COMMENTARY – FIRE BELL IN THE NIGHT

Varied Reactions to Abortion Around the World

At the end of the nineteenth century, nearly every country had serious restrictions on abortion. “The most important sources of such laws were the imperial countries of Europe—Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, and Italy—who imposed their own laws forbidding abortion on their colonies” (Berer 2017). The Roman Catholic Church also played, and continues to play, a major role in restrictions surrounding abortion. Pope Pius IX declared in 1869 that abortion was murder, and that remains the Church's official position (see Saunders 2022). However, a marked tendency toward a relaxation of restrictions permeated the twentieth century, and by 1985, “nearly all industrialized countries—and several others—liberalized their abortion laws.” In 1994, under the International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action, 179 “countries committed to preventing unsafe abortion,” and that led to additional liberalization (Finer and Fine 2013). By 2013, “in the global north and central and eastern Asia,” nearly all countries “with notable exceptions” had liberal abortion laws. This contrasted with “countries in the global south” that criminalized abortion “except for limited circumstances” (Finer and Fine 2013).

The reasons for relaxation seem to have resulted from a growing concern for women's rights and a recognition that restrictions have always come from control by men. Moreover, the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2020 included abortion among its “essential health care services.” It said that “abortion is a simple health care intervention that can be effectively managed by a wide range of health workers using medication or a surgical procedure. In the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, a medical abortion can also be safely self-managed by the pregnant person outside of a health care facility” (WHO 2021).

As might have been expected, there has been reaction—based largely on politics, but politics in the guise of religion. Much of the pushback has come from the United States, with its especially aggressive anti-abortion movement within an increasingly undemocratic ultra-right-wing movement that has taken over one of the country's two major political parties. The situation today in industrial countries ranges from Canada, with no restrictions at all, to Poland, with harshly repressive policies, where in practice, “it is almost impossible for those eligible for a legal abortion to obtain one.” Poland, as a result, now is being challenged before the European Court of Human Rights (Human Rights Watch 2022). Canada, on the other hand, has had no restriction on abortion whatever since 1988. It is “available on request with no stipulations as to who must provide it or where… The benefits for women of having no law are crystal clear” (Berer 2017). Regardless of the fears of opponents, and even many supporters, that “bad things” will happen without at least some restrictions, Canada demonstrates that no law may be the best law (Berer 2017).

Will society ever recognize, generally, that women, acting on sound medical advice, are the best judges of what to do with their own bodies? Societies have never questioned whether men may be so trusted.

Increasing Threats to Reproductive Rights in America

Men may certainly be able to appreciate a woman's desire to have a child. A man may even have the desire equally himself. It is doubtful, however, that a man could ever appreciate fully the horror a woman experiences who finds herself involuntarily pregnant and is in a situation of terror, such as abuse, abandonment, or extreme poverty. Thus, any man who approaches the topic should do so with humility and careful explanation. No man, or men in general, should be “The Decider” (as George W. Bush would have had it) of what a woman does with her reproductive system. Nor, in fact, should other women be in charge. Decisions on reproduction should be personal.

Two centuries ago, when the question of Missouri statehood arose, it introduced the subject of slavery squarely into the national political discourse. The potential danger to the Union was so great that Thomas Jefferson said it made him as fearful as a “fire bell in the night.” He was well aware that the South's determination to continue to enslave human beings took priority over any other consideration. The more astute readers of the New York Times should have been equally startled on November 7, 2021 if they read the special opinion section carefully. That section (Kweku 2021) contained suggested constitutional revisions that chosen contributors considered essential to permit America “to dream again.” Most of the material was excellent, or at least would stimulate thoughtful consideration, and some were compelling. The key suggestions from the proposals for constitutional amendments contained in Kweku (2021) follow.

Kate Andrias argued that all workers shall have the right to form and join labor unions, while Deborah Archer would revise the Thirteenth Amendment that abolished slavery (see Kweku 2021). It would strike from that Amendment the listed exceptions that continue to permit slavery or involuntary servitude if imposed “as a punishment for crime” after conviction. The rationale is that the United States suffers inexcusably from mass incarceration, and often uses the labor of prisoners. Samuel Moyn contends that international law should be part of the U.S. law (Kweku 2021). Barry McDonald would expand the Supreme Court and limit its powers and David Schleicher would prohibit states from restricting people's interstate mobility and protectionist practices (Kweku 2021). Cindy Cohn's new amendment would expand the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of privacy violations to include securing their data and megadata (Kweku 2021). Each of these six at least has something that might be said in its favor. One, however, would be completely disastrous.

Of the seven suggestions from seven scholars for a 28^th Amendment that this respected venue selected to include, one was poisonous; fully the equivalent of Jefferson's “fire bell in the night.” That would be the third one, by DeSanctis (2021; see also Kweku 2021); it would ban abortion except when “medical certainty exists” that a pregnancy would “cause the death of the mother” (Kweku 2021, emphasis added). It would mandate that the term “person” apply “from the moment of conception, at every stage of biological development, irrespective of age, health, function, gender, race or dependency.” Thus, the interests of the woman would barely be taken into consideration—grudgingly and only minimally—if, and only if, her life clearly were at risk. Her well-being, health, preferences, and even fundamental human rights would be cast aside as irrelevant—as would rape as a cause of the pregnancy. She would be reduced to the status of a vessel, or a slave.

The proposed amendment assumes the unquestioned truth of something that neither science nor common sense can support: a zygote, an embryo, or a fetus is equal to a fully functioning, whole, human being. Yet an embryo, say, cannot enable a taxpayer to receive an exemption, nor can it file for habeas corpus if inside an imprisoned woman. In a real sense, in fact, such an amendment would confer extra rights on a zygote, an embryo, or a fetus: the power to supersede and cancel any competing right held by a functioning, whole, human being. Such zealotry demands a response.

The history of abortion in the United States is not widely understood. Thus, misrepresentations abound, both unintentional and deliberate. Arguments against abortion tend too often to be accepted uncritically (see, e.g., Hughes 2021, or any argument in favor of a “heartbeat” prohibition of abortion). The effects of abortion restrictions rarely are recognized for what they always are, unconscionable violations of human freedom and dignity. Rarely is the hypocrisy of many so-called “pro-life” activists recognized. Such zealots tend to decry what they call the “abortion industry” as existing to reap profits.

Under current conditions, this is utter nonsense. Doctors who provide abortions tend to be highly dedicated. They have to be. Any physician in modern America could make far more money from another kind of medical practice. Moreover, refusing to provide abortion would bring a doctor a huge side benefit: it would remove the constant threat of violent death. For a doctor who performs abortions, there is always lethal danger from fanatic “pro-Life” terrorists bent on assassination, their fury excited by demagogic politicians (see, e.g., Smith 2019; see also Braid 2021). If the doctor does not perform abortions, the assassins would seek their targets elsewhere.

The Little-Known History of Protestant Anti-Abortion Activism in America

Until well into the nineteenth century, there were no restrictions on abortion in the United States, nor was there any stigma attached to ending a pregnancy before term. Abortion, as a rule, meant ending a pregnancy after “quickening”; early terminations did not even qualify (“quickening” was the time at which the pregnant woman first felt movement; that tends to be around the 15^th or 16^th week). The Roman Catholic Church itself tended not to condemn abortion before that point. The argument was that a human soul entered the fetus late in pregnancy. Even today, as Garry Wills (2021) points out, although the Church fervently condemns abortion, it does not argue that scriptures forbid it. The Church argues, rather, that abortion violates natural law. Wills is a superb scholar who is also a staunch Catholic, and who is fully familiar with thought on natural law. He argues cogently in the New York Times that the bishops, by forbidding abortion, are wrong on the issue (Wills 2021).

As the nineteenth century progressed, there began to be efforts to curb the practice. This came about as there was a gradual relaxation of restrictions on women. For example, the development of the Post Office created situations that encouraged women to leave their homes, unchaperoned, to collect the mail. Although officials made some efforts to segregate women from men there, they were unsuccessful, and the restrictions disappeared.

It is difficult to recognize today what a radical development—women leaving homes unescorted—that was, or how restrictive the culture tended to be. About a half century earlier, Jefferson (1816) reflected the prevailing attitude of the time when he wrote on September 5 to Samuel Kercheval that women should not vote because to do so would cause them to “mix promiscuously in the public meetings of men.” That would lead to “depravation [sic] of morals and ambiguity of issue” (Jefferson 1816). It would be difficult to find an expression more demeaning to women than Jefferson's comment that their children, their issue, would be of uncertain parentage unless they, the women, were constantly confined to the home, or otherwise carefully supervised. Opposition to abortion was part of a misogynist backlash that took place when women began to exercise any new freedoms. To complicate the issue, physicians began to organize as a profession. They sought to eliminate the widespread but often dangerous performance of abortions by persons who frequently were unskilled, and even untrained. Note that before the Flexner Report in 1910 stimulated regulation of medical education, even many doctors were poorly trained (see Duffy 2011). These unskilled practitioners were also competitive financially with the doctors.

By the dawn of the twentieth century, laws forbidding abortion had emerged across the United States. As is so obvious that it easily might be overlooked—the forest and trees phenomenon—men have always determined the substance of policy regarding abortion; that is, policy relating solely to women. In the event that the misogyny might not be glaringly evident, law professor Tang (2021) recently made it plain in a Washington Post op-ed. He noted that the all-male medical lobby, as it campaigned against abortion, argued that a woman should not be permitted “to judge for herself” in such a matter, because women are “prone to derangement” (Tang 2021).

As the century progressed, some states began to weaken their restrictions. Then, in 1973 (January 22), came the landmark Roe v Wade ¹ decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court declared that there could be no restrictions on abortion in the first trimester. In the second, states could apply some restrictions, but maternal health must have priority. In the final trimester, states could apply restrictions as desired, except that they must permit abortion in cases in which reasonable medical judgment indicated that it was essential for maternal health.

States immediately began to flood the Court with various attempts to restrict abortions, but not until 1979 were any successful. Then, in Bellotti v. Baird, the Court permitted states to require parental consent for minors who wished to terminate a pregnancy—although the decision did require that there had to be an alternative for minors who were deemed to be adequately mature to make sound decisions, or that their “best interests” were at risk. ² It is interesting to note the logic here: young women might be too immature to decide not to continue their pregnancy, but not too immature to be condemned from an early age to raise an unwanted child. Nor did it consider that the pregnant minor's father may have abused her and caused the pregnancy.

Thus, the Court permitted states to discriminate by age, and violate a pregnant person's rights. Another decision, Harris v. McRae in 1980, upheld the Hyde Amendment that discriminated on the basis of income. ³ The 1976 amendment prohibited federal funding of abortions, and states added their own prohibitions. Hyde first applied to the 1977 Appropriations Act and has been renewed annually. There were some exceptions, and these varied through the years, but Hyde severely affected poor women who received care through Medicaid, a program that provides medical services to the very poor. It continues to have pernicious effects on huge numbers of women, but that may soon become a thing of the past, depending on whether it remains in the budget bills Congress is considering. If the budget emerges from Congress with no Hyde Amendment, huge numbers of poor women who receive care through Medicaid will become eligible for abortion services that the Federal Government funds. It is noteworthy that President Biden has called for the Hyde Amendment to be eliminated (McCammon 2021).

There were other relevant rulings. Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992 upheld a Pennsylvania law requiring a 24-hour waiting period, “counseling,” reporting requirements, and parental consent (see Liptak 2021). It did strike the provision requiring spousal notification (recognizing the possibility of an abusive spouse), and it added a new criterion, “viability.” There have been numerous other restrictions receiving the Court's approval. These are merely the high points (or low points).

Until later in the twentieth century, though, abortion was not generally prominent in political discourse. The most strident voices against abortion were Catholics. Protestants generally avoided the subject or supported abortion (Skidmore 2015). They generally considered it a “Catholic issue.” That changed when television evangelism emerged, and when politics began to overwhelm religion among fundamentalist/evangelicals. In general, American fundamentalist/evangelicals had been likely to follow the biblical admonition to separate from the world, and thus often had not been active politically (Skidmore 2015). If they voted, they were likely to support the New Deal and later Democratic administrations because of Democratic economic policies. In the 1970s and 1980s, though, there was what might be termed a new Great Awakening, of sorts. That revolved around the Calvinist teachings of Francis Schaeffer and his son, Frank, conservative Presbyterians who had returned to the United States after years conducting L’Abri, a retreat in Switzerland (Broomfield 2012). Schaeffer, himself, had been largely apolitical.

“Schaeffer's new stance reflected some of the philosophy of Rousas John Rushdoony, a twentieth-century Christian philosopher” (Broomfield 2012, 40), and the most extreme of the evangelical/fundamentalists. He combined quasi-anarchist economics with a stark theocracy, and was the father of “Dominionism,” or “Re-constructionism.” Broomfield (2012, 40) writes that many scholars considered Schaeffer to be a dominionist, “as are Pat Robertson and even Sarah Palin,” and he goes on to describe some of Rushdoony's ideas. Among them was his call for the creation of a Christian United States that would subdue the world. Rushdoony's agenda also included a huge expansion of the death penalty. Capital offenses would include not only those of today, but also adultery, blasphemy, homosexuality, the practice of astrology, incest, the striking of a parent, or “in the case of women, un-chastity before marriage” (Broomfield 2012, 40). Broomfield (2012, 40) notes these “were a bit much for Schaeffer and Robertson,” but he suggests that these and other leaders may, to some extent, have remained disciples who managed to make Rushdoony's doctrines “more palatable for the mainstream.” Nevertheless, he quoted Frank as saying that his father thought Rushdoony to be “clinically insane” (Broomfield 2012, 45), which seems to be a reasonable interpretation of one who, among other things, would put children to death for showing disrespect to their parents.

Frank writes that he and his father were the major force encouraging American fundamentalist/evangelical leaders to become politically active, and to unite with those whom they had considered theological enemies. Specifically, Frank was the first to seize upon abortion as an important political topic that might energize evangelicals. Previously, as indicated, American Protestants had tended to dismiss it as a “Catholic issue.” He described the making—with his father—of “a new Christian documentary titled How Should We Then Live?” The film became a huge success “with the burgeoning religious right in America” (Broomfield 2012, 56). As the younger Schaeffer described it:

When we started making How Should We Then Live? Dad had not wanted to mention abortion in the series. We were already in production when the Supreme Court handed down the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. If it hadn’t been for me, Dad's reputation as an evangelical scholar would have remained intact. As it was, my absolutist youthful commitment to the pro-life cause goaded my father into taking political positions far more extreme than came naturally to him. (Schaeffer 2007, 260; quoted in Broomfield 2012, 56)

The elder Schaeffer said that he didn’t “want to be identified with some Catholic issue. I’m not putting my reputation on the line for them!” (Broomfield 2012, 66–67). he shouted. In words that would likely offend every fundamentalist/evangelical today, he raged in what Frank later called a shouting match (Broomfield 2012, 66–67), “what does abortion have to do with art and culture? I’m known as an intellectual, not for this sort of political thing.”

Nevertheless, the father gave in. They changed the documentary, and with it, they changed history. In 1977, 34 years after Francis Schaeffer began his ministry, the film appeared on the market. It was a sensation. Now, after nearly a half century, it remains available. Through the years it has sold millions of copies, and “it became a staple of evangelical/fundamentalist” teachings for Protestants and Catholics as well (Broomfield 2012, 57–58). Abortion became the key issue uniting the religious right as they rage not only against the modern world in general, but specifically against the government of the United States. The Schaeffers had framed their issues so powerfully that they overcame the traditional enmity between Protestants and Catholics, especially between Baptists and Catholics. Without the issue of abortion—a political issue masquerading as religion—it is doubtful that the disparate elements of the religious right in America would have been able to merge into such a powerful political force, one that today is presenting a fascist alternative as a threat to the Democratic republic, and to the very idea of self-government.

Frank now admits with regret that the group that he and his father worked with and influenced so strongly, “such evangelical/fundamentalist luminaries as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, James Dobson and John Hagee” were a “hate-America group,” and that he and his father crossed the line into open sedition (Broomfield 2012, 8). He and his father not only were part of this group but were leaders. “We were very anti-American,” Frank said. “We became a truly anti-American force” (Broomfield 2012, 8–9).

The Schaeffers had become openly political and therefore were eager to spread their influence beyond explicitly religious circles. In the 1970s and 1980s, they met frequently with such powerful political figures as Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Jack Kemp (who was the Republican candidate for vice president in 1996), and former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop. Frank said that “the evangelical antiabortion movement that Dad, Koop, and I helped create seduced the Republican Party” (Broomfield 2012, 76). Before the Schaeffers, Frank said speaking of politicians, “nobody paid any attention to Jesus” until “Kemp, Koop, and Reagan realized that they could pry off Catholics’ and evangelicals’ votes from the Democratic Party.” As it is now, he said, “religion in America is politics… big-time politics” (Broomfield 2012, 9).

Remember, all this was decades ago. The Trump phenomenon was in the distant future. When it exploded on the scene, though, it overshadowed even the Republican Party's recent patron saint, Ronald Reagan.

Melding together the evangelical and conservative political communities, the Schaeffers became “evangelical/fundamentalist royalty” in America. Jerry Falwell helped spread their writings throughout the congregations of the religious right. They “became fixtures in the Christian Right community,” and were invited constantly to speak at churches, on Christian radio, and on television shows across the country. “Frank speaks at length in Crazy for God about their many personal experiences with Falwell, Robertson, Ralph Reed, [Tim] LaHaye, Dobson, and many others” (Broomfield 2012, 75).

Francis Schaeffer's (1981) final book, A Christian Manifesto, was among his most thorough and influential statements. It was here, and in his sermon the following year, 1982, at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, where he cast aside any pretense of moderation. He recognized that he was dealing with dangerous issues, but he persisted. In his lengthy sermon, he contrasted the “Christian world view” with that of the “humanist,” which he said saw man as the measure of all things. The latter grew from “Darwin's theory of evolution, which fundamentalists had hated since Darwin proposed it in 1859” (Broomfield 2012, 43). He railed against the wrongs that he and other fundamentalists saw in America, “permissiveness, pornography, the public schools, the breakdown in the family, and finally abortion” (Broomfield 2012, 43). He saw recent Court rulings—dealing with prayer in public schools, religious symbols on public property, and abortion—as stripping Christians of their “freedoms.” “It was Schaeffer who led the way for evangelical/fundamentalist Christians to begin thinking that American democracy had been established by Christians and that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution had been written” by the Founders deliberately to establish a “nation based on the Judeo-Christian ethic” and a literal interpretation of the Bible” (Broomfield 2012, 43). Only one word, he thundered, could describe the United States of today: “TYRANNY! TYRANNY! That's what we face,” he roared (Broomfield 2012, 44).

Certainly, Frank Schaeffer rejected, and now regrets, his past and his role in inciting political extremism in America. He describes his awakening in Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take it All (or Almost All) Back (Schaeffer 2007). He had become increasingly uncomfortable, not only with what he was doing, but with the people with whom he was associating. “His devotion to the arts ran counter to much that he perceived among the Schaeffer followers in the U.S.” (Skidmore 2012, 198). Finally, “he came to recognize that the forces he unleashed were deadly. Among the most extreme were Rushdoony's Christian Reconstructionists” (Skidmore 2012, 198), including Rushdoony's son-in-law, Gary North—who began the Christian homeschooling movement. Many of these, North included, have ties to the right-wing extremist John Birch Society that once was so prominent on the far right that it seemed to represent all its varied elements. Reconstructionist doctrines also have adherents among the “C Street Group,” or “The Family,” in Washington, D.C., that includes powerful politicians, predominantly Republican but also some Democrats. The younger Schaeffer also noted the violence in the anti-abortion movement, and the “anti-government rhetoric on the right that at least flirts with revolution and secession” (Skidmore 2012, 198). Regardless of the “flag-waiving veneer of patriotism” there was a “stark hatred for America, for democracy, and for the American political system. His journey away from fundamentalism began when he was startled to recognize that, in the land that his followers hoped to create, he would be among the first to be eliminated” (Skidmore 2012, 198–199; see also Sharlet 2008).

The violent attempt by Trump followers on January 6, 2021 to halt the counting of electoral votes in Washington, D.C. was a clear attack on America's system that places voters at the center of public policy. The insurrection attempt, and the current advocacy of voter suppression that is quite open among Republicans, is the flowering of those seditionist seeds planted by fundamentalist/evangelical anti-abortionists decades ago. They opposed democracy then, and they are at least equally opposed to democracy today, as they have taken pains to demonstrate. Their ferocity should have been expected.

Frank Schaeffer (2011; quoted in Skidmore 2012, 198–199) recognized a core influence that he perceived in all fundamentalisms of the world, “whether Jewish, Islamic, Christian, or some other: a hatred of women, and of sex, all under the guiding motivation of fear”; hence, his sub-title: “How the Bible's Strange take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics—and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway.” He draws an indirect “but deadly connection between the ‘intellectual’ fig-leaf providers and periodic upheavals like the looney American Right's sometimes-violent reaction to the election of people like Barack Obama” (Skidmore 2012, 198). He said that, of course, “your average member of some moronic gun-toting Michigan militia is not reading Francis Schaeffer.” What the Religious Right's “Roman Catholic and Protestant enablers” did do was to raise questions of legitimacy and illegitimacy that sought to create doubt about “the very legitimacy of our government” (Skidmore 2012, 198–199).

If there were any question that the younger Schaeffer was prescient in his urgent warnings, the attempted insurrection on January 6, should remove all doubts. We now are at a junction. The established order in this country faces a large armed and vicious minority sharing a commitment to violence, and openly advocating the elimination of Democratic procedures, flirting with secession, and held together by a mutual misogynistic horror regarding abortion, leading them to delusions of Democrats as literally agents of Satan.

How Arguments Against Abortion are Wrong

The first thing to consider is language. Those who control, or strongly influence, the way people speak have a major advantage that is difficult to overcome. Thus, it is urgent to be careful about language usage. Referring to tax cuts as “tax relief,” for example, implies that the overall tax levels are greatly burdensome, even if the speaker had no intention of saying that. “Pro-Life,” is another salient example. Everyone favors “life,” in general, but the anti-abortion movement has appropriated a general term and applied it to a quite narrow subject: “pro-life has become a synonym for “anti-abortion,” or “forced birthers,” a clever sleight of tongue that becomes a sleight of mind. The “unborn child” is a phrase virtually universal among abortion opponents, and mischaracterizes the situation entirely—and, of course, deliberately.

No one argues that a child is an adult. There is no more reason to say that a fetus is a child, nor that an embryo is a fetus, nor that a zygote is an embryo—let alone a child. There are differences. Children and adults are fully functioning, whole, human beings. Zygotes and embryos are not, nor is a fetus, especially early in a pregnancy. The important developmental phase is not the heart, it is the brain and nervous system.

The question of “life,” is also designed to close out any argument. There is no question that life exists in the womb, or in fact throughout the body. A cell anywhere in the body is alive, but that is irrelevant. A banana slug is alive—so is a penicillin mold, or a growing turnip. No one suggests that they should have the rights of human beings. It is erroneous to conclude that “life” implies “human life,” or even that “human life” means the same thing when applied to a zygote or to an adult—or a child. It is more a matter of definition than of biology. The point at which a developing fetus becomes capable of functioning as a whole human being outside the womb depends upon brain and nervous system development, and certainly is late in a pregnancy, close to birth.

Consider the other end of the human life cycle. When a human being's brain ceases to function—when there is no more cognition—that human being may be taken off life support, so obviously is not accorded the full rights of human beings, even though without question a human being with rights had existed. That person remains “human” biologically, but only biologically, not in the sense of function or sentience.

Similarly misleading, and deliberately so, is the question of fetal heartbeat. Anti-abortionists make dubious assertions that “fetal heartbeat” takes place quite early in a pregnancy (see, e.g., Hughes 2021). Even if that were true, it is another irrelevant factor. We have a tendency to romanticize the “heart,” but that is mistaken. Romantic love, for example, clearly relates to the brain, not the heart. A beating heart certainly is not exclusive to human life. Except for some simple sea creatures, all animal life (including a banana slug) has a heart, and all hearts beat. A beating heart does not imply that the being must be accorded human rights—or animal rights, for that matter. If it did, an octopus would have triple rights; each octopus has three hearts. Nor are stem cells from human beings “tiny little humans.”

Conservatives frequently become carried away by abstractions so extreme as to be ridiculous. An argument can begin as intelligent, but get so convoluted and unrelated to reality that it becomes simply stupid. Some years ago, arguments swirled around the “rights” of stem cells. If rescue personnel were in a burning house and could rescue only a person, or a dish of stem cells, there would be no question that the person, a functioning, whole, human being, should be saved, not a dish of simple non-sentient cells that could be spread throughout the room by a sneeze, but it was common to hear stem cells described as “tiny little human beings.”

There is another argument that abortion opponents would consider key, that others would not, and it is a matter of judgment. Abortion prevents a human life from becoming possible from a given pregnancy. That clearly is true, but it also is an argument against effective contraception. Here, though, is where an argument that might seem compelling becomes so abstract as to be meaningless. Both abortion and effective contraception may prevent a complete human life from developing, but is that really compelling? It is equally an argument against abstinence, and in favor of forced, and involuntary, pregnancies.

I have a friend who is opposed to abortion because his grandmother had been raped. Had she undergone an abortion, he would not have been born. True. Is this, though, a valid argument? If it argues against abortion, it also argues against contraception. Even more important, it argues against abstinence—and even justifies rape.

Regardless of any merit to any of these arguments, they completely ignore an enormously important part of the consideration. Whatever the definition applied to any stage of development, there is complete lack of concern for the woman involved. She is essential, but she is treated as irrelevant, and unimportant except as a vessel. Again, it is essential to recognize that all these arguments completely ignore women and their rights. One should remember that women, half of humanity, also are whole, functioning, human beings and thus should have control of their own bodies. That is, they have rights, and those rights certainly are at least equal to any “rights” that ideologues may assume belong elsewhere.

A reasonable interpretation would be that the woman's rights, as the sentient being most intimately involved, should supersede others. Implicitly, advocates of a “personhood amendment” to the U.S. Constitution may be at least vaguely aware of this. They must recognize that they are not on firm ground regarding the Constitution as it exists, or they would not insist so vehemently on amendment. They must at least suspect that it does provide rights for women and may thus sanction abortion since they appear to fear that abortion cannot be effectively outlawed under the Constitution, and they insist that the Constitution of the United States must be amended to accommodate their particular ideology.

Alexandra DeSanctis (2021, 13)—the ultra-conservative Catholic who provided the proposed personhood amendment mentioned above for the New York Times—admits that, under current conditions, it may be impossible to “safeguard the equality of the unborn,” and that even with the support of a right-wing Court, “states will maintain a maze of abortion laws, some of which will continue to allow abortion.” Thus, abortion opponents know that zealotry is necessary if they are to achieve their goal, which is to impose their ideology upon everyone, without exception.

Abortion Restrictions Bring Unlimited Government

Here we come to the real issue regarding abortion, an issue that is vital, but astonishingly, is almost completely ignored. Most of those opposing abortion seem also to profess to be in favor of limited government and of human freedom. Conservatives tend to rage against “government power,” and especially against “unelected government bureaucrats.” An effective anti-abortion policy, though, requires a powerful government; possibly even a totalitarian one. Part of that government would be “empowered bureaucrats.” An effective abortion policy would immediately place every human being who becomes pregnant, women or girls, under the control of government officials. They would immediately lose all control over their own bodies.

Abortion's opponents overlook an inconvenient fact regarding government power, one that could be turned against them. Certainly, the government that has the power to prevent abortions, under a different kind of authoritarian rule would have the power to require abortions. That other side of the coin is not an imaginative figment. Consider the case of China. It was well publicized that for more than 30 years China had a one-child-only policy. That may have led overzealous local officials to order abortions, rather than mere fines.

Moreover, if a government can forbid abortions, that means, of course, that it can require a pregnant woman to give birth. Would it be much different for a government to require fertile females to become pregnant? It is not extreme to say that pursuing anti-abortion policies would lead to authoritarianism, to a climate of fear, as the recent legislation in Texas does (see Diaz and Totenberg 2021). It makes abortions effectively illegal after an unrealistic six weeks. It enforces the prohibition by encouraging citizens to spy upon one another, and to take action against anyone who might be considered to have been complicit, regardless of how far-fetched the connection might be. Certainly, it is the modern (Texas) version of the infamous Fugitive Slave Law from 1850 that sought to make all citizens wherever located, agents of the “slave power.” Unquestionably the horrendous law helped bring on the Civil War (not that there were not enormous forces already moving toward the bloody conflict), and in modern echoes we see the junior senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, speculating openly about secession. He warns, darkly, that it will be necessary if the fanatics fail to get their way (Rai 2021).

The pernicious effects of the Texas law quickly became apparent. The New York Times just after Thanksgiving featured a front-page article, “Texas Doctors Say Abortion Law Complicates Risky Pregnancies” (Rabin 2021). Even when a pregnancy is so troubled that it will ultimately endanger the pregnant woman's life, and the fetus is certain not to survive, doctors are forbidden to perform an abortion—or even to recommend one—unless the threat to the woman's life is immediate. The law's supporters say their goal is to save every embryo, regardless of how the conception came to be. Thus, “embryo protection” is so overwhelming that it can even disregard child rape. The misogyny, and the fanaticism, here are so clear that they are painful to contemplate. Sadly, by no means are they confined to men. Women can be equally fanatic and no less harsh. Take, for example, the comments of one Dr. Ingrid Skop, identified in the article as a San Antonio obstetrician who belongs to a group called the “American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists” (Rabin 2021). In supporting the Texas law, Dr. Skop said that “even a girl as young as 9 or 10, impregnated by a father or a brother, could carry a baby to term without health risks” (quoted in Rabin 2021, emphasis added). The article quotes her as saying that, regardless of age, anyone who is sufficiently developed to become pregnant, can “safely” give a birth to a baby. There you have it. Fanaticism is too mild a term to describe the core of the anti-abortion obsession.

Margaret Atwood (1985), in her brilliant and horrible Handmaid's Tale, presents many outrages upon women in a society that suffers from having too few women capable of becoming pregnant. Of course, this is a novel; it is fiction. Atwood says, though, that none of the outrages upon women that she describes are products of her imagination. Every one of them, she says, without exception, has happened to women sometime, somewhere, as a result of official policy (see Riley 2017).

This is not alarmist. There can be no doubt regarding the totalitarian nature of policies directed at women that actually do exist in contemporary America. Goldberg (2021), writing in the New York Times, describes additional outrages. Her column's title is apt: “When a Miscarriage is Manslaughter.” A young woman in Oklahoma, Brittney Poolaw, 19 years old, was arrested last year after suffering a miscarriage. Unable to afford a $20,000 bond, she was jailed for a year and a half awaiting trial. When the trial took place, it lasted one day. Poolaw had had no medical care. She had not attempted an abortion. Even though she admitted having used “both methamphetamine and marijuana,” the prosecution's own expert witness could not say that her drug use had caused her to miscarry (Goldberg 2021). Nevertheless, a venomous prosecutor, who no doubt sought to add to a list of convictions, persuaded a gullible and malleable jury to convict. Ms. Poolaw received a sentence of four years in prison. This bears repetition: a young woman received a prison sentence because she suffered a miscarriage, a naturally occurring phenomenon. This took place not under Hitler or Stalin, but in the United States, a country that ostensibly is devoted to individual rights. Despite the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the “understandings” of anti-abortion ideologues now at times are permitted to snuff out any semblance of individual rights, not only when there was an abortion, but even when there was none and none had been attempted.

As Goldberg (2021) perceptively points out, the recasting of laws to define embryos or fetuses as “people,” or “children,” has “resulted in women being punished for things they do or don’t do while pregnant.” She mentioned another case, this one in Alabama, in which a woman was charged with “chemical endangerment of a child,” because she twice took half a Valium while pregnant. In 2014, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a woman who took cocaine while pregnant, despite having delivered a completely healthy child. Between 2006 and 2020, National Advocates for Pregnant Woman identified 1,254 such injustices, Goldberg (2021) notes. She quotes Lynn Paltrow of the National Advocates: “The effort to add fetuses to the Constitution is increasingly an idea to justify essentially removing the constitutional rights of pregnant people” (Goldberg 2021).

It would be difficult for even the most brilliant writer to put it more accurately, powerfully, or presciently than Goldberg. “Poolaw's case,” she wrote, “is an injustice, but it also is a warning. This is what happens when the law treats embryos and fetuses as people with rights that supersede the rights of those who carry them” (Goldberg 2021). It would be foolish to expect that abortion opponents could be persuaded to rethink their positions. Many opponents, of course, do find it necessary to revise their opinions in exceptional cases that affect them or their loved ones.

The Constitution's Language Clearly Protects Women's Rights Including Reproductive Rights

The language of the Constitution is plain in its protection of rights and makes no exception for women. A politicized court can rule otherwise only by ignoring or rationalizing away the clear meaning. For example, if a ruling were to say that a law does not require a woman to raise a child because she can give the child up for adoption, it ignores the coercion that requires her to carry a pregnancy to term and give birth.

Hughes (2021), a state senator in Texas, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that he was the author of the Texas statute, saying that “The Texas Abortion Law Is Unconventional Because It Had to Be,” given that “the Supreme Court does not have the power to declare subjects off limits to democratically elected legislatures.” The Constitution enumerates certain rights, he says, free speech, the right to keep and bear arms, “whereas the ‘right’ to abortion is a fantasy spun by the ludicrous logic of Roe v. Wade” (Hughes 2021). Hughes is completely wrong.

Contrary to his dogmatic pronouncements the purpose of a constitution is to limit what government can do; to establish and protect rights. The Court does indeed have the power to declare subjects off limits to democratically elected legislatures. Those rights, as the Ninth Amendment—a part of the Bill of Rights—makes clear, do not have to be specifically spelled out: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people,” is the precise language. ⁴ Those rights may be group rights, or, as in the case of abortion, individual. The fact that Hughes (2021) says, “I believe life begins at conception, and I believe most Texans are in line with that understanding of human personhood,” is immaterial. Rights offer protections even from the understandings of majorities—or of zealots, even when elected; even when elected in Texas.

When anyone, especially a large segment of the population, has complete power to make decisions for their own bodies taken away by the government, there is only one proper definition to be applied: slavery. The argument is rarely encountered ⁵ —though it would seem obvious—but surely the Thirteenth Amendment, the amendment that outlaws slavery, ensures a woman's right to decide what she does with her own body. Can anyone doubt that there would be an enormous outcry if government were to take away men's rights to control their own bodily functions?

The Need for Vigilance, Strong Partisanship, and Straight-Ticket Voting

Civics teachers long stressed that “good government,” not partisanship, is fundamental to democracy. Well and good, but considering the extremism of the current Republican Party, good government now cannot exist without strict partisanship. Emergency situations demand emergency measures. However extreme it may sound to declare that good government requires complete partisanship, an objective assessment will indicate that it is absolutely necessary.

Currently, one of America's two major political parties, the Republican Party, has openly committed itself to undermine the rule of law. It works to prevent or invalidate an individual's right to vote for positions disfavored by Republicans. Thus, the Republican Party has openly declared itself to be in opposition to rule by the people, and to governing by consent of the governed. It has rejected the values of the Founders and has openly embraced fascism.

The Democratic Party, by contrast, seeks to encourage voting turnout, accurate counting of votes, and the adoption of measures to ensure that the will of the people, the majority, is heard. One such measure now being adopted in numerous jurisdictions is ranked-choice voting. ⁶ Regardless of the mechanisms, though, one party seeks to ensure that the people guide policy, while the other, the Republicans, seek to suppress the majority, with the goal of enabling the increasingly shrinking “conservative” Republican Party, to dominate. When circumstances such as these exist, the urgent need is to reject that party at all levels, national, state, and local and for all offices, minor as well as major. Under America's political system as it has developed, only two candidates for nearly all offices have any chance of being elected. Currently, one candidate, the Democrat, will be dedicated to the procedures of a Democratic republic, while the other, the Republican, almost assuredly, will be dedicated to measures that would overthrow it.

It is incumbent upon all thoughtful and qualified citizens, therefore, first to vote; then to vote against Republicans. Lest this sound overly partisan, please note that many conservatives and former Republicans agree. ⁷ A number of prominent Republicans became “never Trumpers.” Some formed the Lincoln Project, ⁸ to inform the public that in view of the current party's threat to democracy, good government makes it necessary to vote against all Republicans.

Voting against all Republicans means voting for Democrats. In practice, the first step toward good government is to ensure that office holders are devoted to the system, not subversive of it. The only way that can be accomplished is for enormous voter turnout, and for the voters to vote straight tickets; that is, to vote for Democrats for all offices from the president down to state legislators, school board members, water districts, city councils, and the like.