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| "HUMANISTS
REFLECT ON THE CURRENT NATIONAL CRISIS" A forum moderated by Juan Bernal. This is a subject very much on our minds
and we want to hear from all our members.
Juan will make a brief presentation and lead the discussion. Quote of the Month: "What
consigns so many women to death or physical impairment is not a deficiency in
technology, but a deficiency in the value placed on women's lives." J. Jacobson 1991, State of the World. Abortion (An Overview) By Charles L. Rulon From "Enslaved: Birth Control and
Abortion" Introduction For the last
several decades, the Christian Right and their political allies have been
waging a massive, political, propaganda and legal war against separation of
church and state. Battles continue to rage over a. the right (if any) of women to have
complete reproductive control over their own bodies (without, of course, having
to give up their sexuality), vs. b. the inalienable
right to life (if any) of fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses. Also zealously
argued is which Christian sect (if any) is really in touch with God’s will on
these issues. These baffles offer an excellent opportunity to strengthen scientific and
rational critical thinking skills and to arrive at wise, compassionate,
ethically superior decisions regarding abortion. Such skills and ethical
maturity are vitally needed in our socially and ecologically endangered world — a world where military, patriarchal and
fundamentalist religious forces all too frequently dominate and where dishonest
propaganda, pseudo-science and religious leaps of faith continue to spread
like weeds. Abortion and the American public For the last
three decades, one of the most morally divisive issues in America has been the subject
of abortion. Roughly 35-45% of
Americans polled believe that women should have reproductive control over their
own bodies and that abortion for essentially any reason should be a woman’s
choice.1 Many believe that only a patriarchal, scientifically uninformed,
religiously controlled, immoral society would try to force desperate women to
stay pregnant against their will. But, another
40-50% disagree. They believe that abortions should be restricted to cases of rape, incest and serious health reasons.
When asked why they would support the right to abort for those women who didn’t
choose to have sex, but oppose this right for those women who did choose
to have sex, a common response is that they felt compassion for rape victims,
but not for irresponsible, “loose” women who just want “convenience” abortions.
Thus, for 40-50% of Americans, it
would seem that keeping so-called “innocent pre-born babies” alive is less
important than enforcing conservative morality regarding women’s sexual
behavior. Finally, 10-15% of Americans remain totally opposed to almost all
abortions, even in cases of rape or incest. Some see all life as sacred from the moment of
fertilization aid have responded: “We do not murder God’s unborn children for
the crimes of their fathers.” Over 60% of Americans believe that the decision to abort during the first
three months should ultimately be up to the woman and her physician. But 60%
polled also agreed with the statement: “Abortion is murder.” Interesting! Still, abortions don’t produce enough moral outrage for over 80% of
Americans to want women who abort to spend even a day in jail, much less to
face murder charges. Also, America now spends over $25 billion a year in welfare for teen mothers and would save from $4—$
12 in future costs for every dollar invested in family planning programs for
the poor, including abortion. Yet, most of those polled are still
opposed to their taxes being spent on contraception and abortions for the
poor, or for “careless, loose” teenagers. “Don’t abort, put your child up for adoption,” many say. Yet, if carried out worldwide, this would have resulted in an
additional 45 million unwanted and mostly unadopted babies born year after year
with catastrophic effects socially and environmentally. In the U.S. it would
also have been calamitous, resulting each year in roughly one million unwanted,
unadopted babies. Over 80% of Americans also believe that teenagers wanting an abortion
should be required to have their parent’s permission, even though such laws have
proven to be disastrous. Most
of those teens who already can’t or won’t talk to their parents would rather
seek out an illegal abortion, perform a self-induced abortion, give birth, or
leave home than to involve their parents. Finally, half of those polled believe that the consent of the male involved should be required before a woman could
have an abortion. Background Information The
world is awash in unwanted embryos Humans are fallible. They make mistakes and
can be careless sexually. They can also be into denial, sexual guilt and embarrassment.
And then there’s ignorance, alcohol and forceful males. Also, foolproof
contraception is often lacking, too expensive or condemned. The result is
inevitable and has been throughout time. Those who inherited two X-chromosomes
in the genetic coin toss frequently suffer from unplanned pregnancies. For example, every year in the United States, a wealthy, highly educated
nation, half of all pregnancies are
still unplanned!9 In addition, our overpopulated, ecologically endangered
planet is swamped with an excess of human embryos—also half of whom (80
million) are unplanned aid mostly unwanted. About 45 million of these 80
million will be aborted. The remaining 35
million will be aided to the 80 million planned pregnancies. The result is
that, in the next decade alone, we’ll be adding the equivalent of an entire
additional Africa full of poor people, plus a half-dozen Iraqs thrown in for
political instability. Unwanted
pregnancies and, thus, abortions are here to stay If nothing changes, in the next decade
alone there will be about half a billion abortions worldwide. But even if a
“miracle” occurred and all of the major
obstacles (political, religious, sexist, social, moral, educational and
financial) to contraception could be overcome, there would still be tens of
millions of unplanned pregnancies (contraception is not perfect; people are
human). Most of these will opt to abort, legal or not, like it or not. Thus,
abortions will continue to remain a significant post-conceptive birth
control method into
the foreseeable future. Anti-abortion
laws have been disastrous Because of ancient pre-scientific religious
dogmas, entrenched patriarchal laws and customs, the desire to punish “loose”
women, the need for larger annies and more consumers, plus profound ignorance,
maddening red tape and grinding poverty, roughly half of the world’s women
still do not have access to safe and/or legal abortions. The emotional, physical, social and financial costs to women, to their
families and to society at large of anti-abortion laws have been well
documented. And it has been staggering” Such laws have never stopped mass abortions. Instead, every
year at least 20 million distraught, desperate women the world over seeks out
dangerous, illegal abortions. Fully one-third develops medical complications
including abdominal, uterine and intestinal perforations, massive hemorrhaging
and kidney failure, all complicated by deadly infections. In poor countries, the risk of death from an illegal abortion is 25-100
times greater than from having a
legal one.’2 In fact, over 70,000 women do die, year after
year, either at the hands of
unskilled practitioners in filthy conditions, or through self-induced
attempts.’3 In summary: Anti-abortion
laws have turned one of the safest of all surgical procedures into a highly
dangerous one. They have made unavailable for desperate women across the world
the benefits of anesthetics, antibiotics and safe blood transfusions. These
women have been literally forced back into the “dark ages” before modern
medicine. In the last 20 years, anti-abortion laws have criminalized literally
hundreds of millions of women worldwide. They have resulted in literally
millions of gruesome deaths, tens of millions of destroyed families and
hundreds of millions of women seriously injured and infected. Scarce medical
resources and ecological systems have been overtaxed. In addition, over the last 20 years, the world’s restrictive laws and
attitudes toward abortion resulted in hundreds of millions of unwanted children
being born. Poverty increased. Tens of millions of abandoned children currently
wander the streets. Crime escalates. Social disintegration accelerates.
Millions of poor children die each year from preventable causes such as
malnutrition, contaminated water and curable diseases. Abortions in the United States In 1900 all contraceptives were illegal
and seen as immoral by the large majority of churches. Abortions were also
illegal and deadly. Even so, tens of millions of American women still found a
way to abort. In fact, in
the 1940’s an estimated one fifth of all married women by age 45 had chosen to
abort. But illegal abortions were exceedingly dangerous. Up to the early 1970’s
several hundred thousand American women were being hospitalized each year for
massive infections and internal injuries resulting from such abortions. Finally, in the early 1970’s, the U.S. Supreme Court, after listening to
experts on all sides, confirmed that there was little agreement among the
public, nor among different medical, religious, political, philosophical and
social groups as to when personhood appears (if at all) during fetal development.
By “personhood” the Court meant an individual who was entitled to the inalienable
right to life. As a result, in 1973 the Court voted 7-2 to legalize abortion in its
historic Roe v. Wade decision.
Since then, over 30 million American women have chosen to safely terminate an
unwanted pregnancy, 90% within the first trimester. By legalizing abortions, the U.S. joined the trend of liberalizing
abortion laws around the world. The global result has been a dramatic reduction
in the number of unintended pregnancies, plus deaths and injuries from illegal
abortions. Vast improvements in public health have been observed. Now for the first time ever, women had the potential to decide for
themselves when (or even if) to bring a child into the world, instead of having
fate, dominant males, ancient religions, or oppressive laws decide for them. The backlash The Roe v. Wade decision touched off a
firestorm among members of conservative religious groups and their political
allies. The backlash was spearheaded by the Roman Catholic Church. But within a
few years Protestant fundamentalists, evangelicals and the powerful
“born-again” Republican Party were all committed to repealing Roe v. Wade. Since 1980, almost all
Republicans in Congress, “with God on their side,” have opposed Roe v. Wade. Some 200 versions of the
“Human Life (Constitutional) Amendment,” designed to prohibit all abortions
from fertilization on, have been introduced into Congress. Dozens of
Republican legislatures across the country have already passed hundreds of
laws, which inhibit to one degree or another women’s reproductive control. By the year 2000, abortion was still the most common surgical procedure
among U.S. women. Yet, after 20 years of political and conservative religious
opposition, plus 20 years of domestic violence to abortion doctors and clinics
(vandalism, shootings, bombings, arson, death threats), abortion is no longer
available in 85% of all U.S.
counties and is becoming less and less so in the remaining ones. Abortion and civil rights The Christian Right refers to the abortion
battle as the “civil rights issue of the century; the vital issue of protecting
the weakest, most innocent and most vulnerable among us.” Their ministries cry
out with alarm: “Americans have murdered over 30 million innocent pre-born
babies since 1973, making our ‘holocaust’ of the unborn worse than the Nazi
Holocaust.” But there is just no way, if one is being rational, compassionate and
truly religious in the best sense of the word, that one can equate those killed
in the Nazi Holocaust with aborted embryos and fetuses. By extension, there is
no way that doctors who perform abortions and women who choose abortions can be
equated with the Nazi exterminators in the concentration camps. America is not
Nazi Germany! Making such comparisons truly presents a window to the extremist
world-view of many anti-choice activists. Most Americans know this. That’s why the Democratic Party, the large
majority of civil rights groups in the U.S., dozens of religious organizations
and a number of medical organizations (now representing hundreds of thousands
of doctors and medical students) are for choice. Motivations of the anti-choice leaders Many leaders in the anti-choice movement
firmly believe that fetuses are sacred creations, that abortions are going
against God’s will and that the unborn are all entitled to the inalienable
right to life. But there are also other compelling motivations that have
nothing to do with anguishing over the abortions of unwanted fetuses in the
bodies of strangers. These other motivations have to do with maintaining male dominance and
political power; they have to do with preventing the further weakening of the
pope’s claim to infallibility and
of Catholic dogma; they have to do with converting America into a
fundamentalist Christian theocracy, fighting sexual “sin” and punishing “loose”
women by enforcing ultra-conservative sexual moral standards; they have to do
with fighting for the survival of biblical beliefs and against the spread of
secular humanism and the teaching of “atheistic” evolution. For these leaders, there can be no compromise with the “enemy”. All
abortions from the moment of fertilization must be vigorously opposed by
whatever means possible, even violence if necessary. Too much is at stake to
lose. Historically the outlawing of abortions by the male power structure has rarely been because of any concern for
fetuses in the bodies of strangers. Scientific
discoveries challenge religious dogmas We’re now scientifically light-years ahead
of the writers of the world’s many holy books and religions. Scientists have
uncovered our “infinitely” large and “infinitely” old universe, plus our
extremely long 3.8 billion-year evolutionary history via natural selection. In addition, it’s now widely accepted by the scientific community that
every process in living organisms (from fertilization to the complex functions
of our brain) strictly obeys the laws of chemistry and physics. No supernatural
inputs seem necessary anywhere for life to function or to evolve. Furthermore, a staggering amount of evidence now supports the theory
that our mind is totally a function of our neuro-anatomy and physiology. It is
as much a product of evolution as is the rest of our body. There is just no evidence
that any “paranormal” component, or “ghost in the machine” exists. Also, after decades of intensive research, there is still no clear scientific evidence for (and considerable
indirect evidence against) the existence of any supernatural phenomena at work
anywhere in our universe, either today or in the past. Events such as weeping
religious statues or the appearance of the Virgin Mary have all turned out to
be unverifiable, scientifically explainable, wishful thinking, hallucinations
or fraudulent Finally, virtually all of the evidence accumulated over the last 200
years (from science, historical, textual and linguistic analyses,
archaeological discoveries and comparative religious) studies supports the
conclusion that the Bible is a very human book. Rather than being the “word of
God”, it was written long ago by males who lived in patriarchal cultures far
away and different from our own and who knew no more concerning the nature of
the cosmos, the world, or life than did any other ancient peoples. Societies
create their own reality Over the last several hundred years, scientists
have documented numerous facts that fundamentally conflict with many religious
beliefs relevant to abortion. Yet our country is still bogged down in these
ancient religious dogmas. What to do? We can choose to see the availability of elective, safe, early
abortions as a huge scientific and public health success, as well as a social
triumph for women’s rights and healthy families in a very imperfect,
overpopulated, ecologically damaged world. We can also choose to view women who
wish to terminate early unwanted pregnancies as demonstrating moral
excellence in their decision to not bring still more unwanted children into
this world. Or we can weaken women by making them feel guilty, sinful, cheap, or
ashamed for getting themselves into this unwanted pregnancy mess in the first
place. Or finally, we can totally disempower women by ignoring all relevant
science, rational thought and compassion in favor of the religious leaps of
faith of the Protestant fundamentalists and the Vatican. We can equate the aborting
of unwanted tiny, one-ounce, brainless, senseless embryos with the murder of
children, thus making a woman’s decision to abort an extremely immoral and
criminal act. Some final thoughts In the United
States, a conflict of national importance exists today between two
fundamentally different views of sexual morality and even of reality, itself.
One view is supported by
hundreds of years of scientific discoveries, by rational, critical thought and
by a humanistic and liberal religious morality based on compassion and science.
The other view is based on leaps of faith regarding papal infallibility,
ancient religious authority and “God’s will”. It’s no coincidence that the overwhelming majority of those Americans who
strongly oppose abortion are conservative Catholics and Protestants and that
anti-abortion literature C is filled with references to “God’s laws” and to
selected biblical passages. In sharp contrast, it’s no coincidence that numerous
medical organizations and over 90% of the members of the National Academy of
Sciences (the hail of fame for scientists in the United States) are for choice. Humanists, rationalists and liberal Christians emphasize that the world
can no longer afford to tolerate such authoritarian pronouncements from popes,
fundamentalist ministers, televangelists and others that demand universal
obedience. This is because we live in a world where there are horrific
emotional, physical, social and environmental consequences of
attempting to force women to stay pregnant against their will. It’s a world
already groaning under the weight of poverty, ecological destruction and
social unrest, a world already up to its ears in unwanted, abandoned and
malnourished children. Thanks For Your Support: New member - Virginia Bernal Renewing - Bob and Pat Bryant Cinda Combs Robert Hoffelder PHILOSOPHER’S CORNER By Juan Bernal (Ph.D. worker
in the field) On
September 16 the Orange County Humanists hosted a lecture on issues relating to
abortion by Charles Rulon. The lecture was impressive in its broad coverage of
scientific, sociological, and philosophical issues relating to the abortion
question and presented a very strong case for the pro-choice position. It was a
pleasure to hear from someone who expresses so well the values of rational,
critical thought and practices the scientific approach. Mr. Rulon deserves our
admiration as someone having the courage and moral commitment to advocate a
rationalistic, humanistic position in the face of the forces of religious dogma
and superstition, so prevalent in our society today. I hope we get to hear more
from Mr. Rulon. Special thanks to Paul Ricci for coordinating this speaker’s
appearance before the HOAC. After the September 11
terrorist attack, we are all urged to unify as Americans and support our
president as he and his advisors prepare a military response to those who may
have been involved or supported the terrorist campaign against our country.
Dissent or political partisanship is strongly discouraged, and in some cases
even condemned, as Rep. Barbara Lee discovered (She represents the Oakland
district in the House and was the only house member to vote against giving
broad powers to President Bush.) Yet, dissent and critical debate are important
elements of our democratic society, and we should not completely relinquish
them, even in the face of national crises such as the present one. It is in
this spirit, that I offer the following observations on the president’s
rhetoric in the days following the tragic events. Among
other remarks, Mr. Bush stated that the terrorists who hijacked the airliners
represented evil (I won’t quarrel
with that), and that the U.S. response would represent the struggle of good against evil. He also pledged to “eradicate all evil from the world”; and
referred to the upcoming military effort as crusade.*
Now I grant that these remarks are somewhat excusable as an emotional
response to a horrendous act against our country; they might have been made
“off the cuff” and without much reflection. However, they are the remarks of
our president, who should know better. They certainly can be understood to
express the thinking of a man who believes that the U.S., “blessed by God”, has
been given the commission to embark on a “holy crusade” to defeat all that we
define as evil in the world. This makes me almost as nervous as the calls by
Islamic fundamentalist for a “holy war” against “satanic America.” In both
cases we have the assumption that our “tribe” is blessed by God, represents all
that is good, and has the obligation
to eradicate evil from the world.
This kind of thinking is probably among the first five causes of death,
suffering and destruction in human history. It does not seem too much to ask
that our president tone down his rhetoric and try to sound more like a
rational, pragmatic leader, while still expressing the righteous anger and
moral commitment that the tragic events of September 11 require. * Most of the objections to
Bush’s use of the term “crusade” centered on the historical fact of Christian
crusades against Moslems, Jews and all others perceived as infidels. Naturally,
use of this term was a very unwise in light of the fact that the U.S. wants to
assure Arabs and Moslems that the military effort is not directed against them
and their culture. Some
have pointed out that North Americans and Europeans use the term “crusade”, not
as meaning a Christian military venture to reclaim the “holy land,” but a
concerted effort with moral overtones; as in the crusade against world hunger.
For example; crusades against Moslems, Jews and all others perceived as
infidels. Naturally, use of this term was a very unwise in light of the fact
that the U.S. wants to assure Arabs and Moslems that the military effort is not
directed against them and their culture. Some have
pointed out that North Americans and Europeans use the term “crusade”, not as
meaning a Christian military venture to reclaim the “holy land,” but a
concerted effort with moral overtones, as in the crusade against world hunger,
for example. Library Materials If you
have library materials and have forgotten to return them please check and get
them back to us. New Email Address! Our new email address is "dav7@fea.net" If
you have an email submission for our newsletter. I'm looking for book reviews for upcoming issues and email is an
easy way to send them. HAOC MESSAGE BOARD Board
member Benito Franqui has set up an internet message board using
"Ezboard". For access instructions email Benito at benfranq@socal.rr.com. |
