Going There, Part 2

If you are truly Pro-Life and actually care about women and also want to reduce abortions there are some very clear steps you can take and policies that you can openly support.  Before we get there, it helps to know why women have abortions, because any meaningful solution has to address the underlying causes.

While is over a decade old, this report from the Guttmacher Institute is still the most often cited report on the actual reason women seek an abortion.  It was quoted in several different articles addressing the why question.  There are several interesting results from the survey (using 2004 data).  In the broad categories, 74% cited the impact on life and 73% listed financial considerations.  More specifically, 28% of women cited the “cost of a baby and child care.”  38% listed the impact on their professional life as a factor.  38% were done with childbearing and 32% were “not ready for a(nother) child.”  Meanwhile, only 12% cited physical health issues as a reason.

There are multiple ways to address these issues, from better sex education to better access to health care; from more access to financial resources to more family friendly workplace policies.  With help from a recent Facebook meme making the rounds, here now is my list of policies that real Pro-Life supporters should get behind (includes some items not directly related to abortion):

1)      Actively pursuing an economic policy that ensures everyone earns a true living wage on a single 40-hour/week job.  No more families where dad works 3 jobs, mom works 2 jobs, and the kids go to work as soon as they are old enough to hold a work permit.  We need an economy where families can spend time together; where parents have time and money to do more than put food on the tables and clothes on the kids.  This might put a dent 73% of women who cited financial considerations among their primary reasons for getting an abortion.  Side benefit - it might also allow us to start addressing a myriad number of other social issues.

2)      Actively work to change our healthcare system so that women have easy, affordable access to basic healthcare.  FYI – Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of women’s health services in the country.  Women need access to basic healthcare; they need access to affordable birth control.  This should help the women who were either done having children or weren’t ready for a child.

3)      Repeal the Hyde Amendment.  The reality is the federal government does numerous things that various segments of the population find onerous – unjust wars (Iraq, Yemen), the death penalty, fossil fuel exploration, etc.  Should we pass amendments that ban the use of federal dollars for these as well?  We all know the answer is no, so let’s stop treating abortion like it is somehow more onerous or egregious than these other things.

4)      Expand access to the social safety net so that families in need can easily get the financial assistance they need to provide for the basic needs of the family – healthy nutritious meals, basic quality clothing, homes with proper heat/ac, homes with doors/windows/roof that don’t leak, reliable transportation, etc.  Life is full of unexpected surprises; we need a safety net that ensures those surprises don’t leave people destitute.  There’s also a larger conversation to be had around financial planning, but that’s for a different post.

5)      Hold men accountable.  In the entire history of humanity there has NEVER been a pregnancy that happened without a man contributing to the process.  As men, we need to hold our gender responsible for the role we play in pregnancy.  We need to call out the deadbeat dads and absent fathers.  We need to challenge them to take responsibility for their actions and own up to the consequences of their actions.

6)      Teach our young people a sex-ed curriculum based on science, not theology.  Sex is not just for the sole purpose of procreation.  Even the Bible is pretty clear about that.  So let’s teach our young people a holistic view of sex that conveys the deep respect for intimacy; a view that encourages respect for intercourse, not fear or shame.  Let’s teach a curriculum where young men learn about women’s cycles; where everyone learns about all the various types of birth control – how they work, how effective they are, and their risks/benefits.

7)      Make sure companies provide plenty of time for both parents to bond with their newborn.  It should be fully paid leave that is separate from any other vacation/sick leave available to the employee. We need a greater push for fully covered maternity AND paternity leave.  We need to change our corporate culture to one that supports and strengthens families.  We do that by ensuring that both men and women have time off after a birth to recover and bond with the newborn.  It’s important for everyone that proper bonds be formed as they lead to a better and stronger family.

8)      Advocate for serious reform of our prison system.  If you are serious about the sanctity of life, then we have got to stop throwing young people in prison and tossing the key.  We also need to severely limit the use of the death penalty.  It’s impossible to be Pro-Life and actively support the use of the death penalty in so many cases.  I won’t advocate for a complete end to the death penalty because there are a few limited circumstances where the death penalty is fully justified and sadly necessary.  We also need more support for addiction treatment.  We need to stop throwing users in prison as a first move.  We need to get them into robust addiction treatment that addresses the addiction itself AND the underlying causes. 

9)      Support comprehensive gun control reform.  This should be fairly obvious, but the NRA has done a masterful job of blinding people and politicians to reality.  A universal background check for any gun permit would have prevented incidents like the Aurora, IL shooting earlier this year.  A three day wait allows authorities to actually check to ensure that, as a society, we are okay with the individual owning a gun.  Reinstate the assault weapons ban.  Assault weapons like the AR-15 and AK-47 are designed for one thing – killing the maximum number of people in the shortest possible time.  KILLING PEOPLE IS NOT PRO-LIFE!  I’m fine with owning handguns for personal protection.  Shotguns and rifles for hunting are perfectly fine.  Guns designed solely for the mass killing of other people – NO.

In case you haven’t figured it out, most of these policies are supported by many in the Pro-Choice camp.  I know many people in the Pro-Choice camp who wouldn’t personally seek an abortion.  Many of these same people are saddened by the reality of abortion and the need for it.  They also see these policies as the best ways to support women and effectively address many of the reasons women seek abortion.  If you can get behind these ideas then go ahead and call yourself Pro-Life.  If not, well then maybe you’re more concerned with power and controlling women than living, breathing human beings.  Because here’s the reality – abortion is ALWAYS A CHOICE; it’s just a matter of who is making the choice – the pregnant woman or a stuffy politician sitting in the capitol.  Frankly, I prefer letting the woman make the choice.

Going There, Part 1

Time for some blunt honesty – I am raging mad and Alabama and Georgia are right in the middle of my crosshairs.

As a white male, abortion has been a topic I’ve been hesitant to wade into, but no more.  As a brother to three wonderful sisters, as a husband to an amazing wife, as the father of two young daughters I HAVE to add my voice and say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.  The “Pro-Life” movement needs to be stopped.  It is nothing but a sham for earthly political power wrapped up in a specious moral argument about the sanctity of human life.

 

I’m going to say this loud and clear:

YOUR NEIGHBOR’S ABORTION DOES NOT VIOLATE YOUR FREEDOM OF RELIGION.

It seems rather ridiculous to have to say it, but that’s the God’s honest truth.  You are not going to Hell because your neighbor/friend/coworker/random woman from the bar had an abortion.  The fact that someone did something you don’t agree with does not condemn you to eternal damnation.  Millions of people do millions of things every day that don’t conform to someone’s religious beliefs, yet it’s only abortion that supposedly violates the religious freedom of a third party with no relationship to the person(s) involved in the abortion.

 

You are still free to believe abortion is wrong.  You are free to choose to never seek an abortion.  You are free to believe that any individual who obtains or performs an abortion is damned to Hell.  You can believe all of that.  You CANNOT force others to live by those same beliefs.  Furthermore, there is no long standing Biblical foundation for the virulent opposition to abortion espoused by today’s evangelicals.

Up through the 1960’s and 70’s most Protestant Christians held to a belief that life began when a baby “breathed the breath of God.”  In other words, when the baby was born and took it’s first breath.  Life did not begin at conception; it began at birth.  Most mainline evangelical belief held to a view that abortion took a potential life as opposed to murder which took an actual life.  (For a great overview of this head on over to Slactivist and read the posts on “White Evangelicalism, 1975 before the change,” part 1 2 3 4 5).

Why did evangelicals suddenly switch and literally rewrite the Bible to fit their new ideology?  They lost the racism war.  Evangelicals lost the ability to run their religious schools as white only schools.  The Supreme Court threatened them with the loss of their non-profit status.  In a move that clearly shows money was (and still is) more important than moral principles, they backed off.  But they needed a new polarizing topic to rally their base.  Enter abortion as the new moral imperative we must rally against.  And voila! The power of the white men leading Evangelical American Christianity is restored.

So what’s the problem with the “Pro-Life” movement?  Let’s start with the various “heartbeat” bills that have been debated and passed around the country.  Clearly the authors of such ludicrous bills and their supporters have never heard of Savita Halappanavar.  Savita was a young (31) pregnant woman living in Ireland.  In October 2012 she went to the hospital because she was experiencing some complications.  In short, at 17 weeks, she was having a miscarriage.  Except her body didn’t fully expel the fetus.  She had an incomplete miscarriage and the fetus was still in her womb with a detectable heartbeat.  Irish law at the time forbade doctors from performing an abortion while a fetal heartbeat was present.  No surprise, Savita developed a septic infection which led to a cardiac event and caused her death.  Absent the heartbeat law, doctors would have quickly performed an abortion, thus finishing the miscarriage already in progress, and saved Savita’s life.  Now – someone remind me how that heartbeat bill was “pro-life.”  Sorry, the fetus was never going to make it, and that is a sad truth that should be mourned, but an abortion would have allowed Savita to live.  That heartbeat law is NOT PRO-LIFE; it’s ANTI-ABORTION.  Thankfully Ireland has since changed it’s laws to ensure this never happens again.  Too bad many in America are quite content to let this happen again.

The other major issue with evangelicals and their “Pro-Life” campaign – they have very little concern for what happens to the baby after it is born.  These people are the same ones who want to end social welfare programs in this country.  Programs like SNAP, TANF, WIC, etc are vital to providing affordable access to healthy foods; foods that are essential to providing newborns with a good start to life.  These people are the same voters who don’t support raising the minimum wage and believe poverty is simply a result of laziness.  They would rather see parents working 2-3 jobs every week just to scrape by.  Oh, and since these same voters don’t want to adequately fix our healthcare system, women are denied access to basic affordable birth control.  If you don’t care about the child after birth, you aren’t Pro-Life, you are Anti-Abortion and that’s a very real and very big difference.

The Agenda Problem

There’s a problem in Washington.  Let’s call it the Agenda Problem.  It’s very virulent and infects most everyone who works on Capitol Hill.  Yes, a bunch of newly elected officials were just sworn in and we’d like to think they are untainted by the Agenda Problem, but it’s only a matter of time before they, too, become infected.

The Agenda Problem is really a result of the very partisan and polarized political culture we see in Washington.  Both parties are very ill and the cure is very painful, if at all possible.  This problem is most easily seen in the ways politicians talk about “their agenda” or “our agenda.”  In context, they’ve managed to make agenda sound like a dirty word, especially when referring to “their agenda.”  Recently Congressman Jim Banks, my representative, posted on Facebook that he won’t support any spending bill to end the government shutdown that includes language to loosen abortion restrictions.  His comment highlights both sides of the Agenda Problem.

There is a fundamental problem right now – the government does not have money to operate.  Working class Americans aren’t getting paid because their employees can’t agree on a spending bill.  We need our leaders in Congress to pass a spending bill and get the government running again.  Frankly, I’m not a big fan of being forced to work without pay.  So, let’s get a deal done and fund the government and save policy disputes on unrelated issues for another day.

Congressman Banks refuses to support the minibus bill because Democrats are trying to use it as a tool to repeal a provision known as “Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance (PLGHA).”  The provision requires foreign nongovernmental organizations to certify that they do not “perform or actively promote abortion as a means of family planning.”  Now, I don’t like PLGHA and I am certainly a fan of Democrats attempts to repeal the provision.  But that’s a debate for another day – and THAT’S THE POINT.

Politicians in Washington need to pass a spending bill and STOP TRYING TO PUSH PARTISAN AGENDA ITEMS INTO THE BILL.  Democrats need to drop PLGHA language from the bill and Trump needs to drop his demand for $5B for a border wall.

Like I said before, the Agenda Problem infects both parties.  The spending bill is a clear example.  Trump refuses to fund the government unless he gets his wall.  A wall, I remind you, that Mexico was going to pay for.  A wall that is opposed by a majority of Americans.  And that’s the result from multiple polls.  Not to be outdone, Democrats are now trying to use the spending bill to repeal anti-abortion language they find rather onerous.  These two particular items are non-starters for the other party.  Democrats are not going to agree to $5B for a border wall and most Republicans are not going to support language that removes abortion restrictions.  And the truly crazy thing is that the other party knows it.  Trump and the Republicans know Democrats aren’t going to support the wall and Democrats know Republicans aren’t going to support a repeal of PLGHA.  And yet, each side insists on including this language in a bill that is vital to the ability of the government to simply function.

These two policy goals are part of the Agenda for each party.  Its part of what they promised their base and so now they have to deliver the goods.  Except that conveniently ignores the fact that there is another side to the debate.  Wouldn’t it be so much better if Democrats removed the PLGHA language and Trump agreed to the $1.6B figure proposed earlier?  Then we could pass a spending bill and get the government running again and ordinary Americans could get back to being able to pay their bills.

Here’s the final crux of the Agenda Problem.  Spending bills are BIG items.  There’s a lot of pressure to pass these bills because a government shutdown, even a partial one, is a BIG DEAL.  It’s not going to look good if you’re the party that causes people to miss their mortgage payments because they were furloughed.  With all the pressure to pass these spending bills, both parties use it as a cudgel to attempt to force the other party to vote for something unpopular with their base.  Essentially, the leaders in Congress, and the President, use spending bills as a way of forcing their opponents to lose face – either by forcing a shutdown, or by supporting legislation that is strongly opposed by their supporters.  The increasingly hyper-partisan nature of our politics is only making this dynamic worse.

So why don’t we all take a step back and agree that the priority right now is getting the government open again.  That means politicians take the really partisan stuff out of the bill.  It also means voters don’t belittle their representatives for “being soft” or whatever other insult can be hurled.  It means we applaud BOTH parties for finding a way to GET THE JOB DONE.  If we can find a way to do that, maybe we can start to solve the Agenda Problem currently afflicting Washington.