If you have not read this interview with Pope Francis by Junno Arocho Esteves, it is very good: It was originally in Spanish, on Catholic News Service. It is on the NCR site, in English: On Communion for politicians, pope reiterates: Bishops should be pastoral | National Catholic Reporter (ncronline.org)
The title is "On Communion for Politicians" but it actually deals with several things, including gun violence. I will quote the part that segues into the subject of my post, which I promise will be short.
"In an interview that aired in the United States July 11 on Univision, the Spanish-language network, the pope was asked his opinion about President Biden's continuing support for abortion."
"I leave it to his conscience and that he speaks to his bishop, his pastor, his parish priest about that inconsistency," he said."
However, repeating what he has said before about bishops declaring a politician unfit to receive Communion, Pope Francis said bishops must focus on the pastoral care of their people rather than on public condemnation.
"When a shepherd leaves pastoral care aside, or does not have a mature pastoral care, it creates a political problem. That is where all the confusion lies," the pope said."
These words are of course relevant in the wake of the Dobbs decision by SCOTUS, which leaves the US in bitter division, and half the population railing against the other half. I feel that we are going to have to arrive at some sort of detente, because the present situation is an unending loop which is unsustainable. Which brings me to my modest proposal: we can stop demonizing one another. * The pope is pro-life, but he doesn't demonize anyone in his words above.
How do we start the process of un-demonization? By the names we don't hurl at one another, such as "baby-killers" (I'm looking at you, pro-life), or "forced-birthers" (looking at you, pro-choice). On the subject of when to allow abortion (or not) we can believe that someone on the other side is misguided, maybe seriously so, without believing that they are evil and obstinately wicked. We owe one another the respect that at least our views are sincerely held.
The part of the pope's interview about the causes of gun violence deserves its own post.
*I should make it clear that I am referring to dialogue in society, I don't think we demonize one another on this site.
Michigan will have a ballot proposal amending the constitution to "restore" Roe v Wade at the state level and assure contraceptive access that Dobbs seems to call into question as a right under the U.S. constitution.
ReplyDeleteI'm for overturning the 1931 abortion ban and associated penalties for women and doctors. But nobody is talking about whether Michigan's pre-Roe abortion restrictions would remain in place or would have to be re-legislated. Why? Because the screamers on the fringe see no middle ground.
I think at the very least, if we really want to reduce abortions and also respect choice, we have to have easy access to contraception. I think Justice Thomas' mutterings about restricting that were irresponsible, and wouldn't fly. And needlessly turned up the heat.
DeleteEven speaking about "choice" can be dicey. There are situations being reported of women getting delayed treatment for ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages in some places. I'm familiar with needing emergency treatment for miscarriage, and I get testy about the anti-abortion folks who don't see how the sudden ban on "abortion" procedures are freaking out doctors and hospitals.
DeleteThen there's the case of the ten year old girl in Ohio. Which some people were labeling as "fake news", but alas, turned out to be real.
DeleteLegally that case got very convoluted with the Ohio AG ready to prosecute the attending physician for improper reporting.
DeleteEasy to say that the states will just revert to the old laws, easy peasy. But doctors practicing now have never dealt with whatever law was on the books 50 years ago.
Mistakes will be made. Doctors may be quick to act in the case of spontaneous abortions and ectopic emergencies as trained without doing what the laws require, such as ascertaining fetal age, checking for a heartbeat, or trying to figure out whether the mother's life is in danger by some ill defined legal standard.
I think it's the Indiana AG.
DeleteSome official or other in OH was insisting that, under Ohio's law, the girl's situation would make her eligible for an abortion in OH. I don't know where the truth lies.
Maybe cooler heads will prevail after the election.
Yes, thanks, the Indiana AG.
DeleteIt's disheartening to see the most extreme cases, like that poor kid, held up as arguments for abortion on demand. They're rare. But it's a response to the other side that insists on reducing the financial and emotional fallout of problem pregnancies to mere inconveniences.
We can all pray for cooler heads, but the array of current candidates bending over to beg for a Trump endorsement doesn't give me a lot of hope.
"I think at the very least, if we really want to reduce abortions and also respect choice, we have to have easy access to contraception. I think Justice Thomas' mutterings about restricting that were irresponsible, and wouldn't fly."
DeletePersonally (and perhaps in the spirit of your post), I think we need to resist the inclination to suppose that Justice Thomas is interested in "restricting" access to contraception, perhaps because of a dislike of, or disrespect for, women. I think it's much more likely that he doesn't find a *Constitutional* right to contraception, and that whatever decision(s) previously found such a right was/were mistaken. Because the legality of a thing isn't actually embedded in the Constitution doesn't mean that it can't therefore be legal; but it's the job of federal or state legislatures, not the US Supreme Court, to make those policies.
This is a key difference between conservatives and liberals, and that difference is evident on the Supreme Court. The dissent in the Dobbs case, co-authored by the three liberal justices, notes, "The Mississippi law at issue here bars abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy. Under the majority’s ruling, though, another State’s law could do so after ten weeks, or five or three or one—or, again, from the moment of fertilization. States have already passed such laws, in anticipation of today’s ruling. More will follow. Some States have enacted laws extending to all forms of abortion procedure, including taking medication in one’s own home. They have passed laws without any exceptions for when the woman is the victim of rape or incest. Under those laws, a woman will have to bear her rapist’s child or a young girl her father’s—no matter if doing so will destroy her life. So too,
after today’s ruling, some States may compel women to
carry to term a fetus with severe physical anomalies—for
example, one afflicted with Tay-Sachs disease, sure to die within a few years of birth. States may even argue that a
prohibition on abortion need make no provision for protecting a woman from risk of death or physical harm. "
All of these points may strike us as reasonable and important. But the conservatives would say, 'That is not legal reasoning. It is not Constitutional interpretation. It is seeking to target a particular set of policy outcomes. And that is not a court's proper function. Let Congress, or the states, make policy.'
Liberals do understand and appreciate that there is a danger in interpreting the constitution in very broad ways. You can certainly argue that the SC was correct in the Dred Scott case from a strict standpoint at that time. Which is why the constitution can be amended.
DeleteI would prefer that life and death issues--euthanasia, abortion, death penalty, etc. be legislated at the federal level. I don't think that we can call ourselves much of a union with shared values when what gets you executed in Oklahoma gets you 20 to life somewhere else.
Conservatives seem much more comfortable making state laws that are out of sync with the rest of the nation.
Whatever the merits of Roe, it was always clear to me that overturning it would open a pandora's box of civil unrest. I don't think there is any way to close that box. It will continue to divide and destroy our democracy. The focus on the abortion issue, now in regard to all elections not just the Supreme Court, we continue to warp our politics and distract us from the many real issues that we must face. (e.g., my post on Sanders).
ReplyDeleteThe only way out of our deeply divided nation will likely be some greater external challenge to our existence that unites us. The pandemic failed to do that. The Ukraine situation may still have some potential. A Chinese threat, either military or economic, might unite us. The consequences of climate change are too far off in the future to do it. Large scale economic collapse might do it. However, that is more likely to produce a dictatorship than an FDR.
My problem with Catholics and Republicans is not that they would like to reduce abortions. I would like to do that too; I just have a Democratic political agenda to do that. My problem is that Catholics and Republicans vote for people like Trump. I never had problems with Catholics and Republicans who voted the Bushes, Romney or McCain. The election of Trump changed everything for me. The people who voted for Trump demonized themselves.
Whatever the merits of Roe, it was always clear to me that overturning it would open a pandora's box of civil unrest. I don't think there is any way to close that box. It will continue to divide and destroy our democracy. The focus on the abortion issue, now in regard to all elections not just the Supreme Court, we continue to warp our politics and distract us from the many real issues that we must face.
DeleteI also saw this coming. I kept hoping that the SC would use a bit of restraint - and common sense- in the final opinion. It didn’t happen. They now seem determined to also tear down the wall between church and state. Dobbs is part of that effort, but the signs were there even before this year.
Pandora’s box was opened and the furies that have been released may make the last few years look calm by comparison.
Agree with you on everything, Jack. Especially about Catholics and Republicans voting for trump and everything he stands for because it hits so close to home for me. In an earlier time I was a Catholic and Republican who voted for Republicans. I was sick to my stomach about my Catholic friends and relatives supporting trump. I will never have the relationship with them that I had before 2016. Now it’s cool politeness replacing affection. Now I would be thrilled to be able to vote for someone as relatively moderate and experienced as Romney. But it’s not going to happen. It will be trump or DeSantis or someone else just as awful.
At this time, I don’t think anything will bring this country together again. The Texas GOP wants a Referendum on secession next year. If they do it, others will follow. Will the federal government be willing to actually fight a war about it? The value systems in the red and blue states are now so divergent that I sometimes actually think that creating two separate countries - peacefully- might be the only way to go forward.
Texas doesn't have the right to unilaterally secede from the union. That was settled at the time of the Civil War. They can't legally do it by referrendum. They can only do it by insurrection, which is treason (unfortunately we have seen that some people would contemplate that.) The figures I am reading say that only about 13% of Texans would back secession.
Delete
DeleteTrue - legally they can’t secede. And I don’t think it will happen. They would have to go to war. If they managed to secede peacefully somehow, they would lose not only huge federal facilities like military bases and NASA - a whole lot of jobs - and most of the big companies there might decide to “ move” to the United States. Secession simply isn’t practical in the real world. Although if they did secede, I would bid them good riddance!
The country may come apart at the seams through violence. There is an academic in San Diego(UCSD) who is an expert in civil wars - analyzing why they happen, the factors that make them high risk (including the spread of formation of heavily armed, trained private militias), how they happen, and trying to predict them ahead of time. The focus used to be exclusively on foreign countries at high risk. Now the US is included as above neutral risk - no longer in the category of it won’t happen in that country. We are an 8. Thé low risk democratic countries are a 10. We used to be in that group. Truly authoritarian countries like N Korea and Saudi Arabia are also low risk for civil war because the regimes maintain tight control and are pretty ruthless. Civil wars usually happen in the middle group of countries. With a risk rating of 8 we are in that middle group. The right wing militias here are a danger, but, as long as we have a mentally stable President who hews to the Constitution and doesn’t declare martial law, the militias would not stand a chance against the US military. That’s not guaranteed as we have learned the hard way. Unfortunately the militias recruit heavily from former military, who have extensive training that could be turned against the country. They could provoke some tragedies.
Texans are free to try to change the US Constitution to allow for legal secession. Let them get that done and then negotiate a Texit strategy.
DeleteThe logic of our system is: if, in the wake of Dobbs, pro-life legislatures pass laws that are too restrictive for the people they represent, then those legislators will be vulnerable to losing elections to candidates who are more aligned with the electorate. This won't be instantaneous; it may take several election cycles to shake out, and we'll be subjected to more heat than light. Democracy in action. It's the worst possible system except for all the others.
ReplyDeleteI do think the Cordileone approach of public shaming doesn't resonate with the cultural moment. Biden does make me angry, though. His public witness is to the ideology of unlimited abortion on demand. Not what I want to hear from a Catholic, and not particularly aligned with Francis.
ReplyDeleteI wish Biden hadn't caved, he used to at least be "personally opposed". Trouble is the whole Democratic party is in thrall to the whole ideology of (but not limited to)'abortion on demand. And the flip side of that coin is the abortion as the single issue thing. Which the Republicans were glad to use to their advantage.
DeleteYes, Biden had a chance to bring some thoughtful discussion to the issue, but the extremists have driven party policy for decades now. I can't vote for a no-restrictions abortion bill. But the 1931 law is restrictive in the extreme and the 10-year prison sentence is excessive. Hopefully the Michigan amendment language and its ramifications will become clearer soon.
Delete"I can't vote for a no-restrictions abortion bill. But the 1931 law is restrictive in the extreme and the 10-year prison sentence is excessive."
DeleteRight - it's a quandary.
Biden has bowed to the political forces in his party. Disappointing but not surprising. My personal preference would be for a 12 week limit with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. But since both parties have adopted the most extreme stances possible on abortion, I have to not allow abortion to influence my vote. Legal abortion is in no danger in Maryland anyway. In fact it was expanded in reaction to the SC ruling. However, if women start showing up from neighboring West Virginia and the WV people want to prosecute Maryland doctors it will become a nasty fight between the two states. The fact that several red states are working to adopt the Texas bounty model of encouraging spying and reporting people who cross a state line is stomach turning. They want to extradite doctors who legally perform abortions in other states for murder prosecutions. Many doctors are already afraid to treat women in ERs who are miscarrying for fear of prosecution. Theoretically Virginia could also go extreme on abortion, but I think Youngkin won’t encourage it. Perhaps a 15 week limit. However if he bows to the extreme right of his party, Virginia might also send women to Maryland. Right now Virginia is purple and control of the state government is divided.
ReplyDeleteI’m more now focused on the right’s war on civil rights and religious freedom.
The SC seems to be siding with the forces that wish to impose right wing christian beliefs on ALL Americans. The Dobbs ruling unleashed a nuclear weapon to be used in the states to further restrict religious freedom in this country. The court has ruled in favor of those who wish to impose their own christian views on ALL through several rulings in recent years, including a couple in June besides Dobbs, that may open the door to allowing prayer in public schools, along with fundamentalist views on the “god- ordained”, biblically defined proper roles of women, creationism, the “god-ordained” ban on inter-racial marriages, gay rights, and also allowing anyone who claims “ religious beliefs” to exempt themselves from non- discrimination laws. They will also be trying to force ALL taxpayers of all religious views to subsidize religious schools, most of which are Catholic and fundamentalist Protestant. The Catholics can’t hold on to enough of their own to afford to keep all of their schools running. So they want to force the Jews, Muslims, Hindus and everyone else - nones- to prop up their religious infrastructure.
True religious freedom for ALL is being systematically eroded.
"The court has ruled in favor of those who wish to impose their own christian views on ALL through several rulings in recent years, including a couple in June besides Dobbs, that may open the door to allowing prayer in public schools, along with fundamentalist views on the “god- ordained”, biblically defined proper roles of women, creationism, the “god-ordained” ban on inter-racial marriages, gay rights, and also allowing anyone who claims “ religious beliefs” to exempt themselves from non- discrimination laws. "
DeleteI think you're making a number of leaps here.
The Dobbs decision isn't particularly "in favor of those who wish to impose their own Christian views on all". It removes federal case law which had, for 50 years, superseded state laws. States now can make their own laws regarding abortion. Perhaps some states will seek to impose some form of 'abortion Christendom' on its residents. Each state presumably will go in its own direction, and whatever direction it initially takes, may not last long. An era of largely-uniform abortion law has ended, and a new era of abortion law unpredictability and instability has begun.
The United States Constitution explicitly protects freedom of religious belief from government coercion, so I think the era of mandates school prayer is over for good.
A majority of conservative justices have explicitly said that the Dobbs ruling doesn't threaten the right to gay marriage, so at least in the short term, I don't think that right is at risk.
Jim, the SC ruled against the state of Maine which was refusing to use tax money to support religious schools. Maine has changed the provisions for funding eligibility to ban tax money from going to schools that discriminate- against gays especially, which includes Catholic schools and evangelical Christian schools. I’m sure the Christian nationalists are already preparing a whole lot of assaults on both freedom of religion, separation of church and state, and gay rights. It also decided that the football coach paid by taxpayers who was effectively coercing his players to pray with him on the 50 yard line was not impacting the religious freedom of his players on a public school team, on public school property. Several players said anonymously that they feared that if they didn’t join the coach that they would end up on the bench.
DeleteHow can you trust a single word of what SC justices say now? Three of them lied in order to pass the Senate and be appointed. I don’t believe a word they say now, because they are twisting their interpretations of the constitution to suit the white Christians of the country. Interestingly enough, while Clarence Thomas explicitly mentioned that gay marriage and contraception might also come up for bans in the states, he didn’t mention inter- racial marriage. After all, that impacts him personally. But a couple of Republican politicians have suggested that interracial marriage might be among the rights the “ states rights” folk might decide to eliminate. Like Roe, it’s a national right that’s only been around for a little more than 50:years. And, of course, gay marriage has been legal for far less time. It appears that a whole lot of rights that weren’t explicitly given in the 19th century might be under assault by this court based on some of the opinions of the judges that have been inflicted on our country. Keep those rose colored glasses on Jim, and continue ignoring what these states are already trying to do. The issues go far beyond abortion. Dobbs opened up a states rights can of worms that could inflict far more damage on the country than the abortion battle is doing. And it’s already pretty bad.,
"Jim, the SC ruled against the state of Maine which was refusing to use tax money to support religious schools. Maine has changed the provisions for funding eligibility to ban tax money from going to schools that discriminate- against gays especially, which includes Catholic schools and evangelical Christian schools."
DeleteMaine offers tuition vouchers to families who live in towns with no public schools, so their kids could attend local private schools. The state discriminatorily refused to provide tuition vouchers for private schools with a religious mission. The Supreme Court struck down that unconstitutional religious discrimination. I don't believe the now-overturned policy had anything to do with admitting gay students, although I understand Maine's AG is now claiming the schools which sued him (and won) are discriminatory. The Maine policy was redolent of anti-Catholic Blaine Amendments which the Supreme Court has been striking down.
If Maine's elected leaders don't want state tax dollars to support private schools, the obvious recourse is to stand up actual public schools in remote sections of the state.
"How can you trust a single word of what SC justices say now? Three of them lied in order to pass the Senate and be appointed."
DeleteSounds like something which should be leading every newscast. What are those details?
https://news.northeastern.edu/2022/06/26/roe-v-wade-conservative-justice-perjury/
Deletehttps://www.factcheck.org/2022/05/what-gorsuch-kavanaugh-and-barrett-said-about-roe-at-confirmation-hearings/
Pro- life folk would argue that technically speaking they didn’t actually lie. Pro- choice people say that their carefully phrased, misleading statements are tantamount to a lie.
I once quit a job - quit a client- because I realized that the data they had given me about the program, and was using to write grant proposals for them, was highly misleading, to the point where I considered using the numbers in such a way to be a form of lying. I worked with the group for a while before I realized that the numbers they were using to promote their work were seriously misleading, primarily by omitting information. After I wrote a proposal that did not include the misleading information the president of the non- profit and I had a (very loud, vocal) disagreement that led me to quit. It was too late for her to change the proposal. It went the way I had written it. The group she was applying to for money had turned down the previous year’s proposal. I heard later that my proposal, which did not use the misleading data, not only won the grant, but it was the largest grant they were awarded that year. I felt vindicated.
The three justices used obfuscation to mislead when answering questions about Roe. I suspect that anything they have said about in their opinions in Dobbs about future cases that are based on the same foundation as Roe cannot be trusted, but are also probably attempts to mislead. They were too careful to be caught in outright lies, which would be perjury.
So, you may say that they didn’t lie - technically speaking- but I believe their careful legalese was meant to obfuscate and mislead, which I consider a form of lying. However, I also blame some of the Senators, such as Collins, for not pressing. I’m sure there were plenty of lawyers in the Senate who realized what these three were doing, but let them get away with it. I don’t trust them either.
From Forbes -
More Democrats may call for Supreme Court justices to face consequences for allegedly going against their testimony, but legal experts say it’s unlikely the justices have actually lied under oath. “To me, their careful lawyerly phrasing was, itself, a demonstration that they were prepared to overturn Roe,” Northeastern University law professor Dan airman.
I wasn’t clear about Maine and discrimination. Maine anticipated that the SC would rule against them on denying tuition vouchers to private religious schools because of a pattern in recent years to weaken the wall of separation between church and state. Since Maine doesn’t want to use taxpayer money to fund religious education (rightly) they came up with a different provision that was ready to go as soon as the SC ruled against them. It does not eliminate private religious schools from eligibility for the voucher program. But it does eliminate schools that discriminate against gay or transgender people in employment and admissions from receiving the money. The SC was wrong. Perhaps someday in the future, if our country survives, a future SC will revisit, and reverse this ruling - this precedent. Just as they have with Roe. In the meantime, religious freedom for all will very probably continue to be eroded in favor of more promotion of christian religion views. There will be further cases, more appeals and the mess this court is creating will be harder and harder to fix.
DeleteAnne, thanks for that Factcheck.Org link - it saved me a lot of homework :-).
DeleteI don't think there is anything "technical" about the answers of any of the three justices (although some of them did use some technical legal jargon, like stare decisis). All three of them declined to pre-signal how they would rule in any particular case considering Roe - or any other topic - because to do so threatens the independence and the credibility of the judiciary.
I'd be surprised - and dismayed - if Kagan or Sotomayor answered substantially differently during their confirmation hearings.
In the contretemps which spurred the FactCheck.Org article, there are liars, but they aren't the justices. They are the politicians who claim the justices lied. It's a shame, because when public officials lie, it debases the standing of our government.
Anne, I love that episode where you ended up quitting, and I admire your stance. I hope you don't mind, but that is the kind of thing I sometimes "borrow" to make a point when I am preaching!
Delete"Legal abortion is in no danger in Maryland anyway. In fact it was expanded in reaction to the SC ruling."
ReplyDeleteThe same thing happened in Illinois. I may have mentioned before: every state which borders Illinois is now, or soon will be, restricting abortion. The interstates which bring people into Illinois from all directions will be carrying women seeking abortions. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin has provided an abortion provider in Rockford, IL (within a dozen or so miles of the Illinois-Wisconsin border) with funds to create a new abortion clinic in Rockford, to serve the expected spike in 'business' coming from Wisconsin.
"However, if women start showing up from neighboring West Virginia and the WV people want to prosecute Maryland doctors it will become a nasty fight between the two states. The fact that several red states are working to adopt the Texas bounty model of encouraging spying and reporting people who cross a state line is stomach turning. They want to extradite doctors who legally perform abortions in other states for murder prosecutions. Many doctors are already afraid to treat women in ERs who are miscarrying for fear of prosecution."
Right - these are all matters for courts to sort out.
FWIW - I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see how abortion doesn't get classified as interstate commerce, and therefore subject to federal regulation (and/or legislation).
And in today’s news - this report. I’m seeing more and more if this in my news feed. Docs refusing appropriate care to women having miscarriages. This woman didn’t get sepsis, she didn’t die as some women do from incomplete abortions that are untreated. The docs are afraid and who can blame them. The doctor who performed the abort on the 10 year old rape victim was attacked scathingly in the press, by politicians and an investigation was started. But she had followed all the laws. They didn’t care - the attack dogs were unloosed on her. One “ pro- life” leader said that this little girl should have been forced to give birth - something that would have been very dangerous for her.,
ReplyDelete“ A Wisconsin woman was denied care by a hospital's emergency room staff following an incomplete miscarriage and left to bleed for 10 days before receiving medication to expel the fetus. (The Independent)”
I think everyone who doesn't have a screw loose realizes that a ten year old can't be made to carry a pregnancy to term. Unfortunately there are politicians and internet experts who have more than a few screws loose. I have thought a lot about what I would do if I were this child's mother. Those of us who are parents would take a bullet to protect our children. I came to the conclusion that I would have had to take the spiritual and psychological bullet for her, and get her medical help to end the pregnancy. And hope that God would forgive me.
DeleteI do have a ten year old granddaughter. She is small -boned and petite, still very much a child, physically and emotionally. I couldn't bear to think of her in that predicament. I imagine the anonymous ten year old in the news is very much like that.
DeleteThere is an article in the NYT that describes the dangers of pregnancy in young girls (under 15).
Deletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/18/health/young-girls-pregnancy-childbirth.html
I don't think there is much of a constituency in the US to make 10 year old girls carry their pregnancies to term. If common sense actually prevailed, I suspect that legislation to exempt those hard cases from abortion restrictions would garner wide bipartisan support. I think it's quite likely that zealous pro-life legislators who wouldn't permit a girl in that situation to have an abortion, will face an electoral backlash.
DeleteAnd on the Democratic side, I detect zero interest in meeting in the middle. The legislation which the US House passed (and which will die in the Senate) doesn't merely seek to extend the provisions of Roe; it seeks to broaden them.
We're not at the point where there is any interest in legislative compromise on abortion.
Ironically, the Dobbs case, which resulted in the overturning of Roe v Wade, doesn't ban all abortions in Mississippi; it bans abortions after 15 weeks. It's now the prevailing law in Mississippi. I read earlier this week that that makes Mississippi(!) more generous in permitting abortions than either France or the UK; that didn't stop Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson from speaking out against the US Supreme Court, a topic about which they manifestly know nothing.
Jim, you are ignoring all the laws outside of Mississippi that have already been triggered. The little girl could not get an abortion in Ohio because their new law bans abortion after 6 weeks, like Texas. She was 6 weeks and 3 days when referred for abortion in Ohio, so it couldn’t be done. That’s why the social services people arranged for her to go to Indiana. Then the extremists put out the word that tte Indiana doctor had broken laws and the Indiana AG announced they would open an investigation. The doctor was vindicated but nobody apologized nor did they try to correct their lies on viral social media.
DeleteSome state laws have no exceptions - moment of conception. No exemptions for rape or incest. I’m not sure that Oklahoma even allows a d&c for miscarriage. That’s why the Wisconsin woman was left to bleed for 10 days before she was finally given the D&C she needed. Doctors are afraid to treat miscarriages in these states. You are right - the Dems are digging in their heels. But so are the extreme pro- life people. The fighting and legal appeals will now dominate state politics just as they have national and many other important issues will not be addressed. A national law with a 12 week cap should be passed. I will write to my two Dem Senators as well as the Dem Congressman. And I hope that you will write to your Republican politicians. And that you will urge every one of your pro- life family, friends and movement colleagues to do the same. You don’t want the death of 10 year old rape victims on your conscience.
The Oklahoma law bans abortion starting at conception. It allows abortions to save the life of the mother but docs will have to prove the woman was treated for miscarriage and not a botched abortion. It has exceptions for rape and incest IF the rape or incest is reported to police. Not many 11 - or 15 year old girls raped by their father, uncle, grandfather or family friend will report it. Many older stranger rape victims even fear reporting it.
DeletePS to Jim. I subscribe now to David French's weekly email letter from Atlantic, which I assume has the same content that you receive. I wish that "conservative" today meant what it used to. He is a conservative of the pre-trump era style.
Delete"The little girl could not get an abortion in Ohio because their new law bans abortion after 6 weeks, like Texas. She was 6 weeks and 3 days when referred for abortion in Ohio, so it couldn’t be done. That’s why the social services people arranged for her to go to Indiana. "
DeleteHere's a fact check on the story. The basic outline - a 10 year old girl was impregnated, obtained an abortion in Indiana, and the adult accused of raping her has been arrested - seems to be confirmed.
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-could-pregnant-10-year-old-girl-get-abortion-ohio-1725114
Whether, as the Ohio AG apparently has been claiming, the girl would have been eligible for an abortion in Ohio, is not crystal clear, but it seems likely that, as the statute is written today, she wouldn't be eligible. And apparently the statute is so vaguely written that abortion providers in Ohio wouldn't feel comfortable performing an abortion in those circumstances. A bit more here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/14/what-ohio-law-says-about-10-year-old-rape-victim-abortion/
It's a tragic case. A 10 year old girl was impregnated by an abusive, rapist adult.
And someone died.
Fortunately, if Ohio voters don't like their state's policy, they can elect officials who will make policy more to their liking.
Just a bit more on that 10 year old in Ohio. This is from the FactCheck.Org story I linked to above:
Delete"One might consider that a 10-year-old giving birth constituted a medical emergency. However, government statistics show that, while not commonplace, cases of 10-year-olds giving birth occur across the United States every year.
"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention records birth rates among 10-14 year-olds annually. While exceptionally small (in 2020 the rate was 0.2 per every 1000 women) the data shows that even before the overturning of Roe v. Wade, girls gave birth at that age without it automatically being deemed a risk to life.
"While current CDC statistics do not provide the total number of births for 10-14 year olds, a report stated there were around 2,200 in 2016."
All of us recoil at the notion of a 10 year old being pregnant. It's a scenario that puts my pro-life convictions to the test. As I mentioned earlier, it's difficult to imagine there would be a constituency in the US that would insist she carry it to term.
On a slightly more personal note: the ministry Rest in His Arms in which I'm involved, provides burial services for infants who were abandoned after birth. Of the 50+ cases in which our organization has provided a burial, a few (at least - we don't always know the circumstances of the mom) were babies whose moms are in that 10-14 year old category. I mention this to illustrate that bringing the baby to term and having the mom give birth doesn't always 'solve the problem'.
The root cause of these upsetting cases, of course, is that children are sexually abused. Legally, that is presumed, even if a 14 year old girl is voluntarily sexually active (using the world "voluntarily" with caution; a 14 year old who is sexually active may well have been a victim of sexual abuse herself at some point in her life).
Every time an abortion is successfully performed (which is almost always), a human being is killed. We should at least acknowledge we are choosing a trade-off, and resist facile slogans like, "Women will die" as though that tells the entire story.
I once heard a priest in Chicago preach, "Children shouldn't have children". Can any of us argue against that?
It's tragic all the way around.
Jim, did you read the article that describes what pregnancy and birth can do to a child’s body? Ten is not fourteen. How marvelous that some ten year olds have survived pregnancy and birth. They can survive! So lets make every pregnant ten, eleven and twelve year old girl who is raped or molested give birth. After all, the odds are low that she would actually die.
DeleteThe emotional and psychological trauma that has been visited on this girl already is horrific. Forcing her to go through pregnancy and birth would also be horrific. You believe a person died. Many Americans would disagree that a blueberry sized embryo that hasn’t developed most of the biological systems that make someone a real human being, as opposed to potentially a human being, is a person. You believe it but it really shows a lack of sensitivity to the religious views of others to vocally insist out loud that this child had a medical procedure that killed a person. It would add to the cruelty for people to tell her that the abortion killed a person. I pray that no pro-life fanatic ever suggests this to her, ver in her whole life.
I don't know if it makes it any better, but it was abortion by medication. The girl likely experienced it as a heavy period. Hopefully that wouldn't have been as traumatic as a surgical abortion. Yes it is tragic that a life was lost. I lay the responsibility for that on the rapist.
Delete"You believe a person died. Many Americans would disagree that a blueberry sized embryo that hasn’t developed most of the biological systems that make someone a real human being, as opposed to potentially a human being, is a person."
DeleteI said nothing of the sort. I said, "Someone died." A human being died. It was a human being at a very early stage of development. In other words: a human being was killed.
"You believe it but it really shows a lack of sensitivity to the religious views of others to vocally insist out loud that this child had a medical procedure that killed a person. It would add to the cruelty for people to tell her that the abortion killed a person. I pray that no pro-life fanatic ever suggests this to her, over in her whole life."
No blame to her. It's not as if she was given a say in the matter. Adults made all the decisions, from impregnating her to killing the human being growing inside her.
If that is too "sensitive" for some adults to think about - I can't help that. There is real evil in the world, some of it monstrous.
Adults need to confront that reality, especially those who are responsible for perpetrating it. There are altogether too many lies in the world. Let's tell the truth about abortion.
Ten year old girls should not be raped.
ReplyDeleteTen year old girls should not be pregnant.
The only way to make "is" congruent with "should" is to perform an abortion with the lowest psychological impact on the immature victim.
The young rape victim bears NO responsibility for or to the fetal human inside her. If my kidney could save someone, I am not compelled to save them at risk to my own health unless perhaps I was responsible for the condition.
It is correct in my view to say a human life ended at an early stage because life support that was not owed was withdrawn. The fetus was not removed from the girl. The girl was removed from the fetus.
I don't believe one has to denigrate the human status of the fetus to justify this abortion. Abortion is an imperfect but necessary procedure to reestablish as much as possible a previous balance.
I consider my argument to be valid for any victim of rape. Is rape more wrong with a ten year old than an adult? My view is that the wrongness is absolute, pinning the wrongness meter.
DeleteInteresting analogy between pregnancy and life support.
DeleteIn Canada from 1969-1988 that's sort of how grounds for abortion were determined: A panel of three doctors determined the extent to which providing life support would be detrimental to the mother. It sounds scientific, but, in reality, the doctors often applied their own religious and moral ideas that colored how much burden they were willing to make the woman bear.
Stanley, I think many/most people would agree with your analysis. (I'm not disagreeing, either - it's a very hard case, at least for a pro-life person).
DeleteYou're engaging in the analysis that American citizens now have to take up in each state. Ohio's law may well have gotten it wrong. I don't know the history of how it came to be, but it may be the efforts of some Ohio pro-lifers who were striving for a politically-unworkable perfection.
And you may have proposed a politically-workable way to fix it: give an exception for victims of rape (regardless of age).
If there are any pro-life purists reading this, they probably are pissed off at me (a member of the Catholic clergy, no less!) for putting forth something that falls short of pro-life perfection. But if Ohio's law with the Kopacz Amendment turns out to be politically workable, then some number of human lives surely will have been saved. That's better than the status quo ante, when Roe was still in effect.
"You're engaging in the analysis that American citizens now have to take up in each state."
DeleteI would suggest that analysis of the situation occurred to every American woman confronted with a problem pregnancy while Roe was in force.
The militants who push for no restrictions or make YouTubes documenting their medical abortions are outliers and weirdos.
Most women contemplating abortion made the decision after looking at all the angles.
"If there are any pro-life purists reading this, they probably are pissed off at me (a member of the Catholic clergy, no less!) for putting forth something that falls short of pro-life perfection."
DeleteJim, yeah, I hear you. There are people who will brook no discussion or nuances, it's very black and white to them with no gray, ever. I feel that there is room for some theological development in cases like this one, and that one in Arizona where there was no way that both the mother and baby could be saved. It seems like saving one life would be better than losing both.