I posted this on a thread I started, but some computer glitch appears to be keeping it from getting views.
As CoS is evidently guilty of forced or coerced abortion, this has potential for generating the sort of interest and support which can be used for leverage against other abuses.
TO DRAW A LINE
by
William Birdwood
In 1973 the Supreme Court of the United States of America with its historic ruling in the case of Roe v. Wade erased the line prohibiting the termination of pregnancy by medically induced miscarriage. That same year our country signed an agreement with Hanoi which left the government in Saigon indefensible and the American League adopted the Designated Hitter Rule. Grievous tragedies are known to come in threes. Baseball remains a beautiful sublime and compelling game, the people of Saigon still call Saigon Saigon, one day those who make maps will as well and thousands of new Americans are born each day.
The National League is not considering taking bats from pitchers’ hands and the politics of Vietnam are in the hands of the Vietnamese but the conflict over our country’s practice of abortion and the treatment of the unborn is alive and active. In the most notable current political initiative, the Obama Administrations seeks a law to require hospitals to offer abortion services. The Catholics have stated flatly they will close their hospitals rather than comply. And this article is not an exercise in objectivity. It is a call to rally to the defense of conscience and not just block an incoming blow but to counter punch.
Our dialogue on abortion is usually characterized in terms of “Pro-Life” and “Pro Choice” and often descends into one side calling the other “Anti-Life” or “Anti-Choice.” In truth our political opinions are spread across a spectrum with four main sections, “Right to Life,” “Pro Life,” Pro Choice” and “Pro Abortion” and perhaps the two in the center are closer to one another than they are to either end. Very many people who have strong sentiments about the sanctity of life have as well so great a love of freedom, such a hatred of tyranny, and so great a compassion, understanding, tolerance and forgiveness for women they are ardent to reduce the rate of abortion but not by demanding the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Many men, myself included, cannot in good conscience ask legislation against a right which is not ours. And then as well, those who are firmly “Pro Choice“ are often deeply touched by the sanctity of life themselves.
Unlike those whose position is not “Pro Choice” but, though never so denominated, is actually “Pro Abortion.” This is so different a stance it could be alleged for those who hold it to call themselves “Pro Choice” is camouflage and a masquerade. My own ears have heard a spokesman state unequivocally, “We want absolute control over procreation.”
No.
Certainly there is a strong consensus humankind must address the undeniable problem of over-population with self-restraint but absolute control over procreation does not belong in the hand of the man I heard speak those words and those who cheered him.
Those who stick to their shillelaghs about “Right to Life” politics appear to be very effectively neutralized. The Equal Rights Amendment failed. America decided it did not wish to eliminate all distinction between genders. However, before it finally stalled it was approved by more than half of our state legislatures and in fact it established broad if incomplete equality between men and women as both the law and custom of the land. So far as I know, the still raised banner of a Right to Life amendment or law has never made it to any ballot. Its supporters are stigmatized by their religious ardor and association, held at bay by Separation of Church and State, the American Press does not stop far short of mockery in its treatment of them and comics who can mix wit with an absence of restraint about them can pack nightclubs with raucous sophisticates.
Though there is some wrong in writing of what may be another soul’s secret I suspect part of the reason for the ineffectuality of “Right to Life” politics is the result of a hidden self-restraint within their ranks. Are there those who must or will put the letter of their faith upon their tongue but keep it from their hand? If so I do not call them hypocrite but friend. An abortion under the most forgivable circumstance is a tragedy and if I could feed five thousand with five loaves and seven fishes my politics would be Right to Life as well. Creator! Ordain a New Physics and Geometry with a flat earth of endless meadows and streams, mountains and seas stretching out endless miles that my politics might match the heart Thy Word has grown within my breast! Science! Open wormholes in space so humankind may set foot upon a thousand verdant earths circling a thousand distant suns that my conscience might play free. I cannot hold to Right to Life in this world as I know it but I would dread to live here if the principle were not espoused.
But in this world as I know it I am thoroughly unconvinced of a necessity to deny the practice of Medicine to those who by conscience will not perform abortion. On the contrary, if there are any of faith who despite not being in a vegetative coma have yet never acted in violation of their own conscience their number must be few. Let us act fiercely and well to keep Acts of Conscience off the Endangered Species List.
So.
Block that and toss this.
Rather than a Right to Life Amendment how about a Pro-Life Amendment?
The United Nations has composed, adopted, and published a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Am I the only one who noticed it did not state it is a woman’s right to bring a pregnancy to term? I cannot believe I am the only intelligent adult who would call this a human right deeper in the marrow than several other items on the list.
It was long thought our kind rose above animal when we began to use tools but now we know animals as well use tools. Perhaps we became human when first we drew a line.
By what we are, by what abortion is, there was a line. Though that line is now undrawn we are still what we are, abortion is still what it is. Let us measure with keen eye, grasp straightedge with firm hand and, in pencil, with deft and steady stroke, make mark upon the page then turn to our countrymen and women and beseech the Sovereign Ink.
Let us amend the Constitution of the United States of America to read, “A woman’s right to bring a pregnancy to term shall not be abridged.”
Just when this idea of a Pro-Life amendment came to mind escapes me but it stuck fast from its conception. It was at least two or three years before I spoke of it. A couple thousand years ago a controversial rabbi commented on the way swine treat pearls and those who present them and I had already been disabused of the young man’s thought that scripture is largely outmoded.
As it happened I chose well when I finally broached the subject for it was not only treated with respect but I was then told just what I needed to know. I have a friend in Boston who is a lawyer doing pro bono work on behalf of psychiatric patients. I often ate at a bar and grill in the Fenway where he often stopped in the evening and we had a running dialogue for years. He gave a very strong response to the idea locking his gaze on my own. After a timeless moment he looked off and weighed upon it, turned back to me and said, “You’d have to have a case [when the right was abridged].”
‘Nuff said.
Of course it happens every day in private. I had opportunity once to counsel a young woman who was being pressured by here boyfriend to get an abortion she did not want. The look on her face and sound of her voice when she said, “I have very strong feelings about it,” are unforgettable. I don’t recall just when the idea came to me but it was she who inspired it. Would that I could have sprouted angel wings from my back to enfold her. Short of that it would be comforting to know every young woman in her position was taught in grammar school the Law of her Nation stands with her.
This vignette will never be a case at law.
However there was a report this spring in The Boston Globe fulfilling the requirement prima facie. An article related that several American women, including married women, serving in Iraq had been ordered to have abortions.
This would be a lawful order. Yes, a military commander may order a medical action for a subordinate. Many a brave and wounded soldier hot to stand and fight has been ordered from the battlefield to the MASH unit. The pro-abortion forces have been insistent on treating an abortion as a medical procedure no different than setting a broken bone or removing a splinter, have in fact pressed the depredations of Orwellian Newspeak on the language of abortion.
And.
No line is drawn.
Nowhere in law is there a word affirming a woman’s right to her unborn child, an absence now made glaring.
Our Constitution is ours. Our charter seats national sovereignty in the people. It is in our power to raise this question, to say here is a place to draw a line and to appeal to our fellow citizens enshrine it in our Law.
The process of doing so could be a very healing and restorative process. The debate over abortion in our country has been divisive and fierce. This contest will continue even if this initiative were to be fully successful. Those who are very firm in seeking the overturn of Roe v. Wade will not be folding their tents. Some will likely take the position they prefer no line to a line they believe misplaced. Others will recognize that if Oregon declares war on California and mobilizes forces which occupy Redding, California would be wise to establish a firm defensive line north of Sacramento. It seems sort of a shame scripture advises against schadenfreude because it would seem the Pro-Abortion people will be sort of funny looking in their attempts to oppose it. But the Pro-Life and Pro-Choice who are probably the great bulk of the population should be able to warmly unite in support of an action both will find soothing and stabilizing.
For my own part I believe the absence of a line on abortion is subtly but greatly disorienting and that to draw a new line would create a benchmark against which we can measure our efforts to reduce the staggering rate of this tragedy and most especially a barrier to prevent us from falling into an abyss.
Liberty, sweet and fair, may recline on purple velveteen savoring petit fours and Beaujolais in her palazzo built in Yes only if she shows deference to Freedom espoused to Responsibility in their simple abode on the bedrock of No.
Let us draw this line.
William O. Birdwood
San Francisco, California
August 14, 2010
