Pain capability: not just for the unborn

The whole Catholic internet wants to talk about abortion again.

This time, you see, the politicians decided to put up a bill which they knew wouldn't pass. Why would they do that? I make a terrible cynic, being hopelessly optimistic and naive, as I'm told. But I don't think this one is confusing. I think the powers that be are perfectly aware that the CLE people, the New Wave Feminists, etc., are moving and shaking. You don't have to be a republican to oppose abortion. You don't have to vote Republican if you are Republican. Decades of lies and impotence. Can you? Will you? Can you? Will you? Can you? Will you? The Republicans have control. They've thrown a few tokens to the anti-abortion base, but they haven't made it a priority. In fact, the Planned Parenthood thing? They have not tried even once to defund. That was such a loud issue in these circles! Where are they now? How many times has it come to vote?

They need to make sure that all these dependable voters stay in the boat. Even seeing that the captain is crazy and there are storms ahead. How do you keep them in? Abortion. A little louder: PAIN CAPABLE LATE TERM ABORTION. Ha. Try to wiggle out now!

Let's talk about what we're talking about, not the politics of it. Late term abortion is easier to despise. People who are uncomfortable pitting female autonomy against that mulberry-looking thing which you can't see at all without a microscope? People who can't bring themselves to value the life of an unidentifiable blob, not yet capable of sentience, never mind pain? Those people might well oppose the unnecessary extraction and death of a fragile but very clearly human child. With reflexes- like the newborn thing where they grab your finger? Flinching? Responding to music. Recognizing voices. Somewhere along the line the mulberry becomes a baby. Everyone thinks so. The difficulty is trying to decide when.

Those of us who oppose all abortion are pretty sure there is no magic line. The beginning is the beginning. Development happens with all kinds of exciting milestones, but we insist that a person's value is not in any of these milestones. Moving? Thinking? Dancing? Being cute? All fascinating. None imbue essential value. The value is in the person, unique and ever changing. Race. Ability. Gender. Age. All important, but the value is in the person. Right from the beginning. And the beginning is conception.

But this other view, it's not hard to grasp, right? Somewhere along the line, a lump of cells with enormous potential is realized in actuality. And while we can't easily point to a precise moment, we can get a pretty good picture. Like calculus? Converging infinity to a limit? Is that a useful image or just a distraction?

The point is this: Late term abortion, though only a very small percentage of abortions, finds vast sympathetic opposition where abortion generally cannot. That makes it very powerful political weaponry.

Who could possibly oppose banning pain-capable abortion? Why wouldn't the thing pass?

Eugenics. That has to be on the list. The simple fact is that some people think that babies who are other than "perfect" (don't get me started) shouldn't be born. I've got nothing to say for them. No defense. I've tried. They should shut up. Or, better, say what they mean and be denounced for their ableism.

Is that it? I read four articles on the subject yesterday. Two from each perspective. I followed the links to what actual people were saying, not just the reporting.

Some very reasonable people were concerned about exemptions. What if the mother's life was on the line? Shouldn't that choice be hers? What if the baby could not survive outside the womb? They said that the bill did not have sufficient exemptions.

Some read stories from women explaining their choice. These are heart-rending, if you've never read them.

Some rejected the basis. Abortion being the hot political topic that it is, there's a good deal of conflicted science. If you're not a scientist or doctor, who do you believe and how to you evaluate? According to pro-choice doctors, the neural network required to experience pain simply doesn't exist yet. That is, this pain capable ban? It's banning abortion far too early for pain capability.

Some pointed to numbers. Did you know, for instance, that restrictions in Texas caused clinics to close and wait times to increase. Your average anti-abortion activist might cheer for that, but wait! There's more! Because of the wait times, late term abortion went up. I'd have to look to know if abortion overall went down, but this harder, scarier, riskier, and less socially acceptable procedure? It went up.

I'm troubled by the primary focus on political solutions here. Abortion opponents, among whom I count myself, stand to do a lot of harm. Right now there are, popularly circulating, lists of senators who voted the ban down. Catholics are calling for Catholic senators named to be refused communion. Bishops who won't issue blanket condemnation are receiving accusations of weakness and much worse.

Worse, every time this comes up, there's this delightful rhetoric. Murderers. Mothers of dead babies- spoken with spite not sympathy. Doctor death. Etc..

We're talking about a very small percentage. I don't recall the numbers, but it isn't huge. That makes anecdote powerful. Did you read the story about the woman who wanted a baby and thrilled when she found she was pregnant? She did everything right. The early testing showed some abnormalities, but she didn't care. She was not going to love her child less for having disabilities. Now, monitored more closely, the doctors got more concerned. When the organs developed they saw: this wasn't something surgery could fix. This child was going to die and the only question was how much pain? Heartbroken, the mother decided that termination was the right thing. She said that carrying the child to term just so she could have a clear conscience would be putting herself ahead of her child. Disagree, if you like, but hear her. She, like every good mother, put her child ahead of herself. Her abortion would have been banned by this law, had it passed. She named her baby. She was devasted. Now, she is called a murderer. Did you hear about her? I guarantee the senators did. And all the pro-choice advocates did.

I think, more than nuance, I'm disgusted by the lack of empathy. Who is having these late term abortions? Why? Let's work harder to see people. Hear them. Empathize and help. More love. Less judgement. Maybe those senators voted down the ban because they secretly love abortion. But maybe it's more likely that they believe what they are saying. That they find the ban to be political gamesmanship which will hurt more than it helps.

I promise, you can oppose abortion without name-calling, demonization, and lies.

Don't pick the red.

I hate response pieces. I wrote this one anyway.

Crisis published Ruse criticizing the NPLM, CLE, and the seamless garment.

First of all let's just get it out of the way, "pick the red, pick the red, pick the red," isn't a liberal refrain that I've ever heard.

Seriously though, the author seems not to understand the seamless garment. People are often afraid of things which they don't understand, and they invent enemies. Let's try to alleviate some fear.

The seamless garment argument is, simply, that even if you prioritize some issues over others (which of course you must) you cannot isolate the issues from their foundation.

I used to go to "pro-life" conferences and talks. They would talk about life: from conception until natural death. Abortion was the top issue, but you were going to learn about euthanasia too. And abortion related issues. Fetal stem cell research? In vitro? And from abortion it isn't too much of a jump to contraception- anyone in the room can explain how increasing contraception increases abortion. And from contraception, well, let's talk about sexual morality. Would you like to read a pornographic description of the unthinkable things gay people do? And while we're on it, pornography is really bad. Really.

As a teen I struggled to wrap my head around these things, each in their place but also tied together. The theme was nominally life. Why were we talking about gay sex? Or from a different perspective: why weren't we talking about war?

Euthanasia struck many as the odd issue. It's harder. If a very sick and dying person doesn't want medical attention which will slow down but not stop death? Who are we to say no? If that person only wants pain relief? That seems fine. If they want pain relief and a blurry brain so they're not afraid of the terrifying fact of impending death? If they want it to be over? It's easy to get there and many people at these conferences did. Euthanasia was a badly fitting puzzle piece. It confused the picture.

When you take away that one confusing piece? All the sudden you have a clear picture! Now we're know what we're talking about! We're talking about SEX. Sex! Sex! Sex! SexxXXXXXxX!! You have no idea how depraved those people are!

It wasn't just conferences. Lobby nights. Protests. The huge annual March for Life. Sex issues were always there and always clumped together in a category called 'life issues.' A category which included euthanasia, but only in a handful of sound bytes every year.

Sex dominates these talks and protests. Salacious topics. You know that thing Christians sometimes do where they gossip with prayer? "Hey. I've got a prayer request. Joe left his wife for the babysitter. The kids. Oh the kids. It's a really bad situation. Can you pray for them?" It sounds like concern. Sometimes it is concern. But polluted with all the juicy details, it stinks of gossip. The movement often felt like that. "Guys. We really have to pray. Have you heard the latest thing they're doing?" It's really hard to tell genuine concern from gossipy finger pointing. They're both definitely there. Regardless of good or bad intentions, the theme of these "life" events was sex.

That's not quite the derail it sounds. Let's get back to the seamless garment.

The idea is that issues are interconnected. Poverty and war. War and starvation. Healthcare and safety nets. Safety nets and abortion. Abortion and torture. It's not patchwork. If you isolate an issue you cannot comprehend it. You cannot fight it effectively. You cannot even see it.

Imagine your favorite sweater. A puppy jumped on you and now have snags in twenty places, some big, some small. Some obvious, some in the armpit. Can you fix it? If you grab one thread and yank it you will not fix the snag no matter how hard you pull. If you pull too hard, you'll get a hole. It might seem impossible to fix, but it isn't. Patience. Attend carefully to how each thread weaves into the others and gently work them back together. It's not a perfect analogy, obviously. Fixing all the problems, or even any of the problems, that we're talking about is going to take miracles. So, maybe the snags are holes and the threads are broken. You can do repairs, but you need the maker's help? You can make things better. You can make things worse. But you can't fix it alone. (Leave the analogy alone! You're killing it!!)

It's easy and common to abuse the seamless garment argument. Ask anyone who opposes it. Ask Austin Ruse. If all these issues are necessarily connected than all these issues are equivalent. None can be prioritized. Take on every single bad thing all at once, or be quiet you hypocrite. The abuse renders the justice fighter impotent. You cannot fight every battle at once. We're going to need it experts. Specialists. And, uh-oh, I feel another analogy coming on.

If you break your leg you go to an orthopedic doctor and get the bone set. If you have asthma you go to a pulmonologist. But who do you see when you have problems which pull against each other? My daughter needs breathing medications. When she was diagnosed with a heart condition which also needed to be treated with medicine, I noticed that her breathing got worse. It turned out that the breathing medicine and the heart medicine worked on the exact same neuroreceptors and they worked to opposite effect. The specialists had to work together even though the problems seemed completely independent. She's got all these complicated problems which need super-specialized doctors, but you can't treat them independently. The doctors have to work together.

Got it? If you treat abortion in isolation, you'll kill people.

The consistent life ethic, another name for the seamless garment, doesn't equate life issues. It insists that the people leading the charges against each assault on life work together. Understand that abortion isn't the end all be all. Life is. Eyes on the prize. The prize isn't an end to legal abortion; the prize is a culture which values the inherent dignity of life.

Misogyny has no place in the fight. Racism has no place. Religious bigotry. GTFO.

The seamless garment links together life issue which are linked. The objectors link together sex issues and umbrellas them under "millions of babies."

The seamless garment argument allows for prioritizing, but not for isolation. You might be called to fight one specific issue and that's ok. You will meet people and/or arguments which explicitly counter your fundamental cause in defending life, though not the immediate cause. That's not ok.

Case and point: a eugenicist and misogynist took the highest elected office in this country, hailed a "pro-life" hero. Eugenics and misogyny have no place in the fight for the dignity of life.

This isn't the red card street scam. This is Lucy telling Charlie Brown that this time she'll hold the ball still.