|
|
|
I first wrote this back in 1995. I've revised it some since, but it seems just as relevant today
Recent instances of violence, including murder, by so-called "pro-life activists" have raised the controversy between proponents and opponents of abortion to the level of a national crisis which, in my view, requires quick and decisive action by the new Congress. I support legislation which would protect the lives of people going about their lawful activities and promise swift and effective retribution against those who use violence to achieve their ends or publicize their points of view. While Congress must respect the rights of the states to deal with this problem, it has clearly become a national problem which demands national attention by Congress working with the state legislatures and law enforcement agencies to arrive at a workable solution.
However, the very fact that this issue has become so acute is evidence that the underlying disagreements which have caused it need also to be addressed. I believe that an appropriate solution to this problem must not only punish lawbreakers, but provide a resolution to their incentive to break the law in the first place. What is needed is a frank and dispassionate discussion of the various points of view to try to reconcile them, to the extent possible. I am writing this to add my voice to the discussion and to propose what I think would be at least a partial resolution.
Among the most contentious is the religious position. On the one side is the argument that abortion, as the term is usually used, is the murder of an innocent human being, and, being murder, is therefore morally wrong. I happen to support this view, not so much because my church teaches it, but because it's the most logical viewpoint. Except for the closing of a few valves within the body of the child, nothing particularly significant happens to him at birth. If a human baby is a person immediately after birth, there is nothing which would make him or her any less human before. Yet I recognize that the Supreme Court has regretfully ruled otherwise. The decision of the Court is, after all, the Law of the Land, which it is the duty of the President to enforce and for the Congress to enable him to do so by appropriate legislation. Nobody is above the law!
As I have pointed out at length elsewhere, in its opinion, written by Justice Blackmun, the Court suggested the means by which the whole controversy regarding abortion could be forever resolved:
"The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a "person" within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment... If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment. (emphasis mine) The... appellee conceded on reargument that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.*The decision of the Court in Roe v. Wade was the right decision. It was the correct decision. It was the honest decision. It was based on the facts of the case. That the facts are other than what we would like them to be is our fault, not theirs. The Supreme Court has a sacred duty, not to decide what the Constitution should say, but what it actually says. Only then can we make intelligent choices about if or how the law based upon it should be changed by our legislature or popular referendum. To claim that it is the Court's fault is a monumental obscene lie!The Constitution does not define "person" in so many words ... the use of the word ["person" in the Constitution] is such that it has application only post-natally. None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible pre-natal application.*
All this... persuades us that the word "person," as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn... We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer."
Given that nobody, including every single one of the 1,200,000,000+ lay and clerical members of the Roman Catholic Church, could come up with even one convincing argument that the term "person" applies Constitutionally to the unborn, it is difficult logically to argue against the viewpoint on the other side, that a pregnant mother is the sole custodian of the developing child, with a moral right to decide what is to be done with her body and whatever is inside it. Frankly, I can support this view, too. The most intimate privacy we have is that of our own bodies, and if the state can invade the privacy of a mother's uterus, then the very concept of personal privacy is meaningless.
In my opinion it is also difficult for those of us who have blood on our hands for violence and demonstration instead of vigorously supporting "personhood" legislation (which the Catholic Church has thus far failed adequately to do when it had the chance) logically to place the blame for legalized abortion on the Supreme Court. It's not their fault; it's ours. No matter how much money we spend on seditious "marches on Washington" or "pro-life rallies," wanton killing the unborn will always be just as legal in the United States as murdering slaves, for the same reason. As long as we refuse to guarantee their civil rights by recognizing them as persons before the law, they will be only so much garbage, to be thrown out and burned with the trash. Any compromise of the fundamental principle that unborn babies are people, as human as you or I, is intrinsically at least as reprehensible as human slavery.
On a higher level, I believe we must be careful that we do not let religious views cloud our thinking about what the law should be. To enact legislation based solely on what is perceived to be moral or immoral is a direct violation of the First Amendment. Many of our modern legal problems appear to me to be due to the inability of many of our legislators, and the people whom they represent, to distinguish between what is demonstrably good or bad for society and what they personally believe to be sinful. It is not the function of the law to legislate morality; that is for the churches and individual consciences. The function of law is to promote the general welfare, to enhance the good of all the People and protect their individual rights.
Therefore, I am not asking anyone to take a stand on this issue on moral grounds. That is between each individual and his own moral code. I see this issue rather as one of civil rights, and here again there is a problem. The civil rights of the expectant mother are clearly at risk if abortion becomes the choice only of criminals. The civil rights of the child are also clearly in jeopardy if the mother is forced to bear and raise a child she does not want. I know some children who have endured this miserable existence, and I sincerely believe that it would have been better for these children had they never been born at all.
I think we should view this issue in its proper light. The question of viability, which has been used to argue against the rights of the unborn, is clearly flawed. No human baby can survive without parental care, either at birth or for long afterward. Compared to an unborn child, the infant or toddler is much less viable. The unborn child can survive without any special care on anyone's part, while the baby, as we all know, requires constant care to survive. I was born one month premature, and very nearly died, in 1941. Medical science at that time was barely able to keep me alive, and left me with a damaged eye which has never been completely functional. Yet my first grandson, who was three months premature, at a weight of just two pounds ten and one half ounces, is a thriving adult today thanks to modern science. The lower limit on the age post conception that a baby can survive outside the womb is limited not by the infant, but on constantly improving medical technology.
So the question is not one of viability. If the infant is to live at all, he or she must have constant care for years, but all that must be done to a developing human embryo or fetus is to leave it alone. If the issue of viability is to be our criterion of humanity, then an infant is, from that point of view at least, far less human than a child in the womb, and a patient maintained on a life support system is not human at all.
On the other hand, if the question is one of civil rights, our record as a race and as a Nation is truly abysmal. We have consistently denied civil rights to racial minorities, children, women, handicapped persons, those whose sexual or gender identity is different from the norm, and persons only accused but not convicted of crimes for reasons which, looking back from a presumably more enlightened position, are absolutely disgraceful. Therefore, I think we have to take a hard look at any attempt to deny civil rights to anyone, however unlike ourselves they may be, and regard any such decision equally as suspect as the Dred Scott Decision. The Supreme Court has reversed itself before. It may do so again. We must be careful not to give its decisions in specific cases so much additional legislative support that it is impossible in future to overturn them if they prove to be unwise without wrecking our society in the process. By upholding the absolute denial of any rights to the unborn we are setting ourselves up for a social upheaval at least as great as was caused by Brown versus Board of Education.
But there is a more fundamental question here. Is unrestricted abortion in this country good for society? I contend that it is not. There are three very important reasons why:
Abortion, like divorce, is clearly a remedy for what is perceived as a greater evil. I have never heard of any women becoming pregnant just so she can have an abortion later. As the father of a pregnant juvenile (who now is a registered obstetric nurse) myself, I think I know some of the anguish and fear that accompanies an unwanted pregnancy, especially among the young. For many, an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy presents no good alternatives, only ones which are bad to a greater or lesser degree. Abortion is seen as a lesser evil than giving up one's lifetime ambitions or of taking on unwanted responsibility, or possibly of suffering some social stigma. But what if we could allow the reluctant mother to fulfill her ambitions, to avoid that responsibility or to forgo the social embarrassment? Would abortion be such an attractive alternative then? Wouldn't it be better for everyone to provide a means for caring for the mother while at the same time guaranteeing the welfare of a potentially productive child? I think we can do that, and I think we can do it very easily.
We can do it by making adoption by responsible parents easier for them and for the mothers who bear their children. Having been exposed to the social considerations of adoption both as a friend of adoptive parents, a relative of a professional host mother, and as a grandparent of a child given up for adoption, I believe I am in a position to know well how great the number of potential adoptive parents is and how anxious they are to find children to love. I think we can help them fulfill their ambition to become responsible parents, and I believe that it is in the best interests of our society to do so. Here is what I propose: