[published on July 16, 2005 in my previous blog, “The Flatland Oracles]
According to this article published at Foxnews.com, Wisconsin State Representative Dan LeMahieu believes that the morning after pill "causes a chemical abortion." He therefore is personally undertaking to see to it that students within the Wisconsin system don’t have access to it.
Brilliant. Because of one man’s religious convictions---which many people, including many practicing Christians, do not share---young women who conceive but who do not want to have a baby will be forced to have an abortion later, instead of getting rid of a fertilized cell (or a microscopic clump of cells) before it’s out of the blueprint stage.
It's so much easier just to make your belief system the law of the land.
If it's law, you don't have to do all the tiresome work of trying to preach to the uncoverted, and can concentrate on preaching to the choir instead. It's so much more validating to make your arguments to people who already agree with you than to take a chance on martyrdom (social and psychological, if not physical). And as an added bonus, you can put bad people (those who don't agree and won't go along) into prison! Why bother with persuasion if you can pass legislation?
If you ask me whether I am ‘Pro-Life’ or ‘Pro-Choice,’ I will say that I am both ‘Pro-Choice’ and ‘Pro-Life.’ I am so pro-life, in fact, that I oppose the death penalty for adult human beings, even hardened criminals, because I don’t ever like to rule out the possibility of redemption. Furthermore, I believe the ‘eye for an eye’ principle to be in direct conflict with the teachings of Christ and am very conscious of his injunctions to avoid as far as possible seeking out occasions to mete out judgments and punishments.
As for the abortion pill debate, the underlying issues are, whether anyone likes it or not, matters of religious faith and are therefore outside the scope of matters that are the government’s business. I certainly have an opinion on the question whether or at what point abortion becomes murder, but it is an opinion arising out of my own beliefs; I can’t establish that any of what I believe is true without going metaphysical and Biblical. And it’s because I can’t that I should not have the right to try to force other women to do as I do or say. Their information may be different or their interpretation of the same information may differ.
The Pro-Choice/Pro-Life dichotomy is a false one. The debate isn’t between people who think abortion is bad and people who think it is good; it is between people who think that the government ought to enforce as law their particular religious creeds and and people who think that the government has no right to decide questions that depend on faith.
Questions that can’t be resolved except by resort to matters of religious creed are not questions that the law ought to address. It’s as simple as that. Living in a country where church and state are separate and the state is precluded from freely exercising their religion means that we have to be respectful of those who make choices based on a different set of religious beliefs from our own.
Roe v. Wade made an attempt, however crude, to draw a line between the stage in the development of a fetus where the rights of the mother give way to the rights of the unborn child. I recognize the right of so-called Pro-Life advocates to persuade women to make choices other than abortion; if they strongly believe that abortion murders a human being (instead of a cluster of cells containing the blueprint for one), then they are right to put their point of view to anyone concerned.
Why can’t they recognize that so long as there is a contrary position, and so long as the issues cannot be resolved in their favor without their recourse to testimony arising out of their religious faith, the state should not be able to deprive others of the freedom to differ and to act accordingly?
It’s a cliché, I know, but I am perpetually surprised that people put so much energy into trying to protect the rights of the unborn put so little into protecting the rights of the admittedly less appealing ‘born.’ Children all over the country whose mothers certainly were willing to bring them into the world are growing up mentally and economically impoverished, deprived of opportunities or any hope of participating constructively in the system. Why isn’t LaMahieu putting that same energy into coming up with solutions for poverty in Inner City poverty and the children who are going to have very little chance at a decent life without substantial help and intervention? I can cite many passages from the Gospels addressed to the obligation to help the poor.
Why are Christians anywhere intent on banning the morning after pill in the name of the taxpayers instead of putting that energy into helping the poor in the name of Christ? Why do we need to impose our views on the rest of the country instead of showing others by example what a good life ought to mean? Why are we trying to make matters of religious belief the law of the land so that we can impose our will on people who don't share them?
Never mind, I know. It’s much easier to focus on correcting the sins of others than it is to do anything about the wretched state of people who are poor, downtrodden, and disenfranchised. It’s much easier to pass a law banning a pill on college campuses than to try to deal realistically with promiscuity as a social problem. It’s much easier, on the whole, to deprive people of their choices than to persuade them to change their thinking. And yet it is my belief---and feel free to differ!---that the obligation of a Christian is exactly that: to teach and to persuade. I'm not sure that it's possible to build a community or feelings of mutual love by force-feeding one's beliefs to others who think differently.
And what good will it do to ban the morning after pill in Wisconsin’s ‘liberal’ state universities? Will it mean that the students will stop having sex? Will it ensure that they use contraception [Foxnews.com link]? Won’t it just mean that more women will have more abortions later in the term [Foxnews.com link]? And isn't that something that we definitely want to avoid?
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