Posts like this raise many questions. Namely: how many times will the Religious-Industrial Complex go to the same well? And: how many times will US News & World Report blogger Dan Gilgoff dutifully write up the latest iteration of this same threadbare press release for them without bothering to evaluate its premises?
Most of all, it raises the question of how monumentally irresponsible progressive activists would have to be to risk jeopardizing health-care reform by playing into right-wing talking points.
Let's make no mistake about it: that is exactly what's happening here. The idea that changes in health-care would increase funding for abortion comes straight out of the Religious Right outrage machine, and its purpose couldn't be clearer. They want to make any kind of meaningful reform toxic.
Repeating the charges—even if it's to point to a "common ground solution"—only strengthens the hands of those opposed to reform. The president has said—repeatedly—that the status quo on federal funding for abortion will remain just that. It's understandable that the potential for change on this point may not be "only a conservative concern"—there are indeed pro-life progressives—but it's incredibly myopic.
If conservative religious concern trolls succeed in weakening health care reform by making bogus attacks on abortion, they just might succeed in taking reform down, and they'll use the power they gain from that success to take an even tougher line on abortion than pro-life progressives want. I honestly cannot understand how anyone who cares about either issue could fail to connect the dots on this one. Buying into this criticism weakens progressives across the board, even the ones who might kinda sorta agree with it. The only appropriate response is to point out that it isn't part of a good-faith effort to bring down the number of abortions. Call it what it is: a partisan attempt to hamstring a president of the opposing party on his signature issue.
At the same time, it needs to be said that not many religious progressives are worried that health care reform will lead to more abortions. Some of them are, and they're entitled to their worries. But by no means do all progressive religious people share this concern. In fact, abortion doesn't seem to have slowed them down a bit.
Which leads us back to some questions. Given that opinion is split on the priority given to the abortion issue even with the religious progressive coalition, why is it that Dan Gilgoff is reporting this story as if all the liberals were upset? It's not like he hasn't spoken to religious pro-choice advocates, myself among many others. He knows where to find us.
And given that telling the Religious Right to go jump in the lake is the simplest, truest, most effective strategy, why are some progressive religious groups choosing instead to reinforce their narrative?
Tags: abortion, dan gilgoff, health care, healthcare, obama, religious industrial complex, religious progressives
The debate on abortion is merely opinion. Moral values are based on either self-centered, God-based or society-based non-provable basic assumption. For the Catholic viewpoint let me exerpt from the free ebook series “And Gulliver Returns” (httå://andgulliverreturns.info) The Abortion chapter in Book 4 elaborates the pros and cons of the 3 ethical assumptions. Let me attempt to summarize the changing Catholic position. From the 13th Century the views of St. Thomas Aquinas, that male embryos got their souls about 4 weeks after conception, females somewhat later, were the standard. His was a Christionized view of Aristotle’s ideas.
The crux of the modern idea, that the soul is infused at conception, might be traced to St. Paul (Romans 5:12) who started the ball rolling on ‘original sin.’ 500 years later St. Augustine popularized the idea. But the Blessed Virgin was born without original sin, her Immaculate Conception. Pope Pius IX declared this in 1854. Then in 1870 he decided that popes were infallible in church doctrine. So was his pronouncement retroacttive?
Recent popes have generally followed Pius’s idea that the soul enters the zygote at the moment of conception. This brings with it some theological problems. Since many fertilized ova never implant in the uterus what happens to these little souls?
If you are really interested in the question, see the aforementioned chapter. It is done in detail.
At one level this is conservative vs. liberal. At another level, it is American Christianity against global progressivism. They have a lot at stake. They have stacked up issues of abortion, evolution, zionism, freedom and guns, anti-science, and anti-government. They listen only to themselves because their entire belief structure is based on them being closer to God than other people, and therefore right about virtually everything and no evidence should enter into the picture. If this house of cards collapses, it might also undermine progressive Christianity in this country, so the progressives want conservative Christianity to change some, but not fall completely apart. Conservative Christianity is free to move forward confident in the belief that their house of cards is made of stone, and so it falls on their progressive brothers to do all the hard work of trying to protect the house from collapse.
For many years the Religious Right waved the banner of abortion to gather supporters. Having done so, they have used abortion, since then, as a weapon against anything and everything they dislike.
The sad part is that none of their caterwauling about abortion, their passage of laws in some states to restrict, nor their general carrying-on about it as though it meant the destruction of the planet, has reduced abortion at all. It brought them some fleeting political success, but right now they're at the lowest ebb of their political power -- even though they have never relented on the matter.
If these people had any honesty they would stop using abortion as a club with which to beat everyone else, and start working -- at a social or cultural rather than political level -- at efforts which might actually cause the number of abortions to fall. What's worse, the evangelical Protestants who established the Religious Right and remain its core, used abortion to collect allies, such as the Catholic bishops. In the process they forced the bishops to compromise themselves, because in many ways, Catholics are opposed to many Religious Right ideas. In this case the RC Church supports healthcare for all ... yet the R.R. has successfully forced the Catholic bishops to lobby against it, using the abortion scare-tactic as a leash to yank them along and keep them in line.
Let's be honest, we all know the R.R. never will do anything to meaningfully reduce abortion, since they believe the specter of abortion grants them power. If they were to do so, it would undermine them politically. (Or so they think ... I have to wonder how specious this assumption may be, seen as how they have lost power at a national level.)
They are, in a word, hypocrites. They SAY they want abortions to stop, but aren't willing to cause the numbers of abortions to fall. They embrace this hypocrisy, moreover, in direct contravention of the words of the founder of their own religion,
Health care reform and the gay marriage debate are great distractions, but the unchecked powers of the Fed are more or less unknown to the people. Perhaps an audit and reigning in of the Federal Reserve would be a good idea, before Wall Street gets another pay day. The United States Federal Reserve is an organization shrouded in mystery. The Federal Reserve is being hailed as the prime mover in the bank bailout to avoid more bank failures, even though banks are still failing. Some things nobody knows – the Federal Reserve isn't part of the government; it's actually a private group. There is little or no Congressional oversight – and this is who prints our money.
In 1978 I was on a TV talk show, supposedly a "showdown" between pro-lifers and pro-choicers.
I got my 30 seconds of airtime, and I pointed out that with existing methods of birth control, we could reduce unwanted pregnancies by at least 95-98%, and that certainly abstenance is an acceptable method of birthcontrol. I didn't want to alienate the conservatives unnecessarily. With no unwanted pregnancies, there should be no reason, other than medical, to even consider abortion.
I pointed out that what we need are sex education, and the availability of different kinds of effective birth control, and that in countries where these are available, rates of unwanted pregnancies and abortions are far below those in our country.
Of course, as soon as I sat down, the two sides were right back at each other's throats.
While there are many pro-choicers who agree with me, the availabity of sex education and birth control hasn't gone up much, and the number of unwanted pregnancies has actually gone UP in the last few years.
The position of most of the pro-lifers seems to have gotten worse lately. They don't want to do anything that would actually reduce the number of abortions, they just want to make everyone else's life more difficult. They really don't want to win, but they do SO love to fight.
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