Pro Life Deconstructed

Years ago I read about indigenous women in Guatemala who use a poison plant to abort an unwanted pregnancy. This is something they have done for many centuries, and apparently was a secret they kept from their husbands, who, like men everywhere, would tend to disapprove.
This is instructive, or at least should be. Women have been aborting pregnancies ever since there have been humans, and likely well into pre-human stages of evolution. It became "murder" because of religion. It almost doesn’t matter which religion. They all believe they have the answers to life, and make rules for people to follow. The key factor is the degree of patriarchy and its accompanying authoritarianism.

The religion I grew up in, Roman Catholicism, is the most patriarchal and authoritarian of Christian religions, with a single ruler, the Pope, and a descending hierarchy of men all the way down to the local parish priest. There isn’t much point in being authoritarian if you don’t make enforceable rules for the faithful to follow, and making abortion a "mortal" sin is perfect for keeping women in line. When you commit a mortal sin you go to "Hell" after death – unless, of course you repent, beg forgiveness and do some kind of penance, as determined by an authority – a priest, who is by Roman "canon" always a man.

Other Christian religions have been more flexible and ambiguous regarding abortion, but many have fallen into line with authoritarianism and patriarchy, depending on the degree of fanaticism and political alignment. The "Republican" party has worked symbiotically with extreme Christian groups through demagoguery, scapegoating and repressive laws. Until last week these efforts have mostly been thwarted upon appeal because of the 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe versus Wade, giving women the right to an abortion for any reason.

Then, on June 24 the latest iteration of the Supreme Court reversed the 1972 decision, and in its majority opinion said the legality of abortion is up to individual states. In a way, this was a perfect decision. This version of the Supreme Court is illegitimate for a number of reasons, which I wrote about previously. An illegitimate court made an illegitimate decision, based on religious prejudice – five of the six justices voting in the majority are Catholics, and the sixth is a former Catholic, now an Episcopalian - a schism religion that is almost Catholic, just no pope. The Episcopal Church was part of the Church of England, but separated after the American revolution. The Church of England separated from Catholicism in 1534 when the pope refused to give King Henry VIII an annulment of his marriage. He had two later wives beheaded. Some religion.

At least two of the justices lied under oath during their nomination hearings, and are both verifiable sexual predators. The wife of one of the lying under oath sexual predators was involved in the January 6 insurrection. Five of them were appointed by presidents who gained office by voter suppression, collusion with a foreign power to influence voters, and through other election chicanery. One was appointed after the "Republican" majority in the U.S. Senate refused to hold hearings for "Democratic" president Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland.

This is all pretty common knowledge, but necessary to mention when looking at the abortion question. The Christian religions behind anti-abortion efforts are all fake, created by men, and with the underlying mission of controlling people, threatening them with eternal damnation, and sometimes killing them in order to exert their authority. Jesus Christ, the mythical God in human form and focus of worship, never existed, but that doesn’t matter to "Christians." All that matters is believing he existed, or at least pretending to believe. "Serving" him has been the justification of countless wars, tortures, imprisonments, beheadings, burning at the stake, banishments and various forms of disparagement over the centuries, so why stop now?

Deconstructing the U.S. Supreme Court and Christianity are fairly easy pickings. What might be useful at this point is to deconstruct the modern philosophical principle, or more accurately slogan, of the antiabortion movement known as "pro-life." To be opposed to abortion is to be pro-life, as if the other "side" is anti-life. It is essentially a semantic argument. It takes the word life to mean a specific thing – the developing potential human during the nine-month gestation period from conception to birth. A biologically conceived embryo grows into human form over this nine-month period, and then is expelled in birth, the time at which a distinct, viable person is welcomed into the world. Or not, depending on individual circumstances. Welcome is a very relative and ambiguous term.

Pro-lifers contend that the embryo is a live human, and to end a pregnancy at any time after conception is killing a baby. The word life is appropriated to mean fetal life. In actuality, the word life means much more. It applies to all biological life, including animal, plant, bacterial, viral and fungal. To truly be pro life would mean being in favor of the existence and continuation of life on this planet.

I also believe that the term life includes much more than biological life. How about the rest of the Universe beyond our limited planetary understanding? A myriad of fantastic galaxies exist outside the one in which our relatively small solar system operates. Is what goes on in motion in all these galaxies limited to our narrow view of what it means to be alive? So arrogant.

Then there is the problem of independence, of distinctness of the gestating potential human. If an embryo is life, then a kidney should also be life. Or a heart, a liver, a pancreas, a lung, a brain, a bladder and a colon. There are two differences with pregnancy. One, of course, is that the gestating potential person is in the process of becoming a new person. The other is that this development process can be reversed or ended due to a variety of circumstances, including disease or other illness of the mother, trauma, accident, and, of course, abortion.

Ultimately, the process of human reproduction is biological, something humans didn’t invent, but which we share with all other forms of life on this planet. To make rules governing something we didn’t invent is to impose the values and authority of civilization – of mass society – over the life process. In the U.S., it has come down to the authority of crackpot religion and an illegitimate and criminal judicial overseer. It can only be enforced through further fanaticism and criminality. It won’t last, especially in the context of life-threatening climate change and the unsustainability of our infinite-growth economic system. No phony Supreme Court can control these inevitabilities. A real one might try, but even that would be too little, too late. Most likely is that the entire system will abort.

__________________________________

When Trump nominee and sexual predator Brett Kavanaugh testified under oath before the U.S. Senate in 2018, I wrote this.

Here's a song. Vintage George Carlin. Johnny Cash. 

Here's one for Cassidy Hutchinson. Here's another. Stephen Colbert had some fun with her testimony. She answered this question from the January 6 committee with eloquence, courage and great truth. 

The Supreme Court is at it again. This song is for Donald Trump. This song is for the "Republican" party. Bob Marley, always inspiring. Frank Zappa.

Sometimes I write things that appear elsewhere, such as this. And this. Most recently, this. Here's one from last year. 

__________________________________

Update, July 29, 2022: Here's a quick analysis of the Supreme Court's phony theory of "Originalism."

Update, September 2: The NPR program Science Friday aired a discussion of when life begins.