Precedent Setters, the Church v the Court

As I blogged last week about Roe v. Wade, the precedent-setting Supreme Court case from 1973, I believed my case for upholding this nearly 50-year-old ruling was airtight. Well, arguing the points on Facebook did little good to convince anyone. The anti-abortionists on the right cling to their argument equating the medical procedure--for whatever reason--as murder. This is the reason states who are now trying to outlaw abortions are not even allowing exceptions for cases of rape, incest and mother's health. Regardless of what stats, logic or legal precedent you throw at them, it always comes back to "life begins at conception."

The basis for Western morality are the Judeo-Christian Scriptures (Torah/Bible) which were written by Middle Eastern Jews and canonized by European Bishops (the Bible anyway) centuries ago. Wikipedia says, "Which books constituted the Christian biblical canons  of both the Old and New Testament was generally established  by the 5th century, despite some scholarly disagreements, for the ancient undivided Church." To be clear, that was 16 centuries ago or SIXTEEN HUNDRED YEARS! There has been a lot of evolution, science, social change and reinterpretation of the text in that vast expanse of time. Laws that govern current Western culture, still largely based on the moral code of these ancient texts, is revisited and reinterpreted all the time. But let's be, again, very clear that we are talking about a law book canonized 1,600 years ago.

Anti-abortionists want everyone else to buy their theory that this ancient law book trumps all other laws and sets precedent for all time over our current system of governance. That is simply insane!

The precedent for current-day America was set by American judges in the last half of the 20th Century. It was nearly 50 years ago, in my lifetime, that the debate was settled and precedent set--for current day, not 5th Century Europe and certainly not 400 BC Judea! The social norms and mores of those times are mostly irrelevant to the world we inhabit, halfway around the globe, 16 - 26 centuries removed.

That law book, which is a religious artifact, does not set precedent. Our democratic republic is quite simply NOT a theocracy. The separations put in place to protect government from becoming such, are spelled out just as clearly in our Constitution as the right to privacy. The 14th Amendment that protects that right, and served as the basis for Roe v. Wade, was instituted in 1868. So the anti-abortionists, want to erode the protections our forefathers laid out over 150 years ago and wipe away the precedent set by a nearly 50-year-old Supreme Court ruling. Why? So we can return to the barbarism of animal sacrifice and demanding virginal blood be apparent on the marital bedsheets?

They don't merely want to roll back the 1973 protections. They want to return America to the pseudo-safety of the 1950's, of shaming women into having babies that were the products of non-consentual sex, of women remaining silent and knowing their place, of back alley abortions and non-sterilized coat hangers, of putting woman at risk and removing their liberties as equal citizens! It is asinine and insane!

We can't let them lord the control of 5th Century Bishops over our country, our mothers, sisters and daughters any longer! The Supreme Court has spoken, our American forefathers have spoken and the precedent has been set for nearly 50 years. Your ancient religious text doesn't trump that. It's precedence was outdated by the time the Bible was canonized. It's relevance for modern Western culture lacks any real viability--as most of it's taboos on sexuality and women's rights have been long shattered. There will be no dragging back of my America to the dark ages! Not for my generation, not for my daughters', or their daughters' either. Period, end of story.

My latest abortion rights rant

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides a fundamental "right to privacy" that protects a pregnant woman's liberty to choose whether or not to have an abortion

This is the hot topic these days with Bible belt states pushing back against what has already been established as constitutional in this country--a woman's right to choose what she does with her body and the fetus developing inside of it. The debate for the pro-right, pro-religious agenda, "pro-life" side ALWAYS comes back to "life begins at conception." But now we have ultra-right leaning states pushing even further in attempting to call masturbation murder, as if God ordained every sperm out of every male body on the planet to be the next human baby. That's absurd!

But the "life begins at conception" argument is NO LESS absurd. Not every egg that receives the fertilizing sperm and becomes an embryonic cell is meant to become a contributing member of society--some of them don't even develop into multi-cell organisms, others don't make it past the first month or first trimester, some will develop abnormally with major deformities and become babies who have to be cared for all of their lives or become wards of the state, while still others will become rapists, arsonists, terrorists or serial killers. My point is that NOT EVERY LIFE CONCEIVED is destined for a productive and healthy existence on planet Earth! And what's even more important, we are reaching critical mass on this planet--just ask the polar ice caps!!

And even if you believe that God ordains EVERY SINGLE life from conception, then you believe that he condones rape, incest and sex slavery! Each of these evils produces children.

What's more, if your belief is that every woman who conceives should be forced to carry the baby full-term, and it survives the 10-month ordeal, will you also support this child by paying to improve public education, housing options, transportation options, providing free public health care and higher education??? No, I didn't think so. That'd be socialism.

But get this--we DON'T live in a theocracy or an autocracy, where one diety or person in power gets to "play god" and decide which women can abort their pregnancies and which can't. Most would agree that rape, incest and other abuse victims should be given that right. So if some are allowed and some aren't, that's where my problem lies. It's as stupid as the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. It's okay to be gay in the armed forces, just hide who you are (and go kill people!). Who are WE (collective population), or THEY (god or government leader) to say who is OK and who ISN'T???

Our government, even approaching 2020, is still by-and-large run by powerful, wealthy, white men (who are insanely rich on the corporate tit) and so I'd ask (for my daughters' sake), WHO ARE THEY to tell them what to do with their bodies or their fetuses. Are any of these "sugar daddies" gonna help my girls through the pains and emotional rollercoaster of pregnancy, or the anguishing pain of childbirth, or the 18+ years they will need assistance in raising my grandchildren?

All human beings have rights and one of those rights, recognized by the courts, is bodily autonomy. The University of California Santa Barbara defines this right as such:

Bodily autonomy is defined as the right to self governance over one’s own body without external influence or coercion. It is generally considered to be a fundamental human right.

Since the planet does not NEED any more babies and even those conceived in the womb are not guaranteed to survive or to be contributing members of society, then there's no need to assert a divine will or manifest destiny to every living embyo. Therefore, we should default, first, to this basic human right, that ALL humans, even women, have autonomy over their own person. Secondly, we have the 14th Amendment and the 1973 Supreme Court decision. As arbiters of the Constitution, they get to tell us, as society, what is allowed and what's not. And last I checked, abortions are allowed.

Before you try and box me into some stereotype, I AM PRO-RIGHTS! I believe in human rights, women's rights, gay rights, voting rights, right to die, right to work, etc., etc...EVEN gun rights, though they should be way more restricted than say voting rights or driving privileges. I believe people have the right to do what they want to with their bodies, to love and marry who they want to, to copulate consentually and either have the babies as a result OR NOT, to smoke pot (it's a plant not a drug) if they want to, to own and shoot guns if they want to...it's not our place to infringe on people's rights for ANY REASON, especially not religious-based reasons!

Quit fighting what's been a social norm (and a legal right) for nearly HALF A CENTURY! No one wants to return to coat hangers or to fight battles over individual rights that have already been won, whether they be civil, women's, LGBTQ+ or otherwise! We WILL NOT return to the 1950's in this country, so please take your seat and enjoy the ride.