Kakistocrat

Bill C-484, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, seeks to amend the Criminal Code so as to include as an indictable offense, any harm cause to the unborn child while an offense is being committed against the mother. On March 5, 2008 the Bill passed Second Reading in the Canadian House of Commons, with 147 voting in favour, and 132 voting against.

Of interest to me, is how Father Raymond Gravel, a Roman Catholic priest and Bloc Quebecois Member of Parliament, has dealt with this issue. Father Gravel, who, during his days as a parish priest, gained a reputation as a ‘dissenting’ priest, promised that when he took public office he would not take positions that countered those of the Roman Catholic Church, which as a priest he represents.

When discussing the issue, Fr. Gravel transformed the debate into one about abortion. On December 13, 2007 he stated in the Commons "I am against abortion, but I do not believe that [criminalization of it] is how we deal with the problem of abortion." He recently redeclared his opposition to abortion, this time on March 3, 2008, again in the Commons saying "I am against abortion. I regard human life as sacred and abortion as always being a tragedy in our society," and "I believe that human life starts at  conception," as well as "I disagree with [the Supreme Court which has declared that a child becomes a human when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother…"

In light of Fr. Gravel’s previously being seen as a supporter of abortion, this is indeed a nice development. However, Fr. Gravel’s opposition to this Bill confuses me. Gravel is against the decriminalization of abortion because he believes that it would not actually solve anything. He believes that pregnant mothers seeking an abortion would then simply identify alternate, and potentially more dangerous solutions (the famous ‘back-alley abortions’). He suggests that instead it is through education, teaching values, fighting poverty, ensuring respect and dignity for people, and equality between the sexes, and support for pregnant mothers, that the root reasons for mothers normally seeking abortions are neutered. This is how to deal with abortion, Fr. Gravel suggests.

I have never doubted Fr. Gravel’s sincerity, and I don’t disagree with his desire to neuter the reasons those have for seeking an abortion (after all, Crisis Pregnancy Centres seek to do the same), and his concern about the safety of mothers who feel forced to experience an ‘illegal abortion’ is not one I wish to undermine, however, decriminalizing abortion, while it certainly would not wipe abortion out of existence, would significantly lessen it, and with a significantly smaller number of women seeking abortions, preventatives that Gravel suggests (education…) would have a realistic chance of providing potential mothers with real alternatives to abortion. Would this not be the better way to reduce the number of abortions, to combine legislative initiatives with social support?

We digress though because technically this Bill isn’t even about abortion (technically). It is about criminal offenses committed against a pregnant woman that come to bring harm against the unborn child. And yet in a vote of 279 Canadian parliamentarians, 132 (47%) including a Roman Catholic priest, oppose?

K.

"When a pregnant woman is assaulted or killed and her fetus is killed at the same time, I completely agree that it is an abominable crime…" Father Raymond Gravel, MP, December 13, 2007.

While the House wasn’t full on the day of the vote congratulations to New Democrat Peter Stoffer, and Liberals Ray Bonin, John Cannis, Raymond Chan, Roy Cullen, Sukh Dhaliwal, Albina Guarnieri, Charles Hubbard, Jim Karygiannis, Derek Lee, Lawrence MacAuley, Gurbax Mahli, John Maloney, Joe McGuire, John McKay, Dan McTeague, Shawn Murphy, Massimo Pacetti, Francis Scarpeleggia, Raymond Simard, Lloyd St. Amand, Paul Steckle, Paul Szabo, Robert Thibault, Alan Tonks, Roger Valley, Tom Wappel, and Borys Wrzesnewskyj, as well as all but four of the Conservatives who made the right decision. 

Considering the ongoing battle in the Anglican/Episcopalian communities of believers, many opponents of abortion (and assisted suicide for that matter) might be surprised to know that they have a friend in Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Anglican Communion.

Besides being a long time member of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn, Archbishop Williams has recently reinserted himself into the abortion debate. In "Britain’s Abortion Debate Lacks A Moral Dimension," an October 21, 2007, piece for the Observer, Archbishop Williams grants a presumption of goodwill towards those who originally voted in favour of the 1967 Abortion Act, and suggests that many did so clearly believing that they were making provisions only for extreme and tragic situations (conception as a result of rape, fetal or prenatal complications threatening the mother’s life…). Lord David Steel, whose private members Bill in 1967 paved the way for greater access to abortion, told newspapers recently that there are simply too many abortions and he complained that abortion was now being used as a form of long term contraception, so I think the Archbishop’s presumption of goodwill is certainly supported by Lord Steel’s recent comments. However, despite that original good will on the part of the Abortion Act’s architects and defenders, the Archbishop notes “rapidly spiraling statistics—nearly 200, 000 abortions a year in England and Wales—tell their own story,” and one with significantly less good will. 

He notes the irony in the popular and continually strengthened “language of foetal rights” wherein a pregnant woman who smokes or drinks heavily is regarded as infringing on the rights of her unborn child, and yet at the same time, “with no apparent sense of incongruity” there is a governmental push to allow for women to administer upon themselves abortion inducing drugs.

What has happened to society? the Archbishop asks. He suggests that clear, absolute principles (for example, one that he holds, "that abortion is nothing other than the deliberate termination of a human life"), don’t necessarily let one off the hook, when faced with a hugely complex world. Tough decisions cannot be escaped (What do we do with the pregnant woman who life is endangered as a result of her pregnancy, or the victim of rape who has been impregnated?), but he asks, and this is a very important question

when do we get to the point where accepting the inevitability of tough decisions that may hurt the conscience has become so routine that we stop noticing that there ever was a strain on conscience, let alone why that strain should be there at all?

Archbishop Williams notes that just as eroding marriage to allow for divorce in certain seemingly justifiable circumstances has led to no-fault divorce, so also, eroding our view of life to the point that abortion in permitted in seemingly justifiable circumstances, has allowed now for now near unlimited access, and it is this slipperiness, this erosion of values, that is to explain today’s discussions about the availability of over-the-counter abortion pills, which only bring humanity lower.

K.

This week Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis informed the Press, that were Rudi Giuliani to approach him in an attempt to receive Communion, he would be refused it. Giuliani is one of five Catholic presidential candidates (with Democrats Dodd, Biden, Richardson and Kucinich) who support abortion rights, with only one Catholic (Senator Brownback) opposing.

Barack Obama, another Presidential contender, in his bestseller The Audacity of Hope describes being approached by an abortion-protestor who said, ‘Mr. Obama, I know you’re a Christian with a family of your own. So how can you support murdering babies?’

Obama writes:

I told him I understood his position but had to disagree with it. I explained my belief that few women made the decision to terminate a pregnancy casually; that any pregnant woman felt the full force of the moral issues involved when making that decision; that I feared a ban on abortion would force women to seek unsafe abortion, as they had once done in this country. I suggested that perhaps we could agree on way to reduce the number of women who felt the need to have abortions in the first place. 

‘I will pray for you,’ the protestor said. ‘I pray that you have a change of heart.’ Neither my mind nor my heart changed that day, nor did they in the days to come. But that night, before I went to bed, I said a prayer of my own–that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that had been extended to me (p. 197-98).

The reason the Church is against abortion (in the words of Pope Benedict, ‘today’s gravest evil’ is abortion) is because life is present in the womb. With what we know today about the development of the fetus in the womb, the Church rightly sees little difference between the abortion of a fetus one month away from birth, and the murder of a child one month after birth. We need also remember that arguments that seem to grey the issue of abortion, do not find another way of disposing that which is in the womb.

There are over one million abortions in the United States every year, and over one hundred thousand in Canada. Placing restrictions on abortion really won’t bring those same numbers into the back allies with coat hangers. They may bring some there, but we want to heed Obama’s warning about those who feel they have no other option, though not by granting full access to abortion, but rather by giving hope to those who feel hopeless, and by giving them choices, we may find that less and less would choose a back street. When those whom Obama alludes to those who are pregnant and can’t see a future for their child and who then abort, everyone around that person is guilty for having not given hope, and for allowing that person to believe that the task of raising a child is one that they would receive no help in. It does, after all, take a village to raise a child (Ha! Reference to Hillary and Barack in one paragraph!). To promote alternatives to abortion is what takes audacity, not satisfaction with the status quo.

Barack Obama was previously listed as “one of 10 people who could change the world.” I happen to believe that he is a good man and has a lot to offer the United States. I have the audacity to hope that he not only reverses his stand on abortion (though my realistic side says this is a pipedream) but also promotes realistic alternatives to abortion so “as to reduce the number of women who feel the need to have abortions in the first place” which he says he wants to do.

K.

Dr. Ken Walker (pen name W. Gifford-Jones), a Toronto based physician whose syndicated column appears in more than 500 newspapers, has recently suggested that seven month old conjoined twins Tatiana and Kristina Hogan should have been aborted rather than birthed. He suggests that while nature has created this "terrible catastrophe" (the fertilized egg failing to divide completely, resulting in conjoined twins) its mistake is compounded by subjecting the twins to the terrible fate of being allowed to live.

Ethicist Margaret Somerville identifies this as "negative eugenism" (the elimination of those seen as genetically inferior) and suggests that where it is employed "disabled people become disposable people."

Such twins certainly could have been disposed of for legally there mother could have had an abortion, and medically, it is more than likely that she would have been advised of this. Because she refused to do so, W. Gifford-Jones then questions her rationality, and states that she "should not have been allowed to make the ultimate decision," and that instead an ethical committee who "would have seen the logic of terminating the pregnancy" should have been empowered.

Recognizing the pro-choice dogma that interprets a woman’s right to control her own body to an extreme degree, does Gifford-Jones really wish to subordinate this right to an ethical committee in cases where a mother might see value in life that he sees as having should have never been allowed to emerge?

As a result of technologies which allow for screenings (PGD’s for instance) of the unborn, the decision to abort those ‘defective,’ according to Somerville, "might have the effect of wiping out certain groups of people," like Down Syndrome children, dwarf children, those deaf, those bipolar, those with a cleft palate (even thought this is treatable by the final trimester), those of an unpreferred gender, and even those homosexually oriented (should a ‘gay’ gene be found).

Somerville believes society "will lose lessons in courage, hope, perseverance, balance and acceptance," and that in great likelihood, society’s capacity to be humble will be reduced, while its empathy, compassion and acceptance of difference, as well as respect for life, will be diminished.

In defending Terri Schiavo, President Bush warned that when in doubt, one must always err on the side of life, and I too believe that because our lives go through stages, and because the embryonic stage represents the earliest of human life, the embryo should be allowed to emerge unhindered, just as we were allowed to emerge unhindered. If there are opportunities to improve its quality of life, that may be done, but ultimately the question of ending its life is unethical. Negative eugenics like the kind Gifford-Jones promotes, entrench a view of human life that is dependant on particular characteristics that aim for superficial perfection in others. Such eugenics is even more dangerous when the responsibility to determine elimination is given to a third party like an ethical committee. 

K.

I was not planning on posting again this week but in light of several developments, I changed my mind.

US Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Controversial Abortion Procedure

Today Justice Anthony Kennedy voted alongside Justices Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito affirming that the Constitution permits a nationwide pan on the partial birth abortion procedure. The majority decision, written by Kennedy, claimed that the Partial Birth Abortion Act, signed into law in 2003, does not violate a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.

Once the law takes effect, doctors who violate the law could face up to two years in a federal prison.

Dr. LeRoy Carhart, who challenged the federal ban (Gonzalez v. Carhart) claimed "I am afraid the Supreme Court has just opened the door to an all-out assault on [1973’s Roe v. Wade]."

I doubt it, but here’s hoping.

Virginia Tech Shootings

I was a little bit surprised by the number of Christian people blogging about the Virginia Tech massacre and rather than actually showing solidarity with the victims and the families of the victims, instead went into philosophical discussions about the nature of God, attempting to reconcile competing realities (God as all-knowing, all-good, all-powerful; evil’s existence…).

Rabbi Harold Kushner has written the modern classic on God and suffering. His own son, upon birth, was diagnosed with progeria, a rapid aging disease. Kushner was told that his son would never grow beyond three feet, not grow hair, would look like an old man as a child, and would die in his teens.

All occurred as was said and Kushner notes that when he sought out solace in the literature on suffering almost all seemed "more concerned with defending God’s honour, with logical proof that bad is really good and that evil is necessary to make this a good world, than they were with curing the bewilderment and the anguish of the parent of a dying child."

In contrast to those whom Kushner speaks against, and I believe more appropriately than those who simply use a tragic event to further a theo/philosophical discussion (as I believe a number of well-intended bloggers have done), Providence simply posted around the campus:

Today, a lone gunman killed at least 32 people in dorm and other places on the Virginia Tech campus before being killed himself.

A short email has been sent by the Student Council to the School expressing our sympathies. Please continue to pray for these people.

What do you think: Does God really need his honor defended, when his created beings suffer and are in need of solace?

K.