Have you read Yehuda Lev’s piece? Not yet? It’s just opposite this column, there, on page 4. Go read it now. I’ll wait for you. Tum, de, dum dum, pooh, pooh tra la la la la. OK? Finished so soon? Nice of him to give those who missed my column last issue the opportunity to read selections from it this time. Thanks Yehuda.
Where to begin, he asks. What if the boy is 14 and the girl 13? Is there an epidemic of 13-year-old girls out there getting knocked up? Should we establish social policy for all America based on the aberrant behavior of stupid lovesick puppies? Is it not possible that 13-year-old girls would get pregnant less often if they knew that abortion was not an option? I don’t know, and I imagine Yehuda doesn’t either.
I am inconsistent on the morality of women raped having an abortion. I knew it when I wrote that, and I acknowledge it still. It’s a tough call. On the one hand the baby is not guilty of any crime and deserves to live. On the other the mother has been traumatized and could feel that her body is being violated yet again. Do I have to be consistent? Is life black and white, Yehuda? OK, if you insist. Here’s a solution. Castrate the rapist and offer psychological counseling the mother. When the baby is born, she can choose to keep her child or she can choose to give it up for adoption.
Yehuda claims to find a group more defenseless than human beings developing in the wombs of their mothers. While it is hard to penetrate his impassioned prose, I think he means babies not provided with loving families, brought into this world by uncaring pro-life fanatics who (here Yehuda starts rambling a bit, or maybe this part will be edited out before you read it) choose war over feeding and educating its population, catering to the wealthy. Huh? I know there are problems in the world Yehuda, and I know there is poverty, and I know that Bush is still president. But it’s not the fault of a child conceived in the womb of a recent MBA who doesn’t want to go onto the mommy-track.
Finally Yehuda gets to the core of my argument. And then misses the mark completely. Yes, I have a problem with “Clergy for Choice” but I don’t think the group has a guilty conscience. The ones who should have a guilty conscience, he argues, are those who support governments that are anti-child, anti-poor and anti-women. If there are such clergymen in America I think they should be defrocked immediately!
My argument was with clergy who pretend that the Hebrew bible supports individual choice according to one’s own conscience and religious beliefs. This argument is comparable to that of ante-bellum southerners who thumped their bibles and quoted its passages in favor of the abomination that was slavery. Was slavery immoral? They argued it was not, that it was at least morally neutral or, some had it, a moral good, a moral necessity. I know what passages they quoted; I can’t think what the clergy for choice found in Hebrew Scriptures to leave it up to the woman to decide on her own conscience whether to have an abortion or not. I believe that the clerical spokesperson for this organization will have his say in this issue as well, so I will look for the citations with baited breath.
To me “Clergy for Choice” is in the same category as “Compassionate Conservative.” Both are disingenuous oxymorons in full gallop. Arguing the morality of abortion on demand is an example of the banality of expediency. Slave owners were moral and doing what they though best; World War II Germans were moral and doing what they thought best; suicide bombers think themselves moral and do what they think best. But saying it doesn’t make it so. Not in the ante-bellum south, not in 1940’s Europe, not now.
Should we criminalize abortion again? That genie is long ago out of the bottle and the bottle is broken. It’s a promise made by conservative politicians intent on duping the gullible while raking in the profits. Abortion is a moral issue now, no longer a legal one. Let’s look around us as Yehuda suggests and see the moral abyss we are in when we pretend that the willful destruction of the innocents is excusable.
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