A Modest Proposal
Thursday, May 6, 2010 at 03:47PM by Tom deMers
;)
Let’s give it up for mom this Mother’s Day. Applause, sure. Plenty of it.
But how about giving up hate, war and unregulated credit default swaps?
Well, that may be asking too much. Let’s cut it back to the hate, rage, violence and murder that attend the abortion debate. After all, that’s a mom issue, close to her heart in many ways.
I propose that mom be the decider on this one, that we hold a congress of mothers who take as long as they need without male input—or provocative media harassment—to come up with an answer we all agree to live with. No more talk of a Holocaust of the Unborn (covenantnews.com). No more doctors getting shot in church as happened to George Tiller in Wichita.
It would be a holocaust if it were murder: over 50 million abortions in the U.S. since 1973, the year the Supreme Court made Roe v. Wade the law of the land (pro-life site, abortionno.org). Later that same year the National Right to Life Committee was formed “to restore legal protection to innocent human life.” Today the NRLC rallies people on its website against the “Obama Abortion Agenda.” The battle has the passion and rhetoric of a holy war.
Others believe equally strongly that it would be a holocaust for the living if those 50 million unwanted tykes were actually living among us. Birth itself is a storm: well over six million pregnancies a year in the U.S. out of 210 million on average worldwide. Worldwide, about 46 million pregnancies are aborted, and on average about 1.2 million abortions are performed annually in the U.S. [All data from Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as reported at religioustolerance.org/abortion1, the website of the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance (OCRT), a multi-faith group with one of the most comprehensive sites on religion and religious matters on the web].
Nature itself tries to handle this flood of pregnancies with a spate of natural abortions and miscarriages that drastically reduce the number of live births. The 6.4 million pregnancies in the U.S. in 2007, after natural and medical abortions, turn into 4.3 million babies, 40 percent of them born to unmarried women (CDC).
Increased poverty levels, decreased educational achievement and other negative outcomes correlate with unplanned births and unwed mothers, but those facts don’t spark the holy war. That spark is provided by the question of when human life begins and more specifically, when personhood begins.
The issue of personhood: When does a human life become a person with all the civil rights of a person, including the right not to be murdered? The pro-life side tends to conflate personhood with the moment of conception; hence, all abortion is baby killing.
Personhood, some points of contention:
At conception: Sperm and egg meet and you have a person. That person has gills and a tail but no brain and no heartbeat. No matter. For many on the religious right, what science calls a zygote (the new DNA of a unique individual) is a human being deserving the full protection of the laws we all enjoy;
At viability: The point at which the fetus stands a good chance of living outside the womb, roughly 24 weeks. This common pro-choice position coincides with Carl Sagan’s view that personhood begins with the ability to think, at about six months when the cerebral cortex develops. Well over 90 percent of abortions in the U.S. occur before this point;
At birth: Jewish tradition confers personhood when the fetus is half emerged from the mother’s body. Canadian law takes a similar position; personhood starts when the fetus has fully emerged.
Other choices abound: at four weeks when the heart starts beating or six weeks when brain waves are detectable or two months when the fetus loses gill slits and tail and its face resembles a primate. Take your pick.
Believers pool up at different choice points, everyone holding an opinion based on facts/values that suit them, yet often treating that opinion as absolute truth. This led Justice Blackmun to conclude in his original majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, “There appears to be no hope that a future consensus can be reached on when personhood is attained;” a view echoed in 2010 by the folks at Religious Tolerance who conclude, “…thus no agreement on the morality of abortion is likely.”
In the spirit of Mother’s Day, I propose we turn it over to an expert. No one knows better when life or personhood begins than the person whose body creates it. I am not saying that women have the right to choose. I am saying only women have the right to choose and choose for all of us. Not men. Not the Supreme Court. Not the Right to Life Committee. Not the president unless she’s a woman. Let’s turn this over to mom, granting her the full personhood she deserves. Then let’s take her advice.
Why? Because we have gridlock on this issue with men driving the discussion and wielding the guns. Because no problem can be resolved at the level at which it was created. We need a quantum leap to women’s wisdom in order to save us from ourselves. Bodies have intelligence, but only the bodies of women have this particular knowing. It infuses their hearts and minds. They are mothers for God’s sake!
A divine intelligence has given half of humanity the responsibility of birthing the rest of us. This is women’s work.
Can you hear the blustering of male outrage?
Chill, dude.
Let’s have a convention of women charged with drafting a constitutional amendment establishing the point at which human life becomes a person. Let this be a real women’s event with lots of cookies and childcare available. Hold it in a warm place with grass and flowers. No men except as staff assistants who serve coffee and pass out chocolate. Women of every persuasion on the issue, including gay women, and certainly grandmothers.
And all of us required by law to abide by what the convention produces.
It may take several months. There will be tears. It will have to conclude by the time school starts in the fall. Unfortunately, congress will have to approve a Constitutional amendment. That could screw up everything. Yet, I offer this proposal not in jest but as our last best hope for solving this deadlock with its strangely American flavor.
With no cell phones I think it just might work.•
Reader Comments (5)
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