Have we come to the point where there will have to be "underground railroads" from Missouri and other states with draconian anti-abortion laws to states where abortion is still legal? A psychiatrist friend of ours says there will soon be drugs readily available through the Internet to women for safe stay-at-home abortions? His implication: no laws will be able to stop abortion; so stop worrying. "Excuse me, folks, but Amazon delivered my miscarriage kit and I'm getting up early tomorrow to induce one."
The widespread availability of safe abortion-inducing drugs is no consolation because it allows doctors to skirt the legal, moral and social issues connected with abortion. If 1,000 prosecutors could send a letter to the Attorney General saying Donald Trump is guilty of impeachable crimes, certainly as many doctors can send a letter to the AG says abortion is a basic right. My doctor friend is, as far as I am concerned, defending illicit means to achieve what should be permissible ends. Drugs allow doctors to avert, rather than face and solve, a millennial predicament.
Don't get me wrong. Drugs are an answer, but only after abortion is not only decriminalized--but de-stigmatized. Fetal heart beats, stowaway souls at conception--all of this is junk science; natal creationism, if you will. I've been studying scripture, trying to find where God, through one of his many messengers, forbade abortion--and I'm coming up as empty-handed as scripture-combers are empty-headed.
I'm writing because I fear the steady, nearly unstoppable march of religious fascism. The Evangelicals don't just march to deafening drum beats; they march to imaginary heartbeats. Clarence Thomas even frames abortion as part of a monstrous eugenics crusade to kill undesirables like, you guessed it, black people in the embryo-stage. Crazy science borrowed from the heyday of genocidal eugenics back in the 1930s.
ARE ABORTION BANS A FORM OF EMINENT DOMAIN? As it see them, anti-abortion laws are an attempt to claim eminent domain over women's wombs. States can forbid a woman from ownership of her uterus once it is "occupied" with an embryo--even if its presence is involuntary or unwanted. Note that recent laws forbid abortion even in cases of rape or incest. How ironic that a rapist can ben sent to jail but his victim is sentenced to an even worse punishment: full-term pregnancy. Indeed, a Michigan rapist was recently granted joint custody of his child. If pregnancy is a circumstance for there are no exceptions to permit abortion, this makes pregnancy a form of servitude. It is as unjust as any other form of enslavement.
Okay, maybe I'm a libertine or a hedonist. But I think choice is a sacred right--at least, within a certain period of time when a woman can know and act on her own informed behalf and non-coerced will about her condition. That means at least a trimester--and, if left up to me, a helluva lot more time. Moreover, I think an abortion should be as easily chosen and scheduled as a colonoscopy.
PREGNANCY AS PUNISHMENT FOR PLEASURE. Now you might argue that pregnancy is often an outcome of careless activity. Hence, there must be responsibility for this reckless behavior. The consequence of this activity--no matter if non-consensual or accidental--must be made inescapable. I would think any sane person would disagree with--indeed, repudiate--this punitive moralism. Sex is very often unplanned--a kind of spontaneous combustion of two libidos. Should a woman have to pay for an outcome of pregnancy? Absolutely not, in my opinion. Just as we have cooling-off, and change-of-mind, laws for major purchases, women should have laws that give there the right to second--and often first (when unexpected)--thoughts about pregnancy. It's that simple--and practical.
Perhaps, if we had better sex education and easier, affordable access to contraception, this whole issue would be moot. But behind the growing anti-abortion crusade is a looming crusade against contraception. What or who is to stop pro-life fanatics from introducing laws to ban contraception and criminalize vasectomies? Already health plans offered by companies whose owners are "religious" can deny employees contraception coverage with their health plans based on "belief." "My religion says all life is sacred and, therefore, you can't terminate a pregnancy."
But, wait, things are getting worse as the pro-lifers arm themselves with a new specious legalism. Recently, a majority of Supreme Court justices ruled that religious pharmacists or religion-owned pharmacy chains have a First Amendment right of "religious free speech" (an oxymoron if ever there was one) to deny customer requests for contraceptives. As bad, businesses and corporations are allowed to offer health care that restricts distribution of contraceptions. It is amazing how the Extreme Right has turned the First Amendment inside out and upside down. Just remember this: the fetal remains portion of an Indiana law was upheld by a 7-2 SCOTUS majority. Liberals joined conservatives to vote for this requirement to give full burial rights to fetuses. The same number upheld the right of "religious" people to deny their services to gays and others who practice prohibited acts and live ungodly life styles. "If I knew you were coming, I still wouldn't have baked you a cake."
BACK TO BASICS. As I see it, abortion should be a routine medical procedure, like an appendectomy, and, as such, be performed as widely and safely as any other medical procedure--and not just in isolated clinics but hospitals: public and private. For me, the whole debate over abortion has forgotten or ignored that sex is as much, if not more, for recreation than reproduction. Just ask any sex doll or porn-atronic Internet partner. Pregnancy is often an unplanned consequence of a vital, necessary and, at its best, profound pleasure. And it strikes me as an undue burden on any woman to force her to see pregnancy as a great moral dilemma.
I could go on, but I wonder what you think. This is an issue worth discussing among ourselves. The hour is late. Sales of erectile dysfunction meds are at stake.
The real heart of the matter isn't the faint heart-beat of the unborn but the ever-more-faint heart-beat of Disestablishmentarianism--the crucial separation of church and state and freedom FROM religion. The battle over abortion rights is just one in an ongoing war against the First Amendment. Fundamentalist religion is destroying America!
No comments:
Post a Comment