Freedom of Choice Act
Via Kathy G., Sir Charles writes:
One of the things that I dearly hope is that if Obama wins handily and we have a large enough Senate majority, that consideration will be given to passing a federal law codifying Roe v. Wade, including a broad preemption clause to prohibit state laws that interfere with abortion rights. In one stroke, such a law would blow away the claims that Roe represents an illegitimate attack on the democratic process, stop the state by state chipping away of abortion rights, and make the prospect of a Supreme Court reversal of Roe more remote and far less damaging.
There’s a longstanding legislative initiative along these lines called the Freedom of Choice Act that Barack Obama has committed to supporting. My sense is that Democratic pickups will likely make it possible to pass such a bill in some form, though there may be filibuster problems. One issue, though, is what form that would take. The current version of the legislation, as I understand it, includes provisions related to Medicaid financing of abortion services that have a lot less congressional support than would a more limited guarantee. What happens will probably be a function of how willing choice advocates are to compromise in order to get some kind of legislative backstop for the main holding of Roe.
63 Responses to “Freedom of Choice Act”
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October 13th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Nice idea, and I think it’s worth it just as an expression of legislative opinion, but no way FOCA survives a Supreme Court challenge as it’s currently formulated. It takes a far more expansive view of Congress’ commerce and 14th Amendment/Section 5 power than I think Kennedy would ever endorse.
October 13th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Is there no limit to what the culture of death wants? Things like this make me sick. I want to know how Mr. Yglesias, or any other cheerful acolyte of the party of death, thinks he can justify sucking a baby’s brains out with a vacuum tube, or burning it with saline solution. Young liberal men typically favor abortion, because they like using women for casual sex, and they want to be able to dispose of the consequences if necessary. But facilitating the urban hipster lifestyle is not a weighty enough moral goal to justify homicide, however much Mr. Yglesias might persuade himself it is.
October 13th, 2008 at 9:55 am
such a law would blow away the claims that Roe represents an illegitimate attack on the democratic process
We’re not a democracy, and for good reason–we’re a constitutional republic. The whole point of being a constitutional republic is that there are some things the majority is not permitted to do by popular vote. Roe is an attack of the democratic process in the same way that Brown was, or Marbury.
October 13th, 2008 at 9:57 am
“Hector” is certainly an appropriate name for that poster (#2), although might I suggest “Harangue” would also work.
October 13th, 2008 at 9:59 am
If I’m elected it will mandate that all doctors provide abortions, roll back the ban on partial birth abortion, and allow a limited infanticide right. Surely we can all agree on that.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:24 am
It is hard to imagine that if a court like the current one were to strike down Roe, it would at the same time allow a federal law on abortion to preempt all state laws.
The 14th Amendment extends the rights protected under the constitution to the states. And Roe is based on a reading of the rights protected under the constitution. A federal law protecting abortion would have a different status, and unless it was somehow treated as interstate commerce, it would not make most abortions federal matters. This is particularly true given that we now have a court that is trying to rein in what counts as interstate commerce, and composed of a block of Republican jurists who make little secret of their being opposed to abortion.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Abortion existed in biblical times. Jesus never mentioned abortion. Ergo, Jesus doesn’t care about abortion.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Grogor,
Don’t be silly. Jesus never condemned child rape either, does that mean that He approves of it?
I don’t believe in sola scriptura anyway. Abortion was condemned by the early church from the time of the Apostles, and is condemned explicitly in a number of works held to be inspired by the early church, as well as implicitly in the writings of Jeremiah, Isaiah, the Psalms, and St. Luke’s Gospel. The argument against abortion from scripture, tradition, and natural reason are airtight, and there is no room for a Christian to dissent.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:57 am
No way Obama expends political capital on this. Not a chance. He’s way to intelligent a political operator to stoke the flames of a culture war on an issue where his broadly preferred policy preferences are already in place.
Man, but some activists on the left are going to pissed off by an Obama presidency.
October 13th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Politically I think an Obama Administration only has so many things it can focus on. Maybe it’s a sign of my warped sense of priorities but I’d go for the economy, Iraq/Afghanistan and universal health care.
October 13th, 2008 at 11:05 am
nolaboyd is correct, neither Obama, Pelosi (perhaps even more so) nor antiabortion Reid will want to take up this issue given that abortion is currently legal. Perhaps if Roe is overturned, but otherwise this will not make it onto the House floor anytime soon after 1/20.
If they take on a Culture War issue forcefully, I would think it would more likely be revisting the gays in the military issue.
October 13th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Okay, aside from the merits of the law in question, this is an awful, awful idea that Obama will almost certainly not attempt. Such a law would be likely to trigger a debate as to whether the unborn deserve constitutional protections, a debate liberals might not win (and losing that debate would end abortion rights). The Supreme Court, while perhaps reluctant to overturn Roe/Casey, might have no problem striking down a law like this (for example, holding that the Commerce Clause doesn’t give the federal government the right to improperly infringe on states’ traditional right to regulate public health matters by preempting state legislation.) Indeed, Roe’s holding itself recognizes the states’ legitimate interest in protecting the lives of the unborn.
In addition, what would be to gain, other than satisfying the extremists at NARAL? Any state that oversteps the bounds of the protected abortion rights granted in Roe/Casey and their progeny will have the law struck down anyway. And it is worth mentioning that most of those state laws, whether they might or might not be found by a court to infringe improperly on the constitutional right identified in Roe, enjoy broad public support even in bluer states. Trying to push this law through would reopen an issue on which it is not at all clear that there is strong public support for abortion on demand, and very little would be to gain. An Obama presidency would ensure that the Court doesn’t get enough pro-life votes in the near future to overturn Roe anyway. I would be shocked if Obama spent political capital on this misguided effort of dubious value even to strong supporters of abortion. I’m hardly unbiased, but I think this is a terrible idea.
October 13th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Can’t get through the Senate.
Landreiu, Reid, probably Ben Nelson, Casey, and a couple of others (Johnson? Conrad? Dorgan?) are nos. Only Snowe, Collins, and maybe Specter in a pinch are ayes. You’d need like 65 Senate seats
October 13th, 2008 at 11:35 am
I think it would be a mistake for a new Democratic president and majority to think they had a pro-choice mandate from voters. Abortion’s a toxic, partisan, wedge issue. It’s a culture war I don’t think either side will ever win, and I hope newly emboldened democrats can come up with something more important to with a majority.
October 13th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Isn’t the whole point of rights and, indeed, the judicial branch that it’s more enduring protection than legislation? The idea that passing a law will help if the courts fail makes no sense.
October 13th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Most Americans want to keep abortion legal, but don’t they also overwhelmingly support many of the restrictions on abortions (partial birth abortion ban, parental notification, 24 hour waiting period, etc.)??
I can’t see this getting the support of a majority of Democrats, let alone a majority of Congress. As a Democrat, I don’t think I would support it. David is right, this is too radioactive, and there are about fifty other issues that most Americans think are more important right now. Tackling this now could hamstring efforts to improve education, health care, infrastructure, and the economy.
October 13th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Young liberal men typically favor abortion, because they like using women for casual sex, and they want to be able to dispose of the consequences if necessary.
By the way, I think this is way off. Young, liberal men don’t like using women for casual sex any more than young, conservative men, and I certainly don’t think that there’s any basis for a conclusion that even, were that the case, that this somehow informs the policy position of the type of men you’re talking about. Young, liberal men typically favor abortion because they believe that abortion is a necessary evil to ensure more equality between the sexes, which they value highly, and particularly they believe that abortion rights protect poorer and less educated women who need protecting, as opposed to wealthier women who have better access to and education regarding contraception, and who will have access to safe abortion even if it is illegal.
I think those reasons are exactly wrong – I think the facts and consequences of the U.S. under Roe have borne out the fact that abortion-on-demand undercuts and hurts precisely the people it is designed to protect. But the fact that I believe their reasoning to be misguided does not mean that urban pro-choice liberal men are acting out of a desire for casual sex – that’s just not the case.
October 13th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Hugo,
If the pro-choice side is going to slander our motives (by whinging about ‘controlling women’s sexuality” and so forth), then I reserve the right to slander theirs. Sometimes the only appropriate response to abusive language from one side, is abusive language from the other.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
The difference is the pro-choice side allows for the possibility of reasonable disagreement on (1) when life begins, and (2) what power the state should have to make that decision. Hector’s side, by his own admission, does not. As a result, Roe as written is pro-democratic, not in the sense of permitting state legislatures to run roughshod over womens’ substantive due process rights, but in that, by taking the power of the state out of the equation, there can be genuine deliberation — not that the anti-choice side is interested in anything other than “slandering motives.”
Hector’d be better off if he tried to convince people of his position, not lecturing his opponents. As many politicians acknowledge, including the Democratic VP nominee, there’s no tension between being personally opposed to abortion and recognizing that it’s not their decision to make for everyone.
I really don’t care about people’s motives, but when an argument, like Hector’s, doesn’t make any sense, you have to wonder why someone would make it. Also, the modern urban hipster lifestyle involves a fair amount of birth control. Abortion needs to be legal and available on demand for women to have full equality, but nobody thinks its the optimal solution.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
David B.,
Yes, I’ll ackowledge I was wrong to make that argument from motives. I don’t actually think that you support abortion because you like promiscuous sex. I am just frustrated because I hear so much of this nonsense from pro-choicers about the evil motives of people on our side. “Controlling women’s sexuality” and so forth. I wanted to give you guys a taste of how it feels to have your motivations slandered. It was probably wrong to do so, I’ll concede.
I think being ‘personally opposed’ to abortion is rather silly- can we be just ‘personally opposed’ to slavery? I think that a just society would prohibit abortion except in a few cases (mother’s life at risk, and so forth).
I have a hard time seeing how reducing the powers of an elected government can ever be seen as pro-democratic- increasing the ‘deliberative’ power given to individuals reduces the freedom of the people as a collective to act through their government. But leave that aside. Your point is well taken that we need to convince more people before we have a chance of making abortion illegal.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Am I the only person who wondered when Charles Barkley started writing in that way, about that kind of issue>
October 13th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Gays in the military, part Deux. ‘Cause that was such a winning issue to begin the Clinton presidency on. At least gays-in-the-military was an actually relevant issue since gays weren’t, you know, allowed in the military.
Great idea, Matt. Let’s show pro-lifers what happens when, for once, they decide not to be single issue voters.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Hector, I’ll take you at your word that your motives are based solely on your belief that a fetus is a child. However, it seems undeniable that a huge amount of the anti-choice movement is largely motivated by a desire to control women’s sexuality, given that:
1) anti-choice advocates continually say that it’s important for women to “pay for their actions” or “take responsibility for the consequences”;
2) anti-choice advocates are generally not willing to support those measures which have been repeatedly proven to be most effective at reducing the number of abortions: increased sex education and increased access to birth control;
3) anti-choice advocates tend to favor permitting abortion in cases of rape or incest, which is morally incomprehensible (is the “child” no longer innocent?) unless the motive for prohibiting abortion is to punish women for their promiscuity.
So it is disingenuous for you not to admit that sexism and misogyny powers much of the anti-choice movement, even if that doesn’t apply to you personally.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
And, BTW, if the economy is still screwed while the Democratic party is mired in an attempt to pass this thing, it’ll a wonderful statement of Democratic priorities, won’t it?
When the Republicans busied themselves in passing tax cuts for the wealthy, they could at least pretend it had something to do with the burning issue of the day, the economy.
October 13th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Gee, this would be a great strategy, as long as the goal is to alienate every voter in America who isn’t in NARAL’s camp. Doubling down on a culture-war wedge issue where the current law is already on the Democrats’ side just seems like a way to piss off moderates. Way to blow all your political gains on a meaningless, divisive gesture.
#23 — I can’t gainsay the motivations of those who would oppose abortions for the reasons you describe; my anti-abortion views come solely from the “Consistent Life Ethic” philosophy, which is espoused by both the Catholic Church (incl. the two most recent popes) and many Protestants.
October 13th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Tomemos,
I suspect there are a lot of social coservatives who would like to make promiscuity much costlier for men as well as women. That may be unwise, but it isn’t misogynistic. One of the first culture that I know of to prohibit abortion, along with the Jews, were the ancient Persians. Their laws decreed that if a woman procured an abortion, then the woman, the doctor and _the woman’s husband_ were all put to death. Executing the woman’s husband, again, may be unwise but it seems to be a long way from misogyny. Quite the opposite.
Some Catholic conservatives oppose birth control for other reasons, and Christian theology typically does not encourage doing an intrinsically immoral act in order to avoid an even greater moral evil. I tend to think that they are wrong on this, and I do support hormonal birth control, but again, it isn’t misogyny. By the way, birth control is legal all across the United States, and no one of any political or cultural influence is arguing that it should be made illegal.
Looking internationally, there doesn’t seem to be much relation between abortion and womens’ rights. The status of women is undoubtedly higher in many of the Latin AMerican countries where abortion is illegal, than in countries like India and China where it is freely available.
Sure there are some patriarchal types in the pro-life movement, and there are plenty of players who like to use women in the pro-choice camp. Hugh Hefner is a big donor to NARAL, after all. What’s your point?
October 13th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
As a number of posters have stated, this would be a horrible idea.
You’ve probably read legal analysis to the effect that the Roe decision came down too early, before the issue had a chance to be thoroughly wrung out politically.
The only way to even try to de-fang this issue on a national level is to kick it back down to the state level. Yes, a few states would immediately shut down any activity that even hints at preventing a fertilized ovum from implanting in the womb. The wingnuts would then press onto all contraception, and lose. Finally, we’d end up with a dynamic equilibrium, somewhat like with liquor.
Until then, we’ll keep having to contend with this at the Federal level, providing cover for all kinds of right wing B.S.
October 13th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Adam Villani and David are spot-on in one regard. It’s an incredibly divisive issue and this would be an incredibly stupid and counter-productive move on the Democrats part.
It would energize the Republicans like nothing before while turning off working-class Catholic and rural voters in a way that would utterly negate any progress the Democrats might make this year.
What’s more, it presumes that the Democrats should spend all their political capital on abortion-rights. Considering supporting abortion rights has been the litmus test of the party for decades (Lord knows, campaigning for universal health care or raising the minimum wage haven’t been requirements of Democratic candidates the way being pro-choice has) it’s not like this issue has been ignored by the party. Far from it.
Finally, assuming Obama doesn’t appoint any right-wing anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court (and, you know, I’m guessing somehow that’s not something we need worry about) it’s by no means needed to keep abortion safe and legal.
Veering off topic, it might interest Hector to know that young men don’t support abortion out of sexual opportunism. Though there is another hidden motive. Those that support it often do because they’re surrounded by women who do and who identify it as an intrinsically female issue (”our bodies.”) Men then respectfully back off.
But, ahem, back to the point at hand. It should be noted yet again that Matt’s I.Q. invariably drops twenty or thirty points when he’s trying to curry favor with the Feministing crowd. The most dramatic recent example of this was when Matt was supporting Janet Napolitano or some other female governor as a VP pick for Obama. You needn’t be a hardened cynic (only a Democrat who wants to win this year) to know that, oh, the first African-American candidate should probably go with a white Christian heterosexual male as his running-mate. Matt, of course, feigned total and utter obliviousness. It was more important to score the right point than to post (or even admit to himself) what was beyond obvious. We could be seeing something similar here. This is exactly the fight we don’t want, but Matt feigns ignorance while scoring points with the Kathy G’s of the blogosphere.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
You’ve probably read legal analysis to the effect that the Roe decision came down too early, before the issue had a chance to be thoroughly wrung out politically.
Horseshit. That’s not “legal analysis,” that’s political analysis. And I suspect that the hundreds of thousands or even millions of women who were able to obtain safe abortions since Roe would beg to differ that the decision “came down too early.”
You know, maybe we should cut Roger Taney some slack for Dred Scott; after all, he wouldn’t have wanted to turn blacks into persons under the law “too early.” Gah.
October 13th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Some Catholic conservatives oppose birth control for other reasons, and Christian theology typically does not encourage doing an intrinsically immoral act in order to avoid an even greater moral evil. I tend to think that they are wrong on this, and I do support hormonal birth control, but again, it isn’t misogyny. By the way, birth control is legal all across the United States, and no one of any political or cultural influence is arguing that it should be made illegal.
Part of your problem is because you are devoutly religious, you take religious people at their words about their motivations. You see, they have this set of beliefs, one of those beliefs is that abortion is wrong, or contraception is wrong, or something else is wrong, and therefore, they believe in it.
I think a lot of secularists (myself included) approach this much differently. People choose their religious beliefs, and within those beliefs, they choose what doctrines are important to them. That’s why a majority of American Catholics don’t believe buy one ounce of the Church’s doctrines on gender and sexuality, even though they take communion, go to church, and identify themselves as Catholic.
Very few religious people piously and devoutly follow each and every doctrine of their religion. The vast majority emphasize the aspects that interest them and ignore or deemphasize the aspects that don’t, whether its a liberal Catholic who has an abortion or a conservative Catholic who supports war and the death penalty and gives nothing to charity.
Accordingly, I think the reason why most pro-lifers assert pro-life beliefs– and ESPECIALLY the reason why people assert very extreme anti-contraception beliefs and claims that nonprocreative sex is wrong– is not because they simply deductively applied the tenets of their religion, but because these beliefs coincide with certain background beliefs that they have. This is reflected in Kristin Luker’s polling on these issues, which show that there are very few pro-lifers who do not have a consistent patriarchal worldview on gender and sexuality.
October 13th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
That’s not “legal analysis,” that’s political analysis.
My error, you’re correct. Let me bring more focus to it.
We have and do make value judgments on just what the relative value of a life is: an African slave; a pregnant woman; everybody.
For the slave, when was the right time to really go the distance to defend a life that was thus far brutish and short? Should it have been in the 1840’s, when the abolitionists would have lost? Could ‘we’ have bought out the slaveholders peacefully during the Gilded Age? Maybe a half million war dead was in fact the best trade off realistically on offer.
Annual deaths from (by definition, illegal) abortions shrank from maybe 10k in the ’30’s to perhaps 40 in ‘72, due to improvements in the medical arts. Today, deaths are exceedingly rare.
Now, consider the margins by which many Federal elections have swung. How many of those swung on an abortion stand? How many have died or led miserable lives from policies promulgated by otherwise hard-hearted candidates who proclaimed themselves pro-life? To deny them their guarantied wedge issue that covers up their racism, avarice, and aggression, is it worth the risk of a fatality or two a year, and circumscribed family planning in – say – Kansas or Louisiana?
Maybe if we dared, we might find that Kansas and Louisiana would start out hard core, and then finally relent.
But, that’s just a political analysis. If you prefer to paint the issue as black and white, that’s your prerogative.
October 13th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Glenn,
It’s truly grotesque that you invoke slavery. The pro-life cause is more analogous to the abolitionists, since they want to expand the circle of who we consider to be human persons, while you guys want to contract it (much like Stephen Douglass and his ilk).
Dilan,
You’re making the mistake of thinking a religion is what its ‘adherents’ say it is. Wrong. Christianity, for example, is defined by the Nicene Creed, or by various other formulas. Someone who supports abortion rights is, simply put, not being faithful to Catholicism, at least in that regard. As an Anglican, I’ll say this- support for abortion can never be a truly Anglican position, even if all of the Episcopal parishes in the United States took a pro-choice position. The Anglican church is defined by its joint reliance on holy scripture, sacred tradition and natural reason, and abortion violates all three. Truth is not up to a majority vote.
It’s quite true that Christianity does place great value on the supremacy of the individual conscience. If someone truly believes that a course of action is the right one, then they should follow their conscience, and the church be damned. But they should be very clear that they are, in fact, breaking from the church on that matter.
The Christian faith, properly understood, condemns neither war nor the death penalty, by the bye. But I think you’ve been told that already.
October 14th, 2008 at 1:40 am
You’re making the mistake of thinking a religion is what its ‘adherents’ say it is. Wrong. Christianity, for example, is defined by the Nicene Creed, or by various other formulas.
Hector, this is complete and utter BS. Your Nicene Creed wouldn’t be worth the paper it was printed on except to the extent that people believe in it.
But you also missed my point, which is that people choose religious beliefs not because of what ministers tell them to believe or what scriptures say, but because of what they decide to believe in. EVERY single believer is a Cafeteria _________.
When someone chooses to believe religious doctrines about abortion, it isn’t because God told them to. It is because they are attracted to the belief to begin with. And that comes from the worldview, and is the reason why the vast, vast majority of pro-lifers favor patriarchal worldviews. God provides an excuse to believe in something the person wants to believe in anyway.
October 14th, 2008 at 1:46 am
The Christian faith, properly understood, condemns neither war nor the death penalty, by the bye. But I think you’ve been told that already.
By the way, you really need to stop acting like a complete idiot about this. Many, many religious authorities do teach that these things– AS PRACTICED IN SOCIETY (as opposed to some hypothetical “just war” or “just death penalty”– are totatlly contrary to Christian beliefs.
And that’s exactly my point– if you reject those teachings, it’s not because your “God” told you to, but rather because your secular belief system includes support for these sorts of killng, and thus you choose to hypothesize that despite the teachings of many religious authorities, your alleged “God” doesn’t in fact condemn them.
The way it works is believer believes X, and then believer finds a way to make sure “God” believes X too.
October 14th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Dilan,
Luker’s book is interesting but not, I believe, dispositive. She doesn’t appear to have used random sampling, and she used intensive ethnographic interviews instead of short surveys, which could have colored her results. Pro-life _activists_ may also (in fact, they almost certainly aren’t) representative of what most pro-life people believe. I wouldn’t want to judge the political views of Mexican Americans by surveying the most extreme revanchist Aztlan activists. Finally, her study was conducted 24 years ago, when feminism, contraception and premarital sex were much ‘newer’ things, and much less a part of our culture, then they were today.
I’m sure there is some overlap with conservative views about sex, family and women’s rights. Why wouldn’t there be? At the same time, there is some overlap on your side of the aisle with the worst excesses of feminism and sexual liberationism, and with people like Singer who have a frighteningly casual attitude to the value of human life. Using your logic, I could just as well argue that pro-choice activists are motivated by a basic hatred of the natural order- the truths that men and women are essentially different, that we have an immortal soul, that we are not meant to have absolute control over our lives.
The religious authorities who oppose war and the death penalty_ in principle_ are, I believe, mistaken. I believe this on the basis of holy scripture, sacred tradition, and natural reason. The Passion of St. Luke n implicitly supports capital punishment, and the discourse of St. John the Baptist with the soldiers implicitly tolerates war.
Finally, the Nicene Creed is either true or it isn’t, as a description of the nature of the Trinity. If it is, then it would still be true even if no one believed it, and if it isn’t then it would still be false even if everyone believed it. The Gospels are not a cafeteria menu.
October 14th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
At the same time, there is some overlap on your side of the aisle with the worst excesses of feminism and sexual liberationism, and with people like Singer who have a frighteningly casual attitude to the value of human life.
If Singer didn’t exist, your side would need to create him. Hector, as far as I know, Singer doesn’t have ANY adherents. Where are the academic papers expounding on his theories? Where are the movements espousing his ideas? Singer is simply ONE extremist. Not comparable at all to the MILLIONS of people who believe in traditional, patriarchal gender roles. (And by the way, while Luker is the best source because she did it in depth, the correlation between pro-life views and belief in patriarchal gender roles is substantiated by EVERY public opinion survey on the subject.)
You are right, of course, that the more extreme fringes of feminism and sexual liberation are a part of the pro-choice coalition. Notably, however, with one exception that you probably favor (anti-porn laws), the more extreme fringes of feminism and sexual liberation do not favor government intervention to force the general public to adhere to their chosen lifestyles. Contrast that with the pro-life right, which wants to use the government to regulate everyone’s sex lives.
The religious authorities who oppose war and the death penalty_ in principle_ are, I believe, mistaken. I believe this on the basis of holy scripture, sacred tradition, and natural reason.
No, Hector, you don’t. That’s what you THINK you believe. What you actually believe is that war and the death penalty are good things, and therefore you are predisposed to reject any religious teaching that contradicts your belief.
You see, Hector, we all make our Gods in our own image. The Nicene Creed was made up by human beings who wanted to believe certain things. It all was. If you don’t believe this, name me one example of a belief that your secular reasoning powers cause you to firmly believe but which your religious teaching nonetheless persuades you not to.
October 14th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Put another way, Hector, if your conscience and values led you to believe that the death penalty is wrong, I guarantee you that you would be claiming here that Christianity condemns it. That’s the way these things work. We pick out those portions of religious doctrine that we agree with and then claim that God backed up the position that we were going to take anyway.
October 14th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Dilan,
Luker didn’t prove any kind of ‘correlation’, as far as I can see. She wrote her book in the style of an anthropologist, not a sociologist, and didn’t appear to include much statistical data (at least from the portions of her book that I was able to look at online). Again, the book was written 24 years ago.
It may be true that most people who oppose birth control, premarital sex, and women in the workplace are pro-life, but the converse can’t be true, simply because the number of people opposed to abortion is vastly greater than the number who hold to ‘traditional’ views about contraception, etc. There are about 60% of Americans who are at least somewhat morally opposed to abortion, and only 5% who are opposed to contraception.
October 14th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
It may be true that most people who oppose birth control, premarital sex, and women in the workplace are pro-life, but the converse can’t be true, simply because the number of people opposed to abortion is vastly greater than the number who hold to ‘traditional’ views about contraception, etc. There are about 60% of Americans who are at least somewhat morally opposed to abortion, and only 5% who are opposed to contraception.
You are cheating on the numbers here. The only number that matters isn’t personal opposition to abortion but support for throwing doctors in jail for performing them.
And that number is way, way lower than 60 percent, and is mostly comprised of people who support a return to traditional gender roles, oppose premarital sex, support early marriage, believe that women who work rather than take care of their kids at home is a bad thing, etc.
And also, you only get to 5 percent oppose contraception when you exclude all the idiots who think that birth control pills and IUD’s and morning after pills are forms of abortion. If you count those people correctly, the number is much higher.
In any event, you did not deny my central point, which is religious believers decide what they want to believe and then pick those portions of religious doctrine that they agree with to say that God is on their side, rather than dispassionately follow all of their religion’s tenets whether they believe in them or not.
You certainly weren’t able to name me something that your reasoning skills told you were true but which you nonentheless decided you could not believe because God told you otherwise. And the reason is such things don’t exist.
October 14th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Dilan,
Your numbers still don’t work. At the very least, 30% of Americans believe that doctors who perform the vast majority of abortions, should be imprisoned or otherwise penalized. That’s six times as large as the number who believe that contraception is immoral. Your assertion about anti-implantation devices like IUDs etc. is interesting, but you haven’t given me any numbers of evidence that I should believe you.
The fact that the current heroine of the pro-life movement, Sarah Palin, is quite the modern career woman, certainly poses a problem for your ideas. A good friend of mine is currently a medical student at probably the best school in the country, and she’s pretty strongly pro-life. Having a sister with Down’s syndrome tends to do that to you.
I have a fair number of friends and acquantainces in their early to late 20s who are pro-life, and I don’t see that most of them are particularly conservative in other regards.
October 14th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Your numbers still don’t work. At the very least, 30% of Americans believe that doctors who perform the vast majority of abortions, should be imprisoned or otherwise penalized. That’s six times as large as the number who believe that contraception is immoral. Your assertion about anti-implantation devices like IUDs etc. is interesting, but you haven’t given me any numbers of evidence that I should believe you.
Hector, you need to look at the polling on emergency contraceptives (Plan B). You’ll see it’s just about the same percentage as who favor jailing doctors for abortions.
The fact that the current heroine of the pro-life movement, Sarah Palin, is quite the modern career woman, certainly poses a problem for your ideas. A good friend of mine is currently a medical student at probably the best school in the country, and she’s pretty strongly pro-life.
That’s the some of my best friends are Jews argument. It wasn’t valid for anti-semites and it isn’t valid now.
In any event, if your contention is that people with serious birth defects, disabilities, and the like tend to be pro-life, there is no doubt that is true. That doesn’t, however, mean that they are right.
I have a fair number of friends and acquantainces in their early to late 20s who are pro-life, and I don’t see that most of them are particularly conservative in other regards.
Hector, I have never denied that there is some percentage of pro-lifers that believe in the sexual revolution and the gains of feminism. (Note, however, that is different from being politically “liberal”– you, for instance, are “left” on all sorts of issues having nothing to do with gender, but you are also quite antifeminist.)
But that is not true of the vast majority of pro-lifers.
Again, though, I close with the point I have now made three times. You can’t name an issue where your reasoning skills lead you to one position but your religious beliefs command that you take the opposite position. And the reason is because that isn’t the way religion works– rather, as I said, we come to conclusions ourselves and then pick and choose those religious doctrines that support conclusions that we have already come to while ignoring the rest.
October 14th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Dilan, give me numbers. When you say a vast majority, how much are we talking about? 50%? 70%? 90%? And don’t direct me to some source, please- if you have numbers then quote them. I have too many demands on my time to order Luker’s book from Amazon and then hunt through it for a citation.
As for the challenge you posed me- well let’s take things like the bombing of Hiroshima, and many other examples of political violence and reprisals throughout history. They would appear to me to be justified on secular grounds- after all, Hiroshima was no less than proportionate vengeance for Nanking. As a Christian however, I am not permitted to accept them. “The just and innocent man ye shall not put to death.” I won’t claim I necessarily understand the wisdom of that counsel, and my innards rebel at the throught of substituting mercy for justice. But my Lord said it, and so I believe it, and accept it, and live by it.
October 15th, 2008 at 2:38 am
Dilan, give me numbers. When you say a vast majority, how much are we talking about? 50%? 70%? 90%? And don’t direct me to some source, please- if you have numbers then quote them. I have too many demands on my time to order Luker’s book from Amazon and then hunt through it for a citation.
Hector, you can look this up yourself. The numbers to compare are the percentage of people who think that emergency contraception (Plan B) is immoral– a classic antifeminist position (and one that would directly lead to more abortions) and the percentage of people who believe that doctors who perform abortions should be jailed. They are quite comparable to each other.
October 15th, 2008 at 5:44 am
Actually, Dilan, scratch that last post. On thinking back, I’m, pretty sure that I abhorred Hiroshima before I was a Christian- and the idea of mercy is something I like about the ethics of Jesus, which means I must have grounds for believing in it besides my faith. So yeah, that’s not a good example. I can try and think of one if you like.
By the way, being opposed to birth control is, in my opinion, ill-advised and has pernicious effects, but it isn’t necessarily anti-feminist. I really don’t see why you would say it was anti-feminist. It’s anti-sex, perhaps, but not anti-feminist.
October 15th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
By the way, being opposed to birth control is, in my opinion, ill-advised and has pernicious effects, but it isn’t necessarily anti-feminist. I really don’t see why you would say it was anti-feminist. It’s anti-sex, perhaps, but not anti-feminist.
This gets to one of your blindspots, Hector. And that is that the sexuality issues that concern reproduction fall differently on men and women. This is actually something you understand when you are arguing gender roles, but you seem to forget it when it comes to abortion and contraception issues.
While I don’t think this is most pro-lifers’ thought process, one can, of course, argue that while prohibiting abortion will make a lot of women’s lives more difficult, and deny them the opportunity to have fulfilling sex lives while also having fulfilling careers and maintaining independence from men, it is nonetheless worth it because of the human lives that are at stake. But you really can’t make this argument about contraception.
So someone who opposes contraception is either totally blind of how important contraception is to women, or is aware of this and wants to make their lives miserable in order to change their behavior. Further, there is no claim of human life that can be argued to outweigh it. So yes, opposition to contraception is, on any standard, antifeminist. (I would add that it can also be anti-life– the Catholic Church’s opposition to condoms would, if effectively implemented in Africa, kill millions.)
October 15th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Dilan,
Have you, actually, read the arguments given in Humanae Vitae against contraception? Paul VI was truly a great man, a great priest, and a great intellectual- one of the best heirs of Peter’s chair in a very long time. He was by most standards a very progressive man- pretty much socialist on questions of economics, and a true friend of peace, justice, and the downtrodden. He was also, I believe, wrong on the issue of contraception, but I don’t begrudge that his heart was in the right place when he made that decision.
Do you think that opposition to _sex_ in general, along the lines of someone like Tolstoy, or the Albigensians, is necessarily anti-feminist?
October 15th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Dilan,
By the way, I’m not sure whether I personally can endorse the use of condoms- they seem to me to be distinct from hormonal birth control in some important ways, particularly that they do not rely for their efficacy on a natural feature of the human body. I didn’t discourage people from using them, when I lived in Africa, but I did stress that the best way to prevent disease is through abstinence until adulthood, and then fidelity afterwards.
November 30th, 2008 at 6:07 am
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