Abortion and the Beginning of Life

Abortion is wrong. It is sinful. It is just plain wrong.

But a woman has a right to choose. Who are you to tell me what to do with my own body?

Honorable right thinking men certainly disagree on the whole abortion issue.

In the good old days when I was young, things were simple. They were black and white. Abortion was wrong. Life begins at birth. Some things we didn't question, and these were among those things. It's not that we weren't curious or questioning or stupid or ignorant; it's just that some things were obvious. Just plain obvious. Matters of abortion and the beginning of life and even sex outside of marriage were among those things that were just obvious, and everyone knew it.

Oh, sure, some folks did the sex before marriage thing. Probably lots of folks. But it didn't creep into the mainstream of acceptability. The struggle between morals and youthful hormones has been around since morals were invented. Sex, of course, has been around for a lot longer than that. I know this tome is titled Abortion and the Beginning of Life and does not mention sex, but without sex, the other issues don't really present themselves.

Before we discuss abortion, we really have to understand the question and possible answers to “When does life begin?” Historically, the legal answer has always been that life begins at birth. To be sure, the life of a pregnant mother-to-be always seemed somehow to be “a bit more valuable” than the life of the rest of us, but the expectant life still began at birth.

Some believe and loudly profess that life begins at conception. I think that this position emanates from a need for simplicity.

Earl Franklin © 2009

Fairness

Pssts! Hey, you wanna lose an argument? I got a sure fire approach. All you gotta do is read this!

What? You don't wanna lose an argument? Read on anyway. If you learn how to lose one, you're probably smart enough to figure out how to not lose one.

The surefire secret to losing an argument is to let your opponent define the terms of the argument. If your opponent defines the terms of the argument, your opponent wins. See how simple it is? Oh, by the way, if this is the first time you've ever read this, it means either I am a profound genius, or maybe you aren't very well read. And nobody, not even me, thinks that I am a profound genius.

Let's look at the argument about economic fairness. Some people earn a hell of a lot more than others. The top 2% of the income folks pay some 50% (or whatever the number today is) of the income taxes. Some people live in austere poverty, while others bemoan their difficulties in hiring good help for staffing their (fill in the blank: yacht, private airplane, house servants, gardeners, etc.). Our system just does not work, because it obviously is not fair!

There probably isn't much of an argument about income disparities, because they are there for all to see. We could argue about the fairness of some people paying a disproportionate share of taxes, but you would probably have to be “one of them” to make that argument. For the sake of income fairness, we have removed about 50% of the citizens of this great country from the income tax rolls. Now that's fodder for a fairness argument!

But wait. Don't we live in a capitalist country? Aren't people supposed to be rewarded for working hard, taking risks, and investing wisely? Doesn't that necessarily mean that some folks are gonna make more money than other folks? Are there limits on how much more before things get unfair? If so, who is wise enough to define those limits?

So, do you see what I mean? If the “fairness” argument is defined in terms of income, socialist liberals win and capitalist conservatives lose. It's just that simple. I cannot answer the unfairness questions in the previous paragraph, and neither can you. No one can.

Now let's suppose that we redefine the fairness argument from one of income to one of opportunity. Let's suppose that everyone is given opportunities that are equal to those of everyone else. Do we still care that those who pursue a good education, work hard, and risk and invest wisely earn more than those who do not? Should we really strive to give the high school dropout the same income opportunities as the PhD who spent 7-10 years pursuing his education? Should the guy who risks his home, his car and his savings have his income pared by taxes or whatever to have an income on a par with that of another guy who sought the risk-free safety of a job at the corner store or factory? Of course not.

So, if we frame the argument about fairness in terms of equality of opportunity rather than in terms of equality of outcome, we wind up with a totally different set of solutions. We can view the vast disparity of incomes as a natural result of our capitalist system, not as some evil that must be remedied. We can look at the vast disparities of opportunities with alarming disdain and strive to resolve those disparities.

If we pursue fairness as equality of opportunity, we would really change our priorities. Rather than taxing the hell out of the “rich guy” to mitigate income differences (someone please really, really define “rich”), maybe we should focus on the really crummy education that our society offers inner city and many rural kids. Maybe our values of protecting our failing public schools and its teachers’ jobs, we should be looking out for the customers of our education industry; you know, the students and their parents.--- All in the interest of fairness. --Fairness of opportunity. Maybe our values on charter schools and education vouchers might change.

I focus here on inequality of education as a fairness of opportunity issue, because that is where we see today's primary inequity. While job opportunities are not as fair as one would wish, tremendous strides have been made in the past few decades. Strides have also been made in entrepreneurial lending, housing, and other areas.

I am not suggesting that we sit on our laurels with a sense of achievement, but I am suggesting that we recognize where our obvious shortcomings lie. We then need to resolve then act to do something about those shortcomings.

Fairness today does not mean that we need to address inequality of outcomes (or incomes). Fairness today means that we need to address inequality of opportunities. It's really simple when the argument is framed properly.

Earl Franklin, © 2009

Truth! What Happened to it?

I have been an avid comics reader since my youth. When the newspaper arrived, the first thing I read was the comics. Now, I still read the comics on 5 or 6 websites.

I remember well a Calvin and Hobbs comic. I think I read it in the 80's. According to http://www.generationterrorists.com/quotes/calvinandhobbes.html, the conversation went like this:

Calvin: Dad, how come old photographs are always black and white? Didn't they have color film back then?
Dad: Sure they did. In fact, those old photographs are in color. It's just the world was black and white then.
Calvin: Really?
Dad: Yep. The world didn't turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while, too.
Calvin: That's really weird.
Dad: Well, truth is stranger than fiction. ...

I grew up in the 40's and 50's. Back then, the world was still black and white. Oh, physics didn't change and Calvin's dad wasn't wrong. We could see color. But mores were black and white. There was right and wrong. There was good behavior and there was bad behavior. There was Truth.

People knew good from bad. I don't know how, we just did. People who engaged in bad behavior knew they were doing so, and they generally felt appropriately guilty. Well, most of them did. Lutherans knew that if they prayed for forgiveness, they received it and didn't have to do the guilty thing, but that wasn't very common. Generally speaking, people didn't like the guilt. It was uncomfortable. In fact, guilt avoidance is what kept most folks on the straight and narrow.

This is probably not news to you, but the 50's were followed by the 60's and then the 70's. The marvels of technology brought us birth control. The Supreme Court brought us Roe vs. Wade. Mores began to change. Women's Liberation emerged, or perhaps took the country and the world by storm. Mores changed a bit more.

People started openly living together even though they were not married. This previously “bad” behavior became so pervasive that their numbers alone forced societal mores to accept this behavior as OK. Women's Liberation preached equality of the genders, but construed this equality as “sameness” that permitted them to engage in the same promiscuous behavior that they thought all men enjoyed.

Permit me a news flash digression. Men and women may be equal, but we are not the same. I have a Y chromosome and women don't. I personally celebrate that fact. My daughter, whom I dearly love and adore, is among other things a fitness buff. Despite her thrice weekly weight lifting and other exercises and despite the fact that I am 30 years her senior, eat and drink too much, and have never been physically fit, I still have a lot more muscle than she and am noticeably stronger. It's not my fault, and it's certainly not her fault; it's just that one chromosome that makes us delightfully different. Different, but equal. Neither is better than nor inferior to the other. Too many advocates of women's liberation have confused equality and sameness, and that is just plain sad. Here ends the digression.

After the heterosexual couples living together thing became rampant, indeed common, people of the same gender began the same open behavior. They began a big political campaign to convince or force society to treat their behavior, previously considered abnormal or aberrational, as normal. Indeed, in large measure, they have succeeded. Societal mores once again changed.

Now, let's look at the Church and its reaction to these evolving progressive behavioral norms. When I use the term “Church”, I include the Episcopal, United Methodist, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), United Church of Christ, and others. I exclude the Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Synod, and other biblical literalists.

Historically, the Church has been a societal rock. It has been a rock for not only our spiritual lives, but also for our behavioral norms. Our mores have been constrained by the teachings of the Church. These teachings have largely emanated from scripture. The Church has been a societal leader.

But the Church's response to these galloping societal moral standards has not been one of leadership. It rather has assumed a position of following. In abdicating its historical role of leadership, it has instead embraced a policy of inclusion. The problem with inclusion is that the Church by definition must change its beliefs to include those beliefs of the people whom it is including. And simple observation shows us that the Church now either remains silent or openly embraces values and behaviors that it once renounced and that are scripturally wrong. The Church, the historical standard bearer of Truth, has abdicated its role.

CS Lewis observed that in the absence of Truth, there will be anarchy. Since there is no Truth, each individual is free to define his own truth. He is free to define which behaviors are acceptable and which behaviors are not acceptable. He is also free to change his mind as his situation changes. Situational ethics is now OK, because there is no standard of Truth against which to measure ones own personal definition of truth.

In the interest of trying to include people whose values and beliefs differ from those of the historical Church, the Church has sold its own soul. The Church's motivation for this inclusion was purely selfish in that it did not want to limit its membership opportunities and therefore its membership, revenue and power. Paradoxically, this policy of inclusion has failed, as is evidenced by the declining membership of all church bodies that practice inclusion.

We as a society today find ourselves in a state of anarchy. Each of us firmly believes that we are individually free to choose and to change our values, ethics, and behaviors as we see fit. We are free! Do we not believe wholeheartedly in freedom? How could freedom possibly be wrong?

Freedom without law or without truth is not freedom. It is anarchy. In this anarchy, you are not free to express your beliefs without fear of offending others, who surely don't share some portion of your belief system or your truth. Without shared Truth, you are vulnerable to those who hold different truths. This vulnerability may be spiritual, emotional, and even physical. This vulnerability inhibits or precludes openness in relationships and makes one suspect in nearly all relationships.

But then, that's what anarchy is all about. Every man for himself. I am right, you are wrong.

The 10 commandments have become the 10 suggestions. If my behavior does not conform to the commandments, then my choice is clear; I must reinterpret the pesky commandment(s). Now each of us has his own set of interpretations of commandments and other biblical imperatives. We each have our own definition of truth. Did I mention anarchy? Is this anything but anarchy? Should the Church be promoting Truth or anarchy? It can do one or the other; it cannot do both.

If the Church is hell-bent on this pernicious policy of anarchy inducing inclusion, is there hope? Can the Church resume its historical and rightful role of standard bearer of Truth? I am happy to report that yes, there is hope. That hope, believe it or not, is rooted in politics.

The United Methodist Church stands out in its political organization. Whereas other churches have their country based organizations, the United Methodists do not. There is but one world-wide organization. As a result of the evangelical missionary work by the Methodists in Africa, the African arm of that church now wields considerable political clout at the Methodists' quadrennial conventions. The African Methodists are concerned with matters much more basic to daily living than the anarchists views of their American counterparts, and they have little to no tolerance for the American liberal or progressive views. The liberal American Methodists are trying to extricate themselves from this world-wide organization, but the Africans, who need the Americans’ money and are new Christians whose beliefs are still very scriptural, are effectively exercising their political power to prevent the church from splitting or from going very far astray. Since the number of African Methodists is growing and the number of American Methodists is shrinking, the balance of political power will continue to shift.

So, hope for the future lies with the Africans leading us Americans out of our wilderness of anarchy through the United Methodist Church.

Let us pray that the other churches follow our African Methodist leaders.

Earl Franklin, © 2009