A Leap Year and a Leap of Faith

            Hi Everyone. I hope your February 29 is going splendidly. After all, it only comes around once every four years, right? If today’s your birthday, just think, you only have to worry about aging once every four years! If you happen to find the idea of February 29 inconvenient because you want it to be March 1, be glad you’re neither Chinese nor Jewish. Both the Hebrew and Chinese traditional calendars are lunisolar calendars, and so, every so often they add an extra month, not an extra day, to their calendar years. I can’t imagine having to reckon with a thirteenth month. Wouldn’t that be a pain? An extra day in February is ok with me. Here’s one more bit of leap year trivia. Because of the formulae that calculate leap years, there aren’t always leap years at the ends of centuries, even though that century mark falls at the four-year interval. So, 1600 and 2000 were leap years, but 1700, 1800 and 1900 weren’t. Similarly, 2100 won’t be a leap year. There won’t be another end of century leap year until the year 2400. Incidentally, there’s debate right now among those who care as to whether the year 4000 should be considered a leap year or not. I hope they figure it out. They’ve got plenty of … time.

            So, why this title, “A Leap Year and a Leap of Faith?” I wanted to post something special on this leap day, a topic I’ve been resisting because when most people do it, it comes across as corny and insipid. I was just thinking, I make no secret about being a Christian. Yet, until recently I never considered the connection between my blindness and my faith. At any rate, now I have considered it. Correction, I’m still considering it. Here are a few observations based on my experiences as a blind person in today’s world and as a thinking, reasoning, believing being.

Trusting Your Senses

            Being a graduate student and a true academic at heart, I live and breathe the western university culture. There’s a great deal for someone like me to appreciate. Theorizing, discussing, analyzing, reading, teaching and most importantly, learning. Yet, it also tends to be a very skeptical culture. It’s a culture that demands proofs and takes very little as given. Some within that culture live by the motto ‘de omnibus dubitandum,’ doubt everything. On a college campus everything is questioned, every value scrutinized and, more often than not, rejected. Ok, that is the culture in which I operate. How did I end up being different? Because, you see, I am different. I don’t believe that skepticism is the best, or even a viable, philosophy for living. I hold to absolute truths and believe in a God who made the universe, who performs miracles and who has expectations for us born out of love for us. I have quite literally been laughed at because of the preceding sentence.

            “Oh come on, Brad,” one person said to me not too long ago, “how can you, an intelligent, thinking being, possibly believe in a great Santa Clause in the sky who will give you presents if you’re good and cast you into a fiery furnace if you’re not?”

            Well, there are all sorts of answers to that, but this posting relates to my blindness. So, I’ll limit myself to that set of answers. So many people believe only in what they can see and hear and taste and touch and smell or in what they can extrapolate based on the physical world. DNA, colors, aroma therapy, yoga, the speeches of JFK, the Andromeda Galaxy, and a slice of chocolate cake are all perceptible by the senses.

            The first thing to remember is that I have one less sense. Using my list above, if I operated with this brand of skepticism, I could choose to disbelieve in colors, DNA and the Andromeda Galaxy. After all, even if you took me to a biology lab and set a DNA molecule under a microscope for me or even if you let me look through the Hubble telescope, what good would it do me? I wouldn’t see them. Yes, I know you could argue for my belief or disbelief on purely logical grounds, but we’re talking about the physical senses here. So, the first thing to notice is that certain modes of proof, the sacred P-word on campus, are closed to me. You cannot prove that colors exist to me by demonstration or by appeal to physical objects. It’s not possible. Yet, I believe that colors exist. Why? As we do with many things, I believe in what I’m told exists. Who told me? Authorities I consider trustworthy and credible, of course. It’s just that you don’t need to be told that colors exist. You know they do. You don’t need or want proof of that. But consider this:  if everyone in the world were struck blind tomorrow, would colors no longer exist? Would the Andromeda Galaxy no longer be out there? Would Rembrandt’s imagery still exist? Of course those things would still exist. Your ability to see colors or to see the stars or to see a picture doesn’t make those things, the color, the stars, the painting, exist or not exist. They are what they are.

            That idea of belief has always been very fundamental to me in my day to day environment. I believe that the sidewalk is clear ahead of me. Not because I can see down the length of the sidewalk and know that there aren’t any trashcans, bicycles or people on it. Rather, I believe that the sidewalk is clear because I walked it yesterday and it was clear then. I infer that it will be clear today. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes the sidewalk even disappears altogether! That happens to me in construction areas. What I believe about the sidewalk is a form of inductive reasoning. The sidewalk’s been clear for the last fifty days; so, it’ll be clear today. If so, great. If not, oh well. It happens.

            When I teach, I must operate on a certain amount of faith that my students are paying attention. If someone’s sneaky about it, I may not catch someone checking Facebook, reading a newspaper or sleeping in the back. I have, of course, developed my own strategies for managing my classroom and staying on top of things, but that’s not the point. Any sighted instructor would spot those things pretty quickly. I do not. Up to a point, I have to trust my students’ own willingness to learn and their sense of right conduct in class. Similarly, faith enters into my dissertation. When I’m with test subjects, I can’t actually see them at their computers. I don’t know for sure that they’re not opening an internet browser or goofing around while they’re supposed to be testing for me. Again, if I could see, this wouldn’t be an issue. But I cannot. So, I have to trust in an area where a sighted researcher would have no need for trust or belief or faith, as we’re calling it here.

            Given this inductive reasoning I’ve talked about, the question isn’t, why should I believe in God, but just the opposite. Why shouldn’t I believe in God? Despite Richard Dawkins assertions, God remains beyond the ken of science. He’s not a falsifiable hypothesis,. He can’t be seen by a telescope or contained in or dispelled by a logical proof. So, whenever people argue that God can’t be seen or investigated scientifically, I shrug. There’s a ton that I can’t see or investigate even in the way the rest of you can. So that line of argument against God holds little weight for me. It’s not at all compelling as it is for so many scientifically minded people.

Blindness and the Bible

            There are two points I want to make here. Since they’re related, I suppose it doesn’t matter which one I start with. I don’t know how many churches I’ve been to or individual Christians I’ve met who want to pray for my healing and the restoration of my sight. Firstly, restoration is a bit misleading; I never had sight and so it can’t be restored. More to the point, I want to start by saying I understand where this tendency comes from. People like this are thinking of Jesus healing multiple blind people in the New Testament. For example, see the stories in Matthew 9 and Matthew 12. Unfortunately for me, that’s all they’re thinking of. Yes, blindness in first-century Judea was a tough thing to bear. In twenty-first-century America, it still isn’t that easy. That being said, it makes perfect sense to me that those blind men sought healing from Jesus and got it. I can’t say that if Jesus weren’t here today that I wouldn’t ask him to give me sight. Maybe I would. Yet, I don’t pray for physical sight. Jesus performing a miracle is one thing. Miracles by their nature are exceptional divine interventions in the world. If God wants to perform one, far be it for me to stop him, but I’m not going to ask. There are other things I ask for each and every day.

            Still, there’s one thing about this whole blind healing bible discussion that those well-meaning people either forget or don’t realize. That is, God is in control. True, blindness is not the norm. Yet, if I were meant to see, I would. The fact that I am blind because of what happened to me at birth, because of incubators and optical nerve scarring, is not a negation of God’s power. God is, of course, bigger than incubators and optical nerve damage. I am, I repeat, as I was intended to be. That being said, I point these sorts of Christians to two passages. Consider God’s words to Moses in Exodus 4. Moses is pleading with God, pleading that he’s a poor speaker and won’t represent God well to the people and to the Egyptian ruler. God’s response is telling, “The LORD said to him, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the LORD?” (Exodus 4:11). So, yes, God is greater than damaged retinas or scarred optical nerves or glaucoma or whatever the cause of the blindness. I am content with the condition because it is what I am meant to be. The follow-up question occurs, “ok, Brad, why were you intended to be blind?” Why does God do anything? He didn’t consult me about it. I am who I am.

            Yet it doesn’t disturb me. One other verse comes to mind. I don’t intend to quote a ton of them in this part of the discussion. Still, I said I was content. In the forty-second chapter of Isaiah, I find reason to be, “I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them” (Isaiah 42:16). Both of those passages are God’s own words as recorded in the biblical record. So, what am I to take from that? I am as I was meant to be, as I’ve said. And it’s going to be alright. That’s the second thing. That’s not to say that my life is, was or will be easy. Just the opposite, actually. Rather, it’s a promise that things are going to work out. God is there and will lead me where I need to go, just as a human being does when I take their elbow so that they can lead me someplace. If I would trust a human guide, why not a divine one? Again, it seems to make sense.

Concluding Thoughts, The Blind Atheist

            I wouldn’t have you take away the idea from reading what I’ve said that all or most blind people are believers in God let alone in the God of the Christian bible. Belief in God isn’t found in greater proportion amongst the blind than anyone else. I have met a number of blind people who are atheists or agnostics who lean toward the non-existence of God. Naturally, I disagree with them. Their disbelief isn’t grounded primarily in their blindness, not, at least, any more than my belief has its main roots in my blindness. Though, I have met those blind who contend that God, if he existed and was who and what he claimed to be, wouldn’t have made them blind either from birth or from some cause later in life. Yet I contend that it is precisely because God is who he is that they are blind. Exodus 4:11 again. They are fashioned as God meant them to be.

            The final thing I would have you avoid is thinking, either consciously or subconsciously, that faith is acceptable for me because I’m blind. “Well, that’s alright for him,” I’ve heard it said. “Let him have his faith, but as for me, I can see the world around me. I don’t need faith in God.” I’ve had people say this, and undoubtedly, many who don’t say it do think it. It’s not mean-spirited of people to think or say this, though it is mistaken. Just because you don’t see or smell radon gas leaking into your home doesn’t mean you don’t have a gas leak. Your detector unit may not be working properly, and that gas leak that you don’t see may still kill you. Alternatively, just because you don’t see the sun shining outdoors without a window, it doesn’t follow that the sun’s not shining. And so, we might fairly reason, just because God is a being you cannot see or touch or smell or taste or hear or prove by logic or disprove by science, by no means does it follow that no God exists. I submit to you that only people who are too sure of their own intellect and rely far too much on their limited senses will conclude, “that business about God is all bunk.”

            I realize that there are a great many arguments for and against the existence of God. I’ve made many of them and been on the receiving end of many more. I close by saying only that my purpose here has been to connect my blindness and my faith. If you have found what I said informative or even persuasive, then I am pleased. If you disagree with me, that too is alright. Alright in the sense that I won’t get upset. In truth, I hope that you will change your mind and heart and do so quickly while you still have time. In other words, I encourage you to make the leap of faith mentioned in my title, and what better day to do it on than, well, leap day! Meanwhile, have a good one.

The Language of Abortion, Part II

            Hello again. Looking back over my blog, I see I began it just about a year ago. A year ago this past Sunday, in fact. It’s done well, and my desire to continue with it is as strong as it was last February. I thought about coming up with some anniversary entry, but since I missed the anniversary, I’ll let it pass.

            Meanwhile, I want to continue thinking about the language of abortion. Some people ask me, “Brad, why do people like you always fixate on abortion when we’ve got issues like poverty, drugs and the sex trade to deal with?” A good question. It’s not that those issues aren’t important. Indeed, they are. But abortion, by its very nature, presents us with one of the most pressing ethical problems of our generation. So, after my last post on this subject, I surfed the net, looking up abortion clinics in my area. I also read articles, blogs, columns, and so on. I wanted to see how abortion was advertised, talked about, advocated, described and sold. Again, the language strikes me as interesting. I submit that God intended language to reveal. But where this subject is concerned, I contend that those in favor of abortion always use language to conceal. That’s quite a statement, I know. Last time, I talked about words like ‘right,’ ‘choice,’ and so on. Well, here are some more words and phrases that strike me as worthy of discussion, words that shape the abortion debate in such a way that to oppose them is dangerous and difficult. Here we go.

Equality:

            Bear with me. This word takes thinking about. ‘Equality’ has long been a buzzword in American society. It’s found in one form or another in the opening of our Constitution and our Declaration of Independence. You might say Americans have always valued it. It’s one of those things that you just take for granted as desirable. Everybody should be ‘equal,’ right? Who’s ever going to say we should have less equality? It is true that various women’s movement organizations such as NOW have made great strides in closing the gender gap. Education, jobs, salaries, politics, all of these arenas are ones in which women’s participation has been increasing. I saw a study recently that demonstrated that the salary gap is narrower than it’s ever been. Not to mention that I have, during my ten plus years of higher education, had far more female professors than male ones.

But what does this word ‘equality’ mean with reference to the abortion issue? Equal, I ask, in what sense? Who is equal to whom? In my attempts to figure out what the meaning of ‘equality’ is in relation to abortion, I came across this 2006 column by Brian Frederking, a political science professor at McKendree University, a small Methodist school in Lebanon Illinois. http://faculty.mckendree.edu/brian_frederking/columns/gender_equality.htm. I’ve edited it down a bit, but here he is:

… The problem is we have forgotten that abortion rights are intricately connected to the larger women’s movement. The goal of this movement is to break down patriarchal assumptions that men belong in the public sphere and women belong in the private sphere. The women’s movement is about creating both equal gender opportunity in the public sphere (school, jobs, voting, etc.) and equal gender responsibilities in the private sphere (parenting, doing the dishes, etc.). … If we really want to pursue the social goal of gender equality, then we must be willing to put up with a morally ambiguous medical procedure. Gender equality requires abortion rights. It is a package deal.

All we have to do is look around the world to confirm this. The World Economic Forum recently ranked gender equality in 58 countries around the world. It used five criteria to create the rankings: economic participation, economic opportunity, political empowerment, educational attainment, and health/well-being. Abortion was not explicitly a part of the rankings.

            The top ten countries were Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia. (The United States was 17^th.) All of them have legally protected abortion rights. The bottom ten countries were Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan, South Korea, Mexico, Brazil, India, Venezuela, and Chile. All have either outlawed or heavily restricted access to abortion.

            Abortion rights are about the status of women in society. There are two kinds of countries in the world: those who accept modern gender roles and protect abortion rights, and those who prefer traditional gender roles and restrict abortion rights.

            I always stun my students when I say that they do not understand their positions on abortion. The pro-choice students think that it is about the individual bodies of women. But I tell them that they have forgotten the history of the women’s movement. I suggest to them that slogans of “my body, my choice” make them sound like spoiled children.

            The pro-life students are convinced that their position is about saving the lives of the unborn. But I tell them that their position is really a backlash against the women’s movement. It is about keeping women at home and men in power.

            I am not sure that I fully believe this. But my job is to challenge my students. I want them to think about these things. We all should.

            All due respect to the good Dr. Frederking, but I say with a smile that this is the sort of logic I was taught to avoid in my own papers and which I require students to revise in their essays for me. Frederking immediately connects abortion, a single issue, with universal issues of access, equality and suffrage, setting up a chain of reasoning that goes something like this:

Women’s rights = universal access to all spheres of influence, economic, educational, political;

“Abortion = a fundamental component of women’s rights;

Therefore, to oppose abortion is to oppose women’s rights. QED.

            If I may slip into logic speak for a moment, it does not necessarily follow that if I oppose abortion, that I want women barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. It is also false for people like the professor to suggest that being an advocate of abortion is a necessary condition, let alone what we call a necessary and sufficient condition, of supporting women’s rights generally. This sort of slipshod reasoning irritates me because it claims to be logical and is riddled with fallacies, errors in reasoning, if you will.

His logic, as a favorite character of mine would no doubt point out, is flawed. As a footnote, I don’t know what to make of his statement at the end of his column about not knowing whether he believed what he was saying, but that it was his duty to challenge his students. O …k. I thought it was his duty to teach and instruct? But what do I know. I only have five years of college teaching experience. Maybe when I equal his ten, I’ll know what he meant.

            More important than his logic, however, is this writer’s grasp of history as demonstrated in this column, “The pro-choice students think that it is about the individual bodies of women. But I tell them that they have forgotten the history of the women’s movement.” Actually, some of us may know a bit more about that history than he does. The juncture that ties abortion to the broader platform of women’s rights is frequently suggested to be history. Women, people like this professor claim, have historically sought their rights, and this issue has been a historical part of the struggle. Not true. I wonder how people like Frederking would react if they knew (or were reminded) that the early pioneers of women’s rights vehemently opposed abortion.

            Go back to the writings of the nineteenth century and read Susan B Anthony. Anthony was a women’s rights crusader at a time when they had next to none. No voting, no political status, and salary equality? Non-existent. Remember, women didn’t even get the right to vote in this country until 1920. Anthony lived and worked in the mid to late 1800’s, dying in 1906. While abortion was not one of her main causes, she did write this in 1869, "When a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is a sign that, by education or circumstances, she has been greatly wronged." For all the differences between abortions then and now and for all the differences in thought between then and now, I find it hard to believe that, were she resurrected today, Susan B. Anthony would be on the front lines of NOW at a state assembly battling for pro-abortion legislation. I just don’t think so. Finally, some pro-choice scholars and political activists I’ve read point out that she never talked explicitly about fetal rights, state mandates about abortion, and so on. One writer for Women’s ENews, Allison Stevens, even went so far as to say that those who cite Susan B. Anthony in support of pro-life arguments are exactly the sorts of people the nineteenth-century activist would’ve opposed. Quite a statement. So then, I reasonably ask myself, just what did Anthony and her contemporaries say about this topic? Here are a few things they said:

"Guilty? Yes. No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; But oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime!" Susan B Anthony, 1868.

"Child murderers practice their profession without let or hindrance, and open infant butcheries unquestioned...Is there no remedy for all this ante-natal child murder?...Perhaps there will come a time when...an unmarried mother will not be despised because of her motherhood...and when the right of the unborn to be born will not be denied or interfered with." Victoria Woodhull, 1870.

"The custom of procuring abortions has reached such appalling proportions in America as to be beyond belief...So great is the misery of the working classes that seventeen abortions are committed in every one hundred pregnancies." Emma Goldman, 1911.

            Clearly, these were women who saw abortion as being a deep societal ill, one caused by the plight of women during their time. They hoped, if these quotations are representative of their writings, that in time, women’s education, empowerment and inclusion in the mainstream of American life would lead to a lessening, not an increase, in abortion. They seem to have anticipated a day when abortion would be a thing of the past, not a day when it is legalized and sold like any other elective procedure. Today, women in America enjoy freedoms and rights of enfranchisement beyond these pioneers’ wildest hopes; yet, more babies are aborted in this country every day than ever before. I submit to you that they’d weep bitter tears if they knew it.

Still, let’s leave Anthony for the more recent past, shall we? “So what,” some writers might argue, “abortion became an issue of equality in the middle of the last century and is now unquestionably linked to equality, access and suffrage.” That professor’s column above certainly supports that idea. Incorrect … again. Anyone ever heard of Feminists for Life of America (FFL)? My guess is that most haven’t. They’re a women’s rights organization, as you might have guessed. They were founded in Ohio in 1972 by two women from OSU. Interestingly, one of them, Cathy Callaghan, was a tenured linguistics professor at the time. The other founder, Pat Goltz, was expelled from the Columbus chapter of NOW in 1974 for arguing that abortion violates feminist principles. They fight against domestic violence, against sex trafficking, against pregnancy discrimination, against discrimination in the workplace, and against abortion. That last one is where they differ from the big names. They are avid supporters and promoters of women, but these women argue passionately that abortion is wrong and that it’s unnecessary. Don’t take my word for it. Here’s their page:

http://www.feministsforlife.org/

            So, many people would like to muddy the waters surrounding abortion by tying it to the broader women’s rights movement. They get away with it, because nobody really opposes most things the women’s rights movements of today stand for. The rhetorical trick, therefore, is to convince people that abortion equals the rights of women and to oppose it is to oppose the progress, the equality, of women in today’s America. However, this sleight of hand is both misleading and historically inaccurate. It succeeds because most people lack the historical background and the knowledge of women’s advocacy needed to see through it. The earliest women’s rights advocates regarded abortion as nothing less than child murder and longed for a day when the society as a whole would have advanced beyond the point where women felt they had to abort their children. Logically, it is an error in reasoning to argue that a person who is against abortion is also against the rights of women generally or in our society as a whole. So let’s leave ‘equality’ behind and look at some more language. Like Callaghan, I do linguistics, after all.

Pregnancy as Euphemism

            Women’s Health Practice, just up the street from me, has a very comprehensive web site and offers abortions by various methods up through twenty-four weeks or six months of pregnancy. What’s interesting here is just how they use the word ‘pregnancy.’ This may seem obvious. We all know what pregnancy is, right? Well, yes. But they use the word ‘pregnancy’ to mean something more than just the state of being with child. Consider this quote, which is found in their section on medication-based abortion. They describe the effects of methotrexate this way,  “It stops embryonic or fetal cells from dividing. Once these cells can no longer divide, the pregnancy stops growing.”

            A pregnancy does not grow. It is not animate and it doesn’t describe an object, animate or otherwise. It is a biological condition, a process. So, what is it that “stops growing,” exactly? The pregnancy process ends because the baby, not the pregnancy, stops growing. But imagine this same description if they actually said what they meant. Here it is, “It stops embryonic or fetal cells from dividing. Once these cells can no longer divide, the baby stops growing.”

            One other thing about this clinic’s abortion page. I couldn’t find the words ‘baby’ or ‘child’ anywhere. Look for yourself:  http://www.womenshealthpractice.com/abortion.htm. If you find it, let me know. I’ll tell you what I did see, however.

Code Words for ‘Baby’ and ‘Child’

            Regardless of your stance on abortion, it’s interesting to note how strenuously the industry avoids words that would connect the baby to the rest of the human race. You won’t find them talking about a ‘baby’ even for a late-term abortion. Never do it. And nobody uses the word ‘child.’ Wonder why? Is it perhaps because they know collectively what they do and cannot call babies what they are for fear of admitting it? Maybe. It’s also bad business. Telling a scared girl or woman that, “terminating your pregnancy at this point in the fetus’s development is a safe and low-risk solution to your needs,” sounds comforting and brings in money. Telling that same scared girl or woman, “Ending your baby’s life at this point in your pregnancy is a safe and low-risk solution to your needs,” however, is likely to trigger a fall in revenue. We’re not done.

            To end with this web page, I found two instances where biological terms are substituted for baby. A bit more dangerous, since the word ‘tissue’ bespeaks a living (or once living) organism. Try these excerpts from the clinic’s surgical abortion page,  “Your tissue will be sent for analysis to a pathologist. … As a woman progresses farther into pregnancy, there is more tissue to evacuate. … patients can arrange for tissue burial, although they need to be aware that these services must be arranged well in advance and may be costly.”

            Tissue? Makes it sound highbrow and medical, like something I’d read in a biology textbook. It’s also semantically inaccurate. ‘Fetal tissue’ is only an accurate term up to a certain point. By twenty-four weeks, though, what you’ve got is a very recognizable baby, arms, legs, head, internal organs. Many types of tissue there. I should know. I was born at twenty-six weeks. And “tissue burial?” Who are we kidding here? They almost, almost admit what they’re doing. Replace ‘tissue’ with ‘baby’ or ’child’ in the last excerpt and reread it.

This will probably be my last posting on abortion for a while. I’m not an activist per se, I’m not a specialist in medicine and I don’t work for a pro-life organization. I’ve never claimed any particular expertise, and this blog isn’t just about this issue. Still, if I leave the topic here, let it not be because I don’t have strong feelings based on well-informed opinions. There are other issues out there, but this one deserves every word of attention I’ve given it and more. I look forward to any reasoned comments anyone wants to leave.

The Language of Abortion

            I have been reluctant to touch the issue of abortion in my blog, not because I lack for a  stance about it, but mostly because I don’t want my thoughts dismissed as “radical right-wing garbage.” In our current climate, it is very dangerous to oppose abortion. The moment you do, you become fair game for those who are ready to label you a misogynist (or woman hater) or for those who are ready to paint you as dictatorial, narrow-minded, intolerant, in short, to describe you with the language many use to describe Christians. Now, I should point out that not all people who are “pro-life” are Christian, and it is also true, sadly, that not all Christians are “pro-life.” Still, the last reason I haven’t touched the issue is lack of a specific current event. My blog entries that touch on issues like unions, outsourcing and the like stem from particular items in the news, and now, abortion has come up for discussion thanks to the recent controversy surrounding the Susan G. Komen Foundation. But since the subject’s come up, I want to engage in calm, reasonable, rational, caring and truthful discussions here, emphasis on ‘caring’ and ‘truthful.’ So, to quote God from Isaiah 1:18, “Come, let us reason together.”

            I was fifteen when I learned just how abortions are performed. Two of my friends were going back and forth on the subject, and I was listening with only half an ear. I’d heard it all before, it seemed, and the debate simply didn’t interest me. Finally I chimed in with, “you know, how are abortions even done anyway?” My two friends fell silent, and one turned to me and offered to let the others sitting around us leave the room. No one did. She then explained in graphic and accurate detail how the most common procedures were done. She told me about suction abortions, saline abortions and partial birth abortions. I sat there in horror. I had a vivid imagination, you see, and once I had the how-to information in hand, imagining the actual process didn’t take much. A question came out of my mouth without my planning it.

“Amy,” I asked, “Why would anyone even think about doing that?”

Well, almost as many years have passed since that conversation. I’m twenty-nine now. Since that conversation, I’ve sat in philosophy classes beyond count, contemporary issues classes, biomedical ethics classes; I’ve been to three universities as a student and I’ve read feminist writers, post-modern writers, women’s rights advocates, sociology texts, and on and on and on. I’ve met a number of women who’ve had abortions. And still, I want to ask that question. Today, I am a linguist. I live by words and I thrive on knowing what people mean when they use words. So, my own contribution to the abortion debate (probably one of today’s most controversial issues) is to look at the words people use and figure out what’s going on. Let’s look at some language.

Rights and Choice

My first question:  which rights and what choice are we talking about? Reading the literature of NOW and Planned Parenthood and the like, certain answers keep coming up. These organizations talk about a woman’s choices in terms of her “reproductive rights.” The basic idea boils down to something like, “my body, my rights.” But again, rights to do what? A choice to do what?

The first problem with the, “it’s my body and I’ll decide what to do with it,” line of reasoning is that its inherently false. My arm is part of my body because it shares my DNA. The cells of my arm, my liver and my femur share my own unique genetic pattern. Yet, a baby, whether he or she is a zygote (the first cell formed after fertilization) or a fetus or a newborn on the verge of delivery, doesn’t fit this basic criterion for being called part of, “my body.” Their DNA is not identical to the woman’s, because that DNA includes the father’s contributions too. To take a more extreme example, even a cancer cell has more in common with the woman’s DNA than this baby does, because a cancer cell is a mutated cell of her own genetic code. A baby, by definition, has a genetic code that is unique to him or herself, and not entirely part of either her mother’s or her father’s genes. So, “my body?” That is incorrect. It’s not part of her body. It is a resident of her body, true. The baby is fully dependent on her mother’s body for life, true. But that doesn’t make the baby part and parcel of her body the way the mother’s arm or leg is. So, to this line of reasoning I would reply, “if most people wouldn’t kill a baby while it’s suckling at the breast, by what logic do we justify doing so a few months before it gets to come out and do that?” Let’s move on.

Let’s talk about the words ‘right’ and ‘privacy.’ They seem to be very important in this discussion. Many women’s rights advocates see abortion as being a matter of a woman’s right to privacy and personal choice. Many will argue vehemently that that right to privacy and that right to choice are sacrosanct, and that anti-abortion people are impinging upon those rights. This is a powerful argument to some, but I find its reasoning flawed.

First, our rights are already limited. I do not have the right to walk across the hall and shoot my neighbor. According to my lease, I do not have the right to play my music as loud as I want to even in the ‘privacy’ of my own home. If I’m arrested, I lose my right to privacy. I cannot abuse my children even in the ‘privacy’ of my own home, because I don’t have the right. In every one of the examples I just used, the notion of ‘privacy,’ held sacred by pro-abortion advocates, is superseded by other rights or circumstances or laws. So, apparently, we as a society do indeed hold some things as being able to transcend my right to privacy. Why, I ask in puzzlement, is killing a baby before it is born considered a matter of ‘privacy,’ but killing one the day after he or she is born isn’t a matter of ‘privacy?’

Now, let’s talk about the other word, ‘choice.’ In all the examples above, two things came into play, right and choice. I don’t necessarily have the right to do any of the things listed in that paragraph. That doesn’t mean, however, that I can’t choose to do them. I could walk over and shoot my neighbor. It’s a matter of choice, right? I could smack my kids around to my heart’s content. It’s a matter of choice, right? Well, ok, yes, I can choose to do those things. I have free will and a body that mostly obeys my commands. But you might reasonably point out that choices have consequences including legal ones, and because of these consequences,  I might refrain from shooting my neighbor or beating up my kids. Fair enough.

So, does abortion have consequences? Whose consequences? Well, since every biology textbook I’ve ever picked up defines the beginning of life as being at conception, the first answer is the baby’s consequences. A good number of abortions happen somewhere in the first trimester. By the end of that time, the baby displays facial expressions, has a heartbeat, generates a brain wave pattern unique to himself, kicks and makes fists, and the nerves are developing. Consider this from Dr. Robert Shearan, a surgeon who, we presume, knows his stuff:

As early as eight to ten weeks after conception, and definitely by thirteen-and-a-half weeks, the unborn experiences organic pain.... First, the unborn child's mouth, at eight weeks, then her hands at ten weeks, then her face, arms, and legs at eleven weeks become sensitive to touch. By thirteen-and-a-half weeks, she responds to pain at all levels of her nervous system in an integrated response which cannot be termed a mere reflex. She can now experience pain.

That last point is important, because abortion hurts like hell for the babies themselves. Yes, they feel pain, lots of it.

Other consequences to this ‘choice?’ I’ve met women who’ve had abortions, and I’ve read of countless more, and almost to a woman, they’ve talked about the emotional scarring, the regret and pain, that followed their abortion. Maybe not immediately, but at some point it came. Try this one:

Doctors shouldn't say it is easy for people to have an abortion. Because it's not an easy thing. People like my friends get pregnant, get an abortion, get pregnant, get an abortion, get pregnant, get an abortion. You know what I mean? All my friends that I've called say, Oh, it's a piece of cake.' For me, it wasn't a piece of cake.

The woman who said that was quoted in the Journal of the American Medical Association, folks. So, apparently, there are consequences to the women involved.

Are there any consequences to the fathers? Well, consider this:

She did it for me. I feel like I murdered somebody. I wish I could do it over again, if I could just go back in time and relive those years. If she'd had the child, even if we'd got married and everything, it wouldn't have been that bad. I've seen other people do it. Reality's such a bitch sometimes, you know?

That was spoken by a father who didn’t become a father, not that time anyway. One more, and this may surprise you. Abortion, that ‘choice,’ often has lasting consequences for many of the clinic workers who do them. Imagine being a nurse or tech whose job, eight hours a day, is to take babies in the womb and end their existences. Think I’m exaggerating? Let me spend a little time on this point, because it’s often overlooked. I have two longer quotations here which should shed some light on the issue. Consider this first,  most of the time, possibly all the time, the patient i.e. the mother, does not get to view the fetal remains. Who would want to, you ask? She is protected from seeing the end results. Not so for the technicians performing the abortion. They see the consequences up close and personally, and they see them right away in full color and HD. This first quote comes from a report presented to the Association of Planned Parenthood Physicians by a veteran abortionist of twenty-three years’ experience and his assistant some years ago. They interviewed twenty-three current and former staffers at their clinic about their responses to viewing some of the procedures, and this, from the report, is a summary of what they found:

Many subjects reported serious emotional reactions which produced physiological symptoms, sleep disturbances, effects on personal relationships, and moral anguish.... Reactions to viewing the fetus ranged from "I haven't looked" to shock, dismay, amazement, disgust, fear and sadness.... Two felt that it must eventually damage [the doctor] psychologically… Two respondents described dreams which they had had related to the procedure. Both described dreams of vomiting fetuses along with a sense of horror. Other dreams revolved around a need to protect others from viewing fetal parts, dreaming that she herself was pregnant and needed an abortion or was having a baby.... The more direct the physical and visual involvement [i.e. nurses, doctors], the more stress experienced.

That’s pretty straight forward, isn’t it? Have you ever seen a suction machine? I haven’t. Well, ok, that’s not a blindness pun. I really never have been to an abortion clinic or handled the machinery responsible. I can’t say I want to, though I’d probably go if I had the chance and a reason. Here’s a description written by a woman researcher who was pro-choice at the time. This is graphic, I warn you:

I am drawn to the unit, irresistibly, by my reactions of disbelief, sorrow, horror, compassion, guilt. The place depresses me, yet I hang around after working hours. When I leave, I behave outside with the expansiveness of one who has just escaped a disaster. I have bad dreams. My sense of complicity in something nameless grows and festers. I consider giving up the research....

I remove with one hand the lid of a bucket.... I look inside the bucket in front of me. There is a small naked person there floating in a bloody liquid--plainly the tragic victim of a drowning accident. But then perhaps this was no accident, because the body is purple with bruises and the face has the agonized tautness of one forced to die too soon. Death overtakes me in a rush of madness. [the same woman goes on to talk about her experiences from the surgeon's end of the table.] During an abortion] The doctor pulls out something, which he slaps on the instrument table. "There," he says. "A leg."... I turn to Mr. Smith. "What did he say?" "He pulled a leg off," Mr. Smith says. "Right here." He points to the instrument table, where there is a perfectly formed, slightly bent leg, about three inches long. It consists of a ripped thigh, a knee, a lower leg, a foot, and five toes. I start to shake very badly, but otherwise, I feel nothing. Total shock is passionless....

"There, I've got the head out now"... There lies a head. It is the smallest human head I have ever seen, but it is unmistakably part of a person. My vision and my hearing though disengaged, continue, I note, to function with exceptional clarity. The rest of me is mercifully gone.

            Ok, under our laws it is a choice. Even when it was illegal, it was still a choice. No one disputes a woman’s ability to choose and that this is one possible choice. But is it a choice she should make? The consequences are far-reaching. They go beyond one woman and one baby. They impact lives in a widening circle that draws in fathers, family members, even the people paid to perform the abortion. I didn’t make these quotes up and they’re not the only ones I’ve found. The tone and content are remarkably similar. So again I ask, even if it is a choice, is it a right one?

Abortion vs. Murder

            I’m not trying to be flip here. When Christians call abortion ‘murder,’ they’re dismissed. When the laws of the land call it the same, most nod approvingly. What am I talking about? In an increasing number of U.S. states, a man who murders a pregnant woman is charged with two counts of murder, two. The woman’s and the unborn baby’s. The murder charge involving the unborn baby is pursued with all the seriousness as the charge concerning the woman. What does this tell me? It tells me (and remember I’m not even speaking morally) that there is a disconnect in the language and intent of our laws. Answer me this:  how is it murder if someone kills the woman and baby, yet if the woman pays to have the baby killed, it’s a medical procedure? Some might answer me, pointing out that in the first example, the woman dies too. Point taken, but the murder charge brought against the killer for the baby is the same murder charge that he would face if he’d killed, say, a mother and her newborn. No difference under the law that I’m aware of. So, my question remains a good one. And there is no answer. Well, there is one. Our laws concerning the unborn are inconsistent.

            In medicine, we call it ‘termination of a pregnancy.’ Yet if a doctor performed the same saline procedure or something similar once the baby was outside the womb, we would call it ‘murder’ and hang the doctor from the highest tree. The arguable exception to this was the partial-birth abortion. For those not in the know, the partial-birth abortion, put briefly, involves delivering the baby alive, just as you would normally, and then making an incision at the base of the baby’s skull and sucking her brains out with a vacuum pump. After that, the baby’s body is delivered the rest of the way. Fortunately, and isn’t it about time we had some good news, this type of abortion, which was made legal by President Clinton in 1997, was made illegal by legislation signed into law by George W. Bush in 2003. A 2007 Supreme Court decision, Gonzales v. Carhart, upheld the Partial-birth Abortion Ban Act. I add that many clinics have found ways to circumvent the wording of the law. Not surprising.

            I have not been trying to sensationalize the issue. I’ve just been talking about words we all use, ‘rights,’ ‘choice,’ ‘abortion’ and so on, trying to figure out just what we mean, regardless of what we think is meant, when we use this language in the abortion debate. This is not a comprehensive discussion of the issue. I have not, for example, mentioned the fact that the earliest women’s rights advocates, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who were ardent supporters of women’s rights at a time when they had next to none, both vehemently opposed abortion, calling it a crime and labeling it murder. Hmmm, interesting. On that same subject, I have also not discussed the fact that many feminist groups oppose abortion, though you never hear about them. One is the Feminists For Life (FFL) which is passionately pro-women’s rights and is ardently anti-abortion. One member called the attempt to make abortion a women’s rights issue “terrorist feminism,” because women are deceived into believing they have to be willing to kill (babies, of course) to support the platform of women’s rights. I could go on and on. But this is a blog, not a book. I suppose, in closing, I’d have to say that what amazes me is not that some people oppose abortion, but that so many approve of it unreservedly. Feel free to respond reasonably.