The continual struggle over abortion rights is the reflection of the fight to convert the secular United States into a Christian theocracy – whether or not the anti-abortion activists realize it. But there are other religions than Christianity, and a member of – ironically – the Satanists may have found a crack in the attack strategy of the Christian theocrats, as her case has won a transfer to the Missouri Supreme Court. From The Kansas City Star:
The Western District Court of Appeals ruled in her favor Tuesday, writing that her constitutional challenge — rare for its basis in religion — presented “a contested matter of right that involves fair doubt and reasonable room for disagreement.”
The woman, identified as Mary Doe in court documents, argued that her religion [Satanism] does not adhere to the idea that life begins at conception, and, because of that, the prerequisites for an abortion in Missouri are unconstitutionally violating her freedom of religion protected by the First Amendment. …
She claims that “the sole purpose of the law is to indoctrinate pregnant women into the belief held by some, but not all, Christians that a separate and unique human being begins at conception,” according to the court’s opinion. “Because the law does not recognize or include other beliefs, she contends that it establishes an official religion and makes clear that the state disapproves of her beliefs.”
The case would be the first of its kind to be heard by either the Missouri Supreme Court or U.S. Supreme Court, according to the Western District Court.
State supported indoctrination into a religion is definitely an un-American activity.
Let’s talk about this from the view of society, skipping the entire history of abortion, as I’m not up to date on it. As a secular nation, we recognize there are various religions with a variety of tenets, shared and unique, but we decline to recognize any as closer to being accurate than another, including atheists, who would contend that there is not a God and therefore they cannot be a religion; for the purposes of this argument, however, it’s convenient and undamaging to group them as another religion, devoid of insult to them.
Given this noncommittal, Constitutionally-required governmental attitude, the word ‘sacred’ becomes a term of convenience with no force of law, given the inevitable variety of incompatible definitions, and with a force of moral leverage only within the community which promulgates a meaning to it; these communities, being religious by definition, cannot force the term or its meaning into legal vocabularies. And to suggest that life is sacred, then, is meaningless in the governmental context. Any argument involving the concept of sacredness is irrelevant.
But governments have responsibilities to those they govern; they exist to protect and help those societies prosper. But how does one decide whether any activity at all should be illegal, by which I include abortion, murder, fraud, etc? While I do love liberty, all mature members of society admit to limits on liberty: your right to freedom stops where my nose begins, as the old saying goes. It’s a lovely and inspirational phrase, but lacks in analytical power.
So let me suggest that analyzing actions based on their potential to cause negative disruptions for society might be a start. First, a couple of examples.
- Murder: The use of death to settle minor arguments would inevitably tear families apart, destroy productivity, and dissolve the trust on which society best functions. This is, without a doubt, negative for society.
- Fraud: The inability to trust a seller to deliver the promised goods would halt the economy and leave us all starving. The importance of honor in transactions is of such importance to the proper functioning of the economy that it is important it be enforced.
- Theft: The unpredictable loss of one’s goods to a thief would halt the economy, since ownership would become an extremely fluid concept and, no doubt, result in a lot of murders. Again, bad for society.
So, abortion. How does abortion disrupt society? Well, honestly, it’s not clear that it does beyond the disturbance it causes in those whose religion (or, to be properly descriptive, whose religion’s representatives) teaches that it is a sin (another term of no legal significance); and I don’t observe general disruptions due to abortions, I certainly can think of no societies that have failed because of abortions.
In support of the proposition that abortion is not disruptive to society is the libertarian observation that the parents, in particular the women who are quite often responsible for the well-being of these potential children, are also best placed to decide whether or not a child is supportable in the current or most probable future environment. If there are already five children present and a sixth would stretch the resources too much, deciding to abort may be the wisest decision. If abortion is not available, now we have broken families, families in poverty, poorly educated children.
And a nation that may be falling behind rivals, because it’s wasting resources, human or otherwise, on poorly managed families.
There is a hidden factor here, which, if it were to change its character, would precipitate a need for some sort of denial of abortion, and that factor is the natural and fierce affection the normal parents have for their own children. This factor is perhaps the most important, because in its absence, the human species would disappear. Because of this, we needn’t worry about it unless we suffer extreme over-population and discover that, in such an environment, we behave like rats in similar straits. That is, we resort to cannibalism.
Some readers might ask about laws concerning the death of fetuses caused in the course of a crime, such as murder or other felony. Naturally, I could reply that they have been passed under a confused regime and are not germane to my argument, but I shan’t hide behind that legitimate argument. Instead, I would suggest that a fetus is a possession, to be dealt with by the best judgment of those who own it. It qualifies as a possession through the natural investment of resources and the assumption of risk, primarily bodily.
And the transition from possession to person has been, historically, problematic. One might suggest that in more militaristic societies, a person (or at least male) only achieves personhood after successfully finishing public service, and until then the state owns them. My take on it is that this is one of those problematic areas where the intersection between our intellectual concepts of how societies should work and how our biology works shows the unpleasantly ragged, even unfinished, seam. While the concept that life, both actual and potential, is sacred can have its societal advantages, in the end it is not congruent with a reality that makes it abundantly clear that life is merely something that doggedly continues and grows, restricted only by access to resources. It’s not life in itself that is sacred, but rather the desire for a placid and prosperous society which suggests that life should be treated with respect, but with the knowledge that the afore-described society is the sacred thing, and the respect for life the path to that goal.
Finally, how to describe infanticide by a mother under my proposal? Is the infant still a possession or a person? I submit the question ignores a probability, and that probability is this: a mother, whose healthy and instinctual urge is to care for the child, from all observation, must be quite dangerous and prone to other crime if she’ll commit infanticide. The murder of the infant should be taken as a symptom of a dangerous personality, who should be controlled (arrested) on detection. For that reason alone, the infant should be a person under law.
And the same goes for the father, or, for that matter, anyone else. Children, once accepted, are the future, and those who would murder such vulnerable people are a danger to all.
