There is an interesting article on the NCR site today, by David E. Decosse, Dobbs, abolition and women's right to bodily integrity | National Catholic Reporter (ncronline.org) He discusses the Dobbs decision, slavery, and abolition; but not in the way we have usually seen those subjects related to one another.
We may not agree with the author in every respect, but the article is well thought out, and worth discussing.
From the article:
"In my days in the Right to Life Party in the 1980s, I had no doubt that the post-Roe v. Wade Catholic effort to pass laws in the United States prohibiting abortion was the modern equivalent of the 19th-century abolitionist drive to end slavery. "
"...Today, I think the post-Roe Catholic effort to pass laws focused on the dignity of the unborn faltered in its engagement with the reality of pregnant women. Today, I also find it disingenuous to compare the Catholic campaign against abortion to abolition, since Catholics in the 19th century in the U.S. by and large supported slavery and opposed abolition.
Moreover, instead of the easy certainty of my past, a hard question lingers today: Is a similar conceptual problem — the neglect of the right to bodily integrity — that was partially complicit in the failure of American Catholicism to oppose slavery in the 19th century also now at work in the refusal of American Catholic leadership to acknowledge the injustice of using coercive law to compel women to give birth no matter the circumstances of their pregnancy?"
"I am referring to the way that American Catholic arguments about slavery and abortion had then and have now little to no place for the right to bodily integrity. The encyclical Pacem in Terris in 1963 affirmed this as an essential human right."
The U.S. Supreme Court's jurisprudence noted in the late 19th century: "No right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded ... than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person." The dissent in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that was decided June 24, 2022, described the right to mean: "Everyone, including women, owns their own bodies."
"To be sure, the 19th-century American Catholic failure to oppose slavery had numerous causes, such as racism, fear over competition for jobs, and the anti-Catholicism of many abolitionists. But historian John McGreevy in Catholicism and American Freedom has also shown how any possible Catholic moral concern for the violent, physical bondage of enslaved persons was displaced by a moralizing fear of abolition as liberal freedom run amok."
"At the time, the Jesuits in Rome at Civilta Cattolica articulated this logic when they said that the drive for abolition reflected a "mania for liberty and disrespect for authority endemic in liberal political culture."
"By contrast, as McGreevy notes, the almost singular 19th century American episcopal voice against slavery — John Baptist Purcell of Cincinnati — refused to dismiss the moral significance of physical bondage. His diocese's Catholic newspaper wrote that "supernatural and moral freedom will never take place without the natural and physical. "We can see in Catholic writing on abortion an analogous diminishment of the moral significance of the physical, bodily constraint of women that is necessarily an aspect of the use of law to restrict abortion."
"....In my own case, two reasons have kept me from engaging the right to bodily integrity in the context of law and abortion. One is the obvious moral urgency of abortion. But it's also the case that moral urgency can obscure moral complexity — especially in the context of law. Thus the rightful focus on the fetus became for me the exclusive focus on the fetus — blocking out any competing moral concerns other than compassion for pregnant women."
"...It's important to be clear about the meaning of the body at stake in recognizing a right to bodily integrity as a matter of law and abortion. Catholicism is a religion that prizes the body — from its created goodness to its resurrected destiny. But how the body is understood at any given time in the history of the church has varied widely. For centuries, historian John Noonan has noted, slavery was accepted within Catholicism because of a "residual Platonism" in which the soul was considered to be "unaffected by the body's servile state." So long as the soul could be saved, it didn't matter if the body was enslaved. "
"...Sociologist Orlando Patterson has argued that throughout Western history there has been a constant effort to define freedom in abstraction from the embodied and constricted experience of the vulnerable and poor. I think of the accuracy of Patterson's claim when I think of the American Catholic failure in the 19th century to support abolition and of the American Catholic failure today to engage the right to bodily integrity of women in the debate over law and abortion. Both failures are examples of abstraction from embodied and vulnerable experience."
"...it is a failure of moral truth not to recognize the injustice of using coercive law to compel women to give birth no matter the circumstances of their pregnancy. Catholicism failed fully to recognize the bodies of enslaved persons in the 19th century. In the post-Dobbs world, we are failing fully to recognize pregnant women's bodies not simply as objects of compassion but as dignified subjects of justice. "
A few personal reflections: A couple of things caught my attention. One of them was the quote from John Noonan about "residual Platonism", that so long as the soul could be saved, it didn't matter if the body was enslaved. That goes against the Catholic teaching that "..we are a creature composed of body and soul." We aren't just a soul going around in a mortal body, like some kind of vehicle that we drive.
I could feel the author's discomfort with the seeming contradiction of the right to bodily integrity and the right to life. And I am reminded that we follow Jesus Christ, who gave his body for us, and continues to give his body for us. As it says in I Corinthians 6:19-20, "..do you not know that your body is a [a]temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from [b]God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought for a price: therefore glorify God in your body. "
I am also struck by how this issue relates to the church's sex scandals. Those were indeed instances in which neither the victims' nor the perpetrators' bodily integrity and dignity were honored. But that is probably a subject for another day.
I have to sympathize with "residual platonism" to this extent. Regarding the freedom of the soul with respect to the enslavement of the body, there is something to that. How else to fathom the very survival of African-Americans under centuries of horrid bondage? How else to explain the creativity of African-Americans in music, religion and culture? The spirit is not independent of the body and can react in amazing ways when that bodily freedom is abused.
ReplyDelete"The spirit is not independent of the body and can react in amazing ways when that bodily freedom is abused"
ReplyDeleteI would agree with that. But abuse of the body still hurts the spirit.
Yes, it does hurt. Suffering is not an illusion. I suppose that is where I might disagree with the eastern religions. Spirituals, jazz, blues. Lots of suffering there. Joy, too.
DeleteI don't believe I've encountered this author previously. He has a pretty long track record of writing at NCR on a variety of subjects. Nearly all his articles sound interesting; I wish I had time to read all of them.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ncronline.org/authors/david-e-decosse
He may well be right about how the pro-life movement, including in the Catholic church, has failed to take sufficient account of a pregnant woman's right to bodily autonomy.
Of course, it's been clear for decades that it's difficult or impossible to reconcile the competing moral rights to bodily autonomy which come about in the situation of an unwanted pregnancy. Either the pregnant woman has to defer to the reality of the human body (and its autonomy) growing inside her; or the baby has to be killed. Perhaps that is a stark way to put it, but I am not sure there is any middle ground between those two poles.
As a practical matter, the United States seems to be attempting to reconcile that irreconcilable situation by moving, by fits and starts, toward some sort of political consensus whereby abortion is widely permitted up to some early point of pregnancy (somewhere around 12-15 weeks of pregnancy) and then is more restricted thereafter. To be sure, there is wide variance in the states, with some seeking to ban abortion much earlier in the pregnancy, and others seeking to enshrine it as a state constitutional right throughout pregnancy. But public opinion might, possibly, be starting to converge around the sort of consensus I mention here. But we're a long way from achieving that consensus, even in public opinion, much less in politics and policy. If an American consensus ever is reached - and it may never be - it probably would happen after we've all gone to heaven.
A few more comments about the article. He recognizes that abortion is wrong, and I trust he is sincere. But at least in this article (I haven't read his other writings, and he may address this elsewhere), he doesn't really address the notion of a consistent ethic of life. To be sure: some of the loudest pro-life voices in the Catholic Church disdain the theory of the Consistent Ethic of Life (especially when it goes by its nickname, "The Seamless Garment"), because they see it as giving Catholic Democratic officials permission to pick and choose from the cafeteria of pro-life political positions. Naturally, being Democrats, very few of them choose the pro-life position on abortion. Nevertheless, I think the idea behind a consistent ethic of life resonates with many Catholics in the pews, at least when it comes to abortion: it's clear enough to us that the life of the baby is a life created by God, just as the mother's life was created by God, and that therefore the baby in the womb is to be reverenced - and protected.
ReplyDeleteThis point is important because, perhaps unintentionally, the author inverts the reality of the political situation regarding abortion during my lifetime. He writes, "But it is a failure of moral truth not to recognize the injustice of using coercive law to compel women to give birth no matter the circumstances of their pregnancy." But that is topsy-turvy. Pro-life Catholics have not been "using coercive law to compel women to give birth", at least not during my lifetime. They have been working to overturn a law (the case law of Roe v Wade and the case law that followed it) that prohibited most - in some places, nearly all - constraints on terminating pregnancies for any reason, good or bad. The regime of Roe v Wade is unsupportable from the point of view of Catholic moral teaching. Elsewhere in the article, the author seems to concede as much.
Now - to be sure, following Dobbs, some states have greatly restricted abortion. (Many of those efforts to restrict abortion are under court challenges and/or court injunctions, so even where legislators have passed those laws and governors have signed them, they haven't all taken effect yet.) But it would be be almost wholly inaccurate to describe those more-restrictive laws as "compel[ling] women to give birth no matter the circumstances of their pregnancy". Nearly all of them have exceptions for various circumstances, such as rape and incest, and even for the early weeks of pregnancy, for which there really is a strong political consensus. In short: these laws don't prohibit abortions "no matter the circumstances of their pregnancy". They explicitly take into account the circumstances of their pregnancy. So I don't think he's accurately describing the reality of the law prior to Dobbs, nor accurately characterizing what the pro-life movement has achieved post-Dobbs.
The author's attempt to link the history of the 19th century abolition movement with the 20th- and 21st century pro-life movement is mildly interesting, but I have to admit I didn't find it very compelling. Of course, he's right that Catholics emphatically were not in the vanguard of the abolition movement.
ReplyDeleteBut if the church was wrong on abolition - and it was - that doesn't therefore mean it's wrong on abortion. Many people and many institutions are wrong on one item, and right on another.
In the case of the Catholic church, there was a signal event that came between those two movements: the Second Vatican Council. Vatican II changed many things about Catholicism, both explicitly and implicitly. The Holy See in the 19th century, one of the last vestiges of the European royalist tradition, was hostile to many aspects of American thought and American life, which was rooted in the Enlightenment and Protestantism. I think it's likely that slavery in the United States did not figure greatly in the Vatican's 19th century Eurocentric world view. It took the church a long time to come around to seeing clearly on that issue.
Even today, the Vatican, by all accounts still rather Eurocentric, is still nonplussed that abortion generates such passion in the United States. In many ways, even during the pontificate of Francis, the Holy See does not "get" the US.
Speaking as an American who has been around the block a few times: I will note that, in some ways, the abolition movement and the pro-life movement are vastly different from one another - but in some important ways, the comparison is entirely apt. Both movements were/are animated by a moral clarity which the other side cannot acknowledge because to do so would be to acknowledge the moral bankruptcy of their own position. That is why I think that, ultimately, the pro-life view will prevail in the United States: the US often ends up doing the right thing, even when it does many wrong things leading up to it.
About this, "Even today, the Vatican, by all accounts still rather Eurocentric, is still nonplussed that abortion generates such passion in the United States. In many ways, even during the pontificate of Francis, the Holy See does not "get" the US."
DeleteI think that is true, and it is puzzling. Are the Europeans more inclined to let people work things out in their own consciences? From statistics I have read, most European countries have fewer abortions than the US.
Speaking in general terms, Much of Europe already seems to have arrived at the consensus that I'm describing the US as inching toward: abortions are widely permitted early in the pregnancy, and then abortion rights become more restricted as the pregnancy progresses. This tracks with American attitudes as demonstrated by some public opinion polling.
DeleteJim, you may be right that a kind of consensus skewing more to the pro-life view will be reached; in which restrictions are looser in the first trimester, and exceptions are made for life/health of the mother, rape and incest. What is preventing that consensus from being reached right now are politicians trying to be the biggest and baddest culture warriors on the block. In which they talk about prison sentences for women who have abortions, restricting travel, and tying the hands of doctors so that they are afraid to treat actual medical emergencies.
ReplyDeleteIt also doesn't help to reach a more pro-life consensus when so-called pro-life voters favor cutting holes in the social safety net.
Yes - the Seamless Garment challenges just about everyone. I'd like to know how the author reconciles it with his emphasis on bodily autonomy.
DeleteFew pro- choice folks (except the fanatics) would fight a 12-15 week window for abortion. Before Dobbs about 93% of abortions were done by 12 weeks without legal coercion - about 85% by 8 weeks. But the anti-choice fanatics would fight a first trimester window. A consensus would be welcome. Now there is a legitimate concern that the same fanatics may try to impose a national ban on birth control.
ReplyDeleteAs far as respecting bodily autonomy is concerned, it seems that preference must be given to the woman - a complete human being, a person, rather than to the developing, potential person.
The coercion is a function of imposing selected religious beliefs on all, including the majority who do not share those religious beliefs - who do not agree that an embryo or still developing fetus is the same stage of human personhood as an adult woman. Or a newborn. It is potential but not yet fulfilled and complete. Before Dobbs, 85% of abortions were performed by 8 weeks. At that stage of development the embryo is about the size of a kidney bean. The heart has formed, but is still developing. The brain has started forming but will not develop the neural networks needed for consciousness until between 24-28 weeks. Similarly, the nervous system is developing but not complete. The hands and feet have buds that will eventually become fingers and toes. The eyes are still forming, and are on the sides of the head. Eventually they move from the sides to the front of the head. The eyelids begin to form but are fused closed until about 27 weeks. Genitalia have started to develop but not enough to determine the sex of the developing fetus. Most people would recognize this fetus from science classes as being a developing human but would not necessarily agree that it is a person with the same rights of bodily autonomy as a woman.
Regarding personal bodily autonomy - Enslaved persons were obviously fully developed, complete human beings - persons, but were denied bodily autonomy through coercion. Perhaps the situation of pregnant women who are coerced to give birth because they haven’t the financial resources to go to another state where abortion is legal are in a situation that is somewhat comparable to slaves. Dobbs impacts the poor primarily. Others can travel to Illinois (for example) to obtain a legal and safe abortion. They don’t have to be near death first. It seems that the life of the developing fetus is of more value to some than the life of the fully complete and functioning human being.
DeleteA report titled “Care Post-Roe: Documenting cases of poor-quality care since the Dobbs decision,” published in mid-May by teams of experts from the University of California at San Francisco and the University of Texas at Austin, documents the experience of health care providers in states that have banned or strictly limited abortion for women whose troubled pregnancies required medical intervention that the doctors felt unable to provide.
The 24-page report consists largely of excerpts from submissions by 50 health care providers, many of whom felt, as one wrote, that “our hands are tied” as they waited anxiously for their patients’ conditions to deteriorate to the point where the pregnancy could be terminated within the narrow exceptions permitted by the state lawsWhen doctors turned women away, their next encounter was sometimes in the emergency room or intensive care unit as the patient lay bleeding or even near death. Sometimes doctors arranged to transfer their patients to other states, but this was not always possible and in any event consumed precious time. “This delay in care was a ‘near miss’ and increased morbidity,” one doctor wrote in a mixture of clinical and everyday speech.
“It is important to note that these are not ‘one-off’ situations,” the report’s authors wrote. “Similar scenarios were reported in many of the states that have imposed new restrictions on abortion care since the Dobbs ruling.” This public health crisis makes no distinction on the basis of race or class…… The Alito five would have known from reading the briefs that about a dozen states had enacted “trigger laws” designed to ban abortion as soon as the Supreme Court opened the gate. Valuing fetal life over the lives of women and girls was no doubt a feature, not a bug, in the majority’s view; that was, after all, the point of Dobbs.
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DeleteIn some ways it seems as if the ability of doctors in some states to practice accepted standards of care is actually worse than in pre-Roe days.
Delete"Few pro- choice folks (except the fanatics) would fight a 12-15 week window for abortion. Before Dobbs about 93% of abortions were done by 12 weeks without legal coercion - about 85% by 8 weeks. "
DeleteThis is just my view, and YMMV: I don't see the politics panning out as you describe, at least in the short term. I don't see any appetite at all among the pro-choice activists to compromise. At least according to the rhetoric I'm seeing, Dobbs was a travesty that took away a Constitutional right (read: civil right and human right) for a woman to procure an abortion at any point in the pregnancy, for any reason. If we accommodate 85% of pregnant woman, that means (according to this line of thought) that 15% of pregnant women are being deprived of their rights. If we accommodate 93%, then 7% are being deprived.
What's more, politically, the pro-abortion side is ascendant. Since Dobbs, abortion rights have been strengthened in blue states; seized in purple states (cf Kansas and Michigan); and at least protected temporarily via court orders in red states. If I were an abortion activist, I would be asking myself, "Why would I compromise? I don't have to give the other side a single slice of cake - I can keep the whole thing for myself!"
"As far as respecting bodily autonomy is concerned, it seems that preference must be given to the woman - a complete human being, a person, rather than to the developing, potential person."
DeleteIs that all there is to the bodily-integrity argument? If that is all there is, then why would the author state that he thinks abortion is wrong? As formulated here, it seems that it always is justified.
Sorry, meant to add to my previous comment: I could see a bodily-autonomy argument being applicable in a society in which a coercive government forces women to terminate their pregnancies, as happened in China and perhaps elsewhere during our lifetimes; that would be an instance of the woman having to subjugate her bodily autonomy, even in cases in which she desired to have the baby, to the dictates of the state.
DeleteYes, the situation in China would definitely have been a case of women's bodies being violated. Ironically, now the Chinese government is trying to get couples to have more children.
DeleteThere have been a few far-right politicians in the US who are talking about restricting contraception. If they actually try to do that, it is a bodily autonomy issue.
Jim, one can be personally opposed to abortion for oneself without agreeing to coerce birth on others. That is what is happening in 14 states right now - they are using the legal system to force - coerce - pregnant women who want to terminate the pregnancy to give birth if they can’t afford the time and money to travel to a state where abortion is still legal. China’s one time forced abortion policy has nothing to do with s state governments coercing women who can’t find a way to obtain a legal abortion near their homes to carry a pregnancy to term. Since most are poor, they and their children will continue to suffer living conditions that upper middle class folk like you and I would find intolerable, and which will not provide the children with a decent, safe neighborhood nor a decent education. . It’s a straw man, Jim and you know it.
DeleteThe loudest pro- choice voices don’t want any legal limits on abortion. The loudest anti- life voices show little concern for the women - only for embryos and fetuses. But not for real life, fully developed female human beings. But dozens of polls show that while the majority of Americans are pro-choice, they also favor limits - usually -12-15 weeks. Amazing how many formerly absolutist anti-choice Republican politicians are now saying 12-15 weeks. That’s because there actually is a consensus among the majority of Americans. Since GOP politicians’ stance was based primarily on trying to get votes from religious conservatives, they find it easy to pivot. They realize that they might lose votes with a hard- line position now. They’ve learned that even in conservative states women want bodily autonomy and the right to choose whether or not to give birth.
BTW, Jim, one reason for a first trimester window is that a fetus doesn’t have all the necessary-for-human life systems in place yet. And many of those that have been formed by then are still far from fully developed as they are in a human being. Many don’t believe that a fetus is a human being until viability, at around 6 months.If born then, the development can usually continue with extensive medical technological support. . Personally I prefer 12 weeks to 15 because by 12 weeks at least the foundations are completed if far from being fully developed. It’s also enough time for women to know they are pregnant and make a decision before the 12 weeks are up. Most abortions were done by 8 weeks. Six weeks is the limit in some states because they know that most women don’t know they are pregnant by six weeks.it’s a nasty, cruel game they’re playing.
DeleteCorrection - The loudest anti- life voices show little concern for the women -should be anti- choice…
DeleteI think the fundamental difference is between those who believe in separation of church and state/freedom of religion and those who don’t believe in freedom of religion except for themselves. So while some would not seek an abortion when faced with a challenging pregnancy due to their personal religious beliefs claiming that a human person exists at the moment of conception, others who do not share that particular belief might choose abortion. But conservative christians are working overtime to impose their own religious beliefs on all - to coerce their personal morality on those whose beliefs are different from their own.
DeleteThe same author’s previous commentary on the subject is also worth reading.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/church-teaching-dignity-women-changed-my-mind-about-criminalizing-abortion
This article reminded me of the opening chapter of Peter Brown’s classic book The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity.
ReplyDeleteBrown gives the beak mortality statistics about the Roman Empire at its height: average life expectancy of twenty-five. Most died as children. Only four percent of men, and less women lived beyond the age of fifty. The ancient world put heavy pressure on its citizens to reproduce. To avoid population decline, each woman would have to produce five children. Young women were recruited early for their task. The median age may have been as low as fourteen. That meant that most men treated their wives as children rather than equals.
Roman men had absolute control over the bodies of their slaves, including using them for sexual pleasure. So, the control of female bodies for sexual reproduction was very parallel to the control of slaves.
Christianity had a very different attitude toward women. The Roman household head had absolute power over all the children born in the household. Female children were routinely placed at the curbside to be claimed by others or wild animals. Christianity forbade that. So, the female children of Christian household had a greater probably of survival. Christians did not press women into sexual reproduction. They encouraged widows to not remarry and young women to remain virgins.
Rodney Stark the agnostic sociologist who wrote < I > The Rise of Christianity argues that Christians took over the Roman Empire because they treated women better, and created environments in which he calculates that Christians had a higher life expectancy. When the population is turned over every 25 years, growth would have been very quick. Stark’s whole book is an argument against the notion that the growth of Christianity was miraculous, although it might have seemed so to people at the time.
Note that in contrast to the Romans, Christians had both a pro-life attitude but also had values that allowed women not to engage in procreation by abstaining from marriage.
They couldn’t always abstain from marriage. Daughters were very often sold into marriage by parents - the fathers - on whatever terms were agreed upon by the families of both young men and young women. They often had no choice. One reason for the founding and growth of women’s religious orders was to give women a respectable and safe option to avoid being forced into an arranged marriage and forced procreation, which was customary for christian families as well as for non-Christians.
DeleteOf course, a primary reason abortion is evil is precisely because infants in the womb lack autonomy. They are utterly dependent on their mothers to sustain their lives. When the mother, who is autonomous, chooses instead to end the life of the child in its womb - that's evil. It's monstrous.
ReplyDeleteJim, many people don’t believe that an embryo or early fetus is an “ infant”. They haven’t yet developed into that stage.It’s sad that you are so hard-hearted and have no empathy whatsoever for women facing such a difficult situation. Their lives seem to have no value in your mind. You merely judge them - in your mind they are monstrous - evil, undeserving of sympathy or empathy. Plus you are have no respect for the moral understandings of others. Only you are right - and those who disagree are to be condemned.
DeleteIf you believe that terminating a developing pregnancy before the embryo or fetus has even been fully formed is the murder of a human being, then one must assume that you don’t favor consensus on limiting abortion to the first trimester. To be logically consistent, you would favor bringing murder charges against a woman who has an abortion.
DeleteRight?
It's true that I think abortion is evil. At the level of morality, let's understand abortion for what it is, and not try to deflect our attention away from it with claims about the mother's bodily autonomy (or claims that it is a healing medical procedure; or claims that the woman is actually the victim; we humans have many, many ways of turning away from the truth). Each individual abortion is an act that is contrary to God's will. To be sure, some few are very difficult and complex moral decisions. But most aren't. They are simply straightforward acts of evil, whose primary purposes and motivations are to allow young women to avoid shame and be able to continue to follow the life scripts they've written for themselves (and/or that others have written for them). And then we compound the sinfulness of individual abortions by constructing resilient social structures of sin to enable these individual sins.
DeleteI also believe that God forgives the sins of those who show genuine contrition and beg his forgiveness, even a sin as grave as abortion; and that we followers of Jesus are called to forgive one another, too - even seventy times seven times. So I don't look to condemn women who have had an abortion. But neither do I do them any favors by pretending that their act is morally neutral or morally complex or morally virtuous. Having an abortion (or cooperating in someone else having an abortion) is a serious sin, and those who have sinned in this way should avail themselves of the remedies that Christianity makes available to wash away sins. Of course, many women who have had abortions understand this; they are not "just fine" with what they have done.
"If you believe that terminating a developing pregnancy before the embryo or fetus has even been fully formed is the murder of a human being, then one must assume that you don’t favor consensus on limiting abortion to the first trimester."
DeleteIf I were World Dictator (but I neither want to be World Dictator myself, nor want anyone else in that role), I might put very strict limits on the availability of abortion - as some red states are attempting to do. But public policy often doesn't reflect an individual's moral views and preferences. All of us often have to settle for half a loaf, for the sake of civil peace. Speaking as a resident of Illinois, I'd enthusiastically embrace abortion being restricted after 12-15 weeks of pregnancy. That would be half a loaf. But it will take many years of patient work to get Illinois residents and their elected leaders to see things that way.
Jim, then do you believe that no murder charges should be brought against those who shoot their spouses? Or their neighbor? And do you really believe that the 2/3 of women who seek abortion who are poor, desperate, without support, most with children already and who can barely afford to care for them, actually WROTE this script for their lives? Choose to be poor, poorly educated, and without personal or moral support? What presumption.
DeleteThose who kill real living, breathing human beings are charged with murder. God may forgive them also, but they are still arrested and tried for murder. If you truly believe that an embryo is a human being just as you are, then you should also be calling for the same penalties for “murdering” the embryo as you would if someone killed their five year old. You claim that there is no moral complexity with the issue. You are obviously deceiving yourself because your unwillingness to have the murder of an embryo be treated the same way as the murder of a born human being shows that there actually IS moral complexity. That there IS doubt as to when a person becomes a person.
Your religious views are not important except for the threat to all Americans from conservative christians trying to use the country’s laws to impose their religious beliefs on all. I was once like you, judging and condemning women who got pregnant and had abortions, displaying Right to Life stickers on my car, donating money to the National Right to Life organization. I was too young and inexperienced with life then to recognize the moral complexities of abortion, too sure of myself and my moral “rightness” in my righteousness. Too quick to judge and condemn.
Your brushing aside of a woman’s bodily autonomy as being a “distraction” betrays a true contempt for women. Perhaps you didn’t notice in your rush to read the article, but the author was once as extreme as you also in his views of abortion - totally unconcerned about the women involved - as you are. But he has grown in his understanding. He has realized that he does not channel God. BTW, unless you can channel God you don’t KNOW what God’s will is. Arrogance and lack of humility are not good qualities for those in religious Ministry. As a woman, I would never want to discuss an issue of great moral complexity with someone who is close minded, judgmental, and, worst of all, clearly contemptuous of women who don’t happen to perfectly share their narrow religious views. Those who are disrespectful of the beliefs of others. Some religions don’t believe that a human being exists until birth and has taken the first breath. This is biblically based - Genesis. Are you so dismissive of the religious beliefs of others, so SURE that you are right, that you don’t believe that those with different religious beliefs should have rights? Are you so full of certainty in your comfortable, white upper middle class Catholic life, that you KNOW Gods will, without a doubt at all? How fortunate you are.
Perhaps a retreat would be a good idea - with a nun in her 70s who doesn’t wear a habit and who lives in the inner city and works with the poor.
While on retreat, a thorough examination of conscience, especially as related to the sin of pride, might be in order.
Now I have judged you, something I have tried not to do over these years of discussion. But the lack of empathy, and especially the contempt shown for women “in trouble”, for women’s bodily autonomy, has pushed me into an unchristian reaction. So I too will reflect and pray.
Then, too, there is the reality that abortion procedures destroy the bodies of infants in the womb. An abortion is a direct attack on bodily autonomy.
ReplyDeleteJim, I don't know what it could possibly mean to say a zygote, embryo, or an early-stage fetus has a right to "bodily autonomy." You even contradicted yourself in you last two comments.
Delete[10:42 pm] "Of course, a primary reason abortion is evil is precisely because infants in the womb lack autonomy."
[10:43 pm] "Then, too, there is the reality that abortion procedures destroy the bodies of infants in the womb. An abortion is a direct attack on bodily autonomy."
It might make some sense if you were talking about bodily integrity, but certainly not bodily autonomy.
Assuming for the sake of discussion the Catholic view that life (personhood, ensoulment) begins at conception, can we say for a fact that an aborted embryo/fetus suffers a real and significant loss?
According to ChatGPT: As of my knowledge cut-off in September 2021, estimates suggest that approximately 15-20% of clinically recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage, which is the spontaneous loss of a pregnancy before the 20th week. This does not account for losses that occur before a pregnancy is clinically recognized.
When considering all fertilizations, including those that fail to implant or are otherwise not clinically recognized, the percentage is higher. Some estimates suggest that up to 50% or more of all fertilized eggs do not progress to a live birth. This can be due to a variety of factors, including chromosomal abnormalities, maternal health conditions, and age-related factors.
If the fate of a great many (or even most) humans conceived to perish before birth, why is it so bad (to put it crassly) to be an aborted fetus?
It seems to me that if abortion is morally wrong, the case must be made based on something other than the hypothesis that those who are aborted suffer some unhappy fate. They are, after all, utterly in God's hands.
Is it wrong to take something from someone if they don't know they missed it? Civil law would say that it is, if we were talking about money or some other material thing that belonged to them.
DeleteI have often read the estimates that a large percentage of fertilized eggs or even embryos don't make it to birth. But we don't know the numbers and it isn't really relevant to the discussion of abortion because it wasn't caused by human agency. We aren't responsible for things that are beyond our control.
I think you are correct that these lives are in the hands of God, as are all our lives. Our ultimate goal is to be with God forever. But our earthly lives matter too.
Katherine, science confirms that between 20-25% of known pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion. Scientists have also been able to determine that between 50-75% of fertilized eggs fail to implant, but this is a bit less reliable an estimate than that of spontaneous abortion.
DeleteNot everyone believes in God. Of those who do, not everyone believes the same things about God. What is God’s will? Honesty compels admitting that NOBODY knows for sure. Christians are about 20-25% of the population of the world. Do they have the right to tell the other 75% of people that their religious beliefs, their understandings of the divine are wrong and COMPEL. adherence to the morality of some christians (not even all christians)? Especially in the United States, founded by people escaping state enforced religion? A country that explicitly claims freedom of religion to be among its principles?
"Jim, I don't know what it could possibly mean to say a zygote, embryo, or an early-stage fetus has a right to "bodily autonomy...It might make some sense if you were talking about bodily integrity, but certainly not bodily autonomy."
DeleteI'm not entirely sure, either! I am not crystal-clear on what the term "bodily autonomy" means. I expect it means something a a bit different than "bodily integrity" (which I mistakenly used in a previous comment, but didn't realize it until it was already posted).
Having Googled around for a few seconds, I see statements like this one: "Bodily autonomy means my body is for me; my body is my own. It’s about power, and it’s about agency. It’s about choice, and it’s about dignity. " In a feminist context, I would understand that statement to mean that a woman's body is hers, not her husband's or the state's or a religious authority's or some other, external authority figure's. She is allowed to control her own body, and therefore she has the right not to to be physically abused or disfigured (as happens in female circumcision), the right to consent to sex, the right to wear clothing of her choice or dye her hair or have body art if she chooses. Her right may to bodily autonomy may not be absolute: she may justly be imprisoned, and perhaps justly protected from harming herself. But those should be treated as narrow exceptions to the general bias in favor of bodily autonomy.
So let us extend the concept a bit. Let's consider the bodily-integrity rights of a 2 year old toddler. She is too young to make good decisions and defend her own bodily integrity. But to therefore conclude that she has no bodily-integrity rights would be an obvious and terrible mistake. Children must be protected from abusers, from other children and from many other dangers to their bodily well-being. And her parents and family are expected to be her primary protectors and decision-makers.
If that principle applies to infants and toddlers, it doesn't seem much of a stretch to extend it a bit further to babies who are still in the womb. Pregnancies seem "designed" (whether the designer is God, evolution, both together or some other agency or force) for that very purpose: to provide the child protection, nutrition and a supportive environment for flourishing.
Btw, that quasi-definition of bodily integrity I provided in the previous comment came from this page: https://www.unfpa.org/press/bodily-autonomy-fundamental-right
DeleteA question popped up in my skull while reading Anne's comment about spontaneous abortion. How much of this phenomena is caused by pollutants and environmental effects? A first look at the i ternet says there is a link for mammals. Even the wildfire 2.5 micron particulates get in the blood stream and can cause an increase in miscarriage. I couldn't find any estimates for humans. This heat wave can't be good. If more fetuses are being killed by car exhaust and pollution than by medical abortion, then what?
DeleteI mean I couldn't find numerical estimates for humans.
DeleteIf environmental pollutants can cause health problems or even death to already born humans, it seems logical that they could also harm humans in the womb. We already know that some drugs (remember the thalidomide tragedy?) as well as radiation can harm them.
DeleteHi Stanley - I don't think the causes of miscarriages are well-understood, or least that was the case 30 or so years ago when we were going through it. I think the idea of environmental factors, which certainly could include pollutants, seems credible.
DeletePeople don't think reverently for the most part. For what it's worth, I don't think you can call a human entity in the first trimester a person. But neither is it just carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, iron, phosphorus. It might not have a future. Or it might. How you think about it depends on if you think in three dimensions or four dimensions. I think the human embryo deserves respect and reverence. If it gets none, I think it dovetails with all the other psychological methods for dehumanizing the victims of our wars, men in prison, other races and religions.
ReplyDeleteMy problem is with making it law and a matter of surveillance and prosecution. Even laws against murder don't prevent murder. Look at all the mass shootings. It's mostly prevented by the fact that the great majority of people don't want to do it. But, in a stressed out society, it becomes more and more probable despite the law. I'm of the view that you improve the conditions in society, not bring in the cops.
"I think the human embryo deserves respect and reverence. If it gets none, I think it dovetails with all the other psychological methods for dehumanizing the victims of our wars, men in prison, other races and religions." Stanley, exactly! And the law is a poor weapon to accomplish what we want to about respect for life. I'm not saying it's useless. But you are right that a stressed-out society loses respect for life.
DeleteThe Catholic Church itself has little reverence for embryos that are spontaneously aborted. I know because when I “miscarried”an embryo at home at 11 weeks, I was able to retrieve it, and called the parish to find out if there was a rite for burial of the embryonic remains I was told No and to do with it what I wanted.
DeleteGood point. Maybe there should be a rite. Certainly, it is a time of sadness for many women and their spouses as well. I have no personal experiential referent for it. Perhaps, if women are more included in the life of the Church, a rite for miscarriage could be created. Maybe the lack of one is an indicator that the voices of women have been and are still muted in the Church.
DeleteA few parishes now have them, but it is not standard practice everywhere.
DeleteWomen will be disrespected in the church, their voices ignored, until all seven sacraments are accessible to all baptized Catholics. Until then, women will remain second class Catholics.
I know that women can get anointing of the sick for a miscarriage. At least one priest that I know of recommended a couple who had a miscarriage to bury the remains in the family cemetery plot. It was a country cemetery so they could do it on the QT without paying fees. Different rules would probably apply in a city cemetery. Maybe that is part of the problem, people don't know what to do with the remains in a respectful way without incurring expenses that they probably can't afford.
DeleteI remember in the movie The Help that one of the characters had multiple miscarriages, was not able to carry a pregnancy to term. She buried her miscarried remains in her yard and planted a rosebush. There were several rosebushes there. I'm sure people do things like that privately.
Priests and deacons have a formal ritual for interrment or inurnment. Seems like that is something that could be adapted.
Anne, first of all, I'm sorry you experienced a miscarriage. My wife has experienced it several times. It can cause a range of emotions, and in my experience, many people in our society are rather oblivious to it. That said: some wonderful people shared time, love and prayers with us when she went through it.
DeleteAnd I'm sorry your parish gave you that advice. There are a variety of prayers and rites which are applicable to children who died before baptism (which can include children who miscarry or are stillborn). As in the cases of deceased already-born children and adults, the rites have been adapted to situations where the body is not physically present. So even if there was an early-in-pregnancy miscarriage and the infant's remains were already disposed of, the rites can accommodate that circumstance.
Personally, I think it would be a holy thing for parishes to offer this much more widely.
Nikki Haley gave a comment in New Hampshire that actually made sense (please note that I'm not endorsing any political candidate at this time!)
ReplyDelete"In order for us to have a federal law, we’re going to have to have consensus. What does that consensus look like? Can’t we all agree that we don’t want late-term abortion? Can’t we all agree that we want to encourage more adoptions and good-quality adoption so that children feel more love, not less? Can’t we all agree that doctors and nurses who don’t believe in abortion shouldn’t have to perform them? Can’t we all agree that contraception should be accessible? And can’t we all agree that a woman who gets an abortion should not be subject to the death penalty or get arrested? That’s where I think we start — we start, and we do it with a level of respect. No more demonizing this issue. We’re going to humanize this issue. I had a roommate who was raped in college. I wouldn’t wish on anyone what she went through, wondering if she was OK. Everybody has a story. Let’s be respectful of everybody’s story, and let’s figure out what we can do together instead of sitting there and tearing each other apart.”
Let's be fair, I did not read anywhere in Jim's comments that he said anyone "deserved what they got" or deserved to be shamed.
DeleteI agree with Anne that Nikki Haley's comments are humane.
Delete"Let's be fair, I did not read anywhere in Jim's comments that he said anyone "deserved what they got" or deserved to be shamed."
DeleteRight - I didn't say that. I did acknowledge that a single woman carrying a pregnancy to term might feel ashamed - even in today's environment which is (allegedly) much more accepting of such circumstances than in Anne's college days (and in my high school days - I think girls in my high school who became pregnant - unless they got an abortion - were removed from the school. By way of contrast, our local public high school has day care services now for teenage moms who are enrolled as students.)
DeleteThey are simply straightforward acts of evil, whose primary purposes and motivations are to allow young women to avoid shame and be able to continue to follow the life scripts they've written for themselves Yup - they decided that a life of poverty would be the script they would write for themselves.
Jim asserts with absolute righteousness that every abortion is monstrous and evil - to Jim, but he refuses to concede that this may not be how others see it - including many devout christians. Combined with his condemnatory observation that the women “just” want to continue with the “script” they have written for themselves (of course the fathers are not shamed, nor are they criticized by the conservative “Christian “ “pro- life” types for merrily continuing to follow their own scripts) the language implies that the woman with a challenging pregnancy has no right to want to not have her life pretty much destroyed. After all, she slept with the guy. Her own fault. At best her life will only be damaged in the shorter run - if she has good support - and very often in the long run. Most women will definitely suffer long- run mental health issues. The 2/3 who are poor, may suffer much worse than maybe treatable mental health issues. Those women are hanging on by their fingernails as it is just to survive, often to be able to work at a minimum wage job, and feed the kids she already has with the help of those socialist programs like food stamps that conservative pro- lifers hate.
How is she going to work at all with a baby? Cut off Medicaid if she’s healthy and able to work! And it is those women, the poor women without support from family or others, who are most hurt by these state bans because they can’t afford the trip to Illinois like the middle class women can. When Jim and those like him come forward and offer to help support a mother whom they want to force to give birth with significant financial support until that child is 18, then I will continue to doubt both the sincerity of their “Christian” beliefs and their motivations for wanting to ban abortion from the moment of conception - as Jim would prefer. I once offered an outspoken pro- lifer $5000 to help his parish pro- life group ( in an upper middle class mostly white parish and community) get started on providing real, tangible help to women facing disaster because of pregnancy. They could provide childcare so the women could work, or arrange for after- school and homework help in the parish, or create a fund to help with rent support, organize transportation to medical appointments etc - the needs are endless. Pick one and DO something. Literally endless needs. It’s 18 years at the minimum. If there was interest I said I would follow up, to help the “ pro- life” committee figure out long- term funding ( I have experience with writing non- profit grant applications) etc. Nada. Not interested..Apparently they think that diaper drives and formula for six months is plenty while the parish sponsors extravagant social events or very expensive tours of Marian shrines in Europe ( “ all four star hotels, and gourmet meals included”) which forty lucky parishioners pay $5000 or more/person for (sign up early or you will miss out) not counting airfare to Europe. So $7000 in all. At $5000-7000 it adds up to $200,000-$280,000 from 40 parishioners. (But instead they virtue signal by marching in DC with their “ pro-Life” signs and vote for the politicians who promise to cut safety nets to keep their taxes low.). But - Father will say mass daily at each shrine and they can pride themselves on their piety while condemning women who seek abortions. . I see these kinds of tours promoted at local parishes all the time. Bah humbug.
I give monthly donations to the only pro- life group around here that provides support for as long as needed - housing, education support, childcare etc, from pregnancy until the mom can get on her own two feet. Often several years. I first started supporting them in the 70s and they’ve expanded their services tremendously since . The trouble is that thousands of these long- term, comprehensive support programs are needed but the devoutly prolife middle and upper middle class Catholics won’t cough up the money. But, but we do baby bottle drives and charter a bus to DC every year…..
DeleteFor those here who want to do more, the information about St.Ann’s is below. How about giving up a few luxuries like live theater or expensive movie theaters even and restaurant meals now and then to provide some genuinely tangible financial support to a group that doesn’t forget about the needs of the new mother and her newborn three months after the birth.
https://www.stanns.org/
"After all, she slept with the guy. Her own fault. "
DeleteThat's not how I've expressed it, ever. Assuming the sex was consensual, both partners took the risk. Both should share in the consequences.
"Jim asserts with absolute righteousness that every abortion is monstrous and evil - to Jim, but he refuses to concede that this may not be how others see it - including many devout christians."
DeleteI conceded that some - a few - are morally complex. But let's be real: most aren't.
As for my Catholic beliefs: hey, this is America. I'm a citizen. I'm allowed to believe whatever I wish, and I'm allowed to advocate for policies based on my beliefs. If enough of my fellow Americans agree with me, and if we can elect officials who agree with me, then we can make laws that I happen to like. I don't know why you think this is some example of religion run amok. America almost certainly is less religious now than it ever has been - with disastrous consequences to poor women who no longer have the moral guidance of Christian churches nor the the concrete support of Christian faith communities.
Jim - our local public high school has day care services now for teenage moms who are enrolled as students.
DeleteWhat about the Catholic schools? Do they provide free daycare? From what I’ve read if a single teacher in a Catholic school gets pregnant she’s out of a job ( and the health insurance that goes with it).
A friend of mine was a volunteer with teenagers in our county who lacked support - all in the poorer areas of the county. A group of us were talking once about how we had never heard of a single high school girl in our upper middle, affluent community who had gotten pregnant. Nor of any in the Catholic high schools. So, why not? There were several in my very small public high school ( who were not kicked out but sometimes the parents picked up and moved far away) and several girls also got pregnant in my small Catholic college - those who stayed to graduation had quick, small weddings and those who didn’t get married “decided” to transfer to a secular college. They were kicked out by the nuns. At least one abortion in my Catholic college class.
My volunteer friend said that girls DO get pregnant around here, but their parents, including in the Catholic high schools, took them to a doctor for abortion. Of course they do, One reason she volunteered to help pregnant teens find support their families didn’t provide was because she also had had a hurry up wedding. But she was out of college by then, and her fully employed, college grad boyfriend did marry her. They are still married- almost 50 years. They ended up with four kids. But her family - and his - were supportive of her, as well as of him. And yet she still remembers her panic, her near despair, when she realized she was pregnant. And then imagined how much worse it was for the poor women and girls she worked with.
Jim ,really? Seriously? Most abortion decisions aren’t morally complex? Wow. Talk a speaking from a position of white, male privilege.
DeleteJust let the voters decide. Well, in red state after red state, the “pro-life” types are working overtime to prevent the people from voting because they’ve realized that more people want safe, legal abortion rights than forced birth. So they are obstructing letting people vote on it with every trick they can come up with.
DeleteRegarding the Catholic high schools around here: I don't know whether/how they support any girls in their school who become pregnant. (Frankly, I don't know many families around here who send their kids to Catholic high school; it's too expensive for most middle-class families these days.) I don't think the schools kick the girls out anymore, or so I'm told; the pro-life advocates have spoken out about that, and the religious orders which run the schools are, by and large, pretty kind these days. But I'd be surprised if the schools offer daycare, or if they do, it's probably really bare-bones; unlike public schools, the Catholic schools get almost no public-funding subsidies, so there are many programs and amenities available in public schools which aren't really available to Catholic schools.
DeleteBut regardless of whether it's a public or a private high school, it would take a pretty courageous young woman to walk around the school halls pregnant. Juno was a fictional character.
This article "Pregnant in Public School" talks about the difficulties of being a pregnant high school student. Food for thought.
https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/pregnant-in-public-school-challenges-and-options
This is from the policy manual for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee Catholic schools:
Delete"5138: Pregnant Students
"The school has an obligation to assist a pregnant student and her parents/guardians in the continuation of her education
by supporting regular attendance in classes and involvement in related activities.
"If a pregnant student wishes to withdraw from regular attendance, the school has an obligation to offer a tutorial
program or other education alternatives. Wisconsin law prohibits a school from compelling a pregnant student to
withdraw.
"ADOPTED: 12/1/1983; REVISED: 8/25/2015"
This is from the policy manual for the Archdiocese of Chicago high schools. A little different than Milwaukee's policy:
Delete"151.1. Policy If a student is becoming a parent, the principal and staff shall use their discretionary authority to determine the most appropriate course of action for the student and the school. The medical, psychological, spiritual, and educational well being of the boy/girl shall always be a major consideration as well as is the life of the unborn. In any case, becoming a parent is not necessarily a cause for disciplinary action.
This is from our local Catholic high school's policy and procedures handbook:
Delete"___________ High School is committed to helping all of our students with special needs. As a Catholic community, we foster the Church’s teaching that pre-marital sex is inconsistent with the Christian life. However, as a Christian community, we will encourage and support a pregnant student as she carries her pregnancy to term. For this reason, the Administration, Counseling Department and faculty will extend every effort to assist and to support a pregnant student personally and academically should she choose to continue her education at ___________. __________ men who find themselves in a situation involving a girlfriend’s pregnancy are also
encouraged to seek guidance and counseling from a member of our professional staff."
Well, Roe v. Wade was killed by the 6-3 uberconservatively loaded court. Yes, the conservatives did it. But it might have never happened without the stubborn refusal to quit of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Even with Snake McConnell wanting the whole enchilada and the possibility of Trump, she was sucked onto her position like a barnacle. Feminist causes were important to Ruth Bader Ginsburg but not as important as Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Yes, the Republican Party and its appointees did the deed but they were just a-holes doing what you expect a-holes to do. Ginsburg should have sacrificed for her cause. She didn't. You've come a long way, baby. Now it's back, back; back.
ReplyDeleteThe above musings were triggered by the reports of McConnell and Feinstein going unto fugue states.
Stanley, I saw that item about McConnell freeze-framing. Seems like he might have had a transient ischemic event. I agree when people such as Ginsburg (or McConnell) no longer can fully function in the job they need to retire.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteJuno???
ReplyDeleteSounds like Wisconsin has some good laws in place. The Archdiocese there doesn’t have much choice apparently. It has to provide support. Your local Catholic school sounds decent, if a bit ambiguous. Big improvement though. How about their policies for single, pregnant teachers?
Yes, it would be tough for a high school girl to be pregnant in a middle class neighborhood school. It’s pretty accepted in poor neighborhood schools. 50+ years ago in my high school there was either a shotgun wedding or the family chose to move away.I don’t know if they concocted a story in the new place or not. Maybe that she was a young widow. Unfortunately there were plenty of those around then with so many Viêt Nam deaths.
It definitely sounds like McConnell had a TIA.
Agree with Nikki Haley that the issue needs to be humanized. That should include the pregnant woman. The pro- lifers want the pro- choicers to treat the kidney bean sized, fingerless, toeless, brainless, nervous system-less embryo as a full human being with all the rights of a born human being. Fine. So how about they think of the born, all her fingers and toes, pregnant woman as a human being also - one who is facing a very serious crisis in her life that includes a VERY complex moral decision. One who has a moral right to her bodily autonomy.
So, Katherine. How about everyone donating now to St.Ann’s in honor of St.Anne’s feast day.
St. Anne's sounds like a wonderful organization!
DeleteBTW, Jim, you should be encouraged by the fact that both the pregnancy rate and abortion rate for teen girls has plummeted in the last 30 years, now 50% below their peaks around 1990. So the decline in religiosity, especially among the young, has not caused increases in teen pregnancies and abortions.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/08/02/why-is-the-teen-birth-rate-falling/
Anne, that is true. Abstinence seems to have made an unexpected comeback; not only are teens (and young adults) having fewer pregnancies and abortions, they're having less sex.
DeleteAs my kids are roughly in that age range (and were teens not that long ago), here is my view: I think the traditional dating and courtship behaviors are massively screwed up. Boys don't meet girls (and vice-versa) as much as they used to. They have learned to connect for first dates (or, I suppose, hook-ups) using Internet dating apps rather than more traditional, face-to-face approaches.
The old, traditional way was: you met someone because you were in school together. Or through a sibling. Or a friend. There was an entire network of real social connections standing behind the potential relationship. Internet dating circumvents all that. For my kids, I don't see it working. I don't know if they're typical or not.
Jim, I agree that the old ways of meeting a date or potential future spouse are pretty much gone. It’s not just your kids.
DeleteAbstinence has grown, but so has correct use of contraception as a result of the expansion of comprehensive sex education programs in schools. For teenagers, abstinence is obviously preferable, but having a good understanding of contraception methods and their use is also. When I was writing grant proposals for an abstinence education program 20+ years ago, I was immersed in the data, both American and European. I learned then that one reason that teens in Europe postponed sexual activity longer than American teens, and had statistically significantly lower rates or teen pregnancies and abortions was because of their comprehensive sex education, starting in middle school, and access to birth control if they felt they needed it. Perhaps making sex and birth control forbidden fruit in the US with abstinence only programs replacing comprehensive sex Ed in schools had backfired. The comprehensive programs, which stress abstinence as the preferred route but include contraception information came back though.
I would not want to be a young adult in the world of dating apps etc. I do know many young adults who met their spouses the older way. But. I also know some, including a niece, one of my sons, and a close friend ( much younger) who met their spouses through a dating site.
I also have observed that young women working in small, female dominated organizations like elementary schools ( like your daughter) have a very hard time meeting single men. Thé bar scene is worse than the more respectable dating apps I think. Many of my friends met their husbands at work. But they worked in environments with lots of men. And it was a very long time ago. I think it’s just harder these days - too many boys seem to prefer video games to girls. Or even worse, porn.
One of my sons met his wife in college. The other couple met at someone else's wedding. Some people do have good luck with dating apps. In-person opportunities still exist, but you have to want to find them
DeleteOur sons are late 30s-mid40s. One met his wife through mutual friends, one met his wife in grad school which he didn’t start until 4 years after college graduation. But even they aren’t really representative of the situation today with the twenty- somethings.
DeleteAnne - in addition to education about contraception, I have to think the Obamacare contraception policies are having some sort of effect, even if it's marginal/incremental; the program pays for methods of contraception that are more reliable than the Pill.
DeleteI'm not naive (I'm pretty sure) about contraception. But maybe I do have some male blinders: it's pretty hard for me to fathom why, absent a religious/conscience objection, which I think is pretty rare these days, a young woman who is sexually active but doesn't want to become pregnant wouldn't contracept. It's free, and it's widely available. I can understand how it can get complicated for a teenager who is under a parental thumb. And I understand are some who have health conditions which make contraception risky or impossible. But I think there is some risk-taking behavior out there, too. Are young European women more risk-averse than their American counterparts? Could be; Europeans seem saner about guns than we are.
Anne - you've piqued my interest re: the abstinence grant! For what type of organization were you seeking the grant? A church? And given the timeframe you allude to, I'm wondering whether the GW Bush administration was providing federal government funds for abstinence-only education.
DeleteJim, it was for a non- profit foundation that worked with inner city and other poor girls to help them realize that they should make “good choices”, and stay in school which was more likely if they didn’t get pregnant. Some of the programs were in Appalachia, and in Native American communities. The common denominator was poverty. They were operated in schools as an extracurricular with volunteers from the school running them. They had to raise the money for the educational and other materials to run the program. It was not an official part of the school curriculum. The Bush 2 administration was pushing abstinence education, and offering grants, but this foundation’s funding came primarily from other foundations - mostly very conservative foundations. I wrote multiple grant applications for them. The foundation was founded and run by a woman I knew from my kids school. She and her husband were pretty well known in Catholic and conservative circles.
DeleteAccording to CDC data, girls from 15-19 primarily use condoms. Probably because they can get them OTC. Once the pill is available without prescription i am guessing they will choose the pill instead of condoms, unless they are too expensive. Apparently they’ve been available OTC without a prescription in most countries for a long time. The older young women mostly use the pill. The older women (late 30s to 45) primarily use sterilization. . But It’s also the single most popular form of birth control for all women from 15-45 in the survey at 18%. Add in male sterilization and it’s even more popular as a choice. By late 30s most couples have finished with having children and don’t want to mess with pills etc after that. The pill is second overall but is #1 with women in their 20s. Condoms are third I think, and male sterilization. Long acting contraception such as IUDs are around the same percentage as the condoms and vasectomies - about 10%. NFP is last, with about 3% of women using it for birth control.
A small percentage of women get side effects from the pill ( true of all medications);but most do just fine without problems.
Anne said:
ReplyDelete"Just let the voters decide. Well, in red state after red state, the “pro-life” types are working overtime to prevent the people from voting because they’ve realized that more people want safe, legal abortion rights than forced birth. So they are obstructing letting people vote on it with every trick they can come up with."
Here in Ohio, Republicans who are afraid that Democrats will pass a lenient abortion constitutional amendment in November, have their own constitutional amendment up for vote this August which would require a sixty percent majority to pass future constitutional amendments. They are arguing that the state constitution should not be easy to amend.
But everyone can see the ploy. The street signs in my area which normally favor Republicans by about sixty percent are running about 2 to 1 against the Republicans. Maybe the Republicans are attempting to run a quiet campaign so that just their voters will show up?
I will be voting against the Republican amendment. Getting an amendment on the ballot is not easy, neither is passing one. So, I am willing to let a majority of the voters decide the issue. The Republicans have the opportunity to pass a strict abortion law just as the Democrats can pass a lenient one.
IVe seen references to that, but didn’t know the details.
Delete