Archive for the 'Abortion' Category

Linkage and such…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 13, 2004
in Abortion, Blogging, Christianity, Links and Race
. 5 Comments

Over at Alas, A Blog, Ampersand posts some more thoughts in response to this earlier post of mine on abortion. As tempting as it is to respond to nuggets like this one:

By spreading the lie that it’s laws that make abortion possible, Hugo is being deceptive - except the main person he’s deceiving is himself.

…I’m going to honor my recent pledges to stay off the topic for now. I’m not emotionally up to it, honestly.

I was saddened by Trish Wilson’s post this morning, where she’s announcing that she’s considering taking a break from blogging. Here’s an excerpt:

I’m not sure how I feel about blogging at this point. I’m disappointed in the blogosphere. I guess I had fallen for the blogosphere’s image as being an Internet “utopia” and it is certainly far from it. The last incarnation of that dreadful “woman bloggers” debate was another disappointment that was even more disappointing because it was not unexpected. The same old shit comes up every three months. At least I got new readers out of it.

I know that blogging isn’t any different from the rest of the world, but I expected more from it than the usual nonsense you see everywhere else. Sometimes blogging reminds me of Usenet - the same old trolling, snark, and vitriol, too much time spent nuking porn spam, and an atmosphere akin to junior high school popularity contests. Frankly, life’s too short for that. I’m burned out from it all. I don’t even know how many people, if any, really read my blog. Sometimes I feel as if no one reads my blog. I know that’s my bleak mood talking, but I do wonder sometimes. I know I’m not alone. Plenty of other bloggers feel that way. That makes me feel a little better but not much.

I have certainly felt that way, Trish, and sometimes still do. (And I read your blog).

Corianne, though not planning to give up blogging, has also encountered a nasty troll in the blogosphere; she dealt with him here.

Christy has a lullaby.

Camassia experienced Bel Air Presbyterian Church, and… well, read it.

Annie shares a powerful witnessing memory from the front lines on abortion.

Building on Dr. King, Graham shares some of his recent sermon on racial justice.

Astarte has a terrific post on words and political correctness.

And Jay has a particularly powerful post on “bus ministries” and race.

I read lots and lots of blogs, every day. So many times I visit without commenting, wanting to drop an encouraging note, but feeling as if I have too little to say. I’m going to try and be better about that.

Men’s history and one big fat mea culpa about abortion

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 8, 2004
in Abortion, Feminism and Men and Masculinity
. 20 Comments

From the introduction to Michael Kimmel’s “Manhood in America” (temporarily out of print, darn it, but still in xeroxed form), used in my “Men and Masculinity” class:

The history of American manhood is many histories at once…. (it is) a history of fears, frustration, and failure. At the grandest social level and the most intimate realms of personal life, for individuals and institutions, American men have been haunted by fears that they are not powerful, strong, rich, or successful enough. And many of our actions, on both the public and the private stages, have been efforts to ward off these demons, to silence these fears… there have been certain patterns to these actions: American men try to control themselves; they project their fear on to others, and when feeling too pressured, they attempt an escape. (Bold emphasis is mine).

We’ll be working with the theme of that paragraph today in class — and all semester long.

I like Kimmel’s analysis. Really, I think it’s as good a summation of what bedevils American men as any I’ve read. (To be fair, there is much Kimmel says in praise of American manhood).

I just posted below that I wasn’t going to say anything more about abortion. Well, let me amend that slightly. Just as I was typing out the quotation from Kimmel above, I began to think about how this male focus on control and projection plays a part in the abortion wars. It is almost axiomatic among contemporary feminists that the pro-life movement is interested in more than saving the unborn; many argue that the real agenda of most anti-abortion activists is to control women. Specifically, many feminists have argued that men are profoundly threatened by women’s reproductive autonomy, an autonomy that is historically quite recent. Thus, argue mainstream pro-choice feminists, the pro-life movement reflects the male desire to restore things to an earlier order, when women were of necessity more vulnerable and dependent upon men. And if women are vulnerable and dependent, they are thus less threatening to the angst-ridden, status-obsessed males of which Kimmel writes.

I’ve spent a lot of time this past week on this blog and elsewhere saying “NO! I’m not like that! A desire to outlaw abortion is not the same as wishing to restore women to dependency! I want women to be independent and autonomous actors — just not at the price of what I regard as innocent life.” Basically, that’s what I’ve been saying. And I’ve been getting frustrated because not many folks are buying it.

Perhaps it’s because I haven’t explained things well, but I don’t think that’s at the root of it. When I take a step back and quiet my own emotions, I look at my own syllabus for my course on masculinity and remind myself of what this country’s history of misogyny and chauvinism has really been. Men (especially white men like me) have, over the course of some four centuries, taken their fears and anxieties about themselves and projected them on to others — especially men of color, homosexuals, and all women. We have used reproductive policy not so much to protect tiny babies as to to limit the options for their mothers. (Look at any of the traditional arguments against legalizing contraception, used as late as the 1960s, and that becomes evident). Given that history — a history that I know intellectually like the back of my hand — how can I expect my voice as a man to be heard separate from that history?

I want to protect the unborn because I believe the unborn are as worthy of dignity and protection as any other human being. I oppose abortion for the same reasons that I cling to pacifism (even when it’s hard, like after Beslan) and oppose the death penalty and euthanasia. By using phrases like “consistent life” and “seamless garment”, I’ve tried to link my opposition to abortion to a panoply of other issues. But I realize today that I’m a fool if I think that I can expect my sisters with whom I am engaged in debate to see abortion as “just another issue of non-violence.”

In this climate, a man who argues against abortion rights — as I do — does so in the context of centuries of history. I cannot reasonably expect folks to differentiate between my desire to protect the unborn and a legacy of controlling women’s lives in the names of those very same unborn. I wish that it were otherwise. I wish that my arguments could be heard separate from my sex, separate from my upbringing, separate from my identity. But I’m just good enough of a historian to know better.

I remain committed to ending abortion. Small monthly contributions will continue to flow from my checking account to Feminists for Life. But as I reread Michael Kimmel this morning — and reread some of the thoughtful, impassioned remarks here and at other blogs in response to my posts about abortion — I’ve realized that now is not the time for the likes of me to speak on this issue. There are other battles to be fought.

In writing this week and last on abortion, I made the mistake of forgetting the very history I teach every semester. I am sorry to anyone I have offended by doing so, and I am humbled.

I’m also hungry, and ready for my morning snack.

Okay, now I’ve had my morning snack. And I wonder, given that I teach men’s history and women’s history, why did I come to the conclusion I did today as a result of reading Michael Kimmel, and not a woman? Or am I thinking too much?

Taking a break from one topic

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 8, 2004
in Abortion and Blogging
. 4 Comments

Though I welcome comments here about abortion (and may comment elsewhere on the subject), I’m going to take a break from posting on the topic for a while. The first reason is the obvious one: writing about abortion is emotionally exhausting for me in a way that no other topic can be. The second reason is that I’m still uncertain what purpose it serves to debate other folks in cyberspace. The dialogue that’s taken place here, at Mouse Words, and at Alas, a Blog (among other places) has set a high standard for civility. It’s nice that we can all get along, even when the positions that others take exasperate and bewilder us. But at some point, maintaining cheerful civility becomes very tiring. One option is to resort to hostility, and that’s an option I’m utterly unwilling to take. The other is to take a break, and that’s the direction I’m inclined to head at this time.

Lord knows, there are plenty of other things to write about.

Criminalizing abortion?

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 7, 2004
in Abortion, Aggression and violence and Christianity
. 15 Comments

In the post immediately below, I responded to some aspects of Ampersand’s post about pro-lifers and feminism. I didn’t get a chance to get to what may have been the most difficult part of his post, the aspect with which I have wrestled a great deal: can a pro-life feminist advocate the criminalization of abortion?

Ampersand writes:

Hugo asks, why not embrace both the supply and demand-side methods of reducing abortion, rather than making a choice? Hugo’s position only makes sense if he believes that banning abortion would harm nobody to any significant degree. And if you accept that premise, then Hugo is correct: It makes perfect sense to ban abortion if the ban harms no one and might do some good by preventing some abortions (even if the number of abortions prevented is low).

But how could anyone think that banning abortion does no harm?

It’s clear that banning abortion would do harm. Some women (and their doctors) will have to be thrown in prison to enforce such a law. Some women (most likely poor women) will be hurt or killed by botched illegal abortions. Some working- and middle-class women will be forced to spend their life savings getting a safe, legal abortion in another country. And some women will be forced to give birth against their will, giving up control of their fertility (not just whether or not to have children, but also how many children to have and when in their mother’s life plans they’ll be born) and often being forced to give up life dreams and career plans. All women will have less freedom than before.

There is a substantial price to pay for banning abortion. And even if we accept -for the sake of argument - that reducing abortion is a noble and important goal, all the evidence indicates that banning abortion is a very ineffective way of reducing abortion.

I think this is a bit of a false choice. I can only support a ban if it hurts no one? All restrictions on abortion hurt someone; some women are no doubt discomfited by the lack of availability of third-trimester terminations.

First of all, where is the evidence that if abortion is made illegal, women will be hurt or killed by botched abortions? I’m not saying it won’t happen, but since Ampersand is a stickler for evidence, I’m curious as to where the statistics are to back up these various claims. Arguments from America’s past are not in and of themselves sufficient predictors of the future, as much as it pains me as an historian to say that! What about the possibility that a dramatic reduction in access to abortion will result in more women keeping their babies? Especially if — as leftist pro-lifers insist — anti -abortion legislation be accompanied by considerable aid to help single (and married) women either afford to keep their children or give them up for adoption.

But the best reason to support a ban is the conviction that abortion is the destruction of innocent, vulnerable human life. The fact that murders occur despite the fact that homicide is illegal is a poor argument for legalizing homicide. Closer to the point, the fact that men have always paid women to have sex with them is a poor argument for legalizing prostitution. Laws exist to protect the vulnerable regardless of the difficulty of enforcing them.

We are at an impasse here, albeit one we can discuss politely. If one believes — as almost all pro-lifers do — that life begins at conception, and the life of a child at one week or three months or three years is equally valuable, than one would be hard-pressed to justify not working to overturn the law that made the killing of any of those children possible. If one believes that an embryo in these early stages is just a mass of cells that is merely a potential life, than restrictions on abortion are an absurd and unwarranted intrusion into a woman’s privacy. But I’m at a loss as to how it is that I can be expected to continue to believe that abortion is murder while still insisting that it remain legal. As a strategy, pro-choicers will be better off trying to convince folks like me that an embryo is not deserving of personhood. And that will be an uphill battle, just as it is for me when I engage in dialogue with folks on the other side of the issue.

I don’t think that the primary focus of a pro-life strategy should be the criminalization of abortion. I’m interested in changing hearts and minds and behaviors. I’m interested in voluntary rather than forced conversions. And frankly, criminalizing abortion outside the context of a massive cultural change in attitudes towards life isn’t going to work to end the practice. I don’t write or lobby legislators to enact more abortion restrictions, though I support such restrictions. I’d rather give money to campaigns to change hearts and minds, campaigns like those of Feminists for Life. Yes, that means I will make common cause with Christian right-wingers with whom I share a faith and a common language, but whose troglodytic politics annoy the heck out of me on other issues. So too, I will make common cause with secular left-wing feminists on issues ranging from domestic violence to pay equity to war to Title IX to welfare.

I think I’ve infuriated everyone now. Yikes.

Of course, organizations like Consistent Life get “all the issues right”. But those of us who support the “seamless garment” philosophy of life are so numerically insignificant as to be irrelevant — unless we make common cause with both left and right on an issue-by-issue basis.

This is a hard issue for me to write about. As it does for many people, writing about abortion brings up intense emotion. As I’ve written before, I spent years on the pro-choice side, giving my time and energy to pro-choice causes. I have enormous respect for the goodness and sincerity of folks on the other side of this issue. If I had not “come to Christ”, as it were, my views on abortion would surely be where they were a decade ago. But my politics are built on my theology, as inadequate as both no doubt are, not the other way around.

Still more on pro-life feminism: a response

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 7, 2004
in Abortion and Feminism
. 21 Comments

Ampersand at Alas, a Blog posted an interesting challenge to the whole notion of “pro-life feminism” over the weekend. (Make sure to read the comments section as well).

Ours has been a civil exchange, and that tone has been kept up in the comments section. Still, civility only gets us so far — it enables a dialogue to take place, but it doesn’t guarantee that the dialogue will be constructive. On some basic issues, the gulf between our respective positions is too great to bridge. For example, in the comments section beneath his post, Ampersand wrote:

In my view, a fetus for most of the pregnancy (before it develops an effectively functioning cerebral cortex) has no inherant value of its own. It is like any other mindless object.

However, mindless objects do have value when people project that value onto them. So, for instance, a piece of paper with some black ink on it has no inherant value of its own. But if that piece of paper happens to be the original Walt Kelley drawing that my Aunt Gerry gave me, then I find it very precious.

Presumably, you’d say that a piece of paper is a piece of paper, whether it’s the Kelly drawing or some incoherant ink scribbles I made to see if a pen had ink in it. After all, in both cases it consists of pulped, bleached wood with some black in on it. It’s the same in either case, right?

I disagree. We don’t live in an objective universe; we live in a subjective human society, where the value of most objects is the subjective value placed on them by their owners. So I say a fetus has no inherant value of its own; but when I see that a particular fetus is loved and treasured by its eager parents, then I think that particular fetus does have value.

Of course, pro-lifers see value in all fetuses. However, just because you see value in something, it doesn’t follow that you do (or should) have the legal right to control that something’s destiny.

Well, I appreciate Ampersand’s candor. I’m at a loss as to how to respond. I confess (as he might well suspect) I wince when I see what I regard as living human beings compared to pieces of paper! (I’m fairly certain that the comparison was not intended to be offensive). I’m obviously troubled by the notion that the fact that a child is loved makes him or her more valuable. This seems to be parental narcisissm of a high order: My child has no intrinsic worth; rather, it derives its worth from my perception of it. Jeepers.

Of course, pro-choice feminists make a colossal distinction (one hopes) between a pre-born child and a child out of the womb, living independently. Few such folks (again, one hopes) would argue that a child who has been born still derives his or her value from his or her parents’ affections! But like most pro-life folks, I am convinced that life does begin at conception, and it is at the beginning of life that our value and worth begins. (And of course, this is the position of most pro-lifers).

Most of the commenters at Alas, a Blog seem convinced that a pro-lifer (never mind a male pro-lifer) cannot be a feminist in any meaningful sense of the latter term. Alsis38 made a representative remark:

As far as I’m concerned, there is no such thing as a pro-life feminist. You can be a feminist who hates the concept of abortion and would never want one, for sure. But if you are out there trying to cut off women’s access to legal abortion (as the pro-life movement has been doing with great success for the last twenty-odd years), or applauding those who do, you are not a feminist.

Some things, I don’t have very nuanced feelings about, and that’s one of them.

This is a “small tent” vision of feminism indeed! It’s also an ahistorical vision. Feminism in this country, by even the most conservative definition, has at least a 150-year history (we tend to date it to the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848). It’s only in the last 35 years or so that abortion rights have suddenly (and to my mind disastrously) emerged as the sine qua non of feminism in our culture. As Feminists for Life points out over and over again, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton both opposed abortion. (And not merely out of a desire to protect women from bad doctors, but also to preserve the lives of innocent children).

Pro-life feminists are feminists because they support equal rights for women in the political, economic, cultural, social, and sexual spheres of life. (Obviously, I can’t speak for all pro-life feminists; we are a diverse lot indeed). For all of the accomplishments of the last 100 years, we still have a long way to go. Pay equity is STILL (infuriatingly) an issue. The feminization of poverty is a growing, rather than a declining problem. The sexual exploitation of girls and women worldwide through porn and sex trafficking is also a major threat to women’s health and dignity. I am concerned about major issues like these, and minor ones too (like why my college gives benefits to male football players — like subsidized housing — that are unavailable to my female soccer and softball players.) But apparently, no matter how “correct” my stances may be on every other issue, to oppose abortion (or more precisely, to favor legal restrictions on abortion as one tactic in that struggle) is to lose any chance of being considered a feminist.

Look, I know as a man I need considerable humility here. It’s not my body, after all, that carries children. And I won’t lose access to legal abortion for myself. It’s incumbent on male feminists (especially pro-life ones) to be careful to listen to the anguish, the anger, and the fear that surrounds this issue. It’s imperative that we understand just how important the notions of “autonomy” and “choice” are. Most pro-lifers tend to be dismissive of those words, but I’m not. They are meaningful, immensely so. It is with a deep sense of humility that pro-lifer feminists declare that they favor limits on personal autonomy and choice at the moment that these lead to the destruction of human life.

It’s funny. Many of the same folks who think a Catholic can be pro-choice and still take communion DON”T think a feminist can be pro-life. It’s all well and good for other folks to be forced to have big tents, but hey, we feminists have our standards! That saddens me. Look, I teach the history of the reproductive rights movement every semester. (And I’ll bet I know the life story of Margaret Sanger and the text of the Griswold v. Connecticut decision as well as any of my pro-choice colleagues!) When I teach, I don’t betray my pro-life position — that would be crossing a very dangerous line, especially in a classroom likely to be filled with abortion survivors. Indeed, I’ve had pro-life Christian students come to argue with me because from my lectures, they assume I must be pro-choice!

There are other aspects of Ampersand’s post I need to respond to as well. Folks have also raised issues of race and class that ought to be addressed. But it’s Tuesday morning after a holiday weekend, and I’ve got too much to do.

But let me recommend a helpful link for pro-life women’s issues. Check out the back issues of the now-defunct Journal for Feminism and Nonviolence Studies. I recommend this article in particular: Pro-Life Philosophy and Feminism, by Anne Maloney, a philosophy prof at the College of Saint Catherine.

Supply, demand, and the abortion struggles

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 31, 2004
in Abortion and Politics
. 30 Comments

Before anything else, Lynn alerts us this morning that the “pimp and ho” costumes many of us blogged about last week were a hoax. I am embarrassed to have been taken in so easily, but I’m far more relieved.

Barry at Alas, A Blog dropped me a line, asking if I had had a chance to see this post from April. It’s part of a discussion that I’ve only observed from afar, about the tactics of focusing on demand or supply when it comes to reducing abortion. Here’s an excerpt:

I assume that the primary goal of a sincere pro-lifer is not to punish the guilty, but to reduce abortion as much as possible. So I therefore assume that pro-lifers support pro-life policies - and pro-life politicians like George Bush - because they think pro-life policies will reduce abortion. But there are legitimate reasons to doubt that’s true.

First, how likely is it that abortion will ever be banned in the USA? Reagan couldn’t do it. Bush Sr. couldn’t do it. So far, Bush hasn’t been able to. Face it: the country is divided on abortion. The most pro-lifers could possibly accomplish is throwing abortion to state-by-state restrictions; but some states will never ban abortion, so all that will do is force women to cross state lines.

Even if legal abortion could be entirely banned, it’s unclear that this would actually reduce the real number of abortions by a significant degree. Before the Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade ruling, American women had somewhere between 200,000 and 1.2 million abortions a year in the U.S.. Although measuring something as hidden as illegal abortions is always difficult, the best pre-Roe scholarly assessment came to a figure of about a million abortions a year…

There’s more there, so please go and read the whole thing. It ends with a rather stretched but interesting case for John Kerry as the pro-life choice for president.

As my students (and regular readers of this blog) know, I’m not big on “either/or” forced choices. I’m very fond of “both/and” ways of seeing the world. Feminists for Life, the one anti-abortion organization to which I contribute money regularly, uses a “both/and” approach to the abortion issue. FFL lobbies for changes in the law to protect human life in utero, while simultaneously working to raise awareness of alternatives to abortion and to change hearts and minds. Frankly, most pro-life organizations address both “supply” and “demand”, and most spend more money on the latter than on the former. (Pregnancy counseling centers that arrange for adoption cost more, long term, than lobbying Congress!)

I agree with Barry — and with President Bush — that the abortion struggle can only be won through a change in hearts and minds. It can’t be won on the legal front alone. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t worthwhile and noble to expend energy and money on curtailing legal access to abortion — I think it is. But it’s even better to devote time and resources to reaching those women most at risk for abortion, preferably before they conceive a child. That can include abstinence education and information on contraception. One does not preclude the other, nor do I see any reason to believe that teaching both together vitiates the message of either.

Unlike some of my more conservative brethren, I think many forms of artificial contraception are excellent weapons in the war on abortion — condoms, for instance. (The Pill, as most folks know, has abortifacient qualities that render it morally problematic for those who believe life begins at conception.) My goal is to end the destruction of the unborn and to protect and enrich and enhance the lives of the already born — and I am ready to embrace any and all tools in that struggle. So, I rejoiced when President Bush signed the Partial-Birth Abortion ban. I also support the distribution of condoms in high schools. (I’m quite aware that there are relatively few folks who hold those two positions together.) I know full well that condoms don’t always work — but they work a hell of a lot better than nothing at all. If the availability of condoms prevents even one abortion, then I say “hallelujah.”

My problem with most of my fellow pro-lifers is that they often see the abortion issue as simply one part of a larger culture war. (Frankly, the same could be said for the pro-choice movement). Too often, knowing where someone stands on reproductive issues is a highly accurate predicter of a host of other views on issues ranging from guns to gays to the war on terrorism. I don’t think that’s at all helpful. This outlook locks us into ideological boxes that make it impossible to admit that the “other side” might have some excellent and useful ideas. Those of us who care equally about all parties involved in the tragedy of abortion — the child in utero, the mother, the father — must be willing to make coalition with anyone and everyone who can help us in the struggle to save the lives of the unborn and save the psyches of those who terminate them.

In the end, I see no reason not to embrace both a “demand” and “supply” strategy in the struggle to end all abortions, both legal and illegal. I am skeptical about the willingness of politicians of any party to fight this fight on all fronts. Ending abortion is not just about changing the make-up of the court, or re-electing President Bush — it’s about reaching our friends and neighbors, one at a time. It’s about reaching out to those most at risk for choosing an abortion, and proposing alternatives ranging from abstinence to artificial contraception to adoption.

Barry has kindly added me to his blogroll, but placed me in the category of those who are “even further right“, relative to others to whom the editors of Alas link. Given my stance on abortion and a few other select cultural issues, I suppose that’s deserved. But as someone who voted for Socialist Equality Party candidate John C. Burton in the California recall last autumn, I’m tickled to be hangin’ with the righties in anyone’s eyes!

Waterparks. And the T-Shirt.

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 27, 2004
in Abortion, Clothing and Fashion and Feminism
. 15 Comments

Am home and tired after a day at the water park. What an extraordinary place a water park is. So much water. So much sun. So many diverse people in various states of undress. I went on one particular ride and ended up with a great deal of water up my nose.

Annika and XRLQ have been blogging today about this Planned Parenthood t-shirt (Candace noted it in the comments below.)

The shirt’s logo is simple: “I Had an Abortion.” The language at PPFA’s site describing the shirt:

Planned Parenthood is proud to offer yet another t-shirt in our new social fashion line: “I Had an Abortion” fitted T-shirts are now available. These soft and comfortable fitted tees assert a powerful message in support of women’s rights.

Though my view of the t-shirt is not all that different from Annika’s or XRLQ’s, I’m going to try and take this in a different direction. And, for the record, let me reassert my reasonably solid pro-life bona fides. (I’m a monthly sustaining contributor to Feminists for Life).

It was about 1997 or 1998 when I began to see the most remarkable slogans showing up on the fitted t-shirts of my female students: “Porn Star“. “Juicy.” “Real American Bitch.” “I Just Slept with your Boyfriend” (I’ve seen gay men where these too, but I see ‘em more often on women; I’ve seen other verbs besides “slept” as well.) “Too Hot to Handle“. “You Know you Wanna Touch.” There are probably others (you can mention them in the comments section) but those have lingered in my memory. I associate all this with the banal and infuriating “girl power” movement; largely a creation of advertisers, it sold young women a message of empowerment through shock and sexuality. Adolescents love to upset adults; this adult initially found it difficult to know how to deal with female students whose t-shirts read “You Know you Wanna Touch”. (I do a splendid job of affecting blindness in such situations nowadays.)

What I disliked about these shirts was not so much their brazenness as their rank commercialism. Nothing genuinely radical, edgy, or dangerous is sold at Abercrombie and Fitch or Urban Outfitters (two known sources of said shirts; no doubt, there are others.) Newsflash, kiddies: The fact that it horrifies your parents doesn’t make it any less a product of the very same corporate America in which your parents are investing. What these places sell is the cleverly marketed opportunity to outrage the older generation while simultaneously offering a superficially feminist message. The message is “Only a bold, strong, brave young woman who doesn’t care about conforming to stereotypes would wear a shirt like this. Thus if you wear this shirt, you bear witness to your fiery, indominatable, wild grrl soul.” Please. What you bear witness to, darlin’, is nothing more than your own socially constructed insecurity, and any sensible person over 25 is abundantly aware of that.

I write all this because this all came to mind the moment I saw this Planned Parenthood shirt. On one level, giving PPFA the benefit of the doubt, the shirt makes sense. A truly effective pro-choice strategy involves breaking the link between guilt and shame on one hand and one’s own abortion on the other. Just as the t-shirts I refer to above advertise the wearer’s sexual confidence, so too does this shirt advertise the wearer’s refusal to feel remorse for what, after all, was an important and empowering choice. (Perhaps I shall start to see the “I Just Slept with Your Boyfriend” shirts in the autumn semester, and then the “I Had an Abortion” shirts in the spring. The wearer could thus keep us all updated, and, helpfully, indicate the all-too-frequent consequence of out-of-wedlock sex.) Planned Parenthood is borrowing from the cynical strategies of good corporate citizens like Abercrombie and Fitch. Just as A&F and other t-shirt manufacturers used an image of bold sexual assertiveness to market clothes, so Planned Parenthood is using a message of unrepentant, unremorseful pride in abortion both to market t-shirts and to trivialize the emotional consequences of terminating an unwanted pregnancy. If the stigma of abortion can be removed, than the pro-choice movement can win a major battle.

As I write this, I am imagining every woman in America who ever had an abortion wearing the shirt on the same day. I am sure Planned Parenthood would love that, hoping that it would send a powerful message about the absolute necessity of defending women’s access to that particular procedure. I’d like to go further, and have other t-shirts printed up for my sex: “I got a woman pregnant, and refused to marry her. She had an abortion.” Or: “I told her I’d pull out in time. She just had an abortion.” What grim fun we could have thinking up still more slogans. By the time we had put t-shirts on every man and woman and teen in this country to whom they could apply, we’d have an awful lot of folks dressed in soft and comfortable fitted tees. But knowing who has had an abortion, and who has been responsible for one, doesn’t change the basic truth of what abortion is.

In Las Vegas on Sunday, while leaving our hotel, I saw a pretty girl of about 15 standing with her parents. She had on a brand-new hot pink tight t-shirt. It read “Real American Bad Girl.” She was looking around the way young teenagers will, trying to affect a sophisticated world-weariness while obviously eager to see who was looking at her. Her outfit proclaimed: I’m hot and bold and devil-may-care. Her stance proclaimed: I just want some attention, please look at me, please like me, please tell me I’m okay. I knew better than to believe the words emblazoned across her chest.

When I see girls like that wearing these shirts with overtly sexual messages, I know damn well that the vast majority of them don’t want random sex; they want validation. And when, some day soon, I see a woman on the street with the new Planned Parenthood t-shirt, I will be absolutely certain down to the core of my being that she too, regardless of her age, is looking for validation that her choice was okay. But that validation is not mine to give.

All of these posts about Amy Richards here and elsewhere have humbled me. I’ve been reminded, yet again, of how different this issue of abortion is from all other issues. Nothing else, not even same-sex marriage, inflames passions and exposes divisions like this one. Add in a hotly contended political season like this one, and it becomes difficult not to give into blustering self-righteousness. In 1992, I walked precincts for NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) on behalf of Bill Clinton and Barbara Boxer. The folks I walked with were good, loving, kind people who had thought long and hard about the abortion issue. In more recent years, I’ve met with and walked with folks from a variety of pro-life groups. Though there were many social and religious differences between the two groups, the sincerity and decency of both sides was very, very clear to me. In this week of the Democratic convention, as we come closer and closer to this pivotal election, and as we write about some fairly emotional stuff, I say again, people, let’s be committed to seeing the best in our opponents, even as we hold strong to what we think we know to be right.

End of rant. Matilde is ready for her dust bath.

Why Kerry?

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 27, 2004
in Abortion, People and Politics
. 10 Comments

Not much time to post today. My fiancee’s teenage nieces are in town, as is her 16 year-old younger brother; I’m taking all three of them today to Raging Waters, a nearby water park.

I got an email the other day from a reader, asking me how I as a pro-lifer could defend a vote for Kerry. The answer is in the question! To me, being pro-life is always about being more than anti-abortion. Opposition to abortion is merely one facet of a larger set of positions on issues ranging from war to just policing to the death penalty to euthanasia. On my more inclusive days, it even includes opposition to factory farming. No party in this country is going to offer me a candidate who takes a broad, consistent-life ethic position on all the issues. (Though Dennis Kucinich, pre-2002, came close; as regular readers know, he was strongly pro-life on all issues until he ran for president. He’s even a vegan!)

President Bush’s position on abortion is indeed closer to mine than Senator Kerry’s. (Though I confess I am a bit confused as to what Senator Kerry’s position is — it does seem to change). But on every other major issue that I can think of, Kerry’s views are closer to a consistent-life ethic than the president’s. Note that I said “closer”; the Democratic Party is a long way from where I would like it to be, but it is a good deal nearer to the goal than the GOP.

I have gay and lesbian friends who vote Republican. (Think the Boi from Troy). I don’t call them fools for staying within the GOP and trying to change their party; I honor their willingness to fight for change from within. I’m a pro-life Democrat, willing to stay and fight for similar changes within my party. It may be a long time comin’, but I am patient. In the meantime, I’ll be voting for and giving money to the Democratic Party for the foreseeable future.

Okay, off to slather on sunscreen and cavort in the smog, heat, and chlorine of Raging Waters.

One more on Amy Richards, and “Choice for Men”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 22, 2004
in Abortion, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement, People and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 24 Comments

I’ve got a post percolating in my brain (by request, no less) on the subject of contemporary Christian men and their attitudes towards independent women. It will take a while to flesh out.

I’ve been thinking still more about men and abortion. Trish got me thinking with her post in response to my posts on Amy Richards. In Trish’s final paragraph, she mentioned one particular men’s rights outfit with which I wasn’t familiar: Choice4Men, which seems to exist largely as an internet discussion group. She used C4M as an example of where many men might be in terms of the "men’s rights in abortion" movement. Trish wrote:

As far as calling for men’s rights in abortion, a quick reality check to that line of thought lies in looking at the misogynistic men’s rights group Choice4Men and the backlash men’s rights in abortion movement. This movement calls for men’s rights to overshadow a woman’s right to decide what to do with her own body. These men wish to control women’s reproductive freedom, for their own benefit. The movement is about avoiding responsibility when men should take it and complaining about being "forced into daddyhood."

So I went and visited Choice for Men today, and got very sad. And angry. (Those emotions seem to constitute a theme this week!) I read through some of their letters and messages, and agree thoroughly they are misogynistic to the core, not to mention remarkably whiny. If you go to their site, you can read their statement of principles; I’ll just quote the first two:

Choice4Men is about the right to choose to be a parent. Or not.
Choice4Men is about men who have been trapped into parenting without consent.

C4M is worried about men who have impregnated women who have chosen to keep the child, despite the fact that the man involved had no desire to become a father. (Hence the "trapped into parenting" line). I can’t say I have even an iota of sympathy for these fellows.

I’ve been blunt this week. (Folks who believe in astrology would say it’s because we’re in Leo.) So let me continue to be straightforward:

Every man who ejaculates inside a woman, whether or not contraception is used, is signalling his willingness to become a father. If men are not ready and willing to raise a child conceived through an act of sex, they are morally responsible for refraining from sex. (I’ll let my sisters make a similar case for women. I’m in enough trouble on that side of the fence already). A man who opposes abortion ought to be certain of his partner’s feelings before he engages in sexual intercourse with her, lest she get pregnant and choose to abort the child that he may well wish to care for. A pro-life man whose girlfriend chooses abortion can hardly blame her for her "choice". Similarly, a man who has no wish to become a father has no right to complain when biology works as nature intended.

This is not to say that I think sex should be purely for procreation, nor even that sex ought always be confined to marriage. But those who believe that heterosexual intercourse can be fully divorced from procreation do so at the risk of both their own heartache and the destruction of innocent life. I have no desire to "control women" by making them breeding machines. But I see no reason why feminism must be linked to the right to have sexual intercourse without responsibility. The mystery and thrill and excitement and wonder and intimacy of sexual intercourse are ultimately linked to its procreativity, even when the folks engaged in it are unready and unwilling to become parents. We need to get this message across to our sons as well as to our daughters.

I still think what Amy Richards did was evil. That doesn’t mean I am unsympathetic to her! Reading all the comments at various places (including here at my blog), I have a real sense of how overwhelmed she surely must have been. I’m choosing to be charitable and believe that she did what she thought best for her surviving child. But I can understand and sympathize with the reasons for the choice while simultaneously condemning the choice! Compassion does not equal support; empathy does not equal endorsement.

I have no sympathy for the guys at Choice4Men. Not only do I find their irresponsibility appalling, I find their sense of their own victimhood to be repellant. (Maybe it’s my upbringing, but there’s something about men who complain about mistreatment at the hands of women that turns my stomach.) But the boys at C4M and Amy Richards have something in common: they are convinced that they are entitled to enjoy sexual intercourse without accepting its inevitable attendant consequences. The former wish to change the laws in order to avoid their responsibilities, the latter used medicine to terminate hers.

I’m praying for the whole damn lot of them.

“Relying on a man”; autonomy, interdependence — UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 21, 2004
in Abortion, Class, Family, Feminism, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement and People
. 26 Comments

Long and meandering post a-comin’. Try and separate the wheat from the chaff!

My two posts on Amy Richards are still collecting lots of thoughtful responses. I’m getting lots of visitors this morning from a new (to me) blog, After Abortion. Go give ‘em a look.

The best critique of what I’ve written is over at Trish Wilson’s place. Thoughtfully and politely, and with courageous self-disclosure, Trish takes on several of my points. I don’t agree with her on many things, but I am glad our exchange on such a profoundly emotional issue is so civil. Let’s keep that tone!

In the comments section after her terrific post, a reader named AmarettiXL writes:

I’m the (single parent) daughter of a married woman who always advised me to never rely on a man. Many women advise their daughters in this way; so what? I’m not so dense as to see why some men get their shorts in a bunch upon hearing this phrase, but to them all I can say is…it’s not about you! It’s about making sure one’s daughter grows up with the ability to support herself if and when needed. Look through the financial-advice columns (Suze Orman, Michelle Singletary, etc); there’s still plenty of women out there in the so-called post-feminist world who don’t know a damn thing about their own family finances! I don’t want my daughter growing up to be one of them, so she’ll be getting the same advice from me. The message isn’t “men are deadbeats” the message is “take care of yourself”. Clear?

And a reader of mine, blackcoffeeblues, asks a similar question:

Just a quick question, Hugo…so do you mean to say that the teaching of women to not “rely on a man” is negative thing? I’m not challenging you, I’m must asking for a little more Hugo-thought on the statement.

I have mentioned on more than one occasion that the phrase “Don’t rely on a man” troubles me. But it upsets me primarily because I know that it is the unreliability of men that has made that phrase such an essential part of so many young women’s upbringing. Here is where I part company with most of the feminist movement: I continue to believe that feminism, at its core, is a logical response to a legacy of irresponsible, reckless, and disappointing male behavior. No, I don’t mean that if all men were just more reliable, faithful, dependable and moral than all women would be happy to be barefoot and pregnant! As a Christian, however, I believe that all human beings are made for relationship with one another. We are meant to lead lives that are neither dependent nor radically autonomous, but interdependent.

What do I mean by these terms? Dependency is a relationship rooted in inequality. A small child is dependent upon its parents. My chinchilla is dependent upon me and my girlfriend. It is certainly possible to be emotionally and spiritually dependent upon one’s spouse; that generally isn’t healthy. (Not that I am holding myself up as some expert on marriage). Autonomy is the attempt to lead a life of near-total self-reliance and self-determination. Autonomy has a lot of allure in our culture. Problem is, it doesn’t work for most people. To lead a radically independent life requires financial resources only available to a relative handful of educated, mostly white, Westerners. And even the richest and most independent person will begin life by having their diapers changed — and they are fairly likely to spend the final days of their life in that same condition. Real autonomy is a chimera, but a seductive one. And it is only appealing in the long run to adolescents and to those whose emotional wounds have left them perpetual teenagers.

Interdependence is living in complementary relationship. Mutual sacrifice, mutual reliance. Pregnancy is not easy. The extreme vulnerability of women during the later stages of pregnancy bears witness to the obvious need to depend on another human being for protection. (Yes, I’m “arguing from design”, a rhetorical tactic that most secular feminists absolutely despise. But so help me, it’s at the very core of my faith.) Interdependent folks know how to care for themselves, but they also know how to let another person care for them. They are capable of trusting another person, of being radically vulnerable to someone else (presumably, their spouse). On a practical level, that means being willing to merge your finances with another human being, all the while knowing how to take care of your money should disaster strike and you find yourself without your partner.

If God blesses me with a daughter someday, I will raise her to (to borrow a phrase out of context from Ronald Reagan) “trust, but verify.” To lead a successful and happy life, I believe we must be open to the likelihood that the highest form of joy is to be found in community, and for most folks, particularly within family; in love, marriage, and children. That does not mean that other, more solitary pursuits do not have value — merely that for both men and women, the longings of our own bodies and our own hearts suggest that the vast majority of us desire enduring connection with others above all else.

Okay, I’m getting carried away.

We live in a culture that is remarkably tolerant of bad male behavior. I am not asking women to start trusting men first; I am asking my brothers to start changing their behavior! One of the first things we guys need to do is to listen to women, particularly our sisters in the feminist movement. Men have to be willing to hear the stories of the betrayal, abuse, harassment, objectification, de-valuing and dismissal that so many women have experienced at the hands of men. When women don’t return my casual smiles on the street, when they avoid eye contact with my male friends, I don’t complain. I know that defensiveness is a logical learned response to a predatory male culture. I also think that most liberal feminism, the sort that worships “choice”, is also a logical learned response to bad male behavior. What woman wouldn’t want to maximize her own freedom, given that so many men in her life have behaved so badly towards her? We men have to hear that! And we have to be strong enough to prove that we are different. And we have to be strong enough to do our own inner work that leads us to be willing to be different!

One other aspect of the argument to touch on. In her last paragraph, Trish writes:

In his second post, Hugo brought up two things that I believe are irrelevant to Richards’ abortion - the man’s choice and Richards’ description of growing up without a father. He suspects, without any real proof, that Richards’ mother likely told her to never rely on a man because he says that’s what the young women of single mothers that he has met have told him. Again, I didn’t take Richards’ description of her home life the way he did. I didn’t take her “I never missed not having him” as an emphatic “never” the way he did. I saw it as a simple statement of fact, not a hidden code that she regretted being “fatherless.” I know that family values ideologues would have jumped all over her statements as “proof” that she is damaged goods because she “grew up fatherless” when there is absolutely no proof of any such thing. It came across to me as if Hugo was trying to find something lacking in her family background that would explain, to his satisfaction, why she would choose to have such an abortion and to discuss it the way she did. Those comments from him seemed to be more about him and less about Richards. I took her opening paragraph to say that she already recognized the hardships that went with raising children alone, since she saw families from all walks of life, including her friends who were raising their nieces and nephews because their sisters became pregnant out of wedlock. Richards saw the difficulties of single parenting and she did not have any romantic notions about it.

Trish is certainly right about my desire to “psychologize” Amy Richards. And I think we’ve arrived at one of those moments where secular and religious folks may find themselves at an impasse. I don’t believe that any fatherless child can go through life without experiencing dramatic repercussions. I don’t think that is possible spiritually or psychologically (and I do have most psychologists on my side). And thus I do think that any woman who claims that her relationship (or lack thereof) with her father has no bearing whatsoever on her relationships with other men is in denial. Period. And I remain convinced, even without knowing the details of the story, that it is highly likely that her father’s absence is deeply connected to the fact that as an unmarried woman of 34, she chose to abort two of the three children that she and her partner had conceived.

The number one thing I as a man can do to end abortion is to teach responsibility to my younger brothers. I must role model for them the sort of behavior that will lead them to become the sort of men who will earn the radical trust of the women in their lives. That will damn sure cut the abortion rate in this country.

Rant over. By the way, Lance Armstrong was magnificent this morning!

UPDATE: Amanda at Mouse Words is not quite as kind to me as Trish; she takes vigorous issue with my posts on Amy Richards. I liked these bits:

This guy made me angry. I should avoid anti-choice people, particularly men, since the very fact that they think they have a right to use the force of the law to make women comply to their wishes means that they believe on one level or another that women’s bodies are naturally subject to men’s authority… really, sometimes I’m even pissier with guys who think of themselves as liberal and progressive and feminist even but then start shooting sparks when women actually exert some of the autonomy that’s been so long in coming… Trish is really nice to this guy–I want to kick him.

Fortunately, Amanda lives in Austin.

More on Amy Richards

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 19, 2004
in Abortion, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement and People
. 19 Comments

My goodness, I should post on Sundays more often! 20 comments on my Amy Richards bit immediately below, and some 400 visitors in the past 15 hours.

I found the Amy Richards abortion story by accident, just browsing the NY Times online. Apparently, at the same time that I was blogging about it, arch-conservative Michelle Malkin was weighing in on the subject. (XRLQ links to her; she’s not exactly a regular read.) Other folks are blogging about it too.

I really do appreciate the many thoughtful comments below my post (and how nice to see that the Angry Clam is back on the beat!) This one from blackcoffeeblues was particularly accurate:

And, perhaps, those of us who are watching Rudy and Sam and are sympathizing with the difficulties that this loving family are going through, are more sensitive to the cold, harsh reality of another persons life decision and more quick to be critical and judgemental than usual.

For the record, folks, I write my posts very quickly. I give ‘em the once over for spelling and grammar and punctuation, and then put them up. I write impulsively. Yesterday’s post was not intended as a thoughtful essay on abortion politics; it was the product of an emotional, visceral reaction on my part. Make no mistake, if the story is true (and we have every reason to believe that it is), I still think that what Amy Richards did was morally reprehensible. But having had some time to reflect, and to read the thoughtful comments everyone left, I am prepared to offer some more temperate words.

I went back and read Amy’s piece in the Times again. And this time, I focused on the first two sentences:

I grew up in a working-class family in Pennsylvania not knowing my father. I have never missed not having him.

For some reason, that’s what is stopping me short this morning. The emphatic “never” in the second sentence defies everything we know about child and adolescent psychology and human nature itself! Amy never once wished she had had a father? Help me out here, folks… does anyone believe her? I don’t know Amy Richards but I wonder if the callousness of her decision is in some way linked to her own complete obtuseness about her own childhood.

I think everything that comes in the rest of her shocking, stomach-churning essay has to be read in the context of those opening lines. I do believe that abortion and male irresponsibility are inseparable. Amy’s experience of childhood poverty was tied to the absence of a father who could provide for her family. For her and for many women, what it means to be poor is to have a child without an adult man in the home. (She admits as much in her third line: what I probably would have gained was economic security and with that societal security.)

Many of my female students who were raised by single moms were told one thing over and over and over again: Never rely on a man. Many of the mothers of my students got pregnant while still in their teens (I have a number of students whose mothers are younger than I am). I suspect that Amy’s mom gave her that same stern message, and she clearly took it to heart. I wish we knew whether the boyfriend in the story (Peter) offered to marry her. (Oh, I could blog a lot about the Peters of the world. I’ll deal with him in an upcoming post. But if I saw three beating hearts on a sonagram, you’d have to take me away in handcuffs. Perhaps this is just grandiosity, but I’d like to think that I would have fought far harder for those kids. I suspect the Amys of the world pick the Peters carefully. He is a compliant fellow indeed.) But it’s not at all clear that Amy would have accepted his offer and kept all three of her babies even if he had! One child was the most she could have and still be able to maintain her precious autonomy; three children would leave her utterly dependent upon a man. And I suspect that to Amy, nothing could be more self-destructive and foolish than to rely upon a man. Abortion thus becomes a key tool in her fight for dignity and self-preservation. In her first paragraph, she writes of her fear of poverty: What would it take for me to just slip? An unplanned multiple pregnancy makes that fear tangible; but to stick with her metaphor, as for so many women, it is abortion that helps Amy regain her footing. Access to abortion gives women the opportunity to retain complete agency in their lives; for a woman raised as Amy was, that agency is precious enough to be worth stopping two beating hearts.

In the calmer world of this Monday morning, I am still angry at Amy Richards. But I am also angry at a legacy of male betrayal, irresponsibility, and abandonment. I’ve been saying for years that the struggle for abortion rights is rooted in (among other things) a profound disappointment in men. That disappointment and distrust becomes multi-generational. I believe in working to end abortion by a variety of means, including legal restrictions. But as a man, I know that increasing male accountability is a critical component of the struggle to end abortion. And surely, greater male responsibility is something we can all agree on.

Crying with rage at Amy Richards

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 18, 2004
in Abortion and People
. 54 Comments

This post no longer fully reflects my current views. Nonetheless, I’m leaving it up because I think it is important to document one’s stages of intellectual evolution!

I said I wasn’t going to blog again today. But I just read this short piece in today’s Sunday New York Times Magazine, and I have tears of rage running down my cheeks. Entitled “When One is Enough”, it’s the story of a 34 year-old woman named Amy Richards who became pregnant with triplets, and decided to kill two of them and give birth to the third. No medical complications were involved; her real reasons are here:

On the subway, Peter (the boyfriend and the child’s father) asked, ”Shouldn’t we consider having triplets?” And I had this adverse reaction: ”This is why they say it’s the woman’s choice, because you think I could just carry triplets. That’s easy for you to say, but I’d have to give up my life.” Not only would I have to be on bed rest at 20 weeks, I wouldn’t be able to fly after 15. I was already at eight weeks. When I found out about the triplets, I felt like: It’s not the back of a pickup at 16, but now I’m going to have to move to Staten Island. I’ll never leave my house because I’ll have to care for these children. I’ll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise. Even in my moments of thinking about having three, I don’t think that deep down I was ever considering it.

At this point, I thought I was reading a not terribly clever satire of 30ish East Coast career women, their elitism, and their incessant anxiety about becoming “just a mom”. But the story continues grimly:

When we saw the specialist, we found out that I was carrying identical twins and a stand alone. My doctors thought the stand alone was three days older. There was something psychologically comforting about that, since I wanted to have just one. Before the procedure, I was focused on relaxing. But Peter was staring at the sonogram screen thinking: Oh, my gosh, there are three heartbeats. I can’t believe we’re about to make two disappear. The doctor came in, and then Peter was asked to leave. I said, ”Can Peter stay?” The doctor said no. I know Peter was offended by that.

Two days after the procedure, smells no longer set me off and I no longer wanted to eat nothing but sour-apple gum. I went on to have a pretty seamless pregnancy. But I had a recurring feeling that this was going to come back and haunt me. Was I going to have a stillbirth or miscarry late in my pregnancy?

I had a boy, and everything is fine. But thinking about becoming pregnant again is terrifying. Am I going to have quintuplets? I would do the same thing if I had triplets again, but if I had twins, I would probably have twins. Then again, I don’t know. (Bold emphases are Hugo’s).

Anyone on the pro-choice side want to make a case that what this woman did was morally defensible?

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve worked and given money on both sides of the abortion divide. Pro-choice until about four years ago, pro-life since; always, always, sympathetic to both sides of this immensely troubling, personal, complex social issue. As a man, I’ve no way of actually knowing what it is like to carry life inside of me. But as I get older, and spend more time with children, and think about becoming a father myself (Lord willin’), I find it harder and harder to accept the old pro-choice bromide that men “have no say in what a woman does with her body.” When I was younger and irresponsible, I liked that line. Pro-choice rhetoric thrust all responsibility on to the woman; I, like other young men, was off the hook. If it’s not my body, ultimately, then my obligation to respect and care for it is lessened accordingly.

Maybe it’s Sunday, and I’m just tired. I’m usually so good at seeing both sides of the issue. Normally, I would blog about this woman and explain how she was clearly caught in a terrible place, and while I disagree with her ultimate decision, I respect her choice, etc., etc., etc. But honestly, folks, the more I think about Amy Richards, the angrier and more tearful I get. I’m sitting here at my keyboard trying to muster sympathy for her, and I just can’t. Amy fucked up. (Honestly, Ph.D. and tenure and all, and that’s the most apt expression I can come up with right now.) And for once, I’m not going to blame what she chose on our society’s treatment of women, or male irresponsibility, or consumer capitalism or anything else. Her own words, as far as I can read, are too damning.

All I can think of is three heartbeats becoming one and I shudder and shudder. I’m going to go hug my girlfriend and my chinchilla now.

Good news on two fronts, and an interesting phone call

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 19, 2004
in Abortion, Christianity, GLBTQ and Marriage
. 10 Comments

News from the Roman Catholic and Episcopal Churches that made me happy:

1. The American Catholic Bishops have refused to bar pro-choice Catholic politicians from receiving communion, despite a vigorous reiteration of the Church’s teachings on life:

U.S. bishops issued a stinging rebuke yesterday to Catholic politicians who support legal abortion, but turned aside calls to bar them from receiving communion.

“To make such intrinsically evil actions legal is itself wrong,” the bishops wrote in a long-awaited statement.

“Those who formulate law therefore have an obligation in conscience to work toward correcting morally defective laws, lest they be guilty of cooperating in evil.”

It puts the onus on individual Catholics to determine whether they’re fit to receive communion.

The inveterate compromiser in me likes this. The hard right had clearly been hoping for an outright ban on pro-choicers taking communion, the left will be made uncomfortable by the language of “evil actions.” But I think the bishops nailed this one perfectly.

2. The Diocese of Vermont (Episcopal Church) is developing formal rites for blessing civil unions (as opposed to “same sex blessings”, an admittedly difficult distinction for some to make.) What is striking is how clear the Bishop of Vermont, Thomas Ely, is that these new rites should be equivalent to heterosexual marriage:

…same-sex couples are permitted to exchange rings, and only minor word changes are made in the liturgy, such as couples vowing to take their spouses “to be my partner in life,” rather than “to be my husband/wife.” Couples also are to sign a “declaration of intention” that closely mirrors that signed before marriage ceremonies.

“We incorporate parallel components to the matrimony ceremony for every single aspect of the union ceremony,” Ely said.

Conservative Anglican groups, already angry over the consecration of the Rev. V. Eugene Robinson of New Hampshire as the first openly gay bishop last fall, have warned of a schism and denounced such developments as precipitating a crisis in the church.

In regards to that last paragraph, when are the conservatives going to stop “warning” about a schism? As an old friend of mine used to put it, are they “going to step up and pat the pony, or should we go to the rodeo down the road?” There’s a “boy who cried wolf” element to these perennial warnings of schism…

Yesterday afternoon, just after posting my post below, I got a phone call from a most unlikely fellow. The man on the other end is a very well-known, theologically conservative Pentecostal pastor here in Southern California. Recently, he has “come out of the closet”, scandalizing his congregation. He’s on some kind of leave right now, but he called me because he had — through mutual friends in the Metropolitan Community Church – heard about the courses I teach in gay and lesbian history. He’d also heard I’m a Christian. We had quite a nice chat, and he’s going to come up to Pasadena for a meeting with me soon. As he put it, “I know all about the sex; now I want to know about the history.” I’m really flattered, and looking forward to working with him. He’s got a lot on his plate, but he knows two things: he still loves Jesus with all his heart and soul, and he’s a gay man down to that soul. I doubt I’ll be able to report in detail in this blog about our meetings (for the sake of his privacy), but if I can pass along how our meeting goes without harm, I’ll do so.

More on Pro-Life Democrats and the right not to be offended

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 26, 2004
in Abortion, Christianity and Politics
. 8 Comments

Next month’s Sojourners magazine has an excellent op-ed by editor Jim Wallis on the Democratic party’s reckless refusal to acknowledge its own pro-life supporters. Here’s an extended quotation from Wallis, with the bold emphases being my own:

Many Democrats fail to comprehend how fundamental the conviction on “the sacredness of human life” is for millions of Christians, especially Catholics and evangelicals, including those who are strongly committed on other issues of justice and peace and those who wouldn’t criminalize abortion even as they oppose it. Liberal political correctness, which includes a rigid litmus test of being “pro-choice,” really breaks down here. And the conventional liberal political wisdom that people who are conservative on abortion are conservative on everything else is just wrong. Christians who are economic populists, peacemaking internationalists, and committed feminists can also be “pro-life.” The roots of this conviction are deeply biblical and, for many, consistent with a commitment to nonviolence as a gospel way of life.

And there are literally millions of votes at stake in this liberal miscalculation. Virtually everywhere I go, I encounter moderate and progressive Christians who find it painfully difficult to vote Democratic given the party’s rigid, ideological stance on this critical moral issue, a stance they regard as “pro-abortion.” Except for this major and, in some cases, insurmountable obstacle, these voters would be casting Democratic ballots.

Ironically, the Republicans, who actively and successfully court the votes of Christians on abortion, are much more ecumenical in their own toleration of a variety of views within their own party. For example, fellow Republicans have not enforced anti-abortion orthodoxies on their rising new star, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose pro-choice views seem not to be a problem. Indeed, there is now a long list of pro-choice Republicans whose support the party seems to regard as crucial to its success. The Republican Party takes a very strong anti-abortion stance in its party platforms but then allows for a wide variety of opinions based on either conscience or pragmatic political calculations.

But to be a “pro-life” Democrat is to be a very lonely political creature in America.

Amen, amen, amen, amen, amen.

On a different note, we here at Pasadena City College have recently been visited by a small group of evangelists carrying banners in our quad with slogans such as “Repent Now” and “Homosexuality = Sin”. One of my very earnest and sweet young progressive students handed me a leaflet today after class; I quote the following troubling excerpt:

For the last couple of weeks, PCC has become a target for some hateful people. Holding up a sign that says Homosexuality is Sin is a clear example of Homophobia and should not be tolerated. Homophobia is a form of oppression towards a minority group. Any minority group on campus should be able to feel safe and not have to hear offensive comments by people who are not even students of our campus.

Our “Students for Social Justice” and our “United Rainbow Alliance” group are rallying folks to speak out against those carrying the banners. I’m fine with that. As a Christian progressive, I find the vulgarity of the banners and the bullhorns an embarrassment. But I’m tired of the assumption that a “right not to be offended” exists on a college campus. I’m tired of having physical safety (something the college is obligated to provide) confused with emotional safety (something the college has no business even attempting to guarantee).

Conservative Christian students are regularly made to feel “unsafe” in the free-wheeling environment of a secular Southern California campus, but I haven’t noticed any effort by my own advisees in Campus Crusade for Christ to ban or silence the United Rainbow Alliance. I wish that this leaflet were an anomaly, but I am afraid that it isn’t — increasingly, “progressive” student groups are asking the administrations on college campuses to “protect” them from “having to hear offensive comments.”

I teach gay and lesbian history. I advise Campus Crusade. I’ve worked with secular Queer student groups (their preferred term); I’ve worked with doctrinally conservative evangelicals. And frankly, though my politics are more in synch with the former, I find that at least on this campus, the latter group is more willing to bear the burden of living in a pluralistic society. My young Christians expect to be mocked for their faith, which they see as central to their identity. Some — not all — of my young Queer activists expect to be protected from being challenged on their sexuality, which they see as equally central to their identity. And while I desperately want a civil discourse on this campus, I am increasingly tired of explaining the rules for that discourse. Then again, I suppose that’s what teachers are supposed to do.

Communion and Abortion

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 25, 2004
in Abortion, Christianity, People and Politics
. 16 Comments

I’ve been reluctant to post about the recent flare-up regarding Catholic politicians and communion. The reason is simple: even now, I still feel deeply conflicted about Rome. As a result, this is not going to be a well-thought out post.

I converted to Catholicism as an undergraduate, and even considered the priesthood during a lengthy late adolescent spiritual and emotional crisis. (For a variety of reasons, I felt called to the Dominicans. But that’s definitely another post). After my first marriage (a Catholic one) ended in divorce well over a decade ago, I chose to worship elsewhere. Never once did I consider annulment. (Again, another post, but annulment always struck me as the ultimate example of adding “insult to injury”; if you’ve made a mistake, step up and admit it, and don’t try to make it “go away”. I’m not proud of three divorces, but by God, they happened, I knew what I was doing, and I take full responsibility for them.) In the past dozen years, I’ve taken Roman Catholic communion only once: in a tiny church on the outskirts of Florence, on a moment of impulse. I respect the right of the church to limit who can come to the altar, and thus I choose to break bread and worship elsewhere. I honor the Catholic Church too much to demand the right that I be included in the eucharist.

I’m planning on voting for John Kerry in November. But his language on abortion troubles me. Like many, I am bothered by the phrase Kerry and other pro-choice Catholics use: “I am personally opposed to abortion, but I support abortion rights.” What pro-lifers want to know, John, is what that “personal opposition” really is and in what is it rooted? As William F. Buckley asked (and heaven help me, I’ll never quote WFB again here): Where is he exhibiting his pride in what he stands for? Whom has he counseled against abortion? A nun somewhere, out of earshot? On what theological, spiritual, and medical grounds is Kerry even “personally opposed”? If fetuses aren’t people, why is this procedure different from any other routine medical procedure?

But the issue at hand is communion, not abortion itself. Several Catholic bishops have suggested that pro-choice Catholic politicians, Kerry chief among them, be barred from communion. (One, Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs, went much farther by barring those who vote for pro-choice candidates, but has received little support). Many liberals, both in and out of the church, are concerned about a perceived double standard. Why are conservative Catholics not barred from the altar for supporting the death penalty, something that the pope and the overwhelming majority of bishops have consistently opposed? Why is abortion elevated above all other issues?

In February’s First Things, Richard Neuhaus answers for the church:

On capital punishment, Catholic politicians may in good conscience, and with great respect for the Pope’s statements on the subject, have different prudential judgments about what the Catechism describes as “the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime.” There is no such question about the moral obligation to protect innocent human life. Meanwhile, it will continue to be the case that a frightened young woman who procures an abortion is automatically excommunicate, while politicians who aid, abet, and encourage her in such great evil remain in apparently untroubled communion with the Church.

It’s a bit sly (what else would you expect from a Catholic neo-con like Neuhaus), but it has some merit: for the past century (though not much longer) the Holy See, the councils, and the magisterium have spoken out with one voice against abortion. The church, despite the clear convictions of John Paul II, has no such unanimity on capital punishment, or, for that matter, the war on Iraq. From a theological and moral standpoint within the Catholic tradition, the church’s decision to raise abortion above all other issues is defensible because opposition to abortion has become a uniquely essential doctrine.

I want the church (the universal one, not just Rome) to be a prophetic voice in our culture. I want our churches to challenge our politicians and our people, not just on abortion, but on poverty, war, and global justice. Though I am opposed to abortion, I don’t regard it as a greater moral evil than war or capital punishment (I am intensely wary of “ranking” sins, be they individual or societal). I wish the United Methodist Church could challenge President Bush as firmly as some Catholic bishops have challenged John Kerry! The communion table cannot be just another corner of the public square to which all are legally entitled to come regardless of their beliefs and their actions. Though I choose to worship in a community that practices open communion, I honor the Catholic position that proclaims that table fellowship can only happen where true unity exists.

Jonathan Dresner sent me a link to some Saturday letters in the New York Times on the subject. I liked what Ed Manier of Notre Dame wrote, largely because it happens to be, almost word for word, the official Mennonite position on abortion:

The effort to recriminalize abortion mistakenly assumes that secular legislation can presuppose or compel openness to divine grace.

And Jonathan was particularly struck by what a Beth Ciopelletti wrote:

A Catholic politician can believe in church teaching on abortion while opposing laws to enforce that teaching. What if outlawing abortions made things worse?

Teaching the beauty and sacredness of life is having success in decreasing the number of abortions performed. This could be a wiser choice than the political one.

Lots to think about. Meanwhile, I confess that every once in a while, I’ve been known to sneak into an empty Catholic church or two and kneel before the BVM. If only my beloved Mennonites would embrace Marian devotion, my theological life would be easier!