Roe v Wade: Welcome to the Dark Age of American Theocracy
(Working draft)
"They have passed laws without any exceptions for when the woman is the victim of rape or incest. Under those laws, a woman will have to bear her rapist’s child or a young girl her father’s — no matter if doing so will destroy her life.”
--- from the dissenting opinion
Can one think of anything more un-American than a government demanding control of a citizen's very body? than a government forcing a citizen to give birth to an unwanted child against their will; to force that citizen, against their will, to live out their life burdened with the extraordinary demands and challenges of a responsibility they never expected or intended, a responsibility they may be ill-prepared for emotionally, psychologically, or economically—simply because six, Catholic Supreme Court justices, based on their personal religious indoctrination, rule they must? This is tantamount to the government denying an American citizen the liberty to choose his or her own destiny. Can one fathom the depths of such hubris? It’s not the presumption---in fact, it is appalling to the point of absurdity---that six Catholic Supreme Court Justices should allow greater legal status to a six-week-old embryo, with fewer brain cells than a common housefly, than to a fully developed, fully sentient, reasoning and emotionally responsive woman; a self-aware, independent agent possessed of free will, robustly productive, alive, with plans, short-term and long-term, big and small, contributing to their society at large, capable of availing herself of her “unalienable rights…which all governments are created to protect…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,"---each of these unalienable "rights" as declared in America's own Declaration Independence, of course meaningless to zygote, embryo, or fetus wholly dependent on a woman's body.
So, to wrap: according to the wisdom of the Supreme Court, a single cell human zygote can be assigned greater legal standing with regard "life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," as guaranteed by the Constitution (neither of which it is capable of exercising, much less comprehending) than an the woman carrying it.
I call that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" denied. Freedom denied.
Saving Babies
If pro-lifers want to save babies, perhaps they should consider the following: The Netherlands has among the world’s lowest teenage pregnancy and abortion rates thanks to its sex education, which starts at the age of four. The point to make here, based on my above commentary, is that the Netherlands, like the Founders of our Constitution, rightfully assume that a majority of reasonable individuals, when educated with credible facts, can be trusted to make decisions that serve their own best, self-interest, and, ultimately the best interests of the community. Perfect? Hardly. But the pro-lifers, on the other hand, overwhelmingly right-wing and Christian, who perceive an evil lurking in every human heart, would clearly be horrified at even the thought of introducing sex education to four-year-olds, due to their religious indoctrination which claims that humans are born evil (the fall from grace) and therefore that such education would certainly lead to rampant promiscuity. But facts—and even the potential to reduce abortions and therefore actually save babies—will never get in the way of the Fundamentalist’s central agenda; that is, their seldom acknowledged, but deep-seated wish, which is to replace our free, secular democracy, and with it all the dynamic genius, creativity and diversity of life that a free, secular society excites, with a make America a great authoritarian, Christian-based, theocracy again.
The Perverted Satisfaction that Power Arouses in Humans.
This ruling represents, to me, just one more sad, historical example of humanities addiction to that seductive aphrodisiac, power, and the perverted satisfaction that power arouses in humans, the power to subordinate another human being to one’s own will. This is the sickness of popes, potentates, kings, and dictators throughout history. This is the warped psychology of fascism, plain and simple, and it is the deep, human dysfunction behind all theocracies; and one need only watch the nightly news to witness an America slouching toward authoritarianism, and the violent chaos, that this addiction to authoritarian power unleashes .
The Constitution, unlike the extreme Christian fundamentalism driving this ruling, promotes a faith and a healthy belief in human potential. The US Constitution is not "Divinely inspired." It is the product of modernity: the beautiful and subtle human mind. It is the legacy of The Enlightenment, The Age of reason, and the Reconnaissance. It would, in principle, have us love and respect each other as it is "self-evident" that each of us deserves, equally, to be loved and respected, and that each of us be secured the freedom to prosper according to our many impressive and diverse faculties, and that each of us be secured the freedom to create and live our lives according to our chosen lifestyle. Is it perfect? Hardly. But extreme fundamentalism, on the contrary, perpetuates an imaginary evil lurking in every human heart and exhibits an obnoxious, if not seriously dangerous, cult-like obsession with "saving" the rest of us from, what is essentially, a sick projection of its own fears and insecurities. Many are victims of senseless political campaigns that are driven by paranoia, insecurity, and authoritarian excess. Strip away the self-righteous moralizing and one finds a pathological obsession with control, domination, and power (in this case over a woman's body) along with all its ugly, militant paraphernalia: guns, guns, guns, and more guns. If it means forcing Americans, through legislation (or much worse), to live according to a two-millennium old, archaic moral order invented by tribal patriarchs in the Middle East to establish and maintain their patriarchal theocracy, then so be it. If that runs contrary to separation of church and the state, so be it.
To hell with the Constitution, and Democracy, apparently.
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