To hear the Catholic bishops talk, you’d think today’s hot-button issue of contraceptive coverage in healthcare plans is one of “religious liberty,” where the government is denying Catholics the opportunity to practice their religion as they see fit. It’s all a question of personal freedom, they say. Of course they are not trying to take away anyone’s choices; they’re simply trying to preserve the choice for themselves to have private health insurance programs that do not offer the particular benefit of contraceptive coverage.

This is a smokescreen. The truth is that the Church would prefer to have the law ban all forms of contraception, for everyone. They know they can’t get that in 21^st century America, so they try to come as close as they can, nibbling away at the edges to stamp out all the contraception they can while hoping the pendulum eventually swings back their way.

Proof of this lies across the water, in the Philippines, where the hot issue right now is the umpteenth effort to pass what is known as the “Reproductive Health” bill, which is strongly pushed by the Filipino Freethinkers organization. Yesterday, 10,000 Catholics marched in the rain against passage of a law that the Philippines’ bishops call “a major attack on authentic human values … that all of us have cherished since time immemorial.” Bishop Arturo Bastes of Sorsogon even encourages some unspecified form of “civil disobedience” if the bill passes.

Contraception is already legal in the Philippines, but so many Filipinos are dirt-poor that millions cannot afford it. About a third of the country’s 94 million people live on $1 a day, and a packet of condoms would cost almost as much as the weekly food bill for many. Why so poor? Well, in large part because of overpopulation in a country with one of the highest birthrates in Asia, which in turn is caused by the lack of contraception, in a classic positive feedback loop. In fact, 10% of the Philippine population has simply abandoned the country, to try to find a decent life somewhere else. The Reproductive Health bill would make contraceptives freely available to all in the Philippines, just as the U.S. Medicaid program makes contraception available to women who qualify for it in this country. The bill doesn’t require anyone to use contraceptives, it doesn’t suggest any limit on family sizes, and it doesn’t authorize abortion, which is prohibited by the Philippine constitution. It simply gives poor women a realistic choice, a chance to let their own consciences be their guides. Since 44% of pregnancies are unwanted among the Philippines’ poorest classes, this is a choice many of them would evidently like to have. Moreover, about 90,000 Filipinas suffer from illegal abortion complications each year, and an estimated 1,000 of them die; among those who carry their pregnancies to term, the childbirth mortality rate is quadruple the Millennium Development Goals rate.

A church that truly believed in “freedom of conscience” would be all for giving people choices. A church that wanted contraception to be illegal for everyone, period, would be against it. A church not bashful about employing the most blatant hypocrisy to get its way would say it’s for “freedom of conscience” in one country, while conniving against freedom of conscience in another.

Philippine congressman Manny Pacquiao, better known as the best boxer in the world and by far the most famous person in the country, pulls no punches. He simply points out that “God said go forth and multiply. He did not say go and have just one or two children.” This mirrors the official church catechism position that “Sacred Scripture and the Church’s traditional practice see in large families a sign of God’s blessing.” Interestingly, Pacquiao’s wife admits that she actually uses contraceptive pills herself; but rules God experts impose on others often don’t apply to themselves.

Until 2008, contraceptives were provided to poor Filipinas by a U.S. AID program, but the Bush administration caved in to Catholic pressure and phased that out. I don’t know whether it’s budgetary considerations or continued deference to God experts that has prevented the Obama administration from resurrecting the program, but this is really something the Philippines ought to be doing for itself anyway; we’re a little short of cash these days.

The Philippine church has its own interesting approach to the birthrate issue. Couples should simply abstain from sexual relations altogether during Lent, which comprises 40/365 or about 11% of the year. That’s what Archbishop Paciano Aniceto of Pampanga, chairman of the Philippine bishops’ commission on family and life, recommends. After all, he says, “It’s in the Bible that the Jewish priest cannot officiate in the Holy of Holies unless he abstains from conjugal act with the wife.”

The bishops’ objection to the Reproductive Health bill is not limited to its contraceptive choice aspect. They also hate the fact that it provides for comprehensive sex education in Philippine schools. “Sex is not a game that should be taught to children,” harrumphs Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales. A little education might be useful in a country where 22% of married women of reproductive age want to avoid pregnancy but are still not using any family planning method.

Since the argument against freedom of choice for contraception is tough for the church to make, it is creating red herrings to attack. One senator has darkly announced his discovery of a “plot of a foreign group to smuggle abortion into the bill,” even though the bill doesn’t include abortion, never has, and cannot do so under the Philippine constitution. In fact, the bill actually increases the penalties for already-illegal abortion. Disregarding the old-fashioned preference for some semblance of factuality in argument makes the church’s task much easier; Archbishop Cruz warns that artificial contraceptives are “designed to ruin health.” Although the Philippines’ AIDS infection rate doubled when the US condom program wound down, the bishops claim that condoms are ineffective in preventing AIDS, in the face of incontrovertible WHO evidence to the contrary.

Opponents of the bill argue that overpopulation is not the Philippines’ main problem, corruption is. Maybe so. It’s interesting, though, that the political leader of the anti-contraception forces is former president Gloria Arroyo, who recently emerged from imprisonment for, um, corruption. The current president, Benigno Aquino, has become a strong supporter of the bill, despite the fact that the church threatens to excommunicate him if it passes. (If America were to elect a Catholic president who continued to run a Medicaid system that offers the same contraception choices that the Philippine bill would offer, would he or she be excommunicated as well? Since Medicaid is as much a state as a federal program, how about a Catholic governor?)

Here’s an argument being test-marketed in the Philippines that you can expect to start hearing in America: many common forms of contraception actually are abortion, so a legal ban on abortion means a legal ban on at least these forms of contraception as well. IUD’s, for example. These don’t prevent the sperm from fertilizing the egg, they prevent the fertilized egg from implanting itself. In other words, they murder little human beings. The same thing can happen with the contraceptive pill; sometimes it prevents fertilization, but other times it kills off a newly fertilized egg, which is why the “Plan B” post-sex pill is really just a higher dosage of the regular pill. How to tell the difference? Well, you can’t. And when you’re dealing with human life, better safe than sorry, right? So when President Romney replaces Justice Ginsburg with the fifth vote against Roe v. Wade and states start re-enforcing existing criminal abortion laws, expect some challenges to these forms of contraception as well, with today’s “freedom of conscience” rhetoric quietly shelved.

Luis Granados

I was shocked the first time I saw a pregnant teenager. I was in the ninth grade, and a girl I had known for three years came back from summer vacation with a big, hard belly. She walked the halls quietly with her dark eyes downcast, making sure to not to speak what was already obvious. I’d heard about teenagers having unprotected sex and getting pregnant, but I’d never seen a real live 14-year-old mother-to-be. It was surreal.

After that, pregnancies were no longer surprising at my Gulfport, Mississippi, school. Upperclassmen and freshmen, white and black, popular and not-so-popular girls grew bellies. The most seemingly innocent girls in school disappeared from the social scene only to return with child or with adoption rumors swirling over their heads. Some even came back with husbands, but that was rare.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mississippi had 55 births per 1,000 teens aged 15 to 19 in 2010, 60 percent higher than the U.S. average. Having seen so many young pregnant women during my high school years–their college dreams stalled, their families further strained–it pains me to know that teenage girls in Mississippi may no longer have the option to terminate their pregnancy if that’s what they decide is best for them.  HB1390, a law signed in April that would require a facility’s physicians to have admitting privileges at a local hospital and be board-certified obstetrician-gynecologists, in effect ends abortion entirely in the state. Because such privileges are tough to acquire, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the only abortion clinic left, would be shuttered.

While U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III continues to block the law thus keeping the clinic open for now, I feel it may all be for naught. Gov. Phil Bryant couldn’t care less about not having a place for women to seek safe abortions in the state, and Republican Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves thinks the law “protect[s] women.” Neither of them seem to have considered that low-income, mostly black women are the ones who will suffer from this law. And even though my old Southern Baptist church is home to many of these women, I can’t help feeling that everyone is dancing in the pews. They’re not only “protecting” women’s rights, but God’s plan. That’s not easy to fight with.

Abortions are certainly not the only answer for unexpected pregnancies, but it would be a disgrace, to say the least, if Mississippi women lose that option entirely. It’s already enough that women have to travel to the state’s capital for the procedure–driving 200 miles away to Alabama, Louisiana, or Tennessee puts even more financial strain on families.

High school students have enough to contend with as it is. The GOP-led Mississippi legislature, however, doesn’t seem to care. They’re doing what they think is divinely ordered, a noble cause to save all of God’s precious unborn children. Sadly, impoverished girls and women will foot the bill.

I hope that this doesn’t fall under the category of too good to be true (hat tip to Feministing):

Operation Rescue, one of the nation’s highest-profile groups in the anti-abortion movement, has told its supporters it is facing a “major financial crisis” and is very close to shutting down unless emergency help arrives soon.

The group’s president, Troy Newman, blamed the economic downturn for its money woes in a desperate plea e-mailed Monday night to donors. But the Wichita-based organization has also been under attack from both fringe anti-abortion militants and abortion rights supporters since the May 31 shooting death of Dr. George Tiller.

The Associated Press goes on to report that, according to Troy Newman, donations to the organization are down 30 to 40 percent this year.

Why could that be? Could it be that people have had enough of the violent anti-abortion rhetoric that may have emboldened Tiller’s assassin, Scott Roeder? Could it be that more people have come to realize that Operation Rescue represents the most extreme elements of the anti-choice movement? Or perhaps people were put off by idiotic stunts like this?

The Associated Press makes a note of how Operation Rescue was linked in the media to the assassination of Dr. Tiller:

Tiller’s killing has also been a public relations nightmare for the group — despite its public condemnation of the slaying — since the name and phone number of the group’s senior policy adviser was found in Roeder’s car when he was arrested. A television crew zoomed in on the scrawled note inside the car in images that made their way to the Internet.

Furthermore, the president of the National Abortion Federation, Vicki Saporta, noted in the article that there is no way that Operation Rescue can be separated from Tiller’s murder, especially since the organization moved itself to Wichita, Kansas, in order to maintain a constant level of harassment at Tiller’s clinic, and because Roeder obviously had dealings with Operation Rescue’s staff.

Time will tell what this will spell for the anti-choice movement in the United States. But I welcome the possibility that Operation Rescue will fade from the scene. While I doubt that all of us will ever reach consensus on reproductive rights, I do hope that this is a sign that Americans are becoming less tolerant of open harassment and violent rhetoric on the part of the anti-choice movement.

I’m sure you’ve heard of Randall Terry, who for years was the face of the anti-choice movement in the United States. Even though he hasn’t been the head of Operation Rescue, an organization that he founded, since 1989, he has managed to keep his name out there as a prominent anti-abortion and anti-reproductive choice activist. Although his star has faded in recent years, he is trying harder than ever to make a comeback to national prominence.

The Washington Post has an article today about some of Terry’s recent efforts to stay relevant and keep his face on the national anti-abortion brand. It begins with the startlingly creepy image of Terry and his acolytes smearing fake blood all over their hands and copies of the Roe v. Wade ruling while standing outside the confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor. And it’s all downhill from there, as Terry tells the journalist that using fake blood for his protests came to him in a “vision” (is that what he vaingloriously calls having a thought?) while he was planning ways to disrupt the hearings.

It turns out, though, that this was not his first vision; as the Washington Post article states, in reference to the founding of Operation Rescue:

Terry, 50, was in his 20s when he founded Operation Rescue — the result, he said, of a vision from God that appeared before his eyes at a prayer meeting. The vision was, he said, a scroll with instructions to stop abortion. Along with the scroll, he saw thousands of people gathered in front of abortion clinics to save babies, and he saw himself being interviewed on “Donahue,” the popular TV talk show hosted by Phil Donahue.

After serving as a primary spokesperson in favor of federal interference in the Terri Schiavo case in 2005, the Post states that Terry had more or less faded from view for several years. But he is on the upswing once more, getting his name back in the press for the demonstrations against President Obama’s speech at Notre Dame University and his unbelievably hateful comments after the assassination of Dr. George Tiller. (Amongst other things, he said, “George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God…Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God.)

And now he is attempting to lead the charge against President Obama’s middle-of-the-road Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor. Adele M. Stan of AlterNet attended Terry’s demonstration this past Sunday on the steps of the US Supreme Court, and reported on Terry’s demand that the anti-abortion senators filibuster Sotomayor’s nomination:

Terry made the camera operators move forward and adjust their mikes. “Pro-life senators have a moral obligation to filibuster Sotomayor,” he began. “Pro-life Republicans, pro-life Democrats seduce us with their words. They use our money, they take our man-hours, they take our votes, and then throw us away like a used-up mistress after an election. It’s disgusting! If Sen. [Sam] Brownback and Sen. [John] McCain and Sen. [Knute] Nelson and Sen. [Bob] Casey believe that Roe v. Wade must be overturned, then they must filibuster Sotomayor. You can’t say you want to overturn Roe on the one hand, and then vote for somebody who will uphold Roe on the other. It is treachery, hypocrisy, laziness and betrayal.”

He certainly sounds frustrated! Perhaps this ties into Amanda Marcotte’s assertion in the Guardian that Republicans overall have not made abortion front and center in Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings, opting to focus on race and gender-based attacks against her instead. Says Marcotte:

Anti-choice activists used to own the issue of Supreme Court nominations so thoroughly, they were able to bully George Bush out of nominating Harriet Miers, despite her anti-choice views, in no small part because they simply don’t trust women not to stick by their own. Obviously, with Republicans out of power, anti-choice activists can’t block the nomination, but now they can’t even get Republicans to consider their demands a top priority.

The most obvious reason is that gender has been demoted to a second-tier issue so that Republicans can work more efficiently with arguments over race against Sotomayor, playing off anti-Hispanic sentiment and rightwing folk beliefs about a Latino “takeover” to inculcate resentment in their base. Anti-choicers are feeling the sting of falling out of fashion in the circles of rightwing nastiness and resentment.

Marcotte goes on to say that she also believes Republicans may be a little more toned down on anti-choice rhetoric this time around because of the recent murder of Dr. George Tiller. Perhaps they don’t want to be associated with a movement that is so violent in the eyes of many Americans. She’s not optimistic, though, that this distance will last.

I would be shocked if the Republicans filibuster Sotomayor, and I’m sure she’ll sail through confirmation. So the real question here is, what does the future hold for Randall Terry after his stunts at the Capitol are over? The Post notes that some anti-choice activists are less than enthusiastic about his desire to be a more public figure once again:

Leaders of the antiabortion movement are cringing at Terry’s sudden return. They say his incendiary rhetoric and showy tactics turn off ordinary Americans and reflect Terry’s struggle to regain his glory years.

“It’s sad in a way,” said Fredericksburg antiabortion activist Patrick Mahoney, who was close to Terry at one time but, like others in the movement, is now estranged from him. “It’s almost like a heavyweight boxer who’s past his prime. The movement has gone by him.”

While I fear the harmful consequences of his horrific rhetoric and stunts, particularly because they could inspire further violent acts, nevertheless I do feel that Randall Terry serves a useful function for those of us that favor reproductive rights. With his stunts, his jugs of fake blood, his followers disrupting Senate Judiciary Committee meetings, and his references to having “visions” that guide how he organizes his protests, he does represent one idea very well: that his anti-choice position is on the outer fringe. He makes it clear that his strong belief that women should not have control over their own bodies is in fact an extremist position to be defended by fringe and even dangerous characters such as him, operating on the margins of society. His extremist tactics lay bare the extremist nature of the entire anti-choice stance. Even so, we cannot discount the constant threat that Terry’s ugly and explosive language poses. He represents the worst of the intertwining of religion and social activism, when a fanatic believes that he speaks on behalf of his god and that his actions bear a holy endorsement. And we certainly know what kind of trouble that can lead to.

(Crossposted at Friendly Atheist)

Is religion the primary source of people’s moral judgments?

It looks like a nation’s culture plays a larger role than religion itself. David Hume had an interesting post on SecularRight.org last week examining data from the World Values Survey on abortion opinions between religions and between religions within a country:

All things equal there was an international tendency for Catholics to be somewhat more anti-abortion than non-Catholics, but a far better predictor of attitudes was not religion but nationality. In other words Catholic Germans resembled Protestant Germans while Catholic Chileans resembled Protestant Chileans.

But what about religion and irreligion more generally on the international level? That is, do religious and irreligious people within a nation tend to correlate in their attitudes toward abortion? Do atheists in Germany resemble religious people in Germany more than they do atheists in Nigeria?

Lo and behond, atheists in Germany DO resemble religious people in Germany more than they do atheists in Nigeria.

It turns out that there’s huge variability between nations’ views on abortion, and it’s a better predictor than religion. To put it another way: If religion were the primary source of moral judgments, the best way to guess an individual’s views on abortion would be to know that person’s religion. But country is more closely tied – it’s more helpful to know what country the person is from than his religion.

Hume doesn’t include the trendline’s equation in his blog post, but he was helpful enough to include the raw data, which I used to create my own scatterplot:

Here’s an explanation of what you’re looking at:

Each data point is one country. Its horizontal position is what percent of the religious population in that country said abortion is never justified. The country’s vertical position is what percent of the NON-religious population said abortion is never justified. The red line is what we would expect if religion had no effect on people’s opinion. If a country is below the red line (as almost all are), then its religious population is more opposed to abortion than the non-religious population.

On average, those who identify as religious in a country are 13.2% more likely than the non-religious to say that abortion is never acceptable.

What should we take away from this? Well, as always, correlation is not the same as causation. Religious individuals are more likely to interact with their community, which could shape their opinions. People opposed to abortion could be more likely to seek out religious groups.

I suspect that these are true, but it also seems likely that religion does influence opinion. If you believe that a god spoke out against homosexuality, you’ll be more likely to oppose gay relationships.

… It’s just not the biggest influence. Secular society has a culture of its own, one with a huge impact on views. I’d bet it even influences how people interpret their scripture. People might claim to derive moral values from a holy book, but it looks much more as if they get their views largely from society and then skew them a bit based on their book.

What do you get from the data?

In the aftermath of the tragic assassination of Dr. George Tiller, we need to remember what is at stake in the debate over abortion. Indeed, we don’t need to use our imaginations to envision what our nation would be like without legalized abortion; we only need to look at countries like Tanzania, where women suffer and die from policies that religious fanatics are trying to impose in our own country right now. The New York Times reports (h/t to Hullabaloo):

Abortion is illegal in Tanzania (except to save the mother’s life or health), so women and girls turn to amateurs, who may dose them with herbs or other concoctions, pummel their bellies or insert objects vaginally. Infections, bleeding and punctures of the uterus or bowel can result, and can be fatal. Doctors treating women after these bungled attempts sometimes have no choice but to remove the uterus.

Pregnancy and childbirth are among the greatest dangers that women face in Africa, which has the world’s highest rates of maternal mortality — at least 100 times those in developed countries. Abortion accounts for a significant part of the death toll.

Maternal mortality is high in Tanzania: for every 100,000 births, 950 women die. In the United States, the figure is 11, and it is even lower in other developed countries. But Tanzania’s record is neither the best nor the worst in Africa. Many other countries have similar statistics; quite a few do better and a handful do markedly worse.

Even more stunning is the effect that backroom abortions have on maternal mortality around the world:

Worldwide, there are 19 million unsafe abortions a year, and they kill 70,000 women (accounting for 13 percent of maternal deaths), mostly in poor countries like Tanzania where abortion is illegal, according to the World Health Organization. More than two million women a year suffer serious complications. According to Unicef, unsafe abortions cause 4 percent of deaths among pregnant women in Africa, 6 percent in Asia and 12 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Is it clear now what we’re talking about when we talk about choice? Is it clear now that when we talk about access to safe and legal abortion, we’re talking about saving tens of thousands of lives and preventing millions of hospitalizations and crippling aftereffects every year?

Keeping abortion outlawed does not actually reduce the number of abortions; rather, it reduces the safety of those performed. The Guttmacher Institute reports:

Legal restrictions on abortion do not affect its incidence. For example, the abortion rate is 29 [per 1,000 women aged 15–44] in Africa, where abortion is illegal in many circumstances in most countries, and it is 28 [per 1,000 women aged 15–44] in Europe, where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds. The lowest rates in the world are in Western and Northern Europe, where abortion is accessible with few restrictions.

Where abortion is legal and permitted on broad grounds, it is generally safe, and where it is illegal in many circumstances, it is often unsafe. For example, in South Africa, the incidence of infection resulting from abortion decreased by 52% after the abortion law was liberalized in 1996.

The anti-choice movement won’t paint this picture for you, but this is what they’re advocating: a world where women do not have legal rights over their own bodies and are injured or die due to lack of access to safe and legal abortion. It is a horrifying vision, but it’s one that some anti-choice people are willing to kill for. The best response to the terror waged by Dr. Tiller’s murderer and the hatred of the anti-choice movement is to rededicate ourselves to expanding access to safe and legal reproductive health services and ensure that clinics receive the support and security that they need to operate safely. And we need to ensure that freedom of choice in the United States rests on more than Supreme Court rulings by codifying a right to reproductive choice into law.

There are some things I don’t like about American culture, but stories like this one in the Times Online really make me glad to live here:

A group of Afghan women who braved an enraged mob yesterday to protest against an “abhorrent” new Afghan law had to be rescued by police from a hail of stones and abuse.

The protest by about 200 women, unprecedented in recent Afghanistan history, was directed at the Shia Family Law passed last month by the Afghan parliament which appears to legalise marital rape and child marriage.

The rally, staged by mostly young women with their faces exposed, was a highly inflammatory act of defiance in a country as conservative as Afghanistan. It provoked a furious reaction from local men and a rapidly expanding mob threatened to swamp the demonstrators as they tried to approach the Afghan parliament.

The Times Online article quotes supporters of the law:

Those in favour of the new law chanted “Down with the Christians. Down with the apostates.” At one stage both sides chanted “We want honour and dignity for women” — reflecting their starkly different interpretations of the new law.

“We think those who oppose this law in fact oppose the Koran,” said Nesa Naseri, a female student of Sharia Studies who took part in the women’s counter-demonstration.

“This law does not approve rape, it is rather about loyalty of wife to husband and husband to wife. Rape is what you can see in the West, where men don’t feel responsibility for their wives and leave them to go with several men.”

If “loyalty of the wife to husband” implies that she must have sex with him when he demands, I’m thinking the word ‘rape’ is appropriate. It might also have something to do with the statistic quoted in the Times Online article that 57% of all Afghan brides are under the age of 16. By the way, in the first line the word ‘abhorrent’ is in quotes because that was President Obama’s reaction to the bill. I’m with him.

New Development:

In an article today entitled “Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai vows to change Afghan marital rape law“:

KABUL, Afghanistan – President Hamid Karzai said Thursday that the controversial law permitting men to rape their wives will be changed.

…

The law has drawn international criticism, and Karzai’s comments came a day after several hundred protesters demonstrated against it. Critics say the law bars women from opting out of sex, effectively legalizing marital rape.

The measure applies to the 20% of Afghans who are Shiite Muslims. It was part of a massive piece of legislation aimed at bolstering the nation’s Shiite minority.

The Pope’s visit to Africa has already produced some interesting quotes for discussion, but in reading the Boston Globe today, I found other disturbing passages:

In his homily, Benedict expressed compassion for African children being kidnapped and forced to fight by rebel groups trying to carve up parts of Africa.

“God loves you, he has not forgotten you,” he said in a message to these children.

Child soldiers have been used by rebels in eastern Congo and by Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army. An estimated 3,500 children are still with armed groups in Congo alone.

Of course he hasn’t ‘forgotten’ them; the Catholic god isn’t anthropomorphized with human flaws like Zeus.  So what can we take away from the Pope’s message?  God is aware of the suffering children, loves them, and yet they are still suffering.  The more I think about it, the more I understand why the Problem of Suffering has caused theologians so much trouble over the years.

Many people act as if they believe that God intervenes in the natural world.  They credit God with countless wonderful occurrences like a medical recovery, an overwhelming emotional experience, or a hurricane sent to punish the sinful.  But anyone who believes God has ever taken action in the world must therefore believe that God chose to act in those situations.  He must choose not to act in the situations of suffering children.

The Pope seems to be telling the children: “You’re suffering intensely here in this world, but cheer up!  An entity in another world loves you!”  I suppose it’s better than when the Catholic Church did the reverse earlier this month.  A nine year-old girl was raped by her step-father and became pregnant with twins.  Carrying the pregnancy to term would have put her life in danger, so she had an abortion.  The church’s reaction to the whole thing?  Excommunicate the girl’s mother and the doctor.  It’s as if they were saying: “Your family is suffering intensely here in this world, but God is displeased with your decision.”

The church is ignoring suffering in this world – sometimes even exacerbating it, as with AIDS in Africa – because they have beliefs about another world.  I would love it if we all spent our energy focusing on this world, our opinions, and our suffering.  Thoughts about God’s opinion are distracting us.  He isn’t saving the poor and the hungry.  In his new book Losing my Religion, William Lobdell describes the reaction of a friend who came to the realization:

“It nearly drove him insane that no loving God was protecting his children.  I had the advantage of seeing too much on the religion beat.  I knew of many times when faithful Christian parents lost their children.  I hadn’t seen any evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, that children were safer with God watching over them.  It reminds me of a bumper sticker peddled by atheists that makes the point rather bluntly: ’20,000 children died of hunger today.  Why should God answer YOUR prayers?’”

He doesn’t.  If we stop holding mistaken beliefs about the supernatural, we can do a better job caring for this world.

Yesterday the Colorado state legislature voted on a bill that would require the health care providers of pregnant women to give them HIV tests (although the women may opt out). The reasons are pretty clear–if the mother is HIV-positive, it helps to know so that the baby can be protected and treated. The measure passed 32-1. The lone dissenter was Republican state Sen. Dave Schultheis. Why did he vote against the bill? According to the Colorado Independent, he claims that HIV “stems from sexual promiscuity” and didn’t want to “remove the negative consequences that take place from poor behavior and unacceptable behavior.”

My first reaction was that it’s not the mother being punished for promiscuity; it’s the child who doesn’t get treated for HIV. I was sure that Schultheis had just failed to think it through because he couldn’t really mean THAT, could he? Apparently he could:

“What I’m hoping is that, yes, that person may have AIDS, have it seriously as a baby and when they grow up, but the mother will begin to feel guilt as a result of that,” he said. “The family will see the negative consequences of that promiscuity and it may make a number of people over the coming years begin to realize that there are negative consequences and maybe they should adjust their behavior.”

I was horrified when I read that. There are many ways to contract HIV besides careless and promiscuous sex–blood transfusions come to mind. But even for someone who believes promiscuity is a sin, it is despicable to advocate that the child suffer for it. It is contrary to our conception of justice. Luckily the thirty-two other legislators agreed.

Crazy things keep coming out of Texas (where I once lived decades ago) – the Texas pledge of “one state under God,” public school Bible courses, Religious Viewpoints Anti-discrimination Act and now, defining a fetus (or unborn child to some) as a “person” for purposes of the capital murder statute.

My real concern is not with the bonus for prosecutors — two convictions for one murder. That’s right. Under TX Penal Code 1.07(a)(26), an “‘Individual’ means a human being who is alive, including an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth.”

No, my concern is that the Texas legislature routinely drinks Christian right Kool-Aid, which can be seen from above example of its definition of individual being religious-based, not science-based.

Two weeks ago on Nov. 20, a Texas Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction of Jacob Eguia for capital
murder for causing the death of Ruby Elaine Garcia and her fetus during the same criminal transaction. Eguia was sentenced to life in prison, which was the only possible sentence since the State did not seek the death penalty.

Among other defenses, Eguia filed a motion to quash the indictment against him for causing the death of Garcia’s fetus because the Texas statute that defines an “unborn child” as a “person” for purposes of the capital murder statute is unconstitutional. In particular, he alleged that the definition violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of U.S. Constitution because the definition “has the effect of endorsing religion as it is based solely upon a religious belief that life begins at conception.” (Eguia also complained of a violation of Texas’ constitution – “no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious society or mode of worship.” Tex. Const. Art I, § 6.)

In holding that the Texas law defining an “individual” did not violate either the U.S. or Texas Constitutions, the appeals court said: “A statute is not automatically rendered unconstitutional simply because it advances ideals that harmonize with religious ideals. Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. 297, 319-20 … (noting that Judeo-Christian religions’ forbiddance of stealing does not preclude state or federal legislatures from outlawing larceny).”

The appeals court also said that Eguia also “fail[ed] to demonstrate how the statute’s principal or primary effect advances religion, or how the statute fosters excessive government entanglement with religion.”

I believe that the appeals court analogy with stealing is misplaced because, unlike stealing, the notion that life begins at conception is uniquely a religious viewpoint.

However, because I am not familiar with the trial record, it would be inappropriate for me to comment on whether or not the defendant sufficiently proved of his Establishment Clause violation claim.

Instead, I’ll close by saying that in our judicial system the deck is stacked heavily against those who claim a violation of the principle of separation of church and state and that complainants probably need two, three or four times as much evidence as they think would be sufficient. What is needed is a smoking gun (so to speak) where there is a record of a religious purpose for enacting the challenged legislation.