all lead to the prevention of abortion. I understand that we may be on shaky ground here but that statement is more logical and more charitable than anything I have ever heard in opposition.
The even more astounding problem is with those who have no canonical opposition to birth control but just don’t want their kids to be taught, “how to do sex.” This is really mind-boggling because we don’t have to be taught how to do sex, we only have to be taught how to do it right. Teaching kids… and some adults how to prevent pregnancy while still enjoying a healthy sex life is part of our duty as cogent human beings. Opposing that, makes one a huge part of the problem and an enabler of the act of abortion.
You have to remember, opposition to contraception comes from historical necessity. The same reason why the Jews don’t eat pork and Catholics didn’t eat meat on Fridays.
Historically mankind was mostly farmers and children were needed to help with the work. In addition, child mortality rates were much higher than they are now. We as a species needed children, the more the better. Where, once we needed more children than we were producing, we are now produce, more children than our planet can sustain. The earliest evidence of this was the draconian, one child per family laws in China. They couldn’t feed their population and rather than just let millions starve as had happened in other, less civilized nations, they legislated to control the problem. It wasn’t the best idea they had but it did slow down an out of control birthrate.
As explained in the beginning of this piece, (natural urges and all that stuff) people are not going to stop fornicating. Uncontrolled procreation, however, is good neither for the planet, nor in some cases, for individuals or individual families. If we don’t want abortion, and who does, we must come down on the side of universal contraception. Anything else is illogical and brute stupid.