photo courtesy of http://www.jewsonfirst.org/southdakota.html
There are probably only a few people with an “I don’t know” answer to this question. In fact, almost every adult has a rather dramatic answer to it. Most answers, for better or worse, derive from their adolescent knowledge and feelings, many even earlier since they are based mostly on what they learned from their parents in childhood through religious icons and church hymns. These are the ones whose truth comes through the emotions rather than through the channels of reason, where such may exist.
Whether adherents of one side of the issue or the other, we mostly believe that we are believers in our Constitution and justice, and that somewhere in all this we have rights, human and civil, as we were recently reminded by the legislation known as the Civil Rights Bill of 1964. We were all also taught along the way that killing is not only against the law but even sinful. This general knowledge lies at the root of our problem: to abort or not to abort? For though we can generally agree that to kill “may be” unlawful and sinful, there is also the additional complication created by the other fact that it is not always unlawful or sinful, otherwise God himself would be the greatest criminal and sinner of all, having destroyed or killed the whole world for disobeying his Commandments and leaving only one family to re-populate the world after the Great Flood.
Then, of course, there were the many wars or crusades in the name of God that were apparently justified by Church and State through the centuries, right up to the present. So we can agree that killing is not always absolutely wrong legally or sinful. We have even allowed for “justifiable homicide” by a private citizen or the police in the line of duty or in defense of a family member or of oneself. Even when we have wars that are not justified by the label “religious crusade,” we allow the killing of our friends, relatives, and total strangers whom we don’t know enough to hate, all in a “good cause.” Thus it would be pointless, quite absurd, to point to something like a Commandment and insist that ALL killing in all circumstances is absolutely wrong morally and legally.
Historically we know that killing has been interpreted differently in different cultures and at different times, whether to cleanse the family honor in a case of rape or seduction or to avenge a murder of a family member. All these instances find their justification within the cultural code. The point is that in this country of many cultures, we can scarcely find justification in imposing a personal code on everyone else and claim that it is justified by “our” general belief. We must make allowances for other beliefs and values. Consider the other fellow as we should like to be similarly considered, or some form of the Golden Rule we often conveniently forget.
Before Roe vs Wade (1973) we were still in the Dark Ages, though it seems very much as if we have not budged very far from there the way things are going in our social and political life, for there are sinister steps afoot to reverse the ruling on this emancipating legislation within and without Congress. The devoutly religious folk would argue that life begins in conception; hence abortion is tantamount to murder in the eyes of God. Pro-choice proponents insist that at conception the zygote is not only an unrecognizable creature, however human its potential, but not a person, hence abortion cannot be construed as murder. One doesn’t “murder” uninvited vermin in the basement. Clearly there is disagreement here. As a fine gentleman once said, “East is east and west is west, and the twain shall never meet.”
And so we have Pro-life and Pro-choice. Given the polarity of these positions, it is highly unlikely that there can ever be a logical agreement. The resolution must be sought elsewhere, though this does not mean abandoning logic or facts. We might consider the old American notions of Democracy, Freedom, and Patriotism, or if we care to be a tad romantic, we can call it love of country. We take pride in living in a country where we can enjoy the benefits of a Democracy and more freedoms than in almost any other country. And our patriotism shows best when we give dirty looks to anyone who does not stand up and hold his hand to his breast when we sing our National Anthem.
We believe that going to the polls to vote is not only a privilege but a patriotic duty, and when we vote we are demonstrating Democracy in action. Now, before the Roe vs Wade case, it was against the law to have or perform an abortion. Once abortion was no longer unlawful with the passage of the new law, a woman could now have an abortion at will. In recent years, especially since the conservative Reagan era, there have been various groups militating to over-turn the “offending” law. This religious zeal has taken various forms, some of which has included killing doctors practicing abortions, nurses, stalking anyone connected with its operation, and bombing such places and cars belonging to such people. Apparently for these zealots killing unknown zygotes and prenatal creatures is far more evil than killing beloved, educated, skilled, professional [real persons] adults, because it is “in a good cause.” This is also their version of Democracy-in-action: kill those who vote against us – and their idea of what Christianity really means, barbaric force.
On the political level, it is clear that if we take this legislation to the polls again we have two postures or “offerings”: (1) to vote Pro-life we impose our religious beliefs on all Americans and deny everyone their right to decide for themselves as adults, and making it against the law – again, a return to the Dark Ages, a loss of freedoms; (2) to vote Pro-choice we [everyone] can decide for ourselves what we want to do about increasing or controlling the size of our families without interference from anyone else or having the fear of breaking the law. Pro-lifers, like those people who burned you at the stake if you didn’t OBEY the beliefs and practices the authorities were imposing on the whole society, are bent on taking away more and more of our freedoms, those things we felt so proud to enjoy in a free democratic country, while the Pro-choicers are offering us a vote that will allow us retain whatever freedoms are left and still available to us. Instead of adding unnecessary laws that trammel us at every turn, we should be searching to reduce and eliminate as many that serve only to enslave us even more.
Pro-lifers want to deny you your freedom, your beliefs, practices, and size of your family THROUGH THE VOTE, using a civilized mechanism of Democracy to deny everyone else Democracy, converting it into a THEOCRACY. Is that what we salute when we see the American flag, a Theocracy and not the Democracy we have been taught to believe was the aim of our Founding Fathers? Let reason prevail, lest the dark shadow of the Church loom large and darken our open skies and free horizons once again.
