Today, Susan and I will celebrate our son Peter's third birthday. As many participants on this blog know, we became Peter's (and his younger brother Philip's) parents through adoption. And it is because of this experience, being the father of children who could have easily been exterminated in utero, that I find myself reacting to stories concerning abortion in a much more visceral way than before. Rob's post the other day concerning the story in the NYT regarding the woman who chose to abort two of her three children was deeply troubling for a host of reasons, including as Mark pointed out in his post, the seeming lack of appreciation of the gravity of the matter.
Rob's story of moving to New York and of being asked in an open and matter-of-fact way whether his pregnant wife intended to have the baby reminded me of a similar experience we had. Like many couples who ultimately adopt, my wife and I experienced problems trying to conceive. We consulted with fertility specialists both in Chicago and in Michigan where we lived for two years. Like many women in the same situation, Susan was put on a hormonal drug therapy. She had a great response to these drugs, so great in fact that the chances of conceiving large numbers of children is a single cycle were high. As a consequence, some months we opted not to try and have a child. On several occasions, including one that was particulary vivid, we were told that "If you're worried about multiple births you can always do selective reduction." The way in which the nurse said this was so banal and inconsequential that if she had been a waitress she might as well have said "The sandwich comes with soup and salad, but you don't have to get either of them if you don't want to."
Today, Peter is a happy, smiling three-year-old. He is the joy of our life! We thank God every day that Peter's birth-mother had the courage to see the pregnancy through so that he could now enjoy the life he has. But was it her decision that made him a human being? Was it her decision that bestowed "personhood" upon him? Certainly his life span would have been different if she had chosen otherwise, but would he have been any different? I have trouble seeing how an affirmative answer to any of these questions can be squared with how we respond to questions concerning identity, humanity and personhood in other settings.
If his birth-mother had opted for another decision, a decision which our culture encourages and defends as emblematic of true freedom, no one would have ever seen his face, except of course those who would have brought about his death . . . and they would have averted their eyes! Today we look into his eyes with joy and thanksgiving.
Friday, July 23, 2004
The following is an excerpt from Peter Jennings' interview yesterday with John Kerry:
Peter Jennings: You told an Iowa newspaper recently that life begins at conception. What makes you think that?
Sen. Kerry: My personal belief about what happens in the fertilization process is a human being is first formed and created, and that's when life begins. Something begins to happen. There's a transformation. There's an evolution. Within weeks, you look and see the development of it, but that's not a person yet, and it's certainly not what somebody, in my judgment, ought to have the government of the United States intervening in.
Roe v. Wade has made it very clear what our standard is with respect to viability, what our standard is with respect to rights. I believe in the right to choose, not the government choosing, but an individual, and I defend that.
Jennings: Could you explain again to me what do you mean when you say "life begins at conception"?
Kerry: Well, that's what the Supreme Court has established is a test of viability as to whether or not you're permitted to terminate a pregnancy, and I support that. That is my test. And I, you know, you have all kinds of different evolutions of life, as we know, and very different beliefs about birth, the process of the development of a fetus. That's the standard that's been established in Roe v. Wade. And I adhere to that standard.
Jennings: If you believe that life begins at conception, is even a first-trimester abortion not murder?
Kerry: No, because it's not the form of life that takes personhood in the terms that we have judged it to be in the past. It's the beginning of life. Does life begin? Yes, it begins. Is it at the point where I would say that you apply those penalties? The answer is, no, and I believe in choice. I believe in the right to choose, and the government should not involve itself in that choice, beyond where it has in the context of Roe v. Wade.
As an admittedly unenthusiastic Kerry voter, I'll let readers supply their own biting commentary.
Rob
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Abortion politics aside, what sort of parents would send their fifth-grader to learn about sex at a Planned Parenthood "boys and girls" conference from which parents are banned? Approximately 350 parents in Waco, Texas apparently believe that the best way for their preteens to learn about sex is sitting in an auditorium learning how to become sexually active through the unabashed ideological slant of perfect strangers, according to this report.
Rob
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
The Journal of Law & Religion has announced its Fifteenth Annual Law, Religion and Ethics Symposium. On October 21 and 22 at Hamline Law School in St. Paul, an intriguing and diverse lineup of scholars (including MoJ's Michael Perry) will tackle the heady topic, "The Sacred and the Secular: Encountering the Other From the Interpersonal to the International: Three Conversations in Law, Religion and Ethics."
Rob
Beliefnet has an interesting article titled, "The Gay Marriage Ban: Where's the Groundswell?," exploring why the proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage has not sparked much grassroots activism among the conservative Christians who are assumed to support it. After President Bush announced his support for the amendment,
Folks in the pews continued to abhor the idea of gay marriage, just as the activists had said they would--but they didn’t do much about it. Fewer than expected bothered to call senators, write emails, send money, or march in demonstrations. By June, President Bush expressed exasperation that his base--whose leaders had lobbied so hard to get administration support for the amendment--wasn’t doing enough to support him.
One possible explanation for the inaction derives from the premise of subsidiarity and its hold on the nation's political psyche, especially among conservatives. Just as many individuals who supported the legalization of abortion were uncomfortable with the top-down manner in which it was imposed on the nation as a whole, it seems that many opponents of gay marriage are uncomfortable with a national, one-size-fits-all remedy. Americans, in large part, like to tackle problems on the local level. One would think that President Bush, more than anyone, would understand that.
Rob
Many MoJ readers are no doubt familiar with the ongoing struggles of Catholic universities to maintain any sort of distinct religious identity, but perhaps less familiar with similar struggles in the evangelical world of higher education. Among major research universities with Protestant roots, of course, most of these struggles ended long ago, with secularism earning decisive victories. One notable exception is Baylor, which has been attempting to reconnect with its Baptist roots while raising its academic standing, consciously aspiring to be the "Protestant Notre Dame." The resulting battle for control of the university has become increasingly close and bitter, as today's Houston Chronicle reports.
Rob
Monday, July 19, 2004
Two years ago, when my family moved to New York City, my wife was expecting our second child. Soon after we arrived, she was watching our older daughter in a McDonald's play area, and another mother struck up a conversation with her. It was the sort of small talk to which strangers are accustomed until the other woman learned that my wife was pregnant. The woman immediately asked whether she was going to have the baby. Several days later, my wife made her first visit to the doctor's office. The nurse at the reception desk asked her the usual questions, and then asked whether she was going to have the baby.
These two experiences came to mind as I read the NYT piece, ably dissected by Mark and Rick below, in which the author revels in her decision to abort two of her triplets for no other reason than the inconvenience they posed to her lifestyle. The common theme of the article and my wife's experiences, in my view, is the utter lack of moral shame on display. There is, of course, widespread disagreement over whether abortion should be legally prohibited, but there should be no disagreement over whether abortion is a morally troubling act. Perhaps the more relevant inquiry for American society is not the likelihood that abortion will be outlawed anytime soon (between slim and none), but the likelihood that the law's protection of abortion will eventually dissipate any sort of moral presumption against the practice. As we see from the NYT author, when the burdens of shopping for large mayonnaise jars at Costco and moving to Staten Island are even part of the abortion "cost-benefit" analysis, all bets are off.
Rob
