  |
 |
| |
|
|
|
 The Greatest Threat to ChoicePosted on May 7, 2007
By Chris Hedges Jeniece Learned stood amid a crowd of earnest-looking men and women, many with small gold crosses in their lapels or around their necks, in a hotel lobby in Valley Forge, Pa. She had an easy smile and a thick mane of black, shoulder-length hair. She was carrying a booklet called “Ringing In a Culture of Life,” which was the schedule of the two-day event she was attending, organized by the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation. The event was “dedicated to the 46 million children who have died from legal abortions since 1973 and the mothers and fathers who mourn their loss.” Learned, who had driven five hours from a town outside Youngstown, Ohio, was raised Jewish. She wore a gold Star of David around her neck with a Christian cross inset in the middle of the design. She stood up in one of the morning sessions, attended by about 300 people, most of them women. The speaker, Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., had asked if there were any “post-abortive” women present. The most fervent activists in the pro-life movement have usually had abortions, with large numbers admitting to multiple abortions. Learned runs a small pregnancy counseling clinic called Pregnancy Services of Western Pennsylvania, in Sharon, where she tries to talk young girls and women, most of them poor, out of having abortions. She speaks in local public schools, promoting sexual abstinence as the only acceptable form of contraception. And she has found in the fight against abortion, and in her conversion, a structure, purpose and meaning that previously eluded her. The relentless drive against abortion by the Christian right—the first salvo having been fired with the 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision last month to uphold the federal ban on the procedure known as “partial birth abortion”—has nothing to do with the protection of life. It is, rather, a cover for a wider and more pernicious assault against the ability of women to control their own bodies, the use of contraception and sexual pleasure. The movement openly conflates contraceptives with devices or substances that cause abortion. It holds up as heroes of “conscience” those pharmacists who refuse to sell contraceptives. It works to block over-the-counter sales of Plan B emergency contraceptive pills. It peddles, with hundreds of millions in tax dollars handed to the movement by the Bush administration, abstinence-only sex-ed curricula and opposes a vaccine against the HPV virus, the major cause of cervical cancer, claiming it would promote promiscuity. The denial of contraception, as is well documented, increases the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions. And abortion is never going to go away. If it again becomes illegal, the rich, as in the past, will find ways to provide abortions for their wives, mistresses and girlfriends, and the poor will die in unhygienic back rooms. But since this is a war with a wider agenda, abortion statistics and facts do not count. The Christian right fears pleasure, especially sexual pleasure, which it sees as degrading, corrupting and tainted. For many, their own experiences with sex—coupled with their descent into addictions and often sexual and domestic abuse before they found Christ—have led them to build a movement that creates an external rigidity to cope with the chaos of human existence, a chaos that overwhelmed them. They do not trust their own urges, their capacity for self-restraint or judgment. The Christian right permits its followers to project evil outward, a convenient escape for people unable to face the darkness and the psychological torments within them. The leaders of this movement understand that the only emotion that cannot be subsumed into communal life, which they seek to dominate and control, is love. They fear the power of love, especially when magnified and expressed through tender, sexual relationships, which remove couples from their control. Sex, when not a utilitarian form of procreation, is dangerous. They seek to fashion a world where good and evil are clearly defined and upheld by the nation’s judicial system. The battle against abortion is a battle to build a society where pleasure and freedom, where the capacity of the individual and especially women to make choices, and indeed even love itself, are banished. And this is why pro-life groups oppose contraception—even for those who are married. The fight against abortion is the facade for a wider fight against the right of an individual in a democracy. Army of God, a pro-life organization that holds up as Christian “heroes” those who murder abortion providers, defines birth control as another form of abortion, as do many other pro-life groups. In the “Birth Control Is Evil” section of their website it reads: “Birth control is evil and a sin. Birth control is anti-baby and anti-child. ...Why would you stop your own child from being conceived or born? What kind of human being are you?”
Learned’s life, before she was saved, was typically chaotic and painful. Her childhood was stolen from her. She was sexually abused by a close family member. Her mother periodically woke Learned and her younger sister and two younger brothers in the middle of the night to flee landlords who wanted back rent. The children were bundled into the car and driven in darkness to a strange apartment in another town. Her mother worked nights and weekends as a bartender. Learned, the oldest, often had to run the home. She got pregnant in high school and had an abortion.
“My grandfather committed suicide, my mom and my dad both tried suicide, my brothers tried suicide,” she said. “In my family, there was no hope. The only way to solve problems when they got bad was to end your life.” She eventually married, had a born-again experience and began taking classes at Pacific Christian College in Orange County in California. During a chapel service an anti-abortion group, Living Alternative, showed a film called “The Silent Scream.” “You see in this movie this baby backing up trying to get away from this suction tube,” she said. “And, its mouth is open and it is like this baby is screaming. I flipped out. It was at that moment that God just took this veil that I had over my eyes for the last eight years. I couldn’t breathe. I was hyperventilating. I ran outside. One of the girls followed me from Living Alternative. And she said, ‘Did you commit your life to Christ?’ And I said, ‘I did.’ And she said, ‘Did you ask for your forgiveness of sins?’ And I said, ‘I did.’ And she goes, ‘Does that mean all your sins, or does that mean some of them?’ And I said, ‘I guess it means all of them.’ So she said, ‘Basically, you are thinking God hasn’t forgiven you for your abortion because that is a worse sin than any of your other sins that you have done.’ ” The film ushered her into the fight to make abortion illegal. Her activism, like that of many women in the movement, became atonement for her own abortion. She struggled with severe depression after she gave birth to her daughter Rachel. When she came home from the hospital she was unable to care for her infant. She thought she saw an 8-year-old boy standing next to her bed. It was, she is sure, the image of the son she had “murdered.” “I started crying and asking God over and over again to forgive me,” she remembered. “I had murdered his child. I asked him to forgive me over and over again. It was just incredible. I was possessed. On the fourth day I remember hearing God’s voice. ‘I have your baby, now get up!’ It was the most incredibly freeing and peaceful moment. I got up and I showered and I ate. I just knew it was God’s voice.” The fight against abortion is a battle against a culture she and those in the movement despise. It is a culture they believe betrayed them. The rigidity of the new belief system, the sanctification of hatred toward those who would “murder” the unborn or contaminate America with the godless creed of “secular humanism,” fosters feelings of righteousness and virtue. But it also means destroying all competing communities. The sense of entitlement and inclusiveness, brought on by the certitude of belief, is matched by the power of destructive fury. Learned lives in the nation’s Rust Belt. The flight of manufacturing jobs has turned most of the old steel mill towns around her into wastelands of poverty and urban decay. The days when steel workers could make middle-class salaries are a distant and cherished memory. She lives amid America’s vast and growing class of dispossessed, those tens of millions of working poor, 30 million of whom make less than $8.70 an hour, the official poverty level for a family of four. Most economists contend that it takes at least twice this amount to provide basic necessities to a family of four. These low-wage jobs, which come without benefits or job security, have meant billions in profits for corporations that no longer feel the pressure or the need to take care of their workers. But this new American landscape has also bred a profound despair and hopelessness, as well as physical destruction of community that fuels the Christian right. The war to “protect life,” to crush “the culture of death,” is a war against the open society. It is a war to push back the gains in women’s rights, in personal choice, in the power of the individual to form his or her own life. It is a war that seeks to refashion America into a place where external forms of repression, imposed by the government, are used in a bid to contain the brokenness, desperation and emotional turmoil of those Americans whom we, as a society, betrayed. It is, in short, a war of revenge. And until we re-enfranchise these Americans into society, until we give them hope and alleviate the economic and social blights that have plunged them into the arms of demagogues and charlatans who promise a mythical, unachievable Christian paradise and utopia, we will have to face a growing assault on our personal liberties and freedoms. Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is the author of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” Previous item: Burns' Documentary Perpetuates the 'Invisible Minority' Next item: The French Bellwether Elsewhere: . CommentsAre you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig.
Comment Pages:
1
»
By Jaki, July 14, 2007 at 1:28 pm # No one on this planet can say for sure that there IS a “God,” or “Goddess,” or any Supreme Being who either watches over us, or judges us, or creates us, or has anything to do with us (or anything else). There is absolutely no material proof, and anything else is irrelevant. Some people choose to believe in any number of “dieties” for reasons one might say are due to: indoctrination… “Religion is the OPIATE of the masses.” It keeps people down, keeps them from confronting injustice, keeps them PACIFIED, turned into SHEEPLE, not genuinely curious, caring, compassionate human beings. (not to forget it robs you of your money!) HOWEVER, democracy demands that people can have their religion if they want it..."Freedom OF Religion,” but we rarely hear about the other half of that, which democracy also demands: FREEDOM FROM RELIGION. In this way, it is imperative that religion or any mention of God, be kept out of government, our schools, political campaigns, health care, the military, and anything else that affects the lives of ALL of the people and is paid for by us (taxes). Religion (or any kind of “spirituality") should only be a private choice made on a individual basis and should never ever EVER be forced on anyone or given any support by the government or its institutions. If this becomes the case, as it should, then we won’t have to worry about the fanatics. Let them stew in their own juices. There will be many more of us, now called “atheists,” which really just means we like to stay free from “theisms” and it will lose it’s pejorative judgmental definition, just as will the word “socialism” get separated from “communism” (two entirely different concepts IF YOU ADD THE WORD Every single person who lives in the United States owes it to themselves, their families, and future generations, to do 2 things right now: 1. See Michael Moore’s brilliant indictment of our corrupt medical system--"Sicko"--and take as many friends as you can. 2. Support the IMPEACHMENT OF BUSH AND CHENEY, so that we do not maintain the “Imperial Presidency” they have forced on the country, where future holders of that office can follow precedence set by this current group of thugs in power. It isn’t just about those personalities (Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld)--it is about the power of government, particularly the Executive Branch. Impeachment is not a diversion from more important things (like the war, etc.). It is THE ISSUE OF OUR TIMES and the crimes committed by Cheney and Bush are exactly what our forefathers meant when they inserted the possibility of impeachment into our Constitution. Writeyour congresspeople! Phone them. Send them postcards. Email them. Tell Nancy Pelosi that she is wrong wrong wrong ON THIS ISSUE and that impeachment MUST be put on the table and NOW!
By Jim H., July 13, 2007 at 8:06 am # Re: 78959 Phyllis Poole You talk of “God”! Can you describe ‘it”! Can you ‘prove’ ‘it’ ‘is’ or, ‘ever’ existed? No facts? No truth! There is no excuse for intelligent people to be so ignorant of facts about the charlatan fantasies and make-believe pretenses of religion, that works to undermine the true Democratic principles and unifying influences of our Democratic Society! To promote, propagate, profligate or publish the same pretentious and pompous falsehoods that are the evil tools used by Fallwell, Baker, Haggard, the Pope, and their ilk to brainwash, indoctrinate, brand, and subjugate innocent children and fools so as to use them to gain ever more money, power, and divisive influence, is tantamount to supporting pimping, and prostitution. And, because those charlatans use their evil schemes and lies to control, and enslave those misled ‘bovine-like’ advocates by rendering them ‘virtual’ robots that do their bidding; they are criminals, and all of those supporting them, are criminal cohorts, equally guilty of the crimes they commit against humanity, those fools, and the children.
By Jim H., July 2, 2007 at 8:00 am # Re: 78959 Phyllis Poole You say “There is a God---” I say: YOU ARE WRONG! You live in a FAKE WORLD! You are: (Bigoted) “---selfish, ruthless and also emotionally fanatic.” FAKE things, like dolls, Santa Claus, Mickey Mouse, make-believe “Creator God”, Porky Pig, Mortimer Snerd and Charlie McCarthy are MAKE BELIEVE! FAIRYTALE! ‘MENTAL CONCOCTIONS’! If you don’t realize this, you are dangerous to both yourself, and the rest of humanity! And, anyone who thinks, or ‘pretends’ otherwise, is either an imbercile, an escapee from a ‘Nut house’, or a thieving charlatan seeking to perpetuate the schemes and tricks used to prey on, and enslave innocent children, and fools (like you?), give them ‘inferiorty complexes, and compel them to kneel and plea for ‘grace’ for their “sins” (whatever that means) which often is only granted in return for criminal sexual perversion. Wake up! And stop lying to yourself! You had better see a Psychiatrist! Mass/energy never disappear Conservation of Mass/Energy “E=mc2”
By purplewolf, June 18, 2007 at 1:13 pm # To Phyllis: Study the bible. For condemning killing, God sure did a lot of that. Check out when God was mad at King David for the census and to punish him he killed 70 thousand men-women and children were not mentioned,2 Samuel 24:10-17. The flood in Genesis 8:21, Noah and his progeny and their spouses-the whole world was destroyed- again mass murder and also the promotion of incest as now there a four married couples only left on the planet to repopulate it, and since chriatians do not believe in evolution how do you explain the different races of people on the plante? so there was a lot of inbreeding going on there. Shouldn’t that be a sin. Sodom and Gomorrah,Genesis 19:24-25. Exodus 7 1-14 another planned genocide.
By Phyllis Poole, June 18, 2007 at 9:46 am # I read with not knowing where this article was going. It goes from one side to the other and ends with a definite wrong conclusion. This person has the wrong perception of the world.If one has no perception of God and why we are here, it is dispair. There is a God and some “right wing” people have a fanatical, emotional imbalance, true, but let’s get balanced. There is a God and His 5th commandment says Do Not Kill. When you can kill or think it is ok to kill another human, that also is an imbalance. One that is selfish, ruthless and also emotionally fanatic.
By Jaki, May 18, 2007 at 11:28 am # “Clutter?” What an understatement. Next question: Relevance to the article under discussion? Next question: What business do men have even discussing what women do with their bodies, or coopting the discussion to suit their own intellectual preferences? Shades of the 60s when women left the male-dominated left to organize on our own behalf and have conversations relevant to that struggle.
By Inherit The Wind, May 18, 2007 at 3:13 am # Moderators: Thanks! ITW.
By Inherit The Wind, May 17, 2007 at 8:07 pm # {“If you were simply dealing with Truthdig’s extreme slowness to process and post entries, and not simply repeating the same argument as a mantra then I apologize for criticizing you on that count.” {“However, whenever I hear about “AIPAC” as the driving force as the conspiracy controlling America, all I hear is another anti-semite.” Oh, please! Yet again “It’s those damn Jews who are running everything!” I can’t believe an intelligent man like you buys that garbage. AIPAC is a PAC, but this pure NONSENSE about Israel running the US is absurd. It’s more like the other way around. Plus, given the way Israel has been run since Rabin’s murder, it looks like the same incompetents running US foreign policy is running Israeli foreign policy. I agree that the big oil and mil-indus has far, far too much influence over our Republican leaders. I do not understand why the “anti-Zionists” decry bigotry in Israel, the most democratic state in the Middle East but ignore the vile bigotry in her Arab neighbors. Nothing Israel has done in 60 years compares to what Sudan has done in the last 10. “Anti-Semite” means hatred of Jews the way “American” means US Citizen, and not Canadians, Mexicans, Argentinians or Bolivia.
By Inherit The Wind, May 17, 2007 at 8:03 pm # {“If you were simply dealing with Truthdig’s extreme slowness to process and post entries, and not simply repeating the same argument as a mantra then I apologize for criticizing you on that count.” {“However, whenever I hear about “AIPAC” as the driving force as the conspiracy controlling America, all I hear is another anti-semite.” I do not understand why the “anti-Zionists” decry bigotry in Israel, the most democratic state in the Middle East but ignore the vile bigotry in her Arab neighbors. Nothing Israel has done in 60 years compares to what Sudan has done in the last 10. “Anti-Semite” means hatred of Jews the way “American” means US Citizen, and not Canadians, Mexicans, Argentinians or Bolivia.
By Inherit The Wind, May 17, 2007 at 8:00 pm # {“If you were simply dealing with Truthdig’s extreme slowness to process and post entries, and not simply repeating the same argument as a mantra then I apologize for criticizing you on that count.” {“However, whenever I hear about “AIPAC” as the driving force as the conspiracy controlling America, all I hear is another anti-semite.” I do not understand why the “anti-Zionists” decry bigotry in Israel, the most democratic state in the Middle East but ignore the vile bigotry in her Arab neighbors. Nothing Israel has done in 60 years compares to what Sudan has done in the last 10. “Anti-Semite” means hatred of Jews the way “American” means US Citizen, and not Canadians, Mexicans, Argentinians or Bolivia. Phew!! That was a lot of work posting all that. How about YOU make one post’s point, then I’ll make one? OK?
By Inherit The Wind, May 17, 2007 at 7:57 pm # {“ Christo-facism has a very strong hold on the US. It has forced people like McCain and Guiliani to make pilgrimages to such hate-mongers as Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson. In the last 26 years it has placed four of the five Catholic justices on the Supreme Court. It was those five Catholic men, who, following the doctrine of the Roman Catholic church, decided they know more about medicine and OB-GYN than trained doctors.” First, let’s make a distinction: Israel is a nation. When Congressmen go to another nation as Congressmen, yes it’s all-expense paid. It’s supposed to be a fact-finding official trip. They are, theoretically (ouch!) acting as statesmen (don’t laugh TOO loud!) When they go to LBU, or Oral Roberts, or Bob Jones it’s purely as politicians grooming votes, usually to keep the Religious Right loyal or from being too vicious. Let us not forget that the late, little-lamented Falwell consulted monthly with President Idiot. He had access to the President. {#2. I am not a Christian. I fancy myself an agnostic. However, I know a little about Baptists, who are said to be the prime suspects in the “hate-monger” category. The Missus has several sons, one of whom is a rising star among Baptist preachers nationally, as well as assorted former in-laws who practice this particular set of delusions. A few of them have made efforts to proselytize me, but I have let them know that I am no more interested in their peculiarities than in those of the “cargo cult” of New Guinea. However, one thing I have noticed that is a constant in all our conversations. That is that they refer to the Pope as the Anti-Christ. So, I conclude they would just as soon see Satan on the Supreme Court. For this reason, the argument that Fallwell, Robertson, et al have, in the last 26 years, placed four Roman Catholics on the Supreme Court sounds like a piece of propaganda written by some PC propagandist with no knowledge of the differences within the Christian community. I could be wrong, but I would like to see some proofs other than the word of their political enemies. Are there any documented speeches by Fallwell or Robertson endorsing these Catholics before they were appointed to the Supreme Court? } Actually, yes. And when they didn’t their shills in the Senate did. The Abortion issue was milked rather brilliantly by Falwell et al to make common cause with Catholics. The 5 Catholic Justices strike the “right” balance between true Catholicism and the positions of the Christo-fascist right. Common Cause.
By Inherit The Wind, May 17, 2007 at 7:55 pm # {“That unambiguously implies that she does not unconditionally own her own uterus. There is no way you can get around that. If her ownership of her uterus is not unconditional, including the right to evict the “occupant”, then the rest of my argument still follows. If her uterus is not unconditionally hers, then it is not hers. Since it is part of her body there is then no restriction on claiming that other parts of her body don’t belong to her either, ie, her body is not hers. “ {“Since we generally have come to the position in America that legally men and women are equivalent (let’s ignore the differences that do exist as irrelevant).. “ Oh, really? You apparently haven’t spent much time in divorce courts. One might also reflect upon what percentage and to what degree women who have been proven to have made false rape accusations have been held legally accountable. } {“..... then we must assume nobody owns his or her own body.” True; I realistically assume that whoever has control of the guns, clubs, and jail cells owns our bodies. } {“Either that or we are re-establishing that men are somehow superior to women solely because they don’t have uteruses and do have penises.” How does this logically follow? } {“If we don’t own our bodies, then we are living under tyranny.” No argument with that conclusion. }
By Inherit The Wind, May 17, 2007 at 7:52 pm # Secondly, we come back to the point of whose body is it, anyway? As for your question about compassion for whales and puppy-dogs, the same can be said about the anti-abortionists who don’t give a damn about the slaughter in Darfur, about the crisis in adoption in America, or that in the richest nation on earth, millions go to bed hungry every night while others are allowed to amass obscene amounts of wealth from failure. But that is also a tangent. {“You STILL insist that the “rights” of that occupant supercede the woman’s. “ I think you have me confused with someone else. I have more than once stated that I have no problem with abortion where the fetus is severely damaged and/or unlikely to remain viable outside the womb without extreme and continuous medical intervention. My proviso was that this should be determined by competent medical authorities other than the abortionist, who has a fiduciary interest in performing the procedure. I would also have no problem with abortion where the hard choice is between the life of the mother and the child . But, again, I think that, where time is available, competent medical authorities should be called in to determine that such an “emergency “ really exists. ]
By Inherit The Wind, May 17, 2007 at 7:51 pm # Gncarlo: {“ They do try to suppress criticism, and in many places succeed....... I find the late Jerry Fallwell’s philosophy to be no essentially different than the Taliban’s. You belong to the state and no deviation will be tolerated.” {My position remains that the decision to make the baby’s leaving the birth canal the point at which it has some rights that the authorities need protect, even from the mother, is an arbitrary judgment based on assumptions which science have long since proven invalid. Make no mistake about it; fetuses do feel pain and are viable often months before birth. They (late-termers) no doubt die agonizing deaths drowned in saline solutions or having their brains sucked out with a hypodermic syringe. Why do people who show great compassion for whales or puppy-dogs dismiss concerns about this as “bigotry”?
By Inherit The Wind, May 16, 2007 at 4:03 am # gncarlo, However, whenever I hear about “AIPAC” as the driving force as the conspiracy controlling America, all I hear is another anti-semite. Christo-facism has a very strong hold on the US. It has forced people like McCain and Guiliani to make pilgrimages to such hate-mongers as Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson. In the last 26 years it has placed four of the five Catholic justices on the Supreme Court. It was those five Catholic men, who, following the doctrine of the Roman Catholic church, decided they know more about medicine and OB-GYN than trained doctors. Christo-fascism does not include all Christians, or even all Cath |
Email
Print
Share
Del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Ma.gnolia
Newsvine
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo
Jump to Comments
COMMENT TOOLS:
Hide comments
Show comments
Comment on this article