But the immediate take away is the cold hard fact that our biggest and most costly defeat since 1973 was the enactment of the Hyde Amendment and our lack of a total, uncompromising commitment to overturning it. If nothing else happens as a result of this defeat, complete and total dedication to overturning Hyde must be the centerpiece, indeed the single objective of our movement. It is not clear if the effect of the Stupak Amendment will be that the door will close on ever restoring federal funds for abortion, but every effort to make sure that does not happen must be made. We must convince enough people that the only immorality is using poor women as a way of expressing one’s moral outrage. Either we all have the right to choose or none of us has it.
President Obama has always supported overturning Hyde and we now need to insist that having achieved his political objective with strong support from the women’s movement, he must take up the true moral cause – giving women with no or low resources the same right of conscience as those with sufficient money to pay for their own abortions have always had.
Joe Biden and any pro-choice Democrat who has not been for over turning Hyde needs to change their mind – and we need to insist they do so.
I have great sympathy for the dilemma our friends on the Hill faced and in many ways I don’t want to come down hard on them. I know they are hurting and these votes will trouble them for years to come. The Catholic in me says the next step is restitution- all is never lost. That restitution is their unswerving commitment and tireless work to overturn the Hyde Amendment.
]]>This article was originally published in Salon.
Recent research has demonstrated that among the many strategies that need to be brought to bear to reduce global warming, one of the most humane and cost-effective would be meeting the global need for contraception. Two hundred million women worldwide are without it as they try to prevent becoming pregnant.
But if President Obama tries to include family planning in any attempts to address climate change, he's likely to face another thorny battle with the religious activists who supported his election. Religious leaders, even evangelicals, have jumped on the climate-control bandwagon but remain at best unwilling to admit the important role that family planning could play in achieving a smaller human footprint on the environment. At worst, they are actively opposed to expanding contraceptive possibilities for women in the developing world.
A study by Thomas Wire of the London School of Economics, "Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost," commissioned by the U.K.'s Optimum Population Trust, demonstrates the impact that improved access to birth control could have on the planet:
[E]ach $7.00 spent on basic family planning over the next four decades will reduce CO2 emissions by more than a ton. To achieve the same results with low carbon technologies would cost a minimum of $32.00. If we just meet that need that women have already expressed for fewer children and access to contraception, we will save 34 gigatons between now and 2050, equivalent to nearly six times the annual emissions of the US.
Were this 1960 or even 1990, there would be understandable and widespread opposition to the idea that the way to solve environmental problems is through contraception. During that era, conventional wisdom held that the world faced imminent crisis unless we drastically reduced the number of people competing for land and food, and it became easy to justify draconian measures to control female fertility. Women's rights activists, for example, had long reported on the negative effects that an obsession with reducing population had on women.
In 1983, the United Nations awarded China its first annual Population Prize, willingly overlooking the massive human rights violations that accompanied China's one-child policy. Massive forced abortions, sterilization following the birth of the first child, houses bulldozed to find and punish those who violated the policy offended the conscience of women's rights advocates. Less draconian policies in Peru, Indonesia, Bangladesh and India were cited by human rights advocates as examples of what happens when having "too many people" is defined as the problem -- and reducing their numbers is seen as an easier solution than compelling those of us in the developed world to reduce our consumption, or forcing corporations to stop clear-cutting forests.
Family-planning programs in many developing countries that received foreign assistance from the developed world were often sub-standard, offering women no choice but whatever contraceptive was being pushed at the time, usually a long-acting method that women could not control. Developing country governments, eager for the funds, set targets that poorly paid family-planning workers had to meet in order to get a bonus. If they could convince a woman or her husband to get sterilized the bonus was even higher. After all, the experts admitted, consumption and corporate greed were responsible for a hell of a lot more environmental degradation than poor people having kids -- but stopping Japanese and American lumber companies from chopping down trees in Brazil was too difficult. And, even if population programs were occasionally coercive, many believed they were in poor people's interests as fewer babies meant less poverty and more opportunity for women and families in the developing world.
But the other side of the coin, even in those early years, was always the undeniable fact that women wanted family planning. It improved their lives. As individual family size dropped, families were able to send girls as well as boys to school, girls got married later, women entered the workforce and their physical health improved.
Steve Sinding, former director of USAID’s Population and Reproductive Health program and an ardent advocate of rights-based family-planning programs, stresses that such programs have been a global success story, comparable to the Green Revolution and the eradication of smallpox. Along with four former USAID program directors, he issued a recent report that describes successes between 1965 and 2005. Excluding China, they note that during those 40 years, the use of family planning by women of reproductive age in the developing world rose from 10 percent to 53 percent and average family size from six children to just over three.
A major paradigm shift in the population and development field has achieved great changes in the quality of family planning programs over the last 15 years. The U.N. Population Fund and women's health activists shifted the conceptual frame for family planning from demographic imperatives to human rights, resulting in the end of officially sanctioned targets for sterilization and family planning and to a basic women's health approach in which choice and voluntarism were key values. Population control was out and reproductive health was in, and many of the objections to past family programs were mooted.
But the shift in paradigms, while it improved the quality of many services, did not solve some stubborn problems. Certain statistics remain constant. Half a million women a year still die in childbirth and 200 million women who don't want to get pregnant still do not have access to family planning. And the change in emphasis also came at a stark economic price. When we started framing reproduction as a health and human rights issue instead of a population, environment and national security issue, the money dried up. The funds moved to other issues.
In the same time period that we dramatically reduced the death rate from HIV and AIDS, we have made no progress -- no progress at all -- in reducing maternal mortality. And, although the cost is minimal, $3.9 billion a year to meet that unmet need for contraception, it is not forthcoming.
Will linking climate change to family planning help women at the same time it helps the planet? If we can't convince governments to support family planning because it is good for women, perhaps the mounting evidence that contraception is almost five times cheaper than conventional green technologies as a means of combating climate change will do the trick. And can we avoid a resurgence of the old order where women too often became the means to someone else's ends?
Most feminist leaders think we can keep providing quality services and preserve the world's commitment to the basic human right of women and couples to decide freely on the number of their children. This is, many tell us, the century of women.
So where is the remaining resistance to acknowledging family planning as one of the solutions to climate change? There is well-placed concern that once again, the developed world will not deal with its own consumption problem, but instead put pressure on poor people to have fewer children, even though we know that all those poor people leave a very small carbon footprint compared to Americans. We, after all, applaud the one-child policy in China but would consider a one-car-per-family-of-four policy in the U.S. a violation of our basic human rights.
But there is also resistance from antiabortion groups. Supporting family planning has become a policy liability. American environmental groups bowed out of advocating for family planning in the 1990s when antiabortion groups attacked them as "pro-abortion." The environmentalists have stayed scared ever since.
I vividly remember a press conference where the then-head of the Audubon Society refused to stand next to Gloria Feldt, the then-head of Planned Parenthood. More recently, asked by the Washington Post to react to the London School of Economics report about climate change and family planning, David Hamilton of the Sierra Club responded, "I don't know how to say 'no comment' loud enough."
That may be why the Obama administration is not biting. When asked by the Washington Post about the recent studies, the administration declined to comment. I suspect the president needs to consult with his faith-based council about whether the religious community that he has so diligently courted on every issue under the sun, including climate change, is willing to support family planning -- an issue totally lacking in controversy for most Americans. Over 90 percent of women use contraception at some point in their reproductive life. In the 50 years since the pill was introduced, the U.S. fertility rate has dropped by nearly half, from close to four children per woman to two.
It would seem to me that increasing funding for international family planning as well as for low-income women seeking family planning in the U.S. is a win-win proposition. We could help women avoid pregnancy when they are not ready to parent, prevent abortions, reduce maternal mortality worldwide and reduce CO2 emissions. That $47 cost of abating a ton of CO2 emissions through family planning compares favorably to $24 for wind power and $451 for solar and $91 for plug-in hybrid vehicles. This is surely a no-brainer.
]]>This article originally appeared on Salon.com.
It was discouraging to hear Barack Obama, the man I supported for president, announce so resolutely during his speech to Congress last week that "under our [healthcare] plan no federal dollars will be used to fund abortion." It was infuriating, however, that before the morning cock could crow following the speech Jim Wallis of the antiabortion organization Sojourners was claiming that the president's remarks on abortion were just what "a broad coalition of the faith community had asked for -- no federal funding for abortions."
I had been prepared for Obama to close the door on a healthcare reform package that would include funding abortions for women who rely on Medicaid for health coverage. Low-income women already lost that right 30 years ago when the Supreme Court upheld the Hyde Amendment. I believe a principled compromise to maintain the status quo on abortion is justified if it gets us better healthcare for millions of men and women and security from the rapaciousness of the insurance industry. And no pro-choice organization wants to bear the responsibility for healthcare reform failing. And so, tacitly, pro-choice leaders have basically accepted that the Hyde Amendment restrictions, as well as those that deny federal workers, women in the military and women who get healthcare on Indian reservations funding for abortion, would be reflected in the healthcare package.
Unfortunately, the good will shown by the pro-choice community has not been met with a good-faith effort by Wallis and his friends. They now hope to use the president's promise as a way to press for further restrictions on abortion coverage in the final healthcare legislation. As one moderate pro-life leader told me, "It is going to be a long fall." All the talk about finding common ground on abortion and the emergence of moderate pro-lifers is floundering as Wallis and a few others prepare to push Congress and the White House for further concessions. "[The president's] commitment to these principles," said Wallis, "means we can now work together to make sure that they are consistently and diligently applied to any final healthcare legislation." For Wallis, that means that "no person should be forced to pay for someone else's abortion and that public funds cannot be used to pay for elective abortions."
Before the congressional recess, the moderate pro-lifers and pro-choice leaders had pretty much agreed that both sides would not seek provisions in healthcare reform that would change the status quo. Rep Lois Capps, D-Calif., codified that agreement in an amendment to the House bill. The Capps Amendment gave those opposed to abortion both the guarantee they wanted that providers would have adequate conscience protection against having to provide abortions and a prohibition on the use of federal funds to pay for abortions in accordance with Hyde and other current federal law. It made no change in the ability of private insurance plans to decide whether or not to cover abortions, but prohibited private plans from using federal subsidy dollars for abortions. It provides that every state have at least one plan that offers abortion coverage and one that does not, so that someone really opposed to abortion can buy a plan that does not cover that service.
This, it now seems, is not enough for Wallis and company. They now want to be sure that if an anti-choice person chooses a plan that does cover abortion, the minuscule part of his premium that is allocated to abortion coverage for all subscribers is not used for abortion. Stephen Schenk, a moderate pro-life Catholic and a professor at Catholic University, wants healthcare reform to extend the Hyde Amendment beyond those groups that are already denied coverage to everyone. "If we are stuck with the Capps Amendment," he says, "we are going to have problems." Chris Korzen of Catholics United, a small Catholic advocacy group that claims to be progressive, is worried that the public option plan is going to offer abortion coverage. Although it will be funded through premiums and there will be at least one private plan in the "exchange" that those opposed to abortion can buy, Korzen is now poised to oppose abortion coverage in the plan most designed to help low-income people.
Enough already! This is not an attempt to achieve common ground and use common sense. This is not that different from the hard-line Catholic bishops and Family Research Council effort to use public policy and healthcare reform to make abortion less available than it already is and stigmatize every woman who even contemplates it. And frankly, while Christian progressives like Korzen and Wallis are spending all their time worrying about abortion, they're ignoring the major gap in all the plans -- the exclusion of undocumented workers living in the U.S. I always thought faith-inspired social justice advocates were the ones I could count on to go out on a limb for what is right, even if it gives the president they helped elect a hard time. I guess I was wrong.
The irony of all this is that Wallis and Korzen don't represent the majority views of either mainline or progressive religion on abortion. How long the mainline pro-choice faith community will allow Wallis and a few small groups of progressive Catholics to use healthcare reform to push for further restrictions on abortion remains to be seen. For Wallis and others to assert that denying poor women the same access to abortion as other women is moral and "what a broad coalition of the faith community had asked for" is as dishonest as claiming, like Joe "You Lie" Wilson, that the healthcare reform plans are going to provide coverage to undocumented workers.
The broad coalition Wallis refers to is, in fact, a specific group that is largely in favor of federal funding for abortion. All the members of the group have done is to put that support on the back burner in hopes of getting healthcare reform passed. Organized under the umbrella name "40 Days for Healthcare Reform," the coalition draws on about 25 denominations and independent interfaith groups for various actions. Many of these groups are on record as supporting public funding for abortion and have worked to overturn the Hyde Amendment. They include the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, the Unitarian Universalist Association, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, Presbyterian Church USA, Faith in Public Life, and the Disciples of Christ. Some religious groups that are not part of the 40 Days campaign are also on record as supporting Medicaid funding for abortion. The National Coalition of American Nuns has no position on abortion itself but has since 1976 supported providing federal funds for poor women's abortions, asserting that it would be discriminatory to coerce poor women into continuing pregnancies by denying them the same right to decide as women who can afford to pay for their own abortions.
So eager are Wallis and his antiabortion friends to convince the media and policymakers that progressive religion is antiabortion that they have stacked the deck and excluded some pro-choice organizations from the effort to pass healthcare reform. The Web site for the 40 Days campaign sets forward criteria for membership that exclude religious groups working on "single issues" -- code for abortion. For example, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice was told that if it sent in a sponsorship fee for one of the many actions, its check would be returned. The group, founded by the Women's Division of the United Methodist Church, had sent a letter to members of Congress strongly supportive of federal funding for poor women's abortions in healthcare reform. The letter is signed by religious leaders like the deans of the Howard University and Episcopal divinity schools, as well as Nancy Ratzen, president of the National Council of Jewish Women and a member of Obama's faith-based advisory council.
Wallis and the rest need to be called to accountability for their decision to push an antiabortion agenda in the midst of what was meant to be an effort to reform healthcare. Otherwise, we will see the moral commitment most mainline and progressive religious groups have to respecting the consciences of poor and low-income women deeply compromised. Abortion is not going to sink healthcare reform, but poor faith leadership can sink the opportunity of poor women for a decent life. ]]>This article originally appeared on Salon.com.
It was discouraging to hear Barack Obama, the man I supported for president, announce so resolutely during his speech to Congress last week that "under our [healthcare] plan no federal dollars will be used to fund abortion." It was infuriating, however, that before the morning cock could crow following the speech Jim Wallis of the antiabortion organization Sojourners was claiming that the president's remarks on abortion were just what "a broad coalition of the faith community had asked for -- no federal funding for abortions."
I had been prepared for Obama to close the door on a healthcare reform package that would include funding abortions for women who rely on Medicaid for health coverage. Low-income women already lost that right 30 years ago when the Supreme Court upheld the Hyde Amendment. I believe a principled compromise to maintain the status quo on abortion is justified if it gets us better healthcare for millions of men and women and security from the rapaciousness of the insurance industry. And no pro-choice organization wants to bear the responsibility for healthcare reform failing. And so, tacitly, pro-choice leaders have basically accepted that the Hyde Amendment restrictions, as well as those that deny federal workers, women in the military and women who get healthcare on Indian reservations funding for abortion, would be reflected in the healthcare package.
Unfortunately, the good will shown by the pro-choice community has not been met with a good-faith effort by Wallis and his friends. They now hope to use the president's promise as a way to press for further restrictions on abortion coverage in the final healthcare legislation. As one moderate pro-life leader told me, "It is going to be a long fall." All the talk about finding common ground on abortion and the emergence of moderate pro-lifers is floundering as Wallis and a few others prepare to push Congress and the White House for further concessions. "[The president's] commitment to these principles," said Wallis, "means we can now work together to make sure that they are consistently and diligently applied to any final healthcare legislation." For Wallis, that means that "no person should be forced to pay for someone else's abortion and that public funds cannot be used to pay for elective abortions."
Before the congressional recess, the moderate pro-lifers and pro-choice leaders had pretty much agreed that both sides would not seek provisions in healthcare reform that would change the status quo. Rep Lois Capps, D-Calif., codified that agreement in an amendment to the House bill. The Capps Amendment gave those opposed to abortion both the guarantee they wanted that providers would have adequate conscience protection against having to provide abortions and a prohibition on the use of federal funds to pay for abortions in accordance with Hyde and other current federal law. It made no change in the ability of private insurance plans to decide whether or not to cover abortions, but prohibited private plans from using federal subsidy dollars for abortions. It provides that every state have at least one plan that offers abortion coverage and one that does not, so that someone really opposed to abortion can buy a plan that does not cover that service.
This, it now seems, is not enough for Wallis and company. They now want to be sure that if an anti-choice person chooses a plan that does cover abortion, the minuscule part of his premium that is allocated to abortion coverage for all subscribers is not used for abortion. Stephen Schenk, a moderate pro-life Catholic and a professor at Catholic University, wants healthcare reform to extend the Hyde Amendment beyond those groups that are already denied coverage to everyone. "If we are stuck with the Capps Amendment," he says, "we are going to have problems." Chris Korzen of Catholics United, a small Catholic advocacy group that claims to be progressive, is worried that the public option plan is going to offer abortion coverage. Although it will be funded through premiums and there will be at least one private plan in the "exchange" that those opposed to abortion can buy, Korzen is now poised to oppose abortion coverage in the plan most designed to help low-income people.
Enough already! This is not an attempt to achieve common ground and use common sense. This is not that different from the hard-line Catholic bishops and Family Research Council effort to use public policy and healthcare reform to make abortion less available than it already is and stigmatize every woman who even contemplates it. And frankly, while Christian progressives like Korzen and Wallis are spending all their time worrying about abortion, they're ignoring the major gap in all the plans -- the exclusion of undocumented workers living in the U.S. I always thought faith-inspired social justice advocates were the ones I could count on to go out on a limb for what is right, even if it gives the president they helped elect a hard time. I guess I was wrong.
The irony of all this is that Wallis and Korzen don't represent the majority views of either mainline or progressive religion on abortion. How long the mainline pro-choice faith community will allow Wallis and a few small groups of progressive Catholics to use healthcare reform to push for further restrictions on abortion remains to be seen. For Wallis and others to assert that denying poor women the same access to abortion as other women is moral and "what a broad coalition of the faith community had asked for" is as dishonest as claiming, like Joe "You Lie" Wilson, that the healthcare reform plans are going to provide coverage to undocumented workers.
The broad coalition Wallis refers to is, in fact, a specific group that is largely in favor of federal funding for abortion. All the members of the group have done is to put that support on the back burner in hopes of getting healthcare reform passed. Organized under the umbrella name "40 Days for Healthcare Reform," the coalition draws on about 25 denominations and independent interfaith groups for various actions. Many of these groups are on record as supporting public funding for abortion and have worked to overturn the Hyde Amendment. They include the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, the Unitarian Universalist Association, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, Presbyterian Church USA, Faith in Public Life, and the Disciples of Christ. Some religious groups that are not part of the 40 Days campaign are also on record as supporting Medicaid funding for abortion. The National Coalition of American Nuns has no position on abortion itself but has since 1976 supported providing federal funds for poor women's abortions, asserting that it would be discriminatory to coerce poor women into continuing pregnancies by denying them the same right to decide as women who can afford to pay for their own abortions.
So eager are Wallis and his antiabortion friends to convince the media and policymakers that progressive religion is antiabortion that they have stacked the deck and excluded some pro-choice organizations from the effort to pass healthcare reform. The Web site for the 40 Days campaign sets forward criteria for membership that exclude religious groups working on "single issues" -- code for abortion. For example, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice was told that if it sent in a sponsorship fee for one of the many actions, its check would be returned. The group, founded by the Women's Division of the United Methodist Church, had sent a letter to members of Congress strongly supportive of federal funding for poor women's abortions in healthcare reform. The letter is signed by religious leaders like the deans of the Howard University and Episcopal divinity schools, as well as Nancy Ratzen, president of the National Council of Jewish Women and a member of Obama's faith-based advisory council.
Wallis and the rest need to be called to accountability for their decision to push an antiabortion agenda in the midst of what was meant to be an effort to reform healthcare. Otherwise, we will see the moral commitment most mainline and progressive religious groups have to respecting the consciences of poor and low-income women deeply compromised. Abortion is not going to sink healthcare reform, but poor faith leadership can sink the opportunity of poor women for a decent life. ]]>Here was this embarrassingly large early 20th century Catholic family - Rose and Joe had nine children - the kind of raucous brood one felt was the subject of Monty Python's "Every sperm is sacred" skit and that more parsimonious - and non-Catholic - couples would likely shake their heads at in the supermarket. Of course, the Kennedys were rich Catholics, also a rarity among us prior to the 1970's, and something working Catholics admired. Mom was pious and the children followed her lead on liturgical practice if nothing else. You had a sense that Kennedys said grace, prayed the Rosary and went to Mass fairly regularly even into the twenty-first century.
They followed external church rules, gathered together for baptisms, weddings and funerals. When their marriages failed they got annulments either before or after they remarried. I ran into a bunch of them (they traveled in packs) one summer Sunday at the airport in Islip, New York. They were returning from a family wedding in Connecticut. The only member of the older generation present was Ethel. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend warned me, "Don't tell Ethel what you do." When Ethel got around to asking me, I simply said, "I'm not going to tell you as Kathleen says it would upset you." She let it go and we moved on to a conversation about the Cuomos. These differences on matters of faith and politics did not stand in the way of human relationships. You cannot be one of nine children, be respectful of and protect each other and allow big differences of opinion to stand in the way. Big families contribute to respect for diversity. The Kennedys were the epitome of James Joyce's "Here comes everybody" and no Kennedy more epitomized that joyous approach to life and justice than Ted Kennedy.
Here comes everybody to America and let's share the good life - he embraced it for himself and for others. He fought for undocumented workers, sick people, children and the unemployed. His commitment to ensuring that every person in America got the health care coverage they needed and every child got a good education was lifelong. His opposition to unjust wars, including the war in Iraq set him apart at times from his colleagues and his bishops. Most of his work could be said to be in the Catholic tradition of social justice and there is no doubt that that tradition influenced the Senator and the man.
His religion was not, however, worn on his sleeve; he did not ask aloud "What would Jesus do?" nor did he quote any of the 3,000 biblical references to poverty. He grounded his work and commitment in the experience and narratives of those who suffered and had needs. And, in that suffering mass of humanity he included women and the LGBT community. Ted Kennedy was one of only 14 members of the Senate to vote against the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. One never heard him utter a concern that religion would be threatened by gay marriage. He had no difficulty distinguishing between civil marriage and religious ceremonies. On the right to choose abortion, he was fully pro-choice. He supported the right of women who got their medical care from the government whether they were federal employees, in the military or on Medicaid to the same right of conscience that women with their own money or private insurance have. And, on every other issue related to reproductive health and rights, he voted for women.
How did this happen in this big, very pious Catholic family? Theology played a part but Kennedy boys by and large did not go to Catholic schools. They went to the top prep schools and to Harvard. Ted spent only the eighth grade at a Jesuit prep school and went on to the Milton Academy. Had he gone to Catholic schools in the 1940 and 50's abortion would not have been mentioned -- it simply was not an issue much before it started to become legal in the late 60's in the US. But there is something to be said for a good secular education in terms of developing respect for diversity.
Of course, the Kennedys had access to the best theological insights of the times and they used it. I remember the late Giles Milhaven, a former Jesuit priest and theologian who served on the Catholics for Choice board, describing some days in 1970 he spent at the Kennedy compound discussing abortion with members of the family. The theologians at the meeting included Joseph Fuchs, who had served on the Papal Commission on Birth Control and chaired the committee's majority report; Richard McCormick, who is recognized as one of the founders of modern bio-ethics, then Catholic University star Charles Curran. Albert Jonsen, a then Jesuit bioethicist, and Father Drinan, who was Dean of Boston College Law School, rounded out the team. According to Giles, the moral theologians and priests met together for a while and then were joined by the Kennedys and Shrivers who asked questions. Ted Kennedy had the good fortune to engage in discourse about abortion and Catholicism before the papacy of John Paul II virtually closed the window on the lively debate that was going on among theologians about abortion.
None of these experts thought the act of abortion was a moral good and they varied in their opinions on when if ever it was morally justified - but they were clear that Catholic legislators could vote to make abortion legal. The Shrivers never agreed and Eunice and Sarge were active early on anti-abortion efforts. Ted, who at that time expressed anti-abortion views but had not needed to vote on the issue, came around to the pro-choice position by the time the first Senate votes on abortion were required following Roe v. Wade. The first issue was whether federal Medicaid funds could be used for abortion, and the Senator was always in favor of such funding. Perhaps he understood the preferential option for the poor to be determinant; perhaps he simply saw the tragedy that surrounded very poor and very young women forced to have children they did not want. Perhaps those theologians, whose arguments were dismissed in a blogger's short take on the Senator's death in America as "weak then and weaker now" had some influence on the liberal lion.
]]>For advocates of choice it's the fetus; those opposed to abortion suffer from a cavalier attitude toward the woman who carries the fetus.
Amid proclamations that common ground has been reached on abortion, a new set of anti-abortion actors has claimed leadership of the movement. They are no longer ultra-fundamentalist Catholics and Evangelicals but anti-war, anti-capital punishment, pro-environment "pro-lifers." Single-issue anti-abortionists thought they diluted the message by claiming abortion and war were equal horrors and other progressives and Democrats thought they were, well, anti-abortionists.
But some of them are also opposed to discrimination against women and call themselves feminists. Before Obama they were voices crying in the wilderness. Now they have emerged as the face of a new and improved anti-abortion movement. And it is improved -- there are few in this crowd who rate abortion issue as the most important moral issue of our time, and they are not single-issue voters. If they were, they would not have supported Obama.
Now they are embedded in the Democratic party, much to the dismay of some. But the value of their inclusion cannot be underestimated because of the effect inclusion could have on their beliefs. For starters, this group has already decided that a political effort to make abortion illegal is hopeless, which helps the pro-choice cause. The possibility of rational public discourse about all the factors at play in women's decisions not to continue pregnancy and not to become mothers is exactly what we need. Taking legality off the table makes that more possible. We are, however, far from common ground between the new anti-abortionists and the pro-choice advocates.
These new anti-abortionists have set forth a new ethical frame for dealing with abortion. They say rather than prohibit abortion we should work to reduce women's use of abortion by making bearing and raising children or bearing children and placing them for adoption more possible. Since data on why women have abortions indicate a significant number of women say they choose abortion because they cannot afford to have a child, the benign anti-choicers think that better economic support for women and girls who are pregnant will result in more continued pregnancies and more women embracing motherhood. They also assert that if adoption policies were friendlier more women would place children for adoption rather than have abortions.
But facts have little place in their strategy, as the very measures they think would lower abortion rates in the U.S. are already in place in much of Europe and few women who face unintended pregnancies in those countries opt out of abortion. Something much deeper influences a woman's decision about what to do when she is pregnant and does not want to become a mother -- and the new anti-choicers don't seem to have a clue about what this might be.
These are good and decent people who, it seems, suffer from the same lack of understanding of women's nature and identity as do old-line anti-abortionists. No attempt is made to explore what it means to a woman to be pregnant or the essential way in which becoming a mother changes women's identities forever -- even if they place a child they bore in adoption.
While the new anti-abortionists do not use the same words as their older counterparts, they are thinking the same thoughts. Pregnancy is natural and normal. It lasts for nine months and then it is over. Motherhood is part of almost all women's life plans. Many thrive on it. It is safe and results in a wonderful thing -- a new person. It is not asking much of a woman who faces an unwanted, difficult or unintended pregnancy to shift the plan she had for this time in her life and continue the pregnancy. That's because the outcome -- the new person -- is obviously so much more valuable than whatever short-term loss or pain the woman might experience. A woman who does not accept this is lacking some core element of womanhood.
This inaccurate idea of what pregnancy is about is not just dominant among those opposed to abortion. It is pretty much the unthinking assumption in modern Western culture. It denies the reality that even in modern Western culture, in the high-tech U.S., every woman who agrees to be pregnant still risks dying if the pregnancy goes awry. But the new anti-abortionists want to use their rosy view of pregnancy as the frame for public policy, and that is where they become indistinguishable from the old anti-abortion movement. For both groups, women are passive participants in gestation. They are the Tupperware containers in which children grow. "Left alone," anti-abortionists say, "the fetus will develop and be born into the world." Left alone? The development of the fetus into a baby is not a mere matter of geography. It is governed by what philosopher Maggie Little of Georgetown University describes as the "actions and resources of an autonomous agent." That includes the woman's "blood, hormones, her energy, all resources that could be going to other of her bodily projects."
No new anti-abortionist talks about these physical realities or questions whether or not the woman has any right to object or consent to having her body used in this way. They seem to take for granted that fetal life always takes precedence over the body and identity claims of the woman. The woman's claim to moral agency is completely disregarded and the traditional anti-choice belief that the fetus' right to life trumps all other values is mindlessly asserted.
But the absence of a serious moral frame for women's role in pregnancy leaves unspoken more than the physical realities of gestation. In the anti-abortion movement there is a romantic thread about women and pregnancy that includes the notion of submission alongside of passivity. However difficult the pregnancy or the circumstances of a woman's life might be, the sign of a good woman is that she submits to the cosmic event. The alteration of her identity from self-identified autonomous person to pregnant woman and to mother are conditions she has no control over -- other than to say no to sex.
Four positions taken by the new anti-abortionists illuminate this flawed thinking.
Denying the "need" for abortion. Pro-choicers and the new anti-abortionists have argued over terminology. Pro-choicers believe we should work to reduce the need for abortion. The new anti-abortionists also want to reduce the number of abortions but say there is never a "need" for abortion. Again, you could only say this if you completely minimize or reject that women's actions and identity are significant moments of moral agency or of the woman's personhood. You would have to believe that women do not "need" to be themselves when pregnant. According to this mind-set, women do not need the freedom to ask and decide if being pregnant with a disabled fetus or bringing it into the world is contrary to their sense of their duties to a potential child, a family or themselves. Women who have serious or even mild health challenges do not need to decide if the burdens of a pregnancy are more than they are able to bear. Because anti-abortionists see pregnancy as a passive activity by women and part of their innate nature, these questions never spring to mind.
A lack of support for contraception. That same sense of pregnancy as no big deal influences the new anti-abortionists' unwillingness to embrace contraception, in spite of the fact that any rational attempt to reduce abortions would require rushing to provide contraception to women. If we really understood what it meant for women to consent to becoming mothers, we would want them to be able to meet their moral obligation to their own identity by avoiding becoming pregnant. Not a single Catholic anti-abortion group, including Pax Christi, Network, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good or Catholics United has had the courage to stand with women and support legislation that will provide women with better and more affordable access to contraception. Evangelicals who have embraced the new approach to abortion opposition have been somewhat more willing to support contraception, but only if they can add that they support it because it will reduce abortions, not because women have a right to prevent becoming pregnant when that is not part of their immediate or long-term identity.
Making sex sacred. This squeamishness around contraception is closely related to the conservative religious community's concept of sex as sacred. More modern religious thinkers as well as secular philosophers look at sacredness not in the context of individual acts of sexual intercourse, but more broadly at the sacredness of procreation. For anti-abortionists, if women were not invisible, a concept of the sacredness of creation would include understanding that one of the most sacred decisions a woman makes is whether it is appropriate for her to participate in procreation, in bringing a child into the world. If we believe that the act of creating new life is sacred, then we want men and women to have the tools necessary to fulfill the obligation to create life responsibly and not create it when they cannot -- or choose not to -- bring it to fruition. Moreover, we would respect women's insights after they became pregnant and honor their obligation to decide if using their life resources to bring a child into the world is the best thing to do. In conditions of poverty, famine, disease, war, unemployment, lack of parenting skills, it is good for women to be able to say, "This is not the time to create a new person."
Redefining adoption. The new anti-abortionists -- and a number of pro-choice advocates -- say a woman who does not choose to be a mother to a new person can continue the pregnancy and place the child for adoption. This seems to me to be a highly gendered position. I would note that most of the leaders of the new anti-abortion movement are men. They include evangelical thinkers and pastors like Joel Hunter, David Gushee and Jim Wallis and Catholics like Chris Korzen and Douglas Kmiec. There is much to respect in the work of these men and much I disagree with. I do not suggest that any of them are anti-woman. However, they all have a biological relationship to pregnancy that is dramatically different from that of women. Men are always in the position of receiving a child as an act of generosity by a woman. How often have you heard the phrase "she gave him three beautiful children," or from a woman in a second marriage, "I want to give a child to my new husband."
These are not trivial gender observations. If one takes gestation seriously, one must question the wisdom of asking women to alter their identity for not just nine months but forever in order to give a child to someone else. A woman who has had a baby is a mother, even if she places the child for adoption. For many, giving up a child becomes an unhappy part of their lifelong identity.
Historically, adoption had as its purpose finding parents for needy children. And in an age when abortion was illegal and contraception less available and safe, the need for parents was great. We need to think carefully about whether the concept of adoption should change. Is it now a process of finding children for needy parents? And, if we accept that pregnancy and child-bearing are serious and identity-altering events in a woman's life, do we want to encourage this option of creating a needy child over other options; to define it as the most generous choice a woman can make? Might it not be more generous of us as a society to work harder to make it possible for women to keep their children if they so wish?
The challenge to the new anti-abortionists is whether or not women's perspectives on the meaning of pregnancy and motherhood will be considered in their project, or whether their ethical frame will remain focused on the fetus. While they set about reducing the number of abortions -- again, not the "need" for abortion -- will the women whose lives they are affecting ever be seen as moral agents? How many of these women's decisions will the new anti-abortionists be able to say "yes" to? So far it seems that it is far more than abortion that is a stumbling block to common ground.
]]>Editor's note: An earlier and incorrect version of this article was inadvertently published at 9:00 pm due to a technical glitch, but quickly replaced with this version.
I have been in the woods, literally, on a lake. The only internet is a lousy dial up connection.
Today, my patience was high and I took the time to wait for the dial up to connect to “On Common Ground.” I was glad there was a piece by Chris Korzen. I don’t know Chris personally, but there is a Catholic connection which makes me believe we have some things in common and considerable tension as we seem to disagree strongly on abortion, contraception, women’s moral agency, what the preferential option for the poor requires, and just about every other issue that I would define as a matter of personal moral freedom as well as the appropriate role of religion in public policy. Neither of us has shown much interest in actually getting to know each other, so we are left with knowledge through the written word.
I am very curious about what makes Chris tick; what he thinks and believes and how two people with somewhat similar politics and the same access to knowledge and information – possibly an ethics professor in common – could come to such different conclusions on critical social justice issues.
I am, for example, suspicious of Chris’ advocacy of “common ground” on abortion. I don’t trust it as an honest moral impulse and suspect it is political and possibly self-serving. I prefer to be straight forward and direct about my beliefs and take ownership of these feelings. I am prepared to be proven wrong; but if you don’t say what you think you can never get it straightened out. I respect Chris enough to say what I think. Chris has expressed the view that he is suspicious of Catholics for Choice (CFC), and I assume by extension me, although I am no longer associated in any way with CFC. He thinks we are just jealous of the rising tide of access that has rolled in for those Catholics who were active in supporting Obama for president. He says CFC doesn’t do very much. Perhaps he too is wrong.
And so I read Chris’ piece on Obama and the Pope with real interest. I did not like what I read. It did not bring me closer to Chris or serve to foster common ground. This may be my flaw. I am trying to temper my reactions with the reality that I may be predisposed to misread Chris. So, I want to take the opportunity to ask some questions and share my perspective on the points Chris raises – in detail.
I think I was most disturbed by what I saw as a lack of respect for those who disagree with Chris. Throughout the piece straw men and straw women were created and negative views ascribed to them. Not once was a real person mentioned. If Chris wants to write history and be analytical about it, especially critical, it would be helpful if he would attempt to prove his point with concrete examples as well as name some people who fit into the descriptions he gives.
For example, we are told that in the 1970’s the Democratic Party “had deliberately stopped reaching out to many people of faith – Catholics in particularly.” This claim seems based on a 1971 book written by Fred Dutton, who was a campaign advisor to John Kennedy, chief of staff for Pat Brown, governor of California and manager of Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign. All these men are Catholics. Dutton retired from politics in 1972 and while I have not read his book it is hard to imagine that recommending that the Democratic Party reach out to feminists, college educated suburbanites and young people is an abandonment of Catholics. Chris provides little evidence that the party in fact did that. He simply claims it.
My perception is quite different. From the time I came to Washington in 1980, I saw a Democratic Party that was profoundly linked to and respectful of the Catholic Church. Catholics, many prochoice on abortion, were rising in power in elected office. Leahy, Kennedy, Harkin, Moynihan, Dodd were all Catholic leaders and rather than ignore the Catholic Church they worked closely with the bishops on most legislation.
Is Chris suggesting that the Catholics and other Democrats who disagreed with the bishops on a few issues such as abortion and contraception were ignoring the church?
It was said that there was not a piece of health care legislation that was not written by the bishops’ lobbyists for Senator Kennedy. President Carter’s cabinet choices were criticized by those outside the party as “too Catholic” and the first limit on the right to choose--the denial of public funds for abortion--was signed by Carter, passed by a Democratic House and enforced by the Catholic Secretary of HHS, Joseph Califano. It was the Democratic Parry that nominated Gerry Ferraro to the joy of Catholics and the dismay of the bishops. Even pro-life Democrats did well. Mary Rose Oakar held a leadership position as did Marcy Kaptur.
Clinton and Gore were constantly trying to please the bishops while not abandoning a commitment to abortion rights at home. When conflict arose over the US position for the Cairo population conference Clinton insisted that Secretary Wirth personally visit each US Cardinal to hear their concerns and Gore, who was called a liar by the Vatican press secretary insisted that the US was not seeking an international right to abortion. In an interview at the time with Catholics reporters Clinton supported the inclusion of the broadest conscience clause exemption ever proposed for his health care reform plan and affirmed his support for US diplomatic relations with the Vatican. In fact it was in 1980 that the US finally recognized the Vatican as a state with overwhelming support from Democrats in Congress.
I am hard pressed to find evidence to support the claim that Democrats abandoned religion or treated it derisively. I would sincerely like to hear the case made as well as to have some feedback on where my own experience is flawed. I think it is terribly important that we sort through these perceptions regarding the secularity of the Democratic Party as we move forward. Good facts are critical to good ethics.
Chris goes on to say that Democratic strategists of that time “presumably believed that a smaller but more ideologically homogeneous tent was the ticket to success”. He suggests…no, says… these strategists considered socially moderate Americans “little more than monkey wrenches in the cogs of progress.” These are serious charges of disrespect of people long involved in a movement and they deserve to be substantiated or withdrawn.
The piece then moves to a harsh characterization of again unnamed persons: “Proponents of the "small tent" strategy are livid now that the common ground values which put Democrats back in the White House in the first place are playing a vital role in the Obama government.” What is going on here? Who exactly are these proponents and how do we know they are livid about “common ground” values. If I knew their names and what they had said or done, I might be able to evaluate these “charges.”
And they are “charges.” I am interested that Chris sees those who disagree with him and others about common ground as exclusionary and angry. I suspect I am in this category as I have raised many questions about the common ground process currently underway. As is often the case, when I look at this issue, I see the other side of the coin – an attempt to ignore the contributions of those who have worked for common ground for over twenty years, ignoring that which is good in the positions of the other and the creation of a new polarization with those who have not jumped on the common ground band wagon demonized. Even the pro-choice movement’s most ardent and effective advocate of common ground Cristina Page in a comment on the common ground site worried about those, again unnamed, who want to “sabotage” common ground.
“Many feel that those who harbor moral concerns about abortion don't deserve a role in helping to craft social policy,” says Chris. Again, who are these people? I have expressed opposition to the appointment of Alexia Kelly to HHS, so I must be in this group. Is this a fair characterization of my views? I think not. After all, I was clear that I believed there were many other positions that would better and less contentiously use Ms. Kelly’s talents. I’d like to know if Chris was referring to me and if not me, then whom? He mentions that there have been posts to common ground articles that indicate bias and prejudice. I agree that these posts are disturbing. But to characterize anonymous postings as indicative of leadership views is highly questionable, as are the references to “extreme voices” that call people of faith “backward thinking”; or the far left’s “do what feels right dogma.” This is the kind of language we laughed at and criticized when it came from Falwell and Robertson, and there is no reason to accept it from a progressive common ground Catholic. I have been a card carrying member of the far left since I demonstrated against the war in Vietnam in 1964 at the UN and neither I nor my fellow traveler’s believed anything goes. We had the same high moral standards of justice that moderate Catholics do. Actually ours were more stringent as unlike the Catholic bishops we did not support the war on Vietnam.
Having gotten this far in the article--430 words into an 880 word piece--I realized it was only then that he began to address the President’s meeting with the Pope.
Forgive me, Chris, but describing this as an historic meeting is a stretch.
It was not a mere photo-op: There are of course good reasons for the President and the Pope to meet, to show respect and regard for each other and signal areas of collaboration.
But this is not an historic moment. It is not Reagan and John Paul II. Every president since Dwight Eisenhower has paid a visit to the Vatican and not every visit broke ground. Few caused the earth to move.
There is, for me, a bit of unseemly Catholic triumphalism at play in the progressive world these days and in the overstatement of the influence Catholic social teaching should have on an American president - a triumphalism that could lead to the kind of negative reaction ordinary Americans have had to the over-reaching of the Christian right in the Republican party and a desire by moderate Republicans to take the party back – not because they are hostile to religion but to religious orthodoxy and exclusion….by any religious group.
It may only be the proverbial pendulum swinging as those who previously felt excluded exult in inclusion. But too sweeping a claim of Catholic ownership of “concern for the earth,” “economic justice,” “indictment of unregulated free market capitalism,” and “health care for all” leaves out the other 5 billion people in the world, many of whom were writing and speaking about these issues long before the Catholic church and with more consistency over time.
A little humility goes a long way. There is too much gloating in Catholic publications about our “access” and about which Catholics “have the president’s ear.” It is important for “capital C” Catholics to show a little “small c” catholicity and acknowledge that the President’s willingness to be president of all Americans precludes a privileged place for any faith.
Am I misreading this piece when I say I am concerned that that distinction is not sharply enough made? Is common ground not to be grounded in our common humanity rather than in our denominational affiliations? I hope so. Do you?
]]>Editor's note: An earlier and incorrect version of this article was inadvertently published at 9:00 pm due to a technical glitch, but quickly replaced with this version.
I have been in the woods, literally, on a lake. The only internet is a lousy dial up connection.
Today, my patience was high and I took the time to wait for the dial up to connect to “On Common Ground.” I was glad there was a piece by Chris Korzen. I don’t know Chris personally, but there is a Catholic connection which makes me believe we have some things in common and considerable tension as we seem to disagree strongly on abortion, contraception, women’s moral agency, what the preferential option for the poor requires, and just about every other issue that I would define as a matter of personal moral freedom as well as the appropriate role of religion in public policy. Neither of us has shown much interest in actually getting to know each other, so we are left with knowledge through the written word.
I am very curious about what makes Chris tick; what he thinks and believes and how two people with somewhat similar politics and the same access to knowledge and information – possibly an ethics professor in common – could come to such different conclusions on critical social justice issues.
I am, for example, suspicious of Chris’ advocacy of “common ground” on abortion. I don’t trust it as an honest moral impulse and suspect it is political and possibly self-serving. I prefer to be straight forward and direct about my beliefs and take ownership of these feelings. I am prepared to be proven wrong; but if you don’t say what you think you can never get it straightened out. I respect Chris enough to say what I think. Chris has expressed the view that he is suspicious of Catholics for Choice (CFC), and I assume by extension me, although I am no longer associated in any way with CFC. He thinks we are just jealous of the rising tide of access that has rolled in for those Catholics who were active in supporting Obama for president. He says CFC doesn’t do very much. Perhaps he too is wrong.
And so I read Chris’ piece on Obama and the Pope with real interest. I did not like what I read. It did not bring me closer to Chris or serve to foster common ground. This may be my flaw. I am trying to temper my reactions with the reality that I may be predisposed to misread Chris. So, I want to take the opportunity to ask some questions and share my perspective on the points Chris raises – in detail.
I think I was most disturbed by what I saw as a lack of respect for those who disagree with Chris. Throughout the piece straw men and straw women were created and negative views ascribed to them. Not once was a real person mentioned. If Chris wants to write history and be analytical about it, especially critical, it would be helpful if he would attempt to prove his point with concrete examples as well as name some people who fit into the descriptions he gives.
For example, we are told that in the 1970’s the Democratic Party “had deliberately stopped reaching out to many people of faith – Catholics in particularly.” This claim seems based on a 1971 book written by Fred Dutton, who was a campaign advisor to John Kennedy, chief of staff for Pat Brown, governor of California and manager of Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign. All these men are Catholics. Dutton retired from politics in 1972 and while I have not read his book it is hard to imagine that recommending that the Democratic Party reach out to feminists, college educated suburbanites and young people is an abandonment of Catholics. Chris provides little evidence that the party in fact did that. He simply claims it.
My perception is quite different. From the time I came to Washington in 1980, I saw a Democratic Party that was profoundly linked to and respectful of the Catholic Church. Catholics, many prochoice on abortion, were rising in power in elected office. Leahy, Kennedy, Harkin, Moynihan, Dodd were all Catholic leaders and rather than ignore the Catholic Church they worked closely with the bishops on most legislation.
Is Chris suggesting that the Catholics and other Democrats who disagreed with the bishops on a few issues such as abortion and contraception were ignoring the church?
It was said that there was not a piece of health care legislation that was not written by the bishops’ lobbyists for Senator Kennedy. President Carter’s cabinet choices were criticized by those outside the party as “too Catholic” and the first limit on the right to choose--the denial of public funds for abortion--was signed by Carter, passed by a Democratic House and enforced by the Catholic Secretary of HHS, Joseph Califano. It was the Democratic Parry that nominated Gerry Ferraro to the joy of Catholics and the dismay of the bishops. Even pro-life Democrats did well. Mary Rose Oakar held a leadership position as did Marcy Kaptur.
Clinton and Gore were constantly trying to please the bishops while not abandoning a commitment to abortion rights at home. When conflict arose over the US position for the Cairo population conference Clinton insisted that Secretary Wirth personally visit each US Cardinal to hear their concerns and Gore, who was called a liar by the Vatican press secretary insisted that the US was not seeking an international right to abortion. In an interview at the time with Catholics reporters Clinton supported the inclusion of the broadest conscience clause exemption ever proposed for his health care reform plan and affirmed his support for US diplomatic relations with the Vatican. In fact it was in 1980 that the US finally recognized the Vatican as a state with overwhelming support from Democrats in Congress.
I am hard pressed to find evidence to support the claim that Democrats abandoned religion or treated it derisively. I would sincerely like to hear the case made as well as to have some feedback on where my own experience is flawed. I think it is terribly important that we sort through these perceptions regarding the secularity of the Democratic Party as we move forward. Good facts are critical to good ethics.
Chris goes on to say that Democratic strategists of that time “presumably believed that a smaller but more ideologically homogeneous tent was the ticket to success”. He suggests…no, says… these strategists considered socially moderate Americans “little more than monkey wrenches in the cogs of progress.” These are serious charges of disrespect of people long involved in a movement and they deserve to be substantiated or withdrawn.
The piece then moves to a harsh characterization of again unnamed persons: “Proponents of the "small tent" strategy are livid now that the common ground values which put Democrats back in the White House in the first place are playing a vital role in the Obama government.” What is going on here? Who exactly are these proponents and how do we know they are livid about “common ground” values. If I knew their names and what they had said or done, I might be able to evaluate these “charges.”
And they are “charges.” I am interested that Chris sees those who disagree with him and others about common ground as exclusionary and angry. I suspect I am in this category as I have raised many questions about the common ground process currently underway. As is often the case, when I look at this issue, I see the other side of the coin – an attempt to ignore the contributions of those who have worked for common ground for over twenty years, ignoring that which is good in the positions of the other and the creation of a new polarization with those who have not jumped on the common ground band wagon demonized. Even the pro-choice movement’s most ardent and effective advocate of common ground Cristina Page in a comment on the common ground site worried about those, again unnamed, who want to “sabotage” common ground.
“Many feel that those who harbor moral concerns about abortion don't deserve a role in helping to craft social policy,” says Chris. Again, who are these people? I have expressed opposition to the appointment of Alexia Kelly to HHS, so I must be in this group. Is this a fair characterization of my views? I think not. After all, I was clear that I believed there were many other positions that would better and less contentiously use Ms. Kelly’s talents. I’d like to know if Chris was referring to me and if not me, then whom? He mentions that there have been posts to common ground articles that indicate bias and prejudice. I agree that these posts are disturbing. But to characterize anonymous postings as indicative of leadership views is highly questionable, as are the references to “extreme voices” that call people of faith “backward thinking”; or the far left’s “do what feels right dogma.” This is the kind of language we laughed at and criticized when it came from Falwell and Robertson, and there is no reason to accept it from a progressive common ground Catholic. I have been a card carrying member of the far left since I demonstrated against the war in Vietnam in 1964 at the UN and neither I nor my fellow traveler’s believed anything goes. We had the same high moral standards of justice that moderate Catholics do. Actually ours were more stringent as unlike the Catholic bishops we did not support the war on Vietnam.
Having gotten this far in the article--430 words into an 880 word piece--I realized it was only then that he began to address the President’s meeting with the Pope.
Forgive me, Chris, but describing this as an historic meeting is a stretch.
It was not a mere photo-op: There are of course good reasons for the President and the Pope to meet, to show respect and regard for each other and signal areas of collaboration.
But this is not an historic moment. It is not Reagan and John Paul II. Every president since Dwight Eisenhower has paid a visit to the Vatican and not every visit broke ground. Few caused the earth to move.
There is, for me, a bit of unseemly Catholic triumphalism at play in the progressive world these days and in the overstatement of the influence Catholic social teaching should have on an American president - a triumphalism that could lead to the kind of negative reaction ordinary Americans have had to the over-reaching of the Christian right in the Republican party and a desire by moderate Republicans to take the party back – not because they are hostile to religion but to religious orthodoxy and exclusion….by any religious group.
It may only be the proverbial pendulum swinging as those who previously felt excluded exult in inclusion. But too sweeping a claim of Catholic ownership of “concern for the earth,” “economic justice,” “indictment of unregulated free market capitalism,” and “health care for all” leaves out the other 5 billion people in the world, many of whom were writing and speaking about these issues long before the Catholic church and with more consistency over time.
A little humility goes a long way. There is too much gloating in Catholic publications about our “access” and about which Catholics “have the president’s ear.” It is important for “capital C” Catholics to show a little “small c” catholicity and acknowledge that the President’s willingness to be president of all Americans precludes a privileged place for any faith.
Am I misreading this piece when I say I am concerned that that distinction is not sharply enough made? Is common ground not to be grounded in our common humanity rather than in our denominational affiliations? I hope so. Do you?
]]>When people who disagree passionately on something important to them take the time to sit down and engage each other, good things happen. At a minimum, they find out the "other" is a human being, not the devil incarnate.
But rarely do such efforts culminate in common ground on public policy and then only after years of very hard work. Multiple efforts to bring Israelis and Palestinians together haven't brought peace to the Middle East and the process of bringing an end to the "troubles" in Northern Ireland took forever. And when near moral absolutes clash, as they do on abortion, claiming you can end the cultural divide with a public policy prescription may actually be an obstacle to achieving more modest, but valuable, objectives. Even the convening power of the White House, which is holding a series of meetings with advocates and opponents of a woman's right to choose, may come up short on results.
One of the problems with the current efforts, including those of the White House and aforementioned evangelicals and Catholics, is that too small a group decided on the components of common ground and is now trying to get others to "buy in" to a prepackaged conclusion. Those outside the White House who started the common ground ball rolling had some heavy-duty personal and political objectives fueling their efforts. Longtime old-style progressive religionists like Jim Wallis and social justice, peacenik Catholics joined forces with socially conscious megachurch pastors like Rick Warren and Joel Hunter. Some had always been aligned with the Democratic Party, others may have sensed they could have unique influence in a party sensitive about its polling weakness with weekly churchgoers. But they were also motivated by their values. To their credit, evangelicals in particular have moved closer to accepting that poverty, world hunger and the environment are moral issues, and on those positions they are more in line with the Democrats than the Republicans.
Abortion was the stumbling block. But the Democrats, stinging from the 2004 election debacle, were eager to accommodate. Left out of the deal, however, were women, whom the party has always taken for granted and whom the antiabortion evangelicals and Catholics consistently ignore.
Recognizing that they probably won't succeed in making abortion illegal, the Democrats' faith-based allies decided that they could still use their moral disapproval to shape policy. They asserted that the number of abortions that takes place in America constitutes a moral tragedy and called for initiatives that would reduce the number of abortions. According to their mind-set, this was common ground, an abortion-neutral prescription for ending the culture war.
But the common ground they had found was among themselves and themselves only; they just expected everyone else to agree. The arrogance in this has led not to a diminution of the culture war, but to a sharpening of the cultural divide. Had they bothered to consult people who know something about common ground, they might have actually found a way not to go to war even if they could not find a way to agree.
The Family Institute of Cambridge, Mass., got involved in common ground efforts in 1989. Laura Chasin, a family therapist at the institute, was watching a television debate on abortion and was struck by the similarity of the interactions between the debaters with those she observed in family therapy. She wondered if some of the techniques used to help families understand each other and interact in a healthy way could be applied to abortion.
Laura and her colleagues began a long-term project of citizen dialogues that brought together pro-choice and pro-life activists. I participated in a one-on-one dialogue that lasted a whole day with a pro-life scholar I respected and wanted to understand better. The Public Conversations Project, as it came to be called, took a giant step forward when, following the murder of two clinic workers in Boston in 1994, it led a five-year dialogue between local pro-choice and pro-life leaders. The dialogue was private and only publicized at the end of the five-year period. No one changed their mind about abortion; Chasin and colleagues were smart enough to know that was an unrealistic goal. Inflammatory rhetoric on both sides of the debate decreased, and there were no more incidents of violence, as the local leaders came to understand each other better. They spoke publicly in less demonizing ways, shedding light rather than heat. Chasin and her team had drawn another lesson from that television program about abortion; they were concerned about the observers of the debate as well as the participants. They figured if you could teach people who disagree viscerally to talk to each other civilly, viewers might actually get some good information from both sides and be able to make better decisions about their own beliefs. And maybe you could prevent a few murders.
Along the way the Public Conversation Project developed some guidelines for others who might want to improve the way we talk -- and think -- about abortion.
The president himself seems to welcome an open dialogue on abortion. As he said at Notre Dame: "I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away ... But surely we can [make our case to the public] without reducing those with differing views to caricatures."
President Obama's Notre Dame speech demonstrates an understanding of common ground far closer to the modest, achievable and humble objectives of the Public Conversation Project than that of those evangelicals and Catholics who have handed down the answer to the abortion wars as if they were delivering the Ten Commandments to Moses. The PCP asks: "How do we support the wishes of participants to break free of the old patterns and experiment with new ways of thinking and relating." Again, in his Notre Dame speech, the president concurred when he suggested that we "cling to outworn prejudices and fear those who are unfamiliar." The PCP has designed conversations that answer the president's question about "how we work through these conflicts."
Perhaps most important, the PCP works quietly and does not toot its own horn, issue press releases or make extravagant claims. It assumes that participants have more complex views than their slogans or policy positions can reflect, and facilitates in safe and private spaces, the freedom to explore and admit your own doubts about your position.
Abortion opponents are quick to say that Roe cut off the conversation about abortion that the country needed to have to come to consensus. It would be tragic if in attempting to craft a legislative solution to our disagreements about abortion, we also cut off much needed thoughtful conversations. The president acknowledged in his other common ground speech in Cairo that change does not happen overnight. He said we must "say openly the things that are in our heart and that too often are only said behind closed doors."
Now, those in the administration who are leading the discussions on common ground need to take the president's words, and PCP's lessons, to heart. Right now, meetings are going on behind closed doors in the White House among people who disagree about abortion and family planning and sexual morality. Reports from participants make clear that they are not structured in ways that enable people to say what is on their minds and safely pursue disagreements or really engage the "other." This is an enormous lost opportunity. Someone in the White House needs to pick up the phone and talk to people who know how to help people have tough conversations without killing each other. Call 617-923-1216 (the Public Conversations Project) and ask to speak with a family therapist.
]]>This post first appeared on Salon.
What Greenberger and others will want to know is why the post, which includes oversight of the department's faith-based grant-making in family planning, HIV and AIDS and in small-scale research into the effect of religion and spirituality on early sexual behavior, has gone to someone who both believes abortion should be illegal and opposes contraception. That's right -- Kelley's group of self-described progressive Catholics takes a position held by only a small minority, that the Catholic church is right to prohibit birth control. Were there no qualified religious experts who hold more mainstream views on family planning and abortion, views that are consistent with those of President Obama?
The HHS budget for family-planning services grants to faith-based and community groups is more than $20 million. Can pro-family-planning religious groups expect a fair deal from a director who believes that birth control, even for married couples, is immoral? Will programs that provide contraception to adolescents get funded? Obama's Feb. 5 Executive Order establishing a new Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships gave the office and its 11 satellites in federal agencies a policy role on the issues that are at the core of HHS's sexual and reproductive health work: addressing teen pregnancy and reducing the need for abortion. How can an opponent of the single most effective way to do both -- contraception -- lead that effort in HHS enthusiastically and effectively?
Through Catholics in Alliance, Kelley has sought to narrow the interpretation of common ground on abortion to efforts to reduce the number of abortions by providing women who are already pregnant with economic support for continuing the pregnancy and making adoption easier. While pro-choice advocates have been in the forefront of efforts to increase funding for women and children and for pre- and postnatal care, few researchers believe that if pregnant women get the level of support common grounders are talking about, they will jump at the chance to have babies. If one is really serious about making it possible for women to avoid abortion, contraception is the single most important component of any program.
Kelley and other moderately progressive Catholic and evangelical groups owe their pull in the Democratic Party to the disappointment of 2004. They seized on the Democratic defeat in the 2004 elections as a means to push the party to the right on sex and reproduction. Democrats, stung by their near miss in Ohio, desperate to attract swing voters, eager to prove that they were "sensitive" to religion, took the bait.
With support from George Soros and Michael Kieschnick, the founder of Working Assets and Credo Mobile, groups like Sojourners, Faith in Public Life and Catholics in Alliance entered the electoral arena. Catholics in Alliance and its sister organization, Catholics United, were active in voter registration and organizing Catholic voters in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania in 2006 and 2008. Presenting themselves as more Catholic than the pope -- faithful to church teachings on contraception, abortion and everything else the majority of Catholics have long rejected -- the groups insisted in press release after press release that good Catholics could vote for pro-choice candidates, so long as those candidates were also working to reduce the number of abortions. After all, they admitted, it was simply not possible in the current environment to make abortion illegal, so the next best option was pushing the numbers down.
In part, Kelley's appointment is the usual political payback. Catholics and evangelicals including Kelley provided abortion cover for the president and for candidates like Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. A Democratic governor from a red state famous for the ferocity and electoral strength of its social conservatives, Sebelius won a second term in a landslide in 2006. Catholics in Alliance campaigned for her reelection. Though she faced heavy fire from the religious right when she was nominated, Sebelius is now the HHS secretary.
Kelley is a distinguished advocate of healthcare reform and the rights of poor people. For almost a decade, she worked for the Conference of Catholic Bishops on the Campaign for Human Development, a grant-making program roundly condemned by conservatives as too progressive. She entered electoral politics in 2004 when she served as the DNC liaison to the religious community. In 2005, she founded Catholics in Alliance. She has much to offer in government -- but not at HHS. There are 10 other government agencies that have faith-based offices. A far less controversial placement could have been found at Labor, Housing and Urban Development, or the Department of Education.
A heated exchange about the appointment between Jon O'Brien, president of Catholics for Choice (disclosure: I was president of CFC for 25 years) and Catholics in Alliance/Catholics United is representative of the struggle between religious progressives who support gay marriage and reproductive freedom and those like Kelley who think war and abortion are the same evil. O'Brien was the first pro-choice leader to criticize Kelley's appointment, and he went after her with a vengeance. In a press release, he called Kelley's "abortion reduction rhetoric ... simply a newly packaged antiabortion message," claimed the group used "flawed economic data to support anti-poverty measures as a means to reduce the number of abortions," and asserted the current policy fascination with "common ground" has devolved "into an abandonment of ideals."
CFC backed up its assertions about the anti-family-planning and antiabortion agenda of Kelley and Catholics in Alliance with a report titled "The Trouble With Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good." The report asserted that the Catholic Alliance's "position on abortion is firmly planted on the far right ... In its own words: 'Catholics in Alliance is pro-life. We support full legal protection for unborn children as a requirement of justice and as a matter of essential human rights.'" In a 2006 Voter Guide, Catholics in Alliance made a disturbing equation between war and abortion, saying that Catholics need to "build the essential conditions for a culture of life, to end affronts to human life such as poverty, abortion, torture and war."
Statements like this undercut the alliance's claim that its efforts at common ground seek to end the "culture war" that surrounds abortion. In response to the Catholics for Choice press release, Jennifer Goff, a spokeswoman for Catholics in Alliance, said her group "is working toward reaching common ground in order to make real progress on the moral and political challenges our country faces instead of resorting to spurious attacks launched by those who are more concerned with inflaming the culture wars than effecting positive change." Chris Korzen, executive director of Catholics United, characterized O'Brien's opposition and the CFC report as "simplistic," "incendiary" and "a roadblock to progress."
O’Brien’s most serious charge against Kelley is that under her leadership Catholics in Alliance used “flawed economic data to support anti-poverty measures as a means to reduce the number of abortions.” The misuse of research to promote ideology is a serious charge and if true would disqualify Kelley from an appointment that requires adherence to evidence-based policy setting. During the Bush administration, ideology was often a substitute for science, especially in the reproductive health field. Obama has promised a return to scientific integrity.
The charges relate to an August 2008 study by Penn State political science professor Joseph Wright commissioned by Catholics in Alliance. Called "Reducing Abortion in America: The Effect of Socioeconomic Factors," the study is a perfect example of advocacy research gone awry. It claims that analysis of state level data on abortion from 1982 to 2000 shows that spending money on programs for job creation, primary and prenatal healthcare, and the nutrition program known as WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) substantially reduced abortion rates in states where such measures were taken. Given Kelley’s opposition to family planning, it’s the only hope she has that a credible argument could be made that abortions can be significantly reduced without family planning.
In November, following the elections, the study was removed from the Web site and later replaced with a new version that plays down the claims of significant reductions in abortion rates based on spending for programs such as WIC. The new version attempts to correct a series of serious methodological and interpretation errors in the original study. Social science researchers on both sides of the abortion issue expressed concerns about the study, and one coauthor, Professor Michael Bailey of Georgetown University, removed his name from the revised report. Given the serious methodological weaknesses of the first study, there is little reason to assume a second take by the same author can be trusted.
Pro-choice leaders other than O’Brien have not yet commented on the Kelley appointment; most are still reeling from Dr. Tiller’s murder. One hopes they will turn their attention to this appointment and demand a review of Kelley’s qualifications for this post. Pro-choice groups also contributed to the president’s election. They deserve appointees who agree with the platform on which the president ran. The pro-choice movement's recommendations for pro-choice appointees to the faith-based office's advisory council were ignored. Now, after the Kelley appointment, the mission going forward must be to ensure that any additional staff members appointed to faith-based centers in Cabinet-level agencies reflect the pro-choice, pro-family-planning values of the administration. As Greenberger and others try to get to the bottom of the Kelley appointment, greater oversight of, and consultation on, future appointments need to be secured.
]]>This post first appeared on Salon.
These days just about everything that has anything to do with family planning or government support for pregnant women is deemed "common ground." This is an inaccurate use of the term. For example, I support the Ryan-DeLauro bill, not because it brings together opponents and supporters of the right to choose abortion (and it is a stretch to claim that it has done that) but because it contains many provisions that would help women and girls avoid pregnancy when they want to and expand benefits for women who want to continue their pregnancies. The bill is not perfect; it is not comprehensive and it is by no means model abortion rights legislation. Neither is Prevention First, a similar bill that is the brainchild of Rep. Louise Slaughter and former Sen. Hillary Clinton; Prevention First does more than Ryan-DeLauro to provide contraception to women, but it does not include support for women who wish to continue their pregnancy. But no bill needs to do everything, and either or both these bills, if they ever made it to committee hearings and the floor of the Congress, would represent substantial improvements in meeting women's needs.
The choice community is more favorably inclined to Prevention First because it avoids the "Reducing the Need" framing, which is not contextualized from a woman's rights perspective. Ryan-DeLauro also includes some troubling provisions around expanding the availability of medically unnecessary ultrasounds and providing less than objective assistance to women who are carrying fetuses diagnosed with abnormalities. (For example, Ryan-DeLauro does not mention abortion as one of the appropriate choices a woman might make if she finds out through ultrasound or other diagnostic tests that she is carrying a fetus with disabilities.) And there is specific concern that anti-choice groups who operate crisis pregnancy centers have used ultrasound manipulatively and will now get government money to expand that practice. The bill tries to protect against such use by setting criteria for grantees such as the provision of objective and scientifically accurate information, but we all know that there is a gap between how legislation is written and how it is regulated. (When proponents and opponents of comprehensive sexuality education participated in a Ford Foundation common ground project, they could not even agree on what constituted factually accurate information or objective research findings.)
I have chosen not to quibble and to ardently support both bills. I wish Prevention First also addressed women who need help continuing a pregnancy, but not all things are possible. I think it is urgent that the pro-choice community, which has been the major advocate of the range of reproductive choices and needs, do more. But it is hard to claim that those opposed to abortion have been advocating for comprehensive sexuality education, reducing maternal mortality or providing family planning in the US or overseas.
We can do all of this as pro-choice people and organizations. We can do it without making common cause with those who disagree with us on the underlying principles that inform positions on all the reproductive health issues. In fact, there is something to be said for parallel tracks on the family planning issue: with those who support family planning because it is a woman's right to control her fertility making clear and separate values arguments, while those who support it because they want to see fewer abortions making their case. We don't even agree on whether or not there is ever a need for abortion. Rev. Jim Wallis, one of the most widely-quoted spokespeople claiming that we have found common ground on reducing abortions, objects to language that says we should reduce the need for abortion and believes there is never a need for abortion other than to save a woman's life. Can we truly say we have found common ground on family planning when all we have done is found a few people who disagree with us on reproductive rights as human rights are able to support a bill that provides family planning funding?
And we really want to be sure that people don't think such narrow and heavily caveated support for family planning is "new ground" for us. Along with many supporters of abortion rights, I fought against welfare reform, which took women away from their children or denied them support. I worked for family planning, comprehensive sexuality education and economic justice and jobs for women. I never needed to stand next to the Catholic bishops or any other anti-choice group in order to be effective, although I respect them when they work for things that help women.
After reading Rachel's article, which situates Ryan-DeLauro as a common ground bill, I looked at the record on the legislation's supporters in Congress and among interest groups. The article mentioned a link that would provide me that information, but it wasn't there when I looked. Rachel, it would be great if you could provide more specific info about the way in which Ryan-DeLauro has added a significant number of supporters for family planning to the field. Frankly, I just don't see it.
Let's take a look at who in the House has supported the bill. And let's remember that in spite of all the hype from the Third Way, Faith in Public Life, Sojourners and the Catholic Alliance for the Common Good, the common ground advocates who support all or part of the bill, the bill which was first introduced in 2005/6 has not gotten a hearing or vote in the House Health Education and Labor committee to which it has been assigned, has not made it to the house floor and has no companion bill on the Senate side. I point these things out reluctantly as I adore Rosa DeLauro and Tim Ryan, but the facts are the facts. Nor has the bill gained the support of even a handful of heavy hitter anti-abortion members of Congress. It has not a single co-sponsor who is a Republican. Of the 27 out of 435 members of the house who support it, four have mixed records on abortions, four are anti-choice and only one, Dale Kildee, opposed family planning before he signed on to this legislation. Not much progress here.
If Ryan-DeLauro were being actively or passively supported by organizations opposed to abortion or more accurately opposed to family planning and economic justice for mothers and children, I'd count that as another indicator of success. If those new groups got off their butts and away from the press releases praising themselves for ending the nonexistent abortion war long enough to hold lobby days, issue written statements of support or visit Republicans and anti-family planning members of Congress to get them to sign on, that would be progress. In fact that is not the case. In 2007, Third Way circulated a list of "supportive organizations" behind Ryan-DeLauro (it seems to be the most current list, but updates appreciated). Enumerating "supportive organizations" is a smarmy way a group that doesn't have full support or written statements sometimes tries to beef up its list of sponsors. I don't know the full story behind this list, but I do know that one of the groups listed, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, is so far out of the mainstream of Catholic practice that it only supported those parts of the bill that provide support for women who continue pregnancy and not for family planning. If the common grounders can't convince social justice Catholic groups to take the position about 95% of Catholics hold on family planning which is that it is moral and should receive government support then I am not sure they have found much common ground, nor are they very effective lobbyists. Listed as supporters are some major choice groups such as NARAL, RCRC, CFC and the Religious Institute and Protestants for the Common Good. Of course Third Way, which is pro-choice, is also listed. I am not sure why PPFA and other pro-choice groups are not listed. It is not clear if they have endorsed the bill or if Third Way feared that a list that included all the pro-choice groups would appear unbalanced. Anti-abortion groups that support the bill are few and it is not clear how much of the bill they actually support. Three anti-abortion groups are listed: Sojourners, Redeem the Vote and the previously mentioned Catholics in Alliance.
Rachel also argues that Rev. Joel Hunter, a courageous evangelical pastor who stepped down as head of the Christian Coalition because he was seen as "too liberal" on poverty and the environment and has emerged as a leader in evangelical circles, supportive of Obama and member of the President's Council on Faith Based and Neighborhood partnerships, changed his position on family planning and sex education, but she provides no citation to back this up nor does she give any specifics. Now, let's be clear - among Christians, only the Catholic Church is opposed to the use of contraceptives by married couples. So I really need to know: what is different about Joel Hunter's position, especially given his opposition to lifting the global gag rule? And if there are others who have changed their position precisely what is the change? I am scouring the web sites, including that of Hunter's church, Northland, and I'm not seeing anything that indicates a shift on the issue. I raise these issues not to denigrate the work Third Way and others are engaged in, but to hold them to the standard of evidence we all apply when we are evaluating the success of a political effort. I want examples and data, not just press releases with vague claims of having changed many minds or made peace.
So far I don't see evidence of success. I would respectfully suggest that those who are pushing Ryan-DeLauro or the general theme of reducing the need for abortion as an advance in ending the war over abortion have a lot of work to do before they set themselves up as the new change agents on the issue - and certainly before they criticize the strategy of the pro-choice movement.
There are serious analytical questions that have not yet been answered by those who urge a common ground agenda on abortion or reproductive health - and that includes the President. The definition of common ground is weak. Common ground on abortion seems to mean ignoring abortion.
I find my reactions to this current effort somewhat ironic. From my first days at Catholics for Choice, I reached out to those who disagree with me. I invited those opposed to abortion to the office to discuss the issue and present their views; I supported the Public Conversation Project efforts to bring pro-choice and pro-life people together and even dialogued with their facilitation with a colleague on the other side. I think it is those experiences that make me wary of the current effort and somewhat disappointed in the rather shallow approach to common ground that is being fostered especially by religious groups.
Anyone who has seriously engaged the "other" knows how hard it is to really find common ground. It is facile to say, "We all agree that reducing the need for - or number of - abortions would be a good thing" and conclude that therefore we have common ground. We may not have common ground at all. If one set of people believes that the reason to reduce the number of abortions is because abortion is murder and the other believes the reason to reduce the need for abortion is because women prefer to prevent pregnancy rather than to have an abortion, although abortion is a morally justifiable act, we do not have common ground.
Perhaps those who think they have found common ground on abortion have actually found common ground on political expediency. They want to take abortion out of the political arena - some because they want to talk about other more "important" issues and some because they think abortion is a political loser. The reality is we need more talk about abortion, not less. Moreover, while we could do without a culture "war" on abortion we cannot do without an ongoing cultural debate about abortion, however annoying it may be to candidates for public office. There are important values at stake in the way we think about and what we believe about abortion. Whether or not we change anyone's mind, coming to understand our differences and respect them is a good thing. It is not however common ground. It is rather common decency. Struggling for public policy that reflects our values rather than sweeping them under the rug is the principled course of action for both those who support the right to choose and those who oppose it.
]]>I just caught a segment of Hardball in which Chris Matthews talked with Will Saletan of Slate and Ken Blackwell of the Family Research Council about Will's New York Times op-ed on responsibility and contraception. Will is hawking a tough message: pro-choice on abortion but heavy on the moral responsibility to avoid pregnancy when you don't want to have a baby. It's head and shoulders above the phony prevention message of those who are anti-abortion and can't say the "C word" (contraception) or talk about sex, but it is difficult to make clear that abortion is a morally justifiable choice if one is pregnant and doesn't want to or can't have a baby, but is morally complex enough that it's a very good idea to work really hard to prevent it.
On MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews Slate's Will Saletan and Family Research Council's Ken Blackwell, debate how to get past the culture wars and whether there's an ethical responsibility to use contraception.
Will got trapped twice. Once when Matthews pushed the idea that contraception was a lesser evil to abortion, and Will agreed - I'm sure he doesn't think contraception is anything other than an unmitigated social and moral good. And again when he fell into an ill-defined notion of discouraging abortion. I take these moments with a grain of salt; talking about morality on political talk shows is a no-win situation, but one that cannot and should not be avoided. We just need to get better at it every time. Moreover, those of us who are pro-choice feel stung whenever anyone suggests there is something we need to change and we tend to forget the tough message Will is sending to the Catholic Church and so-called progressive evangelicals like Jim Wallis. To them he is saying unequivocally: stop talking about prevention without contraception. This was the strong point of his Hardball appearance. A straightforward acceptance of sexuality as part of the human condition - and a good part.
I'd missed Will's Times piece on the issue but caught Jodi Jacobson's reaction and the comments on RH Reality Check last week. I found the RH Reality Check article and discussion disturbing, but decided not weigh in. Listening to the Hardball discussion made me reconsider. Now, let me confess I am not a Chris Matthews fan and I am both a friend of Will's and in general agreement with his position on abortion. I say generally, because unless one believes that either fetuses or women have an absolute right to life or to abortion, none of us, even within the pro-choice community, is going to agree 100%. Sometimes Will annoys me because he seems to undercut his own position with those of us who are pro-choice by using too broad a brush and coming down too hard on us. And we in turn beat him up.
Here is where I understand Will to stand on abortion. (I ran this section by him about an hour ago and he says I got it right). He is pro-choice. He believes it is a woman's legal right to choose to end a pregnancy and that abortion can be a morally justifiable act. To say it is a morally justifiable act is not to say that every decision to have an abortion is moral (a position some in the pro-choice community seem to take) but rather to say that since it can be either moral or immoral and the lines are difficult to draw in the abstract, it is best not to legally second guess a woman's decision to continue or end a pregnancy. This does not mean that one should be silent about moral matters or refrain from offering a vision of when and under what circumstances abortion is morally - or if you prefer the cooler word ethically - responsible sexual and reproductive behavior. On issues of moral significance, the public wants to know what movement leaders believe, what values they have. And those of us who lead the movement have an obligation to speak to these concerns.
Now, Will takes fetal life seriously, more seriously than many of us in the movement and more seriously than many ethicists and theologians do. He thinks there is something important to society about the way we collectively and individually approach and treat the fetus. He even has some queasy thoughts about destroying early embryos to create stem cells. That means that he thinks at a minimum men and women ought to try not to create embryos or fetuses that they are likely to have to terminate and that health care professionals have a serious obligation to work with people to help them understand and accomplish that (if they themselves believe that). It may be moral for women to terminate those embryos and fetuses (I would say it is very often morally justifiable), but it would be morally preferable for both the person and society if one did not face that situation.
Let us be clear. We may all not agree with Will's position or mine, but they are respectable views that deserve to be treated seriously and civilly. They can be critiqued, analyzed, questioned, and rejected for other views. But to treat them as "insulting to women" or ill-informed is not helpful or justified. Hurling invective does not contribute to furthering the cause of choice. Our movement has suffered many losses and has experienced an erosion of public support. The President we elected holds some of these views himself and has embarked on an approach to abortion that some of us find, to be kind, confusing. To refuse to find what is useful in the approach or thinking of outsiders who are more with us than against us would be a costly error. And, to be frank, I found Jodi's response over the top in invective and lacking in necessary balance. This is the risk of blogging. One does not read and re-read; one does not reflect, one just cries out in pain. There is a place for that, once in awhile.
Will's central point, aimed at those of us who are pro-choice, is that we need to think about contraception, preventing unintended pregnancy, as an ethical obligation and as leaders of the reproductive health and rights movement we should not shy away from expressing that value. There are at least two reactions to this. Agreement: I find that it treats women as competent moral agents who can hear and either accept or reject moral opinion or disagreement. We are all subject to social discourse about what is right and wrong and that is a good thing. Those on Wall Street should be subject to more of it, as should our military men and women. Disagreement: It is none of our business to preach to women. Women already know what is and is not responsible.
Will contends that there is some evidence that a significant number of women do not seem to know or have not accepted that creating a fetus is a significant moral decision to be entered into consciously and with self-reflection on the consequences. He cites Guttmacher Institute data that shows that a substantial number of women were not using and did not consider using contraception in the month they became pregnant, although they knew it existed. Jodi does not directly address that data, but offers an alternative view of why women don't use contraception, which diminishes women's responsibility and places the blame on the structure, system, cost, opposition, pickets, etc.
Jodi was "insulted" (more than once in the piece) by Saletan's demand that "reproductive health counselors must speak bluntly to women who are having unprotected sex." What, she asked, does he think they do? Here was another missed opportunity. Rather than going into high gear defense of counselors, one might ask why Saletan has this view. Is there any merit to it? Having been in a room with Will and 30 leaders in the abortion rights movement and heard a number of them speak out against the introduction of a stronger ethic of personal responsibility into the choice message as well as in counseling, there is some reason for Will to believe there is a lack of commitment in some segments of the movement to this kind of discourse or to personal responsibility as a value. In a follow-up piece on his column, Will made this clearer noting that counselors do indeed give medical information about pregnancy prevention, which he distinguishes from ethical guidance.
Opinions about the expression of ethical obligations as part of choice discourse are highly varied in the movement. Again, there are respectable differences of opinion and one should be no more insulted that some leaders believe we have no business expressing our moral or ethical views to patients or the public than others are insulted that some believe it is the obligation of professionals and social movement leaders to offer patients their best advice and to express their moral views. I for one want to know what my doctor believes about these issues and I want to go to a doctor who respects and seeks out my views. Yet I also understand that not all women have my power to negotiate medical care. Can we not rationally discuss these opposing views, fleshing out the pros and cons?
RH Reality Check is a great place for these conversations to take place, but an editorial ethos that seeks light and not heat is essential to making that a reality.
A case in point is the abortion performed Wednesday on a nine-year-old girl who was carrying twins. The girl had been raped by her stepfather, who is now in jail awaiting trial. Doctors at the public hospital where the abortion was performed noted that the girl who weighs very little and simply could not sustain the pregnancy which posed a serious risk to her life.
Stories like this are not uncommon in Latin America. Family planning counselors from Nicaragua to Argentina report seeing pregnant women from nine- to thirteen-years-old regularly. In 2003, international attention was focused on “Rosa,” another nine-year-old in Nicaragua who was also raped and was lucky enough to get a legal abortion. Abortion is now totally illegal in Nicaragua - even for nine-year-old rape victims.
Paulina, a 13-year-old Mexican girl who had been raped in late 1999, was not so lucky. She sought an abortion and was denied. Paulina was subject to several violations of her human rights while pregnant, including the leaking of her condition to anti-abortion forces in the state who then invaded her hospital room with anti-choice propaganda. The local district attorney drove her to the office of a local priest who then also tried to convince her not to have an abortion. In the end, Paulina had a baby. In small part, Paulina’s story resulted in the legalization of abortion in Mexico City. We can now hope that other children who become pregnant will not suffer her fate.
These cases tear at most people’s heart. These are unambiguous reasons for legal abortion for almost everyone - except the Roman Catholic church. For in each of these cases, local bishops have intervened to try and prevent the abortion, to seek criminal charges against health care workers and, when all else fails, to threaten to excommunicate those involved.
In the Brazilian case, Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho noted in an interview with the Brazilian press that the actions of the girl’s mother and her doctors meant excommunication. The church thought that the girl should continue the pregnancy and deliver the child by Cesarean section. No mention was made of excommunicating the stepfather who had raped the nine-year-old child.
The bishop was aware enough of the canons concerning excommunication not to claim that the girl was excommunicated. Canon law prohibits the excommunication of anyone under the age of majority. But, was the bishop correct in his opinion that the “adults” who were involved had “incurred excommunication?” Maybe not.
The assertion reminded me of an attempt by Mexican bishops to excommunicate the legislators in Mexico City who voted to legalize abortion. During an impromptu press conference on Shepherd One, the papal plane, which at the time was on its way to Brazil, Pope Benedict was asked if this was appropriate. “Yes,” he said “the excommunication was not arbitrary, it is part of canon law."
Huh?
Within minues, the papal spokesperson walked back to the press and tempered the remarks. The next day, the transcript of the event excluded the Pope’s "yes."
While the lack of compassion Archbishop Sobrinho exhibited is without question, his canonical wisdom is in question. Excommunication of the sort he discussed is not imposed. Rather, it is considered self-admininistered by the person who has committed the act. And if the person believes the action they took was not sinful, but was the most moral alternative in a difficult situation, then no excommunication has occurred. For this mother and the girl’s doctors no decision could have been more moral.
]]>After leaving the breakfast, the President unveiled his plans for the new White House Office on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and signed an executive order authorizing it and naming the first 15 of the eventual 25 Council members who will advise him.
There was little change in the Council's core mission - helping faith groups get government funding for social services, education and humanitarian efforts. So little change, in fact, that the one thing the President promised he would change while campaigning was ignored. Obama did not insist that religious groups who get federal funds cannot discriminate in hiring or serving people and they cannot proselytize in the program that receives funding. More alarming was the planned incursion of the Faith Based Office into reproductive health and rights. Suddenly, one of the four top priorities for the Office is to examine "ways to support women and children, address teen pregnancy and reduce the need for abortion."
Well, who better to do this than a bunch of mostly male, mostly 60-and-over clergy (the notable exception is the director of the Office, a 26-year-old Pentecostal minister named Jason duBois). The only person on the Council who might have the slightest knowledge about these issues is the president of Big Brothers and Big Sisters, Judith Vredenburgh. Of the nine religious representatives on the Council, most are anti-abortion, from Jim Wallis and Joel Hunter to the emeritus president of the Southern Baptist Convention and of course, Father Larry Snyder, head of Catholic Charities. The rest have no public record on reproductive health issues, with the single exception of Rabbi David Saperstein, who is pro-choice.
The very wording of the mandate makes clear the conservative bias of the Office. What exactly does it mean to "address teen pregnancy?" This critical problem gets even shorter shrift than abortion. At least for abotion, the goal is clear: reduce the need for abortion. Where teen pregnancy is concerned we have no idea if addressing teen pregnancy means more abstinence-only programming or high schools in which teens who carry pregnancies to term get day care. We can't even say we want to prevent teen pregnancy, which might mean we need to promote contraception and comprehensive sexuality education.
This is one of those issues the women's movement and the reproductive health movement cannot ignore. First, there are 10 seats left on this committee and we need to insist that those seats be held by religious and secular (there are presently five members of the Council from secular organizations) leaders who are both anti-poverty and pro-choice. Obama cannot make up the face of religion to exclude the majority of people and leaders of faith. Some quick names: Reverend Carleton Veazey, president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice; Maureen Shea, Director of Government Relations for the Episcopal Church and liaison to the religious community during the Clinton administration; Deborah Haffner of the Religious Institute, an ordained minister and sexologist; Tom Davis, former chaplain at Skidmore College and an early leader in the Planned Parenthood Clergy Network. And while we're at it how about Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood and former director of the Interfaith Network of Texas. Planned Parenthood knows something about reducing the need for abortion and addresses teen pregnancy every day. And Cecile knows the importance of protecting the separation of church and state. Oh and if we were interested in a balance to Catholic Charities, how about Ruth Messinger, president of American Jewish World Services, which provides humanitarian and health assistance to women worldwide or Carol Bellamy, former executive of UNICEF who also has dealt with supporting women and children worldwide.
After we get those names to the President we need to let the President know that it is the women's movement and the reproductive health movement that he needs to look to on our issues. When we are ignored on these issues the president is not on common ground, he is on shaky ground and is bound to stumble.
]]>"It is time that we end the politicization of this issue. In the coming weeks, my Administration will initiate a fresh conversation on family planning, working to find areas of common ground to best meet the needs of women and families at home and around the world.
"I have directed my staff to reach out to those on all sides of this issue to achieve the goal of reducing unintended pregnancies."
-- Barack Obama Statement
on rescinding the Global Gag Rule January 23, 2009
There is joy tonight in the new and improved pro-life movement. This is the movement that says it has given up for the time being on making abortion illegal and instead wants to reduce the number of abortions without supporting contraception. These are the so-called third way-ers and progressive religious pro-lifers who want women who are already pregnant to continue their pregnancies and support bills that offer rhetorical cover for that goal, but very little money. While they talk about prevention, they really don't like contraception. After all, women who use contraception are having sex, and the religious types are not so progressive that they've given up on the idea that sex is a sin unless it takes place in marriage. If they support contraception for everyone, someone might conclude that they understand sex as a legitimate expression of love outside of marriage, as well as within it, and pleasure itself might be seen as holy. This is not their culture and they will fight a quiet war to be sure government is with them.
And so, when President Obama asks Congress to remove some modest provision for expanding access to family planning from the economic stimulus package he presented to Congress, he sends the message that he too only talks the prevention game, but will not walk the walk; he too sees women's capacity to get pregnant as not a legitimate policy issue. He too doesn't want to deal with the messy issue of sex and pregnancy.
"It is time that we end the politicization of this issue," Obama says. Yet as soon as the Republicans used the family planning provision as a political wedge, he played right into it -- Just take it out of the package, he directed Congress. Every value that undergirds the sexual and reproductive health, justice and rights movements was ignored by the President.
The insensitivity to women is hard to swallow when compared to the purported sensitivity he extends to the hard line anti-abortion movement -- sensitivity that influenced the President's decision not to rescind the global gag rule on January 22 but to do so quietly a day later, without ceremony or celebration with the leaders of the international and domestic movements that represent the thousands of women who were denied information and services as a result of the gag rule.
We were promised that science and evidence would determine policy. Well, the evidence is in that women's economic well being is tied to their ability to decide when and whether to have children. Evidence shows that the cost to low income and unemployed women of unintended pregnancy is increased poverty and joblessness. But politics were more important than facts.
We were promised that preventing unintended pregnancy would be high on the President's agenda. And those of us who support that approach do so not because abortion is bad, but because women want to prevent unintended pregnancy and, for the most part, lack of education and resources, not irresponsible sex, are the reason they fail. The President's January 23 promise of a "fresh conversation on family planning" turned out to be the stale crumbs of political compromise that consistently sweep women's needs under the policy table.
We were promised that reproductive
health would be framed as a social justice issue, integrated into the
long neglected list of what women need to be full and productive members
of the community -- jobs, health care, paid family and medical leave. But at the very first opportunity to link women's reproductive health
to social and economic justice -- the economic stimulus package -- the President denied the link when he picked up the phone and told
Henry Waxman to take out the family planning provision.
The President has asked us to end the culture wars. I say forget it. Bring back the culture war. For in fact what the President and his progressive pro-life buddies has asked us to do is stop talking about the values that are the foundation of our support for women's sexual and reproductive health and rights. He asks us to deal only with "practical solutions" which he then refuses to implement.
The discussion of sexuality and reproduction is a profoundly cultural issue; its long term resolution and the transformation of US social policy into one that is respectful of the values of women's rights, and autonomy and that recognizes that sexual and reproductive freedom is a value requires a cultural discourse. Nothing proves that more than the crass political decision President Obama made yesterday to eliminate family planning access from the economic stimulus package. And it is the cultural discourse of those who do not recognize women's sexual and reproductive lives as a matter of human rights that allows a President to disregard our needs. ]]>