{"id":566,"date":"2024-09-08T08:50:50","date_gmt":"2024-09-08T12:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/?p=566"},"modified":"2024-11-11T04:57:41","modified_gmt":"2024-11-11T09:57:41","slug":"an-open-letter-to-pro-lifers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/2024\/09\/08\/an-open-letter-to-pro-lifers\/","title":{"rendered":"An Open Letter to \u201cPro-Lifers\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Abortion is setting up to be a major issue in the upcoming election, so I want to direct this posting directly to those who call themselves pro-life.<\/p>\n

Please stop!\u00a0 You are not pro-life. You are only pro-birth, and to call yourself pro-life is misleading and hypocritical.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s begin with you \u201cpro-life\u201d women who are taking birth control pills. Those pills either prevent the fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus, which is an abortion, or they prevent the sperm from attaching to the egg, which is its first cousin.\u00a0 If you can take those pills, how can you possibly in good conscience deny that same right to other women?<\/p>\n

But beyond that, if you were truly pro-life you would care about the life of the baby you are forcing into this world.\u00a0 But you don\u2019t.\u00a0 You don\u2019t give a damn about that baby.\u00a0 You abandon that baby the very moment she or he leaves the womb.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t care that that baby will grow into an unwanted, unloved child, just the kind of person who ends up spending most of his life in prison, if not on death row.\u00a0\u00a0 And once that person is on death row, most of you will cheer for him to be legally murdered, or at the very least you will sit quietly by while the executioner does his thing.\u00a0 So much for being pro-life.<\/p>\n

Neither do you care one whit about the life of the mother who you force to produce and rear a child she did not want, probably will not love, and more often than not cannot afford.\u00a0 If she had money she could at least escape the state that denies her the right to choose what happens to her own body \u2013 assuming her state\u2019s laws will allow her to leave \u2013 and find a haven that will allow her to have an abortion.\u00a0 But without money she can\u2019t even do that. \u00a0Without money, she is sunk.<\/p>\n

It would be different if science could prove when that embryo becomes a person, but science doesn\u2019t even pretend to know when that happens.\u00a0 Therefore you merely assume, as I once did, that human life begins at conception.\u00a0 I used to think that because all that embryo needs to become a human is sustenance and time.\u00a0 But Jennifer Haigh put that idea to rest when she wrote these words in her 2022 novel Mercy Street<\/a>: <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat makes a woman a person?\u00a0 Her mind and her memories, all that she has done and felt and known and created and thought and wondered and seen and understood.\u00a0 But the fetus inside her?\u00a0 It has no thoughts or memories, it has made nothing, understood nothing.\u00a0 It is a mute, unthinking knot of tissue \u2013 alive, yes, but unformed, unconscious, incapable of tenderness or reasoning or even\u00a0 laughter.\u00a0 And yet, the fetus now becomes what matters the most.\u00a0 The woman carrying it, that complex creature formed by 20 or 30 years of living in the world becomes simply the means of production.\u00a0 Her feelings about the matter, her ideas and needs and desires, don\u2019t matter at all.\u00a0 Yes, the fetus inside her is a living tissue, no question.\u00a0 But it is not a living person.\u00a0 It is, at most, raw material.\u00a0 The woman carrying it can, if she wishes, make it into a person.\u00a0 But what is the point of\u00a0 making another person when the woman herself, already a person, counts for so little?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Many of you \u201cpro-life\u201d people, or perhaps most, cite religion as your reason for being \u201cpro-life.\u201d\u00a0 But that doesn\u2019t work either.\u00a0 Neither the Protestant Bible (more than 480,000 words) nor the Catholic Bible (more than 783,000 words because it contains seven extra chapters) mentions the word abortion.\u00a0 Jesus never mentioned it. Neither did any of his Apostles.\u00a0 Neither did any of the Prophets.\u00a0 No one whose writings are in the Bible mentioned it.\u00a0 No one.\u00a0 Not ever.\u00a0 Not once.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s talk about your religious objections.<\/p>\n

Protestants<\/em><\/strong>:<\/em>\u00a0 Abortion has never been an issue in most mainstream and liberal Protestant churches, and it still isn\u2019t.\u00a0 Neither was it an issue in most conservative churches until 1979, and the reason they got involved then had nothing to do with religion.\u00a0 It was all about politics.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the story:\u00a0 The IRS was beginning to threaten the tax-exempt status of religious groups that ran racially segregated schools, specifically Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C.\u00a0 To combat the IRS, high-powered Christian nationalist leaders \u2013 among them Bob Jones Sr., Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Paul Weyrich \u2013 decided to \u201crestore America\u2019s moral foundation\u201d by creating a hot-button issue to oppose government regulation, regardless of whether it had anything to do with segregation, and they lit on abortion.\u00a0 Their plan worked so well that ever since then conservative denominations have been strongly anti-abortion.\u00a0 You can read details of this in Katherine Stewart\u2019s 2022 book The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Catholics:<\/em><\/strong> The Catholic Church\u2019s opposition goes back much farther, back to 1679.\u00a0 Until then, the church operated under two propositions, one of\u00a0 which said that it should be lawful for a woman to procure an abortion, and the other said that it \u201cseems probable that the fetus (as long as it is in the uterus) lacks a rational soul and begins first to have one when it is born: and thus it must be said that no abortion is a homicide.\u201d\u00a0 But in 1679 Pope Innocent XI issued the papal bull Sanctissimus Dominus<\/em> that condemned those propositions, and the church hasn\u2019t looked back since.\u00a0 It has made some adjustments, but his basic anti-abortion rule still holds.<\/p>\n

Islamists<\/em><\/strong>:<\/em> The Muslim religion is founded on the Quron, which does not directly address intentional abortion.\u00a0 It leaves the question to the discretion of individual countries.<\/p>\n

Jews:<\/em><\/strong> Judaism is the oldest monotheistic religion in the world, with its origins tracing back more than 3,000 years, and from its earliest days it has always asserted that a fetus becomes a person at birth.\u00a0 Today\u2019s Jews feel so strongly about it that they are making the case that the Supreme Court is violating the Constitution by interfering with their religious rights.<\/p>\n

Which brings us to the Supreme Court.\u00a0 Donald Trump\u2019s three appointees made it abundantly clear during their confirmation hearings that they considered Roe vs. Wade settled law and they respected settled law. Then they proved themselves perjurers at their first opportunity when they leaped on Roe vs. Wade to kill a woman\u2019s right to control her own body.\u00a0 It was the first time in history that the Supreme Court rejected a constitutional right that it had specifically issued.\u00a0 As Margaret Atwood suggested, the court, by forcing women to have babies against their will, forced them into slavery.\u00a0 Surely, \u201cpro-lifers,\u201d you must agree that it is astounding that the court cannot force you to wear a mask, but it can force you to have a baby.<\/p>\n

At least there is some light peeping through all this darkness.\u00a0 The Washington Post reported a few days ago that a growing number of men in red states are speaking out in defense of reproductive rights.\u00a0 Most of those men were either vehemently \u201cpro-life\u201d or had never given the issue much thought until they witnessed the harrowing experiences their wives or friends were forced to suffer when their pregnancies went tragically awry and \u201cpro-life\u201d laws endangered their health, their ability to bear children, and even their lives.<\/p>\n

So please, if you are \u201cpro-life,\u201d think about what you are doing. Think hard.\u00a0 Please.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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