Late last week, as extreme right-wing shock troops swarmed over the Capitol, I was laid very low with a food-borne microbe and required some emergency medical care. My attending ER nurse, a kindly pro, told me that he cannot afford to retire after 30 stressful years with Kaiser Permanente because—like so many others ready and willing to retire—he needs the insurance! We quickly agreed that achieving comprehensive health care reform would be a big win-win for everyone of every age in this wildly unequal society.
But this is by no means obvious to huge numbers of anxious Americans. They have a zero sum view of changing the health care system to cover everyone, to bar insurers from charging women higher premiums, and to prevent them from screening out or dropping people for preexisting conditions. They think that if these changes are made, their existing coverage will be diminished or degraded. That’s what a zero sum mentality means: the gains for some, in this case mainly for the poor and uninsured, must necessarily result in losses for others.
Neoliberal economists can always be dredged up to lend a veneer of respectability to this view, but a religiously-informed ethical sensibility rebels strongly against it—especially in the case of health care. “We are one body, one blood,” is a common liturgical expression in my own Christian tradition. For Jews there are few more significant scriptural passages than Isaiah 58, where one’s own healing and blessing are said by God to be intricately bound up with the healing and care of others in bodily need.
Why then are so many American Christians so devoutly opposed to even very modest steps toward affordable and universal health care coverage? (I do not speak of the adherents of other faiths. In contrast to the behavior of American Christians, for example, nearly 80 percent of American Jews continue to “earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans,” in the famous and funny phrase attributed to Milton Himmelfarb a half century ago.)
This is a question that has haunted me for a long time. The reluctant conclusion I draw is that these are Ayn Rand Christians, never touched by the spirit of the Christ whose ministry was emphatically defined from the start by his compassion for the sick and for his healing of the multitudes who came to him with all manner of diseases. Jesus did not seem to think that it was taking anything away from the already-healthy to restore the health of the physically and psychologically afflicted. He did not operate from a zero sum mentality nor from a neoliberal economics of scarcity. In his economy of radical abundance—one version of what Lewis Hyde calls the “gift economy”—the more health you give, the more health you get.
We are one body. And when a member of that body denigrates or deprives another member, particularly a poorer member, Christ is crucified yet again and the spirit of Christ is absent. Or as St. Paul put it in sternly rebuking a class-obsessed community in Corinth:
The members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect… If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. (I Corinthians 12.22-23, 26)
That’s the way it’s supposed to be even now for Christian people. But the Ayn Rand types with their “Kill the Bill” rhetoric never got that message, apparently.
Then there are the patriarchal Christians: those leaders who continue to believe that women are morally, even ontologically, inferior, and who vividly demonstrate that conviction by excluding women from sacramental leadership and by seeking to control women’s bodies and women’s choices in various ways. Ironically, these patriarchal Christians (many, but not all of them Roman Catholic clergy) reject the possessive individualism of the mostly Protestant Ayn Rand types. They retain a strong sense that social progress is about us advancing together, advancing communally, and not about me feathering my private nest. Yet they managed to land a telling blow against progressive health reform last week—a bit of poison-pill sabotage in the form of the Stupak Amendment, which garnered 240 votes in the House, 64 of them from Democrats.
What Stupak is about politically has been capably reported here by Sarah Posner and others. It will represent a massive setback for women if it is enacted into law. In my view the real devilment is that getting it included in the House bill now gives the Catholic bishops and their non-Catholic patriarchal friends an undeserved moral high ground as the bill moves toward conference committee and eventually to the President’s desk. Because who would dare to stand in the way of providing coverage to the great majority of the currently uninsured over such a trifle as requiring insurance companies to drop existing coverage of abortion services if they want to stay in business? What kind of narrow obstructionist would make any kind of fuss over telling American women that they will now have to purchase a special rider if they want abortion services included in the private insurance plans they pay for with their own money?
Tags: abortion, ayn rand, bart stupak, health care, healthcare, milton himmelbarb, pro choice, pro life, stupak
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"Why not be man enough to just come out and say it? You have never liked women, you fear women, and now you would even sink the chance of providing coverage for 36 million currently uninsured persons—including many of the children and immigrants you claim to love—rather than accept a carefully-negotiated compromise on women’s reproductive health."
This is such a ridiculous caricature, and this site seems to support it across the board. Compare this article (and any other recent one on abortion) to RD's mission statement, and note the many contradictions.
So Christians oppose abortion because they hate women? There is absolutely zero concern for protecting the unborn child's life against some people's choices (as we would do for any other human)?! Nice to see how you slander and distort your opponent's position. How eminently Christ-like!
In a two page article about abortion, how can you manage never to mention the unborn? Is this the radical concern for "the least of these" that you claim to possess? You make just as much a mockery of Jesus's words as those on the right. And since you just condemned them to hell, don't be surprised if Jesus judges you by your own standard, while your cries of "Lord, Lord!" fall on deaf ears.
Repent! Show concern for both the woman and the child! Glorify the name of Christ instead of dragging it through the mud!
Reuster, you're working too hard at missing the point. Your Christianity determines that life begins before birth. Not everyone's does, as you well know.
Laws that enforce one kind of faith are theocratic and violate other's beliefs and consciences. You expect the US government and the public to support and be governed by your religious views only, at the expense of others'.
That isn't how we're supposed to be doing it; no one faith should dictate law. Particularly when that ideology will greatly harm womans' privacy, health, conscience and rights.
I agree that no one faith should dictate law; however, the law is right to violate someone's belief when that belief i) infringes on the rights of another and ii) has insufficient evidence to support it.
For example, some people's beliefs used to dictate that the life of an African slave was not worth the life of a white person. Was it theocratic to abolish slavery and deny slave-owners the right to choose the fate of their slaves? Those who saw African Americans as humans with equal rights were acting just as much on belief as the slaveowners. In the end, the correct solution was not to say "let's agree to disagree and let everyone have their own beliefs". Rather, each belief had to submit to evaluation. There was no good argument for considering a Black person any different from a white person, and so slaveowners' beliefs were overruled.
It is the same with abortion: there is no good argument for considering an unborn child to be off the spectrum of personhood (this spectrum includes infants, mentally handicapped individuals, etc.). Arguments against considering a fetus to be a person are addressed on this website. Thus, the beliefs of those who state that fetuses are not people should be overruled.
Notice that the belief that life begins before birth has nothing to do with the Bible or my Christianity per se. I don't want my religious views codified in law simply because I believe them; I recognize that such a theocracy would be disastrous for everyone. But if anyone's belief is based on evidence and the opposing view is not, and if the issue has potentially serious consequences, then I want the law to reflect the right belief, regardless of majority opinion. Such a policy is not theocracy, but the constitutionally-mandated protection of the weak against the tyranny of the majority.
If you want to change my mind, don't just tell me that other people believe differently than me. Prove to me that their beliefs are valid. Show me a good argument for why we should allow someone to terminate a fetus but not an adult with brain damage. By the way, the burden of proof should lie on the one wishing to exclude certain entities from their definition of humanity. I recognize that women have the rights you listed, but if an unborn child is truly a person (and no one has convincingly argued otherwise), then their right to life should trump all lesser rights... just as a slave's right to liberty trumped the slave-owner's right to pursue happiness through owning property.
In the United States we operate according to law. Legally, a person is someone who has been born.
Using theological speculation on the status of the unborn will try to get us somewhere, but ultimately cannot.
First, I highly recommend this other Religion Dispatches article by Gordon D. Newby: "House Health Care Bill Discriminates Against Religious Freedom" (link name too long to paste).
Second, there is an easy and good argument to deny fetuses "personhood": they cannot survive outside the womb (or an incubator). They do not have the ability to draw breath. They do not have provable consciousness. Yes, the link you provided tries to obfuscate this point, but it's not rational. A clump of cells (the site's words) are not a human the way a fully developed infant is.
Let me be clear - this is not a reason to support abortion. But your question has to do with personhood. We simply cannot give a dependent being in utero the same rights as a being capable of existence outside the womb. It's indefensible and a legal nightmare. Giving a fetus the same rights as the woman bearing it is not rational. It simply is not. In states where personhood amendments are being considered, even anti-abortion advocates are against them because the wording and definitions are so vague (again, cannot post link).
Abortion is a difficult choice that should never have to be made. But it does, regardless of whether it is legal or illegal, covered or uncovered (by insurance). Keeping it safe and legal does save lives - lives of women. That ought to be part of the consideration.
I encourage all persons who want to prevent abortions to focus their energies on responsible sex education and providing means of birth control. These are the most effective solutions to unwanted pregnancies.
linked text for Religion Dispatches article
linked text for article regarding a proposed personhood amendment in Nevada
"they cannot survive outside the womb (or an incubator)."
The ability to survive "on one's own" is not a good criterion for personhood. Certain chronically ill adults cannot survive outside of a hospital. They are people. My grandmother (when she was alive), could not survive without being hooked to a dialysis machine several times a day. She was still a person. What level of self-sufficiency is required to be a person? Some mentally challenged individuals could not survive more than a few days without direct care and supervision from loved ones. Is their personhood diminished for it? Such arguments are insulting and dangerous and should be completely disregarded by the law.
"They do not have the ability to draw breath."
Some adults are dependent on an artificial respirator to breathe. The idea that personhood should be based on the ability to breathe unaided is simply laughable.
"They do not have provable consciousness."
Define "provable consciousness". Are you talking about stimulus response? Self-awareness? Intelligence? Using any of these criteria, how would you distinguish between a fetus, an infant, a developmentally challenged child, and a mentally handicapped adult? Presumably, you would grant personhood to all but the first (if not, then there's no point talking to you), but there seems to be no evidence for drawing the line there.
"Giving a fetus the same rights as the woman bearing it is not rational. It simply is not."
You have failed to give any evidence whatsoever for why a fetus and a mother should not both be recognized as people; all you have done is emphatically state your unproven conviction. In order to consistently apply your criteria, we would have to legally revoke the personhood of the most helpless members of society, or at least set up a graded scale of personhood based on self-sufficiency and cognitive ability. Are you comfortable with that? Are you comfortable with allowing people to exclude others from the human race by right of their "religious freedom"? Such logic fits right in with the antebellum South.
"I encourage all persons who want to prevent abortions to focus their energies on responsible sex education and providing means of birth control. These are the most effective solutions to unwanted pregnancies."
At least we agree on something, but that does not excuse us from extending consistent legal protection to all members of the human race.
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