WHY would a woman put a leech inside her body, in the most private of female places? Why would she put cayenne pepper there?
Why might a woman swallow lye? Gunpowder? Why would a woman hit herself about the abdomen with a meat pulverizer? A brickbat? Throw herself down the stairs?
Why would she syringe herself, internally, with turpentine? Gin? Drink laundry bluing?
Why might she probe herself with a piece of whalebone? A turkey feather? A knitting needle?
Why would she consume medicine made of pulverized Spanish fly? How about powdered ergot, a poisonous fungus? Or strychnine, a poison?
Why would she take a bath in scalding water? Or spend the night in the snow?
Because she wanted to end a pregnancy. Historically, women have chosen all those methods to induce abortion. The first known descriptions appeared around 1500 B.C. in the Ebers Papyrus, an ancient Egyptian medical text that mentioned an abortion engineered by a plant-fiber tampon coated with honey and crushed dates.
For most of history, abortion has been a dangerous procedure a woman attempted to perform on herself. In private. Without painkillers.
What is most striking about this history of probes and poisons is that throughout all recorded time, there have been women so desperate to end a pregnancy that they were willing to endure excruciating pain and considerable risk, including infection, sterility, permanent injury, puncture and hemorrhage, to say nothing of shame and ostracism. Where abortion was illegal, they risked prosecution and imprisonment. And death, of course.
The newspapers of the mid-1800s were full of advertisements for potions, pills and powders that claimed to cause miscarriage. “French Periodical Pills: Warranted to Have the Desired Effect in All Cases” was one such knowing ad that appeared in The Boston Daily Times in 1845. Those ads spoke euphemistically of “curing female complaint,” or “renovating” or “unblocking” the womb. They treated a problem that women called “suppression of the courses,” the idea being that monthly “turns” were the norm and that any cessation of normal periods meant they were “suppressed,” or that the womb was “obstructed.”
Many of the cures for these “ailments” were nothing but sugar and dust. But some of them were nonetheless quite effective. Those were the dangerous ones, containing as they commonly did, turpentine, opium, pennyroyal, aloes, snakeroot, myrrh or oil of rue. One of the most common ingredients was ergot, or claviceps purpurea, a fungus found on the stalks of grain. Women as early as the 16th century had observed that cows that consumed ergot miscarried their calves. The fungus, however, had disastrous side effects, called ergotism, also known as St. Anthony’s fire. Symptoms included a burning sensation in the limbs because of blood constriction, which led to gangrene. The poison could also cause seizures, itching, psychosis, vomiting, contractions, diarrhea and death.
Oil of tansy was another common abortifacient. Here is John Irving’s unforgettable description, from his scrupulously researched novel “The Cider House Rules [ http://www.amazon.com/Cider-House-Rules-John-Irving/dp/0345387651 ],” of a doctor trying to save a woman after too many tansy-oil miscarriages: “Her abdomen was full of blood...but when he tried to sew up [the] uterus, his stitches simply pulled through the tissue, which he noticed was the texture of a soft cheese...his finger passed as easily through the intestine as through gelatin.” Tansy oil rots internal organs.
Notwithstanding such ghastly scenarios, abortion did not always — or even usually — result in death. Many women survived it, which is why for most of history it was one of the main forms of birth control. If they did choose to enlist help, they most often called upon another woman, usually a skilled midwife. But by the 1850s, male doctors began to take over all aspects of women’s reproductive care, sidelining midwives and leading the movement to outlaw the practice of abortion. Did they save some women’s lives by unmasking the dangers of “medicines” to cause miscarriage? Undoubtedly. But by withholding midwives’ knowledge of how to provide a relatively safe abortion in the early stage of pregnancy, they drove other women to undergo the procedure at the hands of the unskilled, until the United States Supreme Court made abortion legal on Jan. 22, 1973.
Women’s historical willingness to endure horrible dangers, to submit to extreme and prolonged pain, to risk grave injury and death rather than remain pregnant, tells us something important about female desperation and determination, and the price women were — and still are — willing to pay to control their own bodies. What it tells us is that women will always find ways to end an unwanted pregnancy, no matter what the law says, no matter the risks to themselves.
If the Supreme Court were ever to overturn Roe v. Wade, or if anti-abortion forces continue to successfully chisel away at a woman’s access to safe abortion, many women will still choose abortion — by their own hands. Leeches, lye and Spanish fly are still among the many tools available to the self-abortionist. So are knitting needles, with predictable, disastrous consequences. There is no law that will end the practice of abortion, only laws that can protect a woman’s right to choose it, or not, and to keep it the safe and private procedure still available to us in 2013, 40 years after the Supreme Court made it legal.
Sarah Palin: Roe v. Wade Anniversary Highlights Obama 'Hypocrisy'
By Mollie Reilly Posted: 01/22/2013 7:28 pm EST | Updated: 01/23/2013 1:30 am EST
As pro-choice advocates and abortion foes alike marked the anniversary [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/roe-v-wade-ruling_n_2529451.html ] of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling, Sarah Palin criticized President Obama for advocating gun control as a way to protect children while simultaneously supporting abortion rights.
In a post on her Facebook page, the former Alaska governor and one-time Republican vice presidential candidate charged Obama with "hypocrisy" for "boldly highlighting children" in anti-gun violence speeches while supporting an "abortion agenda."
"Using kids as the backdrop for his gun control speech, the President claimed his commitment to young ones," Palin wrote [ https://www.facebook.com/sarahpalin/posts/10151382475153588 ]. "The hypocrisy of it all, however, is that while the President publicly acknowledges the value of “even one life” when it advances his own political agenda, he fails to acknowledge as much when it comes to protecting the lives of children soon to be born."
Palin continues: "See, his commitment to our children is selective. When children in the womb are on the chopping block, the President is silent. When he places the Second Amendment, however, on the chopping block, children are his focus. Never mind the fact that his latest proposals would not protect them from evildoers and would, in fact, leave responsible, law-abiding citizens less able to protect them as well ... Clearly, there is no shortage of hypocrisy coming out of Washington, and this is just one example."
The 1973 Supreme Court decision, which established a woman's constitutional right to an abortion, marked its 40th anniversary on Tuesday. While the ruling continues to draw ire from pro-life advocates, new poll data signals a shift in opinion about the landmark decision. According to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/majority-americans-abortion-legal-40-years-roe-v-wade_n_2527174.html ], a majority of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in most cases, while 70 percent believe the ruling should be upheld -- an all-time high approval rating in the poll's history.
Palin is not the first conservative to draw a link between gun control rhetoric and abortion in the weeks since the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School reawakened the national debate on gun violence.
Last week, radio host Rush Limbaugh agreed with a caller who questioned the renewed focus on gun policy while abortion remains legal.
By Minister Leslie Watson Malachi Director of African American Religious Affairs, People For the American Way Posted: 01/22/2013 10:38 am
"I am my mother's child. The one she told one day many years ago, as I laid on a hospital table that, 'God did not intend for your life to be like mine!' The forms had been signed, we were in agreement and I was tearfully rolled into the very cold, unfriendly operating room.
"It was 1974, one year after the landmark decision Roe v. Wade legalized abortion. I was fourteen and my mother was twenty-eight, on welfare with five other children. Fourteen at the time of my birth, she was what we now call 'an unwed teen mother.' On this day, at that moment, the decision was not about legislation or white men in suits far away. It was not about the doctor, the nurse, or the technicians. It was just the two of us and God."
I wrote those words, published [ http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/watson.html ] in In Motion magazine, 15 years ago. I had at that point devoted more than a decade to working with the black church to fight for reproductive rights in my home state of Louisiana and in Washington, making sure that girls and women like me have not only reproductive choice, but reproductive justice -- the choice to determine our own futures and the justice that comes from a system that respects us as human beings with equal dignity and equal rights.
Today, on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and after 15 more years of fighting and praying, I see many reasons to celebrate. I am grateful for those who continue to fight for women's rights in the halls in Congress and in front of clinics; to the doctors and medical staff who risk their own safety to care for women in need; to the women who must shut out the noise of politics to make the most personal of decisions; and to the family and friends who stand behind them. Behind an issue that inspires so much venom and shouting, it's easy to forget that there are countless men and women who are quietly fighting for justice on a small, personal scale.
But on the national scale we see a very different picture. In 2011, state legislatures passed 92 laws [ http://www.guttmacher.org/media/inthenews/2012/01/05/endofyear.html ] restricting reproductive justice and many more followed in 2012. Republican presidential candidates and their allies in Congress went after women's right to birth control, claiming that an employer should decide whether a woman's health care covers her contraceptive care. Prominent figures on the right dismissed the wrenching circumstances of women who become pregnant by rape, claiming it wasn't possible or that some rapes are more "legitimate" than others. While so many Americans grappled with their own and their loved ones' decisions with decency and grace, our politicians experienced a crisis of empathy and a deficit of facts.
Particularly galling is the campaign by some far-right groups to promote the idea that legal abortion is a "genocide" of African Americans. This campaign seeks to paint black women as passive victims rather than as fully realized human beings facing real, tough choices. In the process, it has helped to make the political debate about reproductive rights even more about caricatures of women and less about real women.
Polling consistently shows that Americans' personal views of reproductive rights are not always the same as their political views. A recent poll by Planned Parenthood found [ http://www.buzzfeed.com/annanorth/planned-parenthood-moving-away-from-choice ] that 23 percent thought abortion was "morally acceptable" and 40 percent said it "depends on the situation." That "depends" is important -- as has been the case with the LGBT rights, civil rights, paycheck fairness and gun violence prevention movements, sometimes strongly held political opinions must bend when they run up against the real experiences of a real person.
I celebrate 1974 and the start of my "pro-choice, pro-faith" journey. I have hope for the future of reproductive rights. Roe v. Wade still holds in the courts. And last year, as attacks on reproductive rights reached a fever pitch, women across the country rose up with their votes. Women didn't ask our politicians to make the personal political. But we must continue to fight back by making the political personal. This is about choice and it's about justice -- for every woman, no matter her story.
Forty years after the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, one state may be on the verge of becoming abortion-free.
By Alissa Quart Jan 22 2013, 9:48 AM ET
It was the week before Thanksgiving and Dr. Willie Parker was making small talk with a group of patients at an abortion clinic in Jackson, Mississippi. "What are your plans for the holidays? What's your mother cooking?" They laughed as they discussed turkey and dressing. After a bit more chatter, Parker got serious. "I hope this will get done what you want to get done," he said as an assistant went around the room, dispensing a pill per girl along with small plastic cup of water.
Some of the half-a-dozen young women in the room were awkward, others assured. They were skinny, overweight; some were still in braces. Some were in high school and had mothers waiting for them in the next room. Some had children at home.
"If you feel nauseated, eat some Jolly Ranchers," Parker continued. "Which flavor do you like?" Parker was usually Latinate in his speech but he was going "colloquial" today, as he put it. Like most of his patients, he is black and from the South. And as he is in his 50s, he also reminds some of them of their fathers and uncles--or the way they wished their fathers and uncles were in moments of crisis. All the girls in this session were receiving the "abortion pill," or mifepristone. Within the next few hours, they would start to cramp and their pregnancies would be terminated.
Parker is an abortion provider. But he is also the plaintiff in a case that may have extreme political consequences. Jackson Women's Health Organization is the last abortion clinic in Mississippi, and state legislators are trying to shut it down: The next court date is at the end of January. Republican Governor Phil Bryant has called it "the first step in a movement, I believe, to do what we campaigned on: to say that we're going to try to end abortion in Mississippi."
If the effort is successful, it will be an "enormous victory" for the pro-life movement, said Carole Joffe, a long-time scholar of abortion rights at University California at Davis. "There's a competition within the Red States to see if they can be the first to close all the clinics."
***
It's been 40 years since Roe vs. Wade made abortion a constitutional right across the land. But if states can't make the practice illegal, they can pass stringent new laws. In Virginia, for instance, the state legislature recently regulated the location of bathrooms and the sizes of the hallways within clinics, requirements that have been deemed impossible to follow.
In April 2012, the Mississippi legislature passed House Bill 1390, which requires abortion providers to gain hospital admitting privileges. Since then, Parker and the other physicians at the clinic have been rejected by the area's seven local hospitals. Five rejected them outright because they were opposed to being associated with an abortion provider, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. One wrote that giving doctors admitting priveleges "would lead to both an internal and external disruption of the Hospital's function and business within this community."
If the Jackson clinic is closed, the 2,000 women who go there for abortions each year will need to travel out-of-state. That will mean paying for bus fare or gas, as well as covering childcare and the loss of wages. There will also be hotel fees: many nearby states require a 72-hour waiting period between a state-mandated counseling session and an abortion. And the procedure itself can cost $450 or even more. (Several of the women in the waiting room of the Jackson clinic said they had received financial assistance from the National Abortion Federation.) All of this may make abortions prohibitively expensive for many Mississippi women, who are among the poorest in the union. According to the latest census, Mississippi had a poverty rate of 22.6% in 2011. The clinic's clientele fall disproportionately into this poorest sector.
The bill's supporters insist they aren't trying to make things difficult for low-income women; they're simply trying to protect them. Outside the clinic, protestors, seated on foldable lawn chairs, are eager to tell visitors about the medical risks of abortion, handing out leaflets and models of fetuses. One woman, 64-year-old Ester Mann, has been picketing the clinic for many years and has been arrested twice. She says the clients who come there are "disdaining God" and the "precious gift" of pregnancies. She is eagerly awaiting the court decision later this month as she sits outside the clinic, day after day, praying for it to close.
***
Inside the pink, yellow, and red waiting room, business continues as usual. There's voluble chatter among the staff and clients as BET plays on the television, an old Jamie Foxx rerun with canned laughter.
When Parker isn't talking or performing procedures, he sits serenely in his office. On one break, he eats what he calls a "cardiac" breakfast of bacon and eggs, loading up for the dozens of operations ahead of him.
Though Parker has long been a doctor and a gynecologist, he came to his current profession in mid-life. After attending a specialized program at University of Michigan, he began performing abortions roughly 10 years ago, working at clinics in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. The decision was not an easy one. "I grew up in the black church and I was conflicted about what it would mean to help women with their unplanned pregnancies," says Parker, who was raised without much money by a single mother in Birmingham, Alabama.
But then he had an epiphany. He realized that "a safe and early abortion was the Christian thing." He reenvisioned Christianity as "a love ethic, especially around the doctrine of compassion." Part of that compassion, he believed, was to help young women who had nowhere else to turn. There was a personal dimension for him as well: His own grandmother died in childbirth.
Last May, Parker began traveling down to the Jackson clinic from D.C. and Philadelphia a few days a month. (He also spends a few days a month at a clinic in Montgomery, Alabama.) He had read about the impending Mississippi law and had a strong sense that he was needed. Once he arrived, he was pleased to find the clinic located in an accepting, "avant-garde" neighborhood with vintage stores and coffee shops. But he was disturbed by the zeal of protesters. One took a picture of him at a local sub shop, and another shouted out his name, including his middle name. He is unmarried and has no children, and his girlfriend supports his work, but he says she also "fears harm will befall me."
"I don't want to falsely reassure myself," Parker says, naming two abortion providers who were killed by pro-life extremists. "[Bernard] Slepian died in the kitchen, [George] Tiller at church."
Along with his own safety concerns, Parker must grapple with the stigma of abortion in other ways. His patients frequently ask him whether they will be punished for what they're about to do. "They fear divine will and divine intervention. They'll ask, 'Do you think God will kill me for killing my baby?'"
It's a difficult practice. As Parker explains, an abortion is something most women would rather forget, and the poorer clients at the clinics Parker works at are usually "putting out lots of other fires" in their lives. The only patient who has kept up a warm friendship with him is a woman who learned of rare genetic abnormalities late in her first and second pregnancies. Parker performed the procedures after she and her husband chose to abort. Just this summer, the woman had a healthy baby and invited him to her newborn's bris.
"Which women deserve or don't deserve care?" asks Parker. "I want for other people what I want for myself. These women should have what I have. That's dignity and making peace with an uncertain God."
What Economics Can (and Can't) Tell Us About the Legacy of Legal Abortion
(Wikimedia Commons)
Research suggests Roe v. Wade left the U.S. with fewer births, fewer poor children, and maybe less crime. But economists still have yet to crack some the biggest questions about the decision's impact, explains Wellesley College Professor Phillip Levine.
By Jordan Weissmann Jan 23 2013, 5:46 PM ET
America's abortion debate won't ever be resolved by an economics paper. But that doesn't change the fact that child-bearing and fertility are deeply entwined with not just our demographic growth, but also women's professional lives and families' financial health. So with the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade falling this week, I called up Wellesley College Professor Phillip Levine to get a sense of what we do and don't know today about the economic impacts of legalized abortion.
A leading researcher on the topic, Levine explained that while there are couple of settled facts, there's still an amazing amount that, decades after the Supreme Court's landmark decision, is still murky. Our conversation is below, edited for length and clarity.
I'd like to start with the broad question: What do we know for sure about how the legalization of abortion impacted the economy?
I think the first thing that we can learn from the research that's been conducted is that abortion legalization clearly had a dramatic impact on women's fertility. It wasn't necessarily clear a priori that was the case. People had talked about illegal abortion being so prevalent that once it was legalized it wasn't obvious it would have much of an impact. But that's just not true. It had a very large effect. A reasonable estimate is that American women's fertility fell on the order of about 5 percent in direct response to abortion being legalized. That's the average effect. For certain population subgroups, it was much larger than that. So you're talking about a 10, 12 percent reduction in fertility for teenagers, for African American women. In certain pockets, certain segments of the population, there was just a very dramatic impact on women's fertility. And that is something which I think we certainly know.
A second thing I think we could say we've learned -- and this may not come as a surprise either -- but if you're having changes in fertility of that magnitude, the characteristics of the children who are born are different than they otherwise would have been. It's very difficult to believe that the women who chose to have an abortion and didn't have a child because of that were randomly selected in the population. And so, because of that, the lack of random selection, the children who were born were different than the ones who would have been born otherwise.
Living standards of children growing up were very different as a result. Fewer children grew up living in poverty, fewer children grew up in single parent households, fewer children grew up in households headed by welfare recipients. In some sense, you can think about following that cohort's path through life into things like educational attainment, labor market outcomes. You observe increases in college graduation, lower rates of welfare use for the children themselves, reduced likelihood of becoming a single parent themselves. These are outcomes for the children who were born in the early 70s that we observe 20 years later, that we observe for the cohort as a whole. Because it's a different group of children born relative to those who would have been otherwise. That's not to say that's a good thing, that's just what happened.
Is it fair to call those economic benefits?
I think this is an incredibly sensitive topic, so I want to avoid using terms like ... "benefit." Different children were born. An empirical fact is that the ones who were born are the ones who were more likely to have better economic outcomes. The value judgment on whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is something I don't want to get into.
What about women in particular? How did legalizing abortion affect their economic standing?
It turns out getting direct evidence of that is not such an easy thing to do. While there certainly are indications that women's economic outcomes were directly improved by abortion legalization, I wouldn't necessarily say that's the sort of thing that research has conclusively proven. We are clearly able to find support for the notion that their fertility was affected. And you certainly could imply from that if you're better able to time giving birth, you're better able to make other sorts of decisions that would improve your economic well being. Direct evidence of that is a little bit limited. There is some work that shows educational attainment and labor market outcomes have improved, but it's a little bit limited.
Why is that research so limited?
Statistically, it's a very hard thing to find support for. It's a statistical issue as opposed to an economic issue.
In some sense, what economists are always trying to do when we find evidence for something -- you're trying to look for something that looks like an experiment. Where one group is exposed to something and another group wasn't, and what was the difference in the outcomes. That works really well when thinking about a fertility decision when the law changes and not so well when you're thinking about these longer term decision-making processes.
So what do you think is the most concrete thing you can say for sure about what abortion did for women's economic lives?
It clearly affected their ability to regulate their fertility. One-hundred percent that happened. It certainly is a direct implication from there that they are then able to make different economic decisions.
But it's hard to confirm that's what happened for sure using data?
Unfortunately, we're not at that stage.
What do you think are the most controversial claims you've seen about the economics of abortion?
I think the abortion and crime debate pretty much overshadowed all other research on the topic, which I think is a shame because there are some other interesting issues that have been raised, like the sorts of things we've discussed.
Can you explain what happened in that debate?
The notion about abortion and crime is that some of the children who were not born were children who would have grown up to be individuals who were more likely to commit crime. At the time that this literature was coming out, this was in the mid 90s, and we were right in the middle of experiencing this big decline in crime rates and nobody had any good explanations as to why. And the argument in some sense was that the criminals were not born because abortion was legalized 20 years ago, or exactly 20 years ago, and that's when criminals are committing the bulk of their crime. That led to "is that a good thing or a bad thing?" and "does that mean we should favor legal abortion because the criminals aren't being born?" It got sidetracked into a discussion about abortion rights. And then the economists were all focusing on the use of the data and the methods being used. It was controversial in the public sphere and it was controversial in a statistical sense. There's some good work that's been done that seems to indicate at least that their effect was overstated, if not completely invalidated.
Why was that a distraction?
Crime is an important outcome, but not the only important outcome in the world. The literature tended to be a distraction in the sense that people weren't really focusing on the actual question of what did abortion legalization do in a sort of empirical sense. Instead it became a philosophical question about abortion rights.
I believe that life starts at conception. And it's never stopped me from being pro-choice
By Mary Elizabeth Williams Wednesday, Jan 23, 2013 09:43 AM CST
Of all the diabolically clever moves the anti-choice lobby has ever pulled, surely one of the greatest has been its consistent co-opting of the word “life.” Life! Who wants to argue with that? Who wants be on the side of … not-life? That’s why the language of those who support abortion has for so long been carefully couched in other terms. While opponents of abortion eagerly describe themselves as “pro-life,” the rest of us have had to scramble around with not nearly as big-ticket words like “choice” and “reproductive freedom.” The “life” conversation is often too thorny to even broach. Yet I know that throughout my own pregnancies, I never wavered for a moment in the belief that I was carrying a human life inside of me. I believe that’s what a fetus is: a human life. And that doesn’t make me one iota less solidly pro-choice.
As Roe v. Wade enters its fifth decade, we find ourselves at one of the most schizo moments in our national relationship with reproductive choice. In the past year we’ve endured the highest number of abortion restrictions ever [ http://www.guttmacher.org/media/inthenews/2013/01/02/index.html ]. Yet support for abortion rights is at an all-time high [ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/22/support_for_abortion_rights_at_an_all_time_high/ ], with seven in 10 Americans in favor of letting Roe v. Wade stand [ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323301104578255831504582200.html ], allowing for reproductive choice in all or “most” cases. That’s a stunning 10 percent increase from just a decade ago. And in the midst of this unique moment, Planned Parenthood has taken the bold step of reframing the vernacular – moving away from the easy and easily divisive words “life” and “choice.” Instead, as a new promotional film acknowledges, “It’s not a black and white issue.”
It’s a move whose time is long overdue. It’s important, because when we don’t look at the complexities of reproduction, we give far too much semantic power to those who’d try to control it. And we play into the sneaky, dirty tricks of the anti-choice lobby when we on the pro-choice side squirm so uncomfortably at the ways in which they’ve repeatedly appropriated the concept of “life.”
Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.
When we on the pro-choice side get cagey around the life question, it makes us illogically contradictory. I have friends who have referred to their abortions in terms of “scraping out a bunch of cells” and then a few years later were exultant over the pregnancies that they unhesitatingly described in terms of “the baby” and “this kid.” I know women who have been relieved at their abortions and grieved over their miscarriages. Why can’t we agree that how they felt about their pregnancies was vastly different, but that it’s pretty silly to pretend that what was growing inside of them wasn’t the same? Fetuses aren’t selective like that. They don’t qualify as human life only if they’re intended to be born.
When we try to act like a pregnancy doesn’t involve human life, we wind up drawing stupid semantic lines in the sand: first trimester abortion vs. second trimester vs. late term, dancing around the issue trying to decide if there’s a single magic moment when a fetus becomes a person. Are you human only when you’re born? Only when you’re viable outside of the womb? Are you less of a human life when you look like a tadpole than when you can suck on your thumb?
We’re so intimidated by the wingnuts, we get spooked out of having these conversations. We let the archconservatives browbeat us with the concept of “life,” using their scare tactics on women and pushing for indefensible violations like forced ultrasounds. Why? Because when they wave the not-even-accurate notion [ http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/prenatal-care/PR00112 ] that “abortion stops a beating heart” they think they’re going to trick us into some damning admission. They believe that if we call a fetus a life they can go down the road of making abortion murder. And I think that’s what concerns the hell out of those of us who support unrestricted reproductive freedom.
It seems absurd to suggest that the only thing that makes us fully human is the short ride out of some lady’s vagina. That distinction may apply neatly legally, but philosophically, surely we can do better. Instead, we let right-wingers perpetuate the sentimental fiction that no one with a heart — and certainly no one who’s experienced the wondrous miracle of family life — can possibly resist tiny fingers and tiny toes growing inside a woman’s body. We give a platform to the notion that, as Christina Locke opined in a recent New York Times Op-Ed, “motherhood had slyly changed us [ http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/roe-at-40-judging-a-mothers-choice/ ]. We went from basking in the rights that feminism had afforded us to silently pledging never to exercise them. Nice mommies don’t talk about abortion.”
Don’t they? The majority of women who have abortions – and one in three American women will [ http://www.guttmacher.org/media/inthenews/2013/01/08/index.html ] – are already mothers [ http://www.guttmacher.org/in-the-know/characteristics.html ]. And I can say anecdotally that I’m a mom who loved the lives she incubated from the moment she peed on those sticks, and is also now well over 40 and in an experimental drug trial. If by some random fluke I learned today I was pregnant, you bet your ass I’d have an abortion. I’d have the World’s Greatest Abortion.
My belief that life begins at conception is mine to cling to. And if you believe that it begins at birth, or somewhere around the second trimester, or when the kid finally goes to college, that’s a conversation we can have, one that I hope would be respectful and empathetic and fearless. We can’t have it if those of us who believe that human life exists in utero are afraid we’re somehow going to flub it for the cause. In an Op-Ed on “Why I’m Pro-Choice” in the Michigan Daily this week, Emma Maniere stated, quite perfectly, that “Some argue that abortion takes lives, but I know that abortion saves lives, too [ http://www.michigandaily.com//blog/feminine-critique-why-im-pro-choice ].” She understands that it saves lives not just in the most medically literal way, but in the roads that women who have choice then get to go down, in the possibilities for them and for their families. And I would put the life of a mother over the life of a fetus every single time — even if I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the fetus is indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing.
Roe v. Wade 40 years later: Latinas weigh in on abortion
Pro choice advocate Johannes Schimdt (L) argues his point of view to pro-life supporters in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building January 22, 2007 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
According to the Guttmacher Institute [ http://www.guttmacher.org/media/inthenews/2013/01/02/index.html ], 42 states and the District of Columbia enacted 122 provisions related to reproductive health and rights in 2012, and one-third of these new provisions, 43 in 19 states, sought to restrict access to abortion services. It is the second highest number of new abortion restrictions passed in a year.
These restrictions continue despite evidence of changing attitudes towards abortion. A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll [ http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/21/16626932-nbcwsj-poll-majority-for-first-time-wants-abortion-to-be-legal?lite ] found that seven in 10 respondents oppose Roe v. Wade being overturned, which is the highest percentage on this question since 1989. “The dialogue we have had in the last year has contributed … to inform and shift attitudes,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff.
Latinos might be a large portion of that percentage. According to the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health [ http://latinainstitute.org/es/node/884 ], the media’s notion that Latinos are socially conservative is also inaccurate. “Latinos are typically portrayed as very religious and very Catholic. The reality is that 90 percent of married Catholic Latinas have used birth control banned by the Vatican,” says executive director Jessica González-Rojas.
A poll [ http://latinainstitute.org/Latinopoll ] conducted on behalf of NLIRH and the Reproductive Health Technologies Project (RHTP) [ http://www.rhtp.org/default.asp ] also found that 74 percent of Latino registered voters agree that a woman has a right to make her own personal, private decisions about abortion without politicians interfering.
“Historically, the perspective of Latinos hasn’t changed. The Latino population isn’t in favor of limiting anyone’s options,” says Lorena Garcia, executive director of Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights.
But some Latinas disagree with these findings. “I think it’s totally inaccurate,” says Mercedes Arzu Wilson, founder and President of Family of the Americas Foundation, an organization that promotes natural family planning.“I wonder how they asked the question,” she says, “because most Hispanics are the ones who buy our materials.”
“It’s inconceivable that any country that calls itself civilized or advanced could legalize the destruction of innocent lives,” Wilson says.
González-Rojas says that on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade her organization “will recognize that there’s a right women can utilize, but for the women we work with, accessing that right seems to be a challenge.” And because of these barriers, her organization has developed holistic approach to reproductive health. “We have a lens that incorporates issues of class, race, immigration, and sexual orientation.” She says they are also launching a new campaign called “Yo Te Apoyo” to give a voice to those who support women making a difficult choice about their pregnancy.
Maricela Lupercio, director of Latinos 4 Life, a nonprofit providing education and outreach for Latino youth and families, says she’s very passionate about counseling young girls who are pregnant and is reminded of Roe v. Wade every day. On the 40th anniversary, she says she’ll “be reflecting on the 55 million people who were not born and the many men and women who are mourning the loss of their child. I will continue to reach out to Latino families to continue the discussion.”
Some Latinas, like Garcia, will be celebrating, but ambivalently. “This means that we’ve gone 40 years and we still haven’t ensured full access to everyone. It’s a time to celebrate, but it’s also a time of reflection. I hope that across the country we’re all doing that.”
If a woman voluntarily gets an abortion, it’s murder, the Catholic church says. Because a fetus is an unborn person. If a woman uses hormonal birth control that might endanger a zygote, it’s murder, the Catholic church says. Because a zygote is an unimplanted person. If a slack-ass obstetrician can’t answer his damn pages and a woman and two potentially viable fetuses die, it’s a crying shame, says Catholic Health Initiatives, but there’s not much that can be done about it because fetuses aren’t people [ http://coloradoindependent.com/126808/in-malpractice-case-catholic-hospital-argues-fetuses-arent-people ].
Lori Stodghill was 31-years old, seven-months pregnant with twin boys and feeling sick when she arrived at St. Thomas More hospital in Cañon City on New Year’s Day 2006. She was vomiting and short of breath and she passed out as she was being wheeled into an examination room. Medical staff tried to resuscitate her but, as became clear only later, a main artery feeding her lungs was clogged and the clog led to a massive heart attack. Stodghill’s obstetrician, Dr. Pelham Staples, who also happened to be the obstetrician on call for emergencies that night, never answered a page. His patient died at the hospital less than an hour after she arrived and her twins died in her womb.
Stodghill’s husband, Jeremy, has filed a wrongful-death suit against Catholic Health Initiatives, which runs St. Thomas More, with an expert witness testifying that while Staples probably wouldn’t have been able to save Lori, he might have been able to save the twins, either by actually showing up or by directing the ER staff in performing an emergency C-section.
[T]he court “should not overturn the long-standing rule in Colorado that the term ‘person,’ as is used in the Wrongful Death Act, encompasses only individuals born alive. Colorado state courts define ‘person’ under the Act to include only those born alive. Therefore Plaintiffs cannot maintain wrongful death claims based on two unborn fetuses.”
Which would have been “unborn persons” under the laws proposed by the church over the past decades, but aren’t now, because they threaten Catholic Health’s $15 billion in assets.
If I don’t hear about pro-life protesters marching their bullhorns and their misleading fetus posters around the Catholic Health offices in Denver, I might start to believe they don’t actually care about women or the unborn. After all, say the Religious Directives of the Catholic Church, “The Church’s defense of life encompasses the unborn and the care of women and their children during and after pregnancy.” It doesn’t go on to say, “unless there’s a shit-ton of money at stake” — I know, I looked. There’s just more stuff about providing adequate health care to mothers and their children before and after birth and whatever. So step up, Church — I mean, you’ve already clearly established that women aren’t people, but are fetuses people or not?
Catholic Hospital Conveniently Claims Fetuses Aren’t People in Malpractice Lawsuit
Erin Gloria Ryan Jan 24, 2013 1:30 PM
The Catholic Church has long been the Nadia Comaneci of mental gymnastics, but a new lawsuit where a Catholic-run hospital claims that fetuses aren't people with any legal rights sets a new standard for a triple twisting double-WTF logical dismount. Even Elfie Schlegel would be forced to abandon her perpetual stinkface and applaud.
She was vomiting and short of breath and she passed out as she was being wheeled into an examination room. Medical staff tried to resuscitate her but, as became clear only later, a main artery feeding her lungs was clogged and the clog led to a massive heart attack. Stodghill's obstetrician, Dr. Pelham Staples, who also happened to be the obstetrician on call for emergencies that night, never answered a page. His patient died at the hospital less than an hour after she arrived and her twins died in her womb.
After Stoghill's death, Lori's husband Jerry filed a wrongful death suit against St. Thomas Moore Hospital in Cañon City, claiming that Dr. Staples should have at least instructed ER personnel to perform an emergency C-section. Jerry's suit states that the hospital's negligence resulted the deaths of three individuals — his wife, and his two unborn but post-viability sons. In response, Catholic Health Initiatives, the nonprofit that runs St. Thomas Moore and 170 other healthcare facilities, claimed that Jerry Stoghill has no grounds to sue them for the loss of three lives, as unborn people aren't technically "persons" under Colorado law.
(This is the part of the story where my brain — totally on its own — made the record scratch sound.)
Not to get all smug Bond villain here but: Well, well, well, Catholic Health Initiatives. Well, well, well. Looks like someone is trying to have things both ways. In recent years, Catholic run health care systems have, in their brave, brave crusade to defend "life," lobbied for the right to deny rape victims Emergency Contraception, advocated laws that would allow health care facilities to let women die rather than receive abortions, and fought Obamacare's inclusion of emergency contraception in its birth control mandate on the farcical grounds that EC causes abortions. But now that the idea that fetuses are people just like me or you or Vin Diesel might cost a religious run facility a metric fuckton of money, time to run and hide behind a law that is in direct opposition to the Church's endlessly regurgitated worldview.
Sure, you could argue that CHI is just using the law in the way that best benefits them, but at the very least, CHI's refusal to acknowledge the deceased Stodghill twins as "persons" is a massive cop out — as Tomasic notes in the Independent, accepting Jerry Stoghill's claim that three lives were lost that New Year's Day in 2006 would make a powerful — but expensive — statement. But isn't your eternal soul worth it, Catholic Health Initiatives? Unless "protecting life" is just dog whistle talk for keeping women pregnant and Catholic Churches full. Perish the thought.
Copyright 2013 Gawker Media (emphasis in original)
NOM Slams Obama's Call For LGBT Equality, Says Gays 'Already Treated Equally'
Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, criticized President Barack Obama's inauguration speech, claiming that his call for LGBT equality was unnecessary since gays already have equal rights. In this 2010 file photo, Brown speaks at a rally for opponents of same-sex marriage in Augusta, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File)
By Meredith Bennett-Smith Posted: 01/22/2013 4:31 pm EST | Updated: 01/22/2013 4:38 pm EST
In the wake of President Barack Obama's precedent-setting call for LGBT equality Monday, anti-gay groups have been quick to dismiss the administration's apparent support for marriage equality.
On Monday, Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), jumped on the president's statement in a response posted to the group's blog. In it, he argued that gay and lesbian Americans already have the same rights as heterosexual Americans [ http://www.nomblog.com/32508/ ].
"Gay and lesbian people are already treated equally under the law," Brown said. "They have the same civil rights as anyone else; they have the right to live as they wish and love whom they choose. What they don’t have is the right to redefine marriage for all of society."
Brown went on to criticize Obama for voicing "support for a radical agenda advanced by some of his biggest campaign contributors to redefine marriage for everyone."
A representative for the Family Research Council, another anti-gay group, echoed Brown's sentiments [ http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1301/22/sp.03.html ] during an interview with CNN host Soledad O’Brien on Tuesday morning.
"We as social conservatives do not agree with the president’s attempt to link the modern homosexual movement with the women’s rights movement or the civil rights movement for African Americans,” Sprigg said. “The irony is that homosexuals already have all the same civil rights as anyone else.”
Sprigg continued to say that "all sexual behavior" is not created equal, nor do "all personal relationships have an equal value to society at large, that serve the same public interests."
"Homosexuals do not have a constitutional right to engage in sodomy," Fischer proclaimed, as first reported by Right Wing Watch [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/obamas-inaugural-address-sends-fischer-another-anti-gay-rant ]. Noting that sodomy was a felony for the first 200 years of America’s history, he added, “It’s absurd in the extreme, it’s ridiculous, it’s ludicrous for homosexuals to claim that they have some kind of constitutional right to engage in sexually deviant behavior."
"All men are created equal, but nobody, nobody, nobody is born gay," Fischer, who also argued that Obama "displays ignorance" in his embrace of same-sex marriage and other LGBT rights and "doesn't know what he's talking about," stated. "Nobody's born that way!"
Fischer's remarks follow those of National Organization for Marriage (NOM) [ http://www.nationformarriage.org/ ] President Brian Brown, who argued that LGBT Americans already have the same rights [ http://www.nomblog.com/32508/ ] as heterosexual Americans.
Even more specifically, the Family Research Council [ http://www.frc.org/ ]'s Peter Sprigg has objected to the president's comparison of the 1969 Stonewall Inn riot -- a watershed moment for gay rights -- with similar moments from the women's rights and Civil Rights movements.
"We as social conservatives do not agree with the president’s attempt to link the modern homosexual movement with the women’s rights movement or the civil rights movement for African Americans,” Sprigg said [ http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1301/22/sp.03.html ]. “The irony is that homosexuals already have all the same civil rights as anyone else.”
Video [embedded] Gospel of Intolerance: American Evangelicals Finance Uganda's Antigay Movement
The filmmaker Roger Ross Williams reveals how money donated by American evangelicals helps to finance a violent antigay movement in Uganda [the above NYT original YouTube of the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcM6GI0TUMQ ].
By ROGER ROSS WILLIAMS Published: January 22, 2013
Raised in Pennsylvania, I grew up in the black church. My father was a religious leader in the community, and my sister is a pastor. I went to church every Sunday and sang in the choir. But for all that the church gave me — for all that it represented belonging, love and community — it also shut its doors to me as a gay person. That experience left me with the lifelong desire to explore the power of religion to transform lives or destroy them. I became interested in Uganda, an intensely religious country that attracts many American missionaries and much funding from United States faith-based organizations. The American evangelical movement in Africa does valuable work in helping the poor. But as you’ll see in this Op-Doc video, some of their efforts and money feed a dangerous ideology [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/opinion/gay-and-vilified-in-uganda.html ] that seeks to demonize L.G.B.T. people and intensifies religious rhetoric until it results in violence. It is important for American congregations to hold their churches accountable for what their money does in Africa.
This video is part of a series produced by independent filmmakers who have received major support from the Ford Foundation and additional support from the nonprofit Sundance Institute.
Roger Ross Williams is a filmmaker based in New York. His film “Music by Prudence [ http://www.musicbyprudence.com/mbp/ ]” won the 2010 Academy Award for documentary short subject, making him the first African-American to win an Oscar for directing and producing a film. This Op-Doc draws on some of the material from “God Loves Uganda [ http://www.godlovesuganda.com/ ],” a feature documentary he directed and produced that is having its premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.
The Christian right in America, like all organized religions, claims to have a correct and exclusive understanding of God's will. To hear them tell it, the almighty creator of the universe has strong opinions about corporate tax rates, firearm ownership and what consenting adults do with their genitals, and he's delegated them to speak on his behalf.
But if they want us to believe they have this authority, it seems only fair to consider their track record. After all, the Bible itself tells how to identify false prophets [ http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/dt/18.html#22 ], saying that if they're not really speaking for God, their predictions won't come true -- a very sensible test!
It's a test that the American religious right should be worried about, because their history, to put it politely, doesn't inspire confidence. Many of the most powerful and influential members of their movement, including presidential candidates, media moguls and the founders of churches, have repeatedly claimed to have God-given visions of the future that proved to be completely and utterly wrong. Here are some of the more notable (and hilarious) examples of their prophetic blunders.
Failed doomsday predictions
The world-renowned Harold Camping [ http://www.alternet.org/story/155126/apocalypse_soon%3A_why_are_christians_so_obsessed_with_the_end_times?paging=off ] was just the latest in a long line of Christian preachers who've made a profitable career out of erroneously predicting the apocalypse. If anything, Camping was only unusual in that he admitted his blunder after falling flat on his face (although he didn't offer to refund any of his followers who spent their life savings on spreading his message).
Other prominent Christian sects that have gotten it wrong are still around, in some cases recycling decades-old predictions as if they were brand-new. The Jehovah's Witnesses made a habit of erroneously predicting the apocalypse throughout the 20th century. One of their founders, J.F. Rutherford, wrote a book in 1920 called Millions Now Living Will Never Die, in which he claimed among other things that the patriarchs of Israel would be resurrected from the dead by the year 1925.
A little more recently, there was Hal Lindsay, author of such '70s-era classics as The Late Great Planet Earth and The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon. Along the same lines, a Christian author named Edgar Whisenant wrote a popular book called 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Could Be in 1988. Whisenant's book was influential: most infamously, Paul and Jan Crouch's Trinity Broadcast Network preempted their regular programming on Rosh Hashanah in 1988 to run a prerecorded tape of instructions for those who'd been left behind by the Rapture.
To be fair, when it comes to end-of-the-world hysteria, it's not just devotees of the Rapture and the Antichrist who've dropped the ball, so to speak. You probably remember that last year, the supposedly significant date of December 21, 2012 saw a surge of excitement and dread among New Age devotees, many of whom flocked to holy sites all around the world in the hopes of surviving whatever they believed was going to happen. (My favorite story was about the mountain of Bugarach [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/world/europe/31bugarach.html ] in rural southern France: pilgrims believed that there were alien ships hiding out underneath, biding their time until Doomsday when they'd emerge and whisk people away from the planet.)
Pat Robertson's dubious prognostications
Pat Robertson, the one-time GOP presidential candidate and religious-right media mogul, has repeatedly tried to predict the future, with roughly the same accuracy as a dart-throwing monkey.
In 1980, Robertson predicted the start of World War III, telling his audience that God said the year would be full of "sorrow and bloodshed that will have no end soon, for the world is being torn apart, and my kingdom shall rise from the ruins of it." (source [ http://www.daylightatheism.org/2008/01/pat-robertsons-pathetic-predictions.html ])
In his 1991 book The New World Order, Robertson forecast that U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller would be elected president. (source [id.])
The 2012 presidential election will be legendary for the number of Republican pundits who blew their calls in spectacular fashion by predicting a Romney landslide [ http://punditshaming.tumblr.com/ ]. But it wasn't just secular conservatives who got it so wrong: the religious right, too, was confident that God was on their side and would deliver them a miraculous victory. One of my favorite examples is an activist named James Goll [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/prophet-divine-encounter-romney-victory ], who claimed that in 2008 he had a prophetic vision about a savior from Michigan with a "big mitt" (get it?):
Then the external voice of the Lord came to me saying, When the nation has been thrown a curve ball, I will have a man prepared who comes from the state of Michigan and he will have a big mitt capable of catching whatever is thrown his way.
The counterpoint to the Romney-landslide prophesies are the religious-right pundits who warned darkly of the catastrophic consequences of an Obama reelection. For example, the preacher Dutch Sheets wrote about those who saw the election as "a sign of the end-times," whereas he merely believes it will bring "our most severe judgment to date." Columnist Erik Rush similarly argued that Obama's reelection lends credence to Armageddon dogma," and Sherry Shriner writes about how Obama is ushering in "one world government... as that old Bible on your shelf has foretold."
Technically, these aren't failed prophecies yet, since Obama still has four years to prove himself the Antichrist -- except that, in many cases, these are the same people who were predicting disaster and dictatorship if Obama won a first term. The blogger Libby Anne dug up hilarious proof of this, in the form of a 2008 press release from the Christian-right group Focus on the Family, titled "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America [ http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/10/this-is-the-most-important-election-of-all-time-again.html (and see "Now Shut Your Hole & Wallow in Your Delusion-Induced Shame, Christian Right" about halfway down at {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=80372627 {and preceding and following})]." Among the parade of horribles in this dystopia: the forcible disbanding of the Boy Scouts; an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel; coerced euthanasia; churches forced to conduct same-sex weddings; banning the Bible as hate speech, and more.
In fact, not a single thing the 2008 letter predicted came true. But this flat record of failure hasn't chastened the religious-right prophets who are, once again, predicting the apocalypse in the aftermath of electoral defeat.
We have a reality check for these claims, however, which is states like Massachusetts where same-sex marriage has been legal for years. As Nate Silver has written, the states with marriage equality have some of the lowest divorce rates in the country [ http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/07/06/divorce-rates-lower-in-states-with-same-sex-marriage ]. The institution of the family hasn't disintegrated there; nor have those states been swallowed by the depths of the earth.
Since it's always possible to claim, after the fact and with no evidence, that a natural disaster was caused by God's anger at some sin, these specific assertions are unprovable. However, the claim that sinful behavior in general causes destruction is eminently testable, and has been tested. In April 2010, Kazem Seddiqi, an Iranian cleric, said that immodestly dressed women cause earthquakes. This remark inspired "Boobquake [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boobquake ]," a tongue-in-cheek experiment where women wore "immodest" clothes for one day to note the seismological effects. There was no detectable change in the number of earthquakes on that day.
The imminent triumph of creationism
The "intelligent design" creationist movement, which arose in the late 1990s, claimed to be more strictly scientific and more respectable than the old-fashioned, Adam-and-Eve-riding-dinosaurs school of creationist thought. And they weren't shy about predicting that their ideas would soon take the scientific community by storm.
For instance, the so-called Wedge Document [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy ], a strategic memo written in 1998 by the pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute, listed as one of its five-year goals, "To see intelligent design theory as an accepted alternative in the sciences and scientific research being done from the perspective of design theory," and as one of its 20-year goals, "To see intelligent design theory as the dominant perspective in science." (It's pretty safe to say that the former goal has failed, although they still have five years to fulfill the latter one.) Similarly, intelligent-design advocate Nancy Pearcey wrote in 2005 about "why intelligent design will win [ http://www.humanevents.com/2005/11/30/why-intelligent-design-will-win/ ]," and creationist William A. Dembski wrote in 2004 that within 10 years, he expected a "Taliban-style collapse of Darwinism [ http://www.defaithed.com/blog/2009/06/death-of-molecular-darwinism-imminent ]."
These goals turned out to be empty bluster. Intelligent design suffered a crushing blow when it was ruled unconstitutional to teach in public schools by a George W. Bush appointee, Judge John Jones, in the 2006 Dover trial, and since then the movement has largely faded into obscurity. But this is nothing new: creationists have been continually predicting the imminent demise of evolution since the mid-1800s [ http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/demise.html ].
You may notice that, other than the self-serving predictions of their own success, most of the religious right's prophecies are of disaster and calamity. They almost never forecast greater peace, increased prosperity or the advance of democracy and human rights. There's a good reason for this.
The religious right as a movement thrives on fear, because it depends on the unthinking obedience of its followers, and fearful people are far easier to shepherd and control. A person who fears the worst will follow anyone who promises security and relief from that fear: it's not difficult to persuade them to donate money, follow marching orders, or vote as instructed if it will turn back the imaginary evils that menace them.
This has been an effective strategy, but it means that secularists and progressives can win people over if we offer them freedom from fear. And the best way to do that is to point out that the prophets of doom have failed over and over again. Normally their followers are only too happy to count the hits and ignore the misses, but when the evidence is all collected in one place, the conclusion becomes much harder to ignore: the people who claim to be the conduits of God's will are scam artists, falsely claiming to know things they don't know. Whether they're intentionally lying or sincerely deluded makes no difference.
Nehemiah Griego Went To Church After Family Was Killed In Albuquerque
By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN 01/24/13 08:26 PM ET EST
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The public defender who is representing a New Mexico teen accused of gunning down his parents and younger siblings said Thursday that it's too early for anyone to rush to judgment about the teen's mental state, motives or plans.
Nehemiah Griego, 15, is facing murder and child abuse charges in the deaths of his family. They were all found shot to death inside their rural home south of Albuquerque last Saturday.
Public defender Jeff Buckels said the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department has been parceling out limited bits of what he described as "the most damaging supposed `facts.'"
"This has led directly to a multitude of sensational headlines that threaten to finish Nehemiah's case in the public mind before it has fairly begun," Buckels said.
Family members also have criticized the sheriff's department and the media for their portrayal of Griego in the days following the murders.
On Thursday, Sheriff Dan Houston again described the case as "horrific" and said he stood by the facts as presented in the investigation.
Detectives continued Thursday to pour over evidence gathered at the Griego home last weekend. They were also reviewing text messages and calls between Griego and his 12-year-old girlfriend and security video from Calvary Albuquerque, the Christian church where Griego's father once served as a pastor and where the boy apparently spent much of the day following the slayings.
Authorities have said Griego allegedly reloaded his parents' two rifles and put them in the family van after the early morning slayings and had planned to randomly gun down Wal-Mart shoppers. Houston said investigators have no information that Griego actually went to a Wal-Mart that day.
Buckels also noted that Griego appeared to have had "every chance to carry out such a plan, but did not."
Former police officer and Calvary Albuquerque security chief Vince Harrison told The Associated Press that Griego spent much of last Saturday at the church, wandering the campus as dozens of Sunday school teachers were being trained on how to deal with a shooter.
He was greeted by the manager of the church's skate park and others. But it wasn't until hours later that church officials knew something was wrong.
It was Harrison who called the sheriff's department, and he and the boy drove to the Griego home, where they met authorities.
After finding the bodies inside the house, sheriff's officials took the teen to headquarters. During questioning, he confessed to shooting his mother and three younger siblings in their beds shortly after 1 a.m. with a .22-caliber rifle, then waiting in a bathroom with another military-style semi-automatic rifle to ambush his father upon his return from an overnight shift at a homeless shelter.
Harrison said he doesn't know why Griego decided to come to the church, but that it was like a second home for the homeschooled teen.
"It was a familiar place to him," he said. "I think if he did have in his mindset to do something foolish and start shooting people there also, I think his demeanor was tamed a little bit because he saw people there he knew."
Authorities have said there was no indication Griego intended to harm anyone at the church. The sheriff also said Griego and his girlfriend had spent much of the day together.
A memorial service is planned Friday at the church for victims Greg Griego, 51, his wife, Sarah Griego, 40, and three of their children – a 9-year-old boy, Zephania Griego, and daughters Jael Griego, 5, and Angelina Griego, 2.
On Wednesday night, the church also held an hourlong prayer vigil that drew an estimated 2,000 people.
Pastor Skip Heitzig shared stories about Greg Griego, who also served as a voluntary chaplain at the county jail and provided spiritual guidance for local firefighters. He said Greg was dedicated to helping others find God. Heitzig also urged the crowd to remember that forgiveness and restoration – tenets dear to Greg – will be important as the community moves forward.
Relatives, in a statement Tuesday night, said they were heartbroken, and remembered the teen as a bright and talented musician who played guitar, drums and bass with the church choir. He also was a wrestler who dreamed of following his family's long tradition of military service, and a boy who accompanied his pastor father on rescue missions to Mexico, they said.
"I don't know what Constitution that other members of Congress uphold, but it's not this one," Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) said on Tuesday afternoon, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jim Galloway [ http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider-jim-galloway/2013/01/23/your-daily-jolt-gpb-producer-resigns-over-hiring-of-chip-rogers/ ]. "I think the only Constitution that Barack Obama upholds is the Soviet constitution, not this one. He has no concept of this one, though he claimed to be a constitutional lawyer.”
The Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991. For all his years in the public eye, Barack Obama has only ever had mean things to say about the former Communist state [ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/yes-iran-is-a-much-smaller-threat-than-the-ussr/ ]. It's pretty clear that there's nothing to suggest that President Obama adheres to the "Soviet constitution." What isn't clear is which Soviet constitution Broun was referring to.
I reached out to the congressman's Washington office to ask which of these three he meant. Perhaps Broun was referring to all of them. I will update this post if I get a response.
Paul Broun 'honored' people are asking him to run against Saxby Chambliss
By Cameron Joseph - 01/23/13 09:04 AM ET
Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) said he was "honored" people were asking him to run against Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) — and sounded open to a bid for the seat, though he said he hadn't made any decisions on the race.
The conservative congressman went further when pressed: "When people encourage you to run, how can you not think about it?"
Chambliss has a fairly conservative voting record but has been criticized by conservatives in the state for using bipartisan rhetoric and looking for across-the-aisle solutions. Broun appears to be the most likely to take him on, though Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) hasn't ruled out a bid.
L.A. church leaders sought to hide sex abuse cases from authorities
Cardinal Roger Mahony, seen at a 2007 trial of a case involving sexual abuse by priests, wrote memos in 1986 and 1987 that offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by archdiocese officials to shield abusers from police. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times / July 16, 2007)
Documents from the late 1980s show that Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and another archdiocese official discussed strategies to keep police from discovering that children were being sexually abused by priests.
By Victoria Kim, Ashley Powers and Harriet Ryan, Los Angeles Times January 21, 2013, 2:31 p.m.
The archdiocese's failure to purge pedophile clergy and reluctance to cooperate with law enforcement has previously been known. But the memos written in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J. Curry, then the archdiocese's chief advisor on sex abuse cases, offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by officials in the nation's largest Catholic diocese to shield abusers from police. The newly released records, which the archdiocese fought for years to keep secret, reveal in church leaders' own words a desire to keep authorities from discovering that children were being molested.
In the confidential letters, filed this month as evidence in a civil court case, Curry proposed strategies to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they abused young boys. Curry suggested to Mahony that they prevent them from seeing therapists who might alert authorities and that they give the priests out-of-state assignments to avoid criminal investigators.
Fifteen years before the clergy sex abuse scandal came to light, Mahony and a top advisor discussed ways to conceal the molestation of children from law enforcement.
The archdiocese's failure to purge pedophile clergy and reluctance to cooperate with law enforcement had been known previously. But the memos written in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J. Curry, then the archdiocese's chief advisor on sex abuse cases, offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by officials in the nation's largest Catholic diocese to shield abusers from police. The newly released records, which the archdiocese fought for years to keep secret, reveal in church leaders' own words a desire to keep authorities from discovering that children were being abused.
In the confidential letters, filed this month as evidence in a civil court case, Curry proposed strategies to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they abused young boys. Curry suggested to Mahony that they prevent them from seeing therapists who might alert authorities and that they give the priests out-of-state assignments to avoid criminal investigators.
Mahony, who retired in 2011, has apologized repeatedly for errors in handling abuse allegations. In a statement Monday [ http://documents.latimes.com/cardinal-roger-m-mahony-statement/ ], he apologized once again and recounted meetings he's had with "some 90" victims of abuse.
Here's Mahony's full statement:
With the upcoming release of priests’ personnel files in the Archdiocese’s long struggle with the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy, my thoughts and prayers turn toward the victims of this sinful abuse.
Various steps toward safeguarding all children in the Church began here in 1987 and progressed year by year as we learned more about those who abused and the ineffectiveness of so-called “treatments” at the time. Nonetheless, even as we began to confront the problem, I remained naïve myself about the full and lasting impact these horrible acts would have on the lives of those who were abused by men who were supposed to be their spiritual guides. That fuller awareness came for me when I began visiting personally with victims. During 2006, 2007 and 2008, I held personal visits with some 90 such victims.
Those visits were heart-wrenching experiences for me as I listened to the victims describe how they had their childhood and innocence stolen from them by clergy and by the Church. At times we cried together, we prayed together, we spent quiet moments in remembrance of their dreadful experience; at times the victims vented their pent up anger and frustration against me and the Church.
Toward the end of our visits I would offer the victims my personal apology — and took full responsibility — for my own failure to protect fully the children and youth entrusted into my care. I apologized for all of us in the Church for the years when ignorance, bad decisions and moral failings resulted in the unintended consequences of more being done to protect the Church — and even the clergy perpetrators — than was done to protect our children.
I have a 3 x 5 card for every victim I met with on the altar of my small chapel. I pray for them every single day. As I thumb through those cards I often pause as I am reminded of each personal story and the anguish that accompanies that life story.
The cards contain the name of each victim since each one is precious in God’s eyes and deserving of my own prayer and sacrifices for them. But I also list in parenthesis the name of the clergy perpetrator lest I forget that real priests created this appalling harm in the lives of innocent young people.
It remains my daily and fervent prayer that God’s grace will flood the heart and soul of each victim, and that their life-journey continues forward with ever greater healing.
Clerics apologize to abuse victims as lawsuit files become public
By Catholic News Service (UPDATED) Jan-22-2013
LOS ANGELES (CNS) -- As the Archdiocese of Los Angeles released church records on clergy sexual abuse, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony again apologized to abuse victims, saying he was naive about its impact on their lives.
The cardinal, who retired as archbishop of Los Angeles in 2011, also said in a statement Jan. 21 that he prays for victims of abuse by priests daily as he celebrates Mass in his private chapel.
"It remains my daily and fervent prayer that God's grace will flood the heart and soul of each victim, and that their life journey continues forward with ever greater healing," he said, explaining that on his altar he keeps cards with the names of each of the 90 victims he met with from 2006 to 2008.
"As I thumb through those cards I often pause as I am reminded of each personal story and the anguish that accompanies that life story," Cardinal Mahony said.
"I am sorry," the cardinal's statement concluded.
Cardinal Mahony's comments followed the publication by the Los Angeles Times and Associated Press portions of documents filed in court as part of a lawsuit against the archdiocese. Some of files showed archdiocesan officials worked to conceal child molestation by priests from law enforcement authorities in the 1980s.
The release came two weeks after a Superior Court judge's ruling that the names of personnel identified in the files could be made public. Judge Emilie H. Elias' Jan. 7 ruling overturned an earlier decision by a retired federal judge who, acting as a mediator in a settlement between the archdiocese and those who claimed they were sexually abused, said that material to be released should have names redacted to prevent the documents' use to "embarrass or ridicule the church."
Church officials in Los Angeles had fought for years to keep the files private.
The 2007 settlement for $600 million covered more than 500 people who made claims about being sexually abuse by priests and other church personnel. Some of the priests who had claims against them sued to keep their names from being released, saying it violated their privacy rights.
While the archdiocese's actions to protect priests accused of abuse and its reluctance to work with investigators is known, the documents offer a closer look at the efforts undertaken to safeguard accused clergy.
Memos exchanged in 1986 and 1987 by Cardinal Mahony and Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Curry, who was the archdiocese's vicar of clergy and chief adviser on sexual abuse cases at the time, reveal proposals to keep police from investigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they molested young boys, the Los Angeles Time reported.
The documents show that Bishop Curry suggested to Cardinal Mahony that they prevent the priests from seeing therapists who might alert authorities and that the priests be given out-of-state assignments to avoid criminal investigators.
The newspaper said the memos were from personnel files for 14 priests.
Files of at least 75 more accused abusers are to become public in coming weeks under the terms of the settlement.
Bishop Curry and the archdiocese apologized for their actions in the handling of abuse reports in statements Jan. 22.
"I wish to acknowledge and apologize for those instances when I made decisions regarding the treatment and disposition of clergy accused of sexual abuse that in retrospect appear inadequate or mistaken," said the bishop, who is assigned to the archdiocesan region around Santa Barbara northwest of Los Angeles.
"Most especially, I wish to express my sympathy to all the victims of sexual abuse by clergy. Like many others, I have come to a clearer understanding over the years of the causes and treatment of sexual abuse," he continued, "and I have fully implemented in my pastoral region the archdiocese's policies and procedures for reporting abuse, screening those who supervise children and abuse prevention training for adults and children."
In its apology, the archdiocese said "no institution has learned more from mistakes made decades ago in dealing with priests who have abused young people than the Archdiocese of Los Angeles."
"We have apologized for the sad and shameful actions of some priests as well as for our inadequate responses in assisting victims and in dealing with perpetrators, the archdiocese said in citing the steps it has since taken to report abuse allegations to law enforcement officials.
"The past cannot be changed, but we have learned from it," the statement said.
The newspaper reported archdiocesan attorney Michael Hennigan said in a statement Jan. 21 that church policy in the late 1980s was to let victims and their families decide whether to go to police.
"Not surprisingly, the families of victims frequently did not wish to report to police and have their child become the center of a public prosecution," he said.
Hennigan also said that memos from that era "sometimes focused more on the needs of the perpetrator than on the serious harm that had been done to the victims."
"That is part of the past. We are embarrassed and at times ashamed by parts of the past. But we are proud of our progress, which is continuing," Hennigan said.
Cardinal Mahony's statement, released through the archdiocese, said steps to safeguard "all children in the church began here in 1987 and progressed year by year as we learned more about those who abused and the ineffectiveness of so-called 'treatments' at the time."
"Nonetheless, even as we began to confront the problem, I remained naive myself about the full and lasting impact these horrible acts would have no the lives of those who were abused by men who were supposed to be spiritual guides," Cardinal Mahony said.
Copyright (c) 2013 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
Standing a few feet outside the doors of the Los Angeles Archdiocese headquarters, clergy abuse victims who settled with the church in a landmark $660-million settlement called for the release of the documents it agreed to make public in 2007.
Flanked by people who said they were abused by clergy, Joelle Casteix, western regional director of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, demanded the release of the files. She also called for the immediate removal and punishment of any abuser still in the church.
Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles must end his silence, Casteix said, and release the unredacted documents of those involved in molesting children, as well as those who helped cover it up.
“They must be held accountable to the same laws that everyone standing behind me here is held accountable to,” Casteix said. “We are victims of clergy sexual abuse and supporters. We demand justice; we deserve justice.”
Manuel Vega, one of the victims who was part of the 2007 settlement, said he was abused from the time he was 10 years old until he was 15. He said it's important for the public to understand exactly what took place and why the unreleased files are important.
"To feel the hands of the priest on me, the breath of the priest on the back of my neck, to feel him press against my body, to feel him violate me," Vega said, "you have to put yourself in that moment to see what Cardinal Mahony is protecting."
Vega said he remains frustrated because the lawsuit was about making the abuse files public and holding those responsible accountable -- and not about money.
“The church continues to drag its feet,” Vega said. “Try living in my shoes for one day.”
Jim Robertson, 66, of Los Angeles said he was abused by two religious brothers at Junípero Serra High School in Gardena. One of them, he said, abused him for 10 days until a friend he confided in told school administrators.
On Tuesday, Robertson, who was part of the 2007 settlement, held up a pair of handcuffs and said they should be used to bring clergy who abused children to justice. Robertson said he used the same cuffs to tie himself to Mahony’s chair during a 2005 church service in protest of how the church handled the abuse cases.
"This is for the victims who are dead," he said, holding the handcuffs in the air. "This is for the victims who have not been compensated."
Cardinal Mahony has been powerfully indicted in the court of public opinion.
by Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM) 1/23/2013
It's a scathing indictment, but today the Los Angeles Times reviewed documents which reveal that Los Angeles Archbishop, Cardinal Roger Mahony, actively and knowing participated in hiding child sex abuse from the authorities in the 1980s.
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - In front page news, Cardinal Roger Mahony was skewered as the Los Angeles Times published a review of documents that reveal that then-Archbishop Roger Mahony knew about child sex abuse in his archdiocese and actively worked to cover it up.
The revelations are part of a document dump ordered by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge. Documents were released on Monday.
According to the Times, the documents contain the best evidence to date to show that Cardinal Mahony and others actively worked to cover up the scandal. In addition to Mahony, memos he exchanged with Msgr. Thomas Curry were disclosed. The memos discuss things such as keeping an accused priest out of the state for fear of arrest and prosecution, both criminal and civil, as well as discussions related to priests who were known pedophiles.
Several pedophile priests were sent to rehabilitation programs in the 1980s. Authorities were never contacted.
Some priests even deliberately targeted the children of illegal immigrants and threatened to report those families if they talked. When informed of these heinous crimes, Cardinal Mahony's response appears to have been to cover up the incidents.
It is well-understood that sexual abuse is a crime against children, and the appropriate response includes criminal sanctions. Unfortunately, because Mahony did not take this step, an unknown number of children were further abused.
The documents are part of an ongoing civil case against the Archdiocese.
While it appears based on the documents that Mahony may have participated in covering up crimes against children, he has actually gone one step further. He has actively participated in a crime against the entire Church.
The child sex scandal has rocked the Catholic Church for over a decade and has hurt the church in innumerable ways.
For his part, Archibishop Mahony has said, "I'm sorry." Unfortunately, the apology may not be enough to repair the lives of all the children who were harmed as a result of his actions - and inactions.
Mahoney released a statement where he said, "I have a 3 x 5 card for every victim I met with on the altar of my small chapel. I pray for them every single day. As I thumb through those cards I often pause as I am reminded of each personal story and the anguish that accompanies that life story." "It remains my daily and fervent prayer that God's grace will flood the heart and soul of each victim, and that their life-journey continues forward with ever greater healing. I am sorry."
*
Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for January 2013
General Intention: The Faith of Christians. That in this Year of Faith Christians may deepen their knowledge of the mystery of Christ and witness joyfully to the gift of faith in him.
Missionary Intention: Middle Eastern Christians. That the Christian communities of the Middle East, often discriminated against, may receive from the Holy Spirit the strength of fidelity and perseverance.
But long before those memos that The Times found about concealing priests’ misconduct, the church apparently was doing the same thing in the face of a lawsuit by a young woman named Rita Milla. I wrote the stories [ http://articles.latimes.com/2002/may/08/local/me-patt8 ] about her suit against seven Filipino priests working here, and the archdiocese, for $21 million in 1984. Her suit said that:
• For four years, beginning when she was 16 and a parishioner at a Wilmington Catholic Church, first one and then all seven priests had sex with her, beginning when one who fondled her through a broken confessional screen. Two of them assured her that “it was morally, ethically all right for her to have sexual intercourse with them … that by doing so, that she would be helping them and helping herself.” Milla was 16 when all this began; the age of consent in California is 18, but no question of criminal charges was evidently pursued in this matter, perhaps because of the statute of limitations.
• When she became pregnant -- by one of the younger priests, as DNA tests showed years later -- Milla says there was talk of an abortion; then the priests got her a passport, arranged travel to the home of one priest’s relative in the Philippines for her pregnancy, and told her family she was going abroad to study. When she came back with a baby daughter, and the priests did not pitch in to support the child, she asked the church to help hold the priests to their responsibility. But, she said, when one churchman said it was probably her fault, and not the priests’ alone, she went to a lawyer.
• Not soon enough. California courts first dismissed the archdiocese from the case, saying that because sex with parishioners isn’t part of a priest’s job description, the church couldn’t be liable. And then the courts threw out Milla’s case completely because her legal clock was timed out -- by about six months before the suit, as it turned out. The courts said she should have sued, at the latest, within a year of her daughter’s birth.
• Milla was regarded as off-balance, a fantasist, a scarlet woman. She filed a slander suit against a bishop who told a local Spanish-language radio station that she was a “person of bad reputation.” Then-Cardinal Timothy Manning, at the archdiocese’s old cathedral of St. Vibiana’s, scolded The Times for its coverage of Milla’s case. And the priests could not be served with the lawsuit because they could not be found. When I called looking for them, I was told they were out of the office. Then I was told they were away on vacation or retreat, then transferred to unknown parishes. Gone.
About half a dozen years after this, my phone at The Times rang. A creaky voice said, “Patt? It’s Father Tamayo.” The eldest of the seven priests was dying, and he was remorseful. He had a confession to make to me. He showed me documents on the archdiocese letterhead. One, CCed to Cardinal Manning (Mahony came to the archdiocese a year after Milla sued), advised Tamayo not to reveal he was being paid by the archdiocese unless he was questioned under oath. A check for $375 was included. It was one of many checks.
The archdiocese knew where to send Tamayo the letters advising him to stay away, and nearly four years’ worth of checks, but did not share that with Milla’s lawyers. A copy of one letter urging Tamayo to go back to the Philippines was copied to then-Archbishop Mahony.
Tamayo kept asking the archdiocese for permission to come back, but the letters told him to stay put; returning could “open old wounds and further hurt anyone concerned, including the archdiocese.” Tamayo was also in bad standing with the church because he had gotten married.
A church spokesman told me then that the payments didn’t amount to hush money but were mandated until Tamayo found another post. The fact that payments went on so long was “unusual” but were sent “out of compassion and care and a sense of moral responsibility for a man who had served us.”
No such responsibility was evidently acknowledged for Milla and her child. Not until 2007, when the church paid out a massive $660-million settlement to more than 500 young people who had been victimized by clergy, did Milla get any money for what she went through. By then her daughter, the priest’s daughter, was 25 years old.
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