I saw a Facebook post today that began with “Here’s a little truth bomb on abortion by George Carlin.” Now I’m all about George Carlin. He was hysterical. Such a mind full of thoughts about humanity screaming to get out and sometimes they were spot on. This time not so much; rather his arguments were made in favor of laughs rather than truth. But this is pretty typical of the entertainment industry; they follow the crowd because their careers demand they remain popular. I can appreciate that. And at this point in our history it is very unpopular to be pro-life. One thing Carlin does get right is his call for “consistency.” But where he demands it from the pro-life crowd, I would very much like to see consistency from both sides of this debate. If there is one thing neither “side” exhibits, it is a consistent life ethic.
The right demands an end to all abortions. The left wants abortion “free and
legal” at any point in a woman’s pregnancy. I think all but the most rabid of
the far left and far right will agree that both of these positions are
ridiculous, but the greater problem is that the stance of the left, as well as
that of the right, is wildly inconsistent with the rest of their beliefs. The
right is typically anti-compassion/life in every one of the rest of their views
while the left, on the other hand, is pro-compassion/life on every one of the
rest of theirs. Consider it: the left and the right are polar opposites on
hunting, gun rights, capital punishment, weapons of mass destruction, health
care, aid to the poor, animal rights, education, the size of government, and
either pro-Israel (for the right) or pro-Palestine (for the left). Abortion,
however, is where the left and the right switch sides!
Now this thought originated in the much more able brain than mine of Nat Hentoff, the former editor of the notoriously leftist paper, The Village Voice. I read Hentoff’s essay called, “How Can the Left be Against Life” in the late 80’s, when our lead teacher had me and the rest of his Instructional Associates use it in the teaching of Remedial Writing at De Anza College in Cupertino, CA. In spite of his decidedly liberal take on nearly everything else, Hentoff was pro-life. As you might imagine, this made him often a subject of at worst, anger, and at best, discontent from the pro-life groups as well as the liberal crowds to whom he was often called upon to speak. But this same stance made him much more consistent in his life ethic than almost everyone else, whether liberal or conservative. When I first read the essay, I was a cradle conservative, and I held traditionally conservative opinions on most issues except the environment. Hentoff forced me to face up to some of the “fundamental contradictions”[1]in my views. In the essay, Hentoff points out that “…to be consistently pro-life, it is necessary to extend the definition to include more than abortion.” He quotes Cardinal Bernardin:
“Nuclear war threatens life on a previously unimaginable scale; abortion takes life daily on a horrendous scale; public executions are fast becoming weekly events in the most advanced technological society in history; and euthanasia is now openly discussed and even advocated. Each of these assaults on life has its own meaning and morality; they cannot be collapsed into one problem, but they must be confronted as pieces of a larger pattern.”
Hentoff argued conservatives also need
to think about these issues, too. He noted, for example, that the diminishment
of Women-Infant-Children (WIC, commonly known as welfare) was largely
responsible for low birth weight and thus high infant mortality. This was a
direct result of of trickle-down economics, the philosophy of the president
that I and many other pro-life people had voted for. As you can imagine, this
kind of light shining on my inherited beliefs and their inconsistencies rocked
my fresh-out-of-college idealistic world view.
If one is going to choose to oppose abortion, I realized, one must also choose to oppose capital punishment. How about the slow death caused by lack of proper health care? And what about people across the world in Israel and Palestine? And if you’re going to value life, shouldn’t you value all life, like that of animals in laboratories or on farms? The more I read about these and a lot of other issues, the less “conservative” I turned out to be. It was then that I went vegetarian.
And it was then that my life ethic began to slowly but surely become far more consistent and has continued to evolve over the years.
So then the other side of that coin is
for the liberal mind. If you’re going to favor abortion, surely you are
thinking in terms of the rights of the woman, and aren’t they being trampled
when her right to an abortion is taken away? Hentoff addresses that by
introducing us to Juli Loesch, founder of a pro-life and anti-nuclear arms
group. I’ll let you read from Hentoff’s essay:
A feminist, Loesch has been working on a feminist critique of what she calls “the abortion mentality.” For instance, she notes that in many cases, “abortion becomes part of the female-body-as-recreational-object syndrome. The idea is that a man can use a woman, vacuum her out, and she’s ready to be used again. It’s like she’s a rent-a-car or something.”
That excerpt affected me profoundly. It
seems so obvious, like why didn’t I see that before?
Hentoff also introduces us to Elizabeth
Moore, then organizer of Feminists for Life. Hentoff quotes Moore, “I knew
first-hand the effects of legal nonprotection under the Constitution, and from
my point of view, the basic value upon which just law must rest is not ‘choice’
but equality. I cannot tolerate the destruction of life in a society where I
find myself among the expendable.” (Moore, in another article[2], maintains that abortion legislation is actually
aimed primarily at the poor because paying for a poor woman to have an abortion
is cheaper than paying her to raise the child. Let’s consider THAT for a
moment.) Hentoff goes on to say that
…the pro-choice argument based on a woman’s right to control her own body is a right-wing concept that puts property rights over the right to live. Jo McGowan, a pacifist/feminist, adds – in a Commonweal interview with Mary Meehan (January 18, 1980) – “I can no more control my body by destroying my child than I can insure my safety by building Trident submarines.” McGowan’s prison record includes sentences for demonstrating at a Trident plant, at Seabrook against nuclear power, and at an abortion clinic.
Women’s rights are being trampled on every day by both ends of the political spectrum. Taking away the fetus’ rights to be born doesn’t help us. Especially when so many couples are waiting to adopt a newborn. In fact, there is a waiting list of approved, adoptive parents. A long one. In the UK it can take up to nine years of waiting — and that’s AFTER you’ve jumped through all the required hoops — to get a newborn.[3] In the US, the wait is between two to seven years.[4] So not being able to provide for babies isn’t the issue; there are approved couples waiting to provide for the babies. If the mother needs a solution, adoption is a kind, humane solution that saves a child’s life and a woman’s peace of mind. The problem is that women and our health are viewed as “less than”, and expendable, just like the baby growing inside us.
And
lest we deny the humanity of the aborted fetus, an opinion based on the Supreme
Court’s decision in 1973, Hentoff reminds us that the 1857 Supreme Court also
denied the humanity of the many then-enslaved peoples of African descent. Isn’t
it time, now that we can see into the womb, that we stop denying the humanity
of the growing person inside? Isn’t it time we see the fetus as what it is, an
unborn HUMAN?
Hentoff predicted what has become true, that the pro-life movement would never develop to become a viable, powerful voting bloc unless it broadened its beliefs on life to include ALL LIFE, not just the unborn. And my own “cause celebre” also leaps to mind. All life must also include animal life. Factory farms are hellish places of blood, sorrow and terror. Sentient beings as laboratory subjects is an affront to their Creator. How can we destroy those lives so horrendously with no thought to their right to live in peace and safety? And yet for most conservatives, champions of the pro-life movement, the lives of animals is an issue that is not even on their radar.
One
problem is that a consistent life ethic is not an easy thing to develop. So
much of 21st Century life is bound up in issues that relate to human
and animal life. I think about the leather in shoes and belts, whether the
shirt I want to buy was made using child labor, what companies my mutual fund
is involved in. In the complicated world we live in, perfect consistency isn’t
really possible, I don’t think. But today I can be more consistent than I was
yesterday. I can make those choices thoughtfully, and I can choose on the side
of life when I know enough.
I’m calling on my evangelical Christian friends, my Catholic friends, and my conservative and liberal friends from all religious and non-religious perspectives to think about this. Isn’t it time we value life just because it is life? Because all life is valuable? Shouldn’t we choose kindness rather than cruelty whenever there is a choice? Don’t we still believe that we should treat others as we would want to be treated? Shouldn’t that extend to all “others,” not just human “others”, but to all life? Whether human or animal, born or unborn, life isn’t ours to give or take. That kind of choice is not ours to make.
Consider
your life ethic.
[1]
Hentoff, Nat; How Can the Left Be Against Life,”
Writing Day by Day, 1987, Harper and Row. First appeared in The Village Voice
in 1985.
[2] http://inthesetimes.com/article/21371/anti-abortion-Catholic-Left-women-welfare-socialist-feminism
[3] https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/the-adoption-waiting-game/
[4] http://www.adopt.org/faqs
What Living Feels Like 