I meant to include in today's earlier post about contraception and the Texas Women's Health [Contraception] Program that part of the reason the pro-life movement must come to terms with contraception is because that has implications for any sort of Human Life Amendment or Personhood Amendment. In November of 2011, Mississippi had on the ballot a Personhood Amendment which was not successful. I wrote the following after that election which is still applicable today and is more fuel for thought as we work to be philosophically consistent and work to protect all life from conception until natural death.
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In the aftermath of the unsuccessful Personhood Amendment initiative in
Mississippi, pro-life groups have much reason to reflect on their overall
philosophy when it comes to when life begins and how much protection life
should receive, matters that, as it turns out, are far from settled. Rather than debate whether this Amendment
failed because of the MSM or Planned Parenthood or whoever or whatever; rather
than debate whether it would have been upheld by the Courts if it passed and
was (inevitably) challenged; let us take a moment and look at the pro-life
movement more fundamentally. There must
be a consistently intellectually honest view of life that underlies all
pro-life efforts. But it is clear today
that there is not. We must recognize and
rectify it or the movement is lost because it will have no moral
authority.
Keith Mason of
Personhood USA, which backed the Personhood Amendment, said today: “A personhood amendment, recognizing
everyone as a legal person, is the right thing to do. It is always right to protect our
citizens. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘The time is always right to do
what is right.’”
He is
absolutely correct. However, there is a
contradiction when he says: “Our
opposition’s most successful tactics were steeped in falsehoods. Despite testimony from countless experts
including the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, numerous high-profile
attorneys, and board certified physicians and OBGYNs, Amendment 26 opponents
falsely claimed that the measure would ban in vitro fertilization (it
couldn’t), ban contraception (it wouldn’t), and give protections to ‘eggs’ (it
didn’t).” And then also
says: “In truth, Amendment 26 protected human embryos from
the moment of conception.”
The Personhood
Amendment debate in Mississippi and the comments of its primary supporter, show
a shocking, but all too common, truth about the "pro-life" community
as a whole. Even the proponents of the
Amendment go out of their way to say that this would not ban IVF and contraception.
As a matter of
philosophical consistency and logic, "Why not?" If they are seeking to protect all embryos
from the moment of conception and define them as persons, how do you then
exclude these two forms of life-beginning-at-conception from the protection
they say they want? Are they not
persons, too? How can you “protect human
embryos from the moment of conception” and
not ban IVF and at least those forms of contraception that can be
abortifacients?
It is important to
realize how the Supreme Court got to its decision in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179 (1973). Together Roe
and Doe legalized abortion across
all fifty states based principally on an alleged “right of privacy” in the U.S.
Constitution because the Court had already decided Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), which is the
all-too-often-forgotten case wherein the Court actually found that “right of
privacy” in the context of deciding that a Connecticut law prohibiting the use
of contraceptives was unconstitutional.
There has been, from the very beginning, an inextricable link between contraception and abortion.
Up until about 1930, all
Christian Churches condemned both contraception and abortion and were united in
support of life from the moment of conception.
The only Christian Churches to remain firmly against both contraception
and abortion are the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. When the others changed their doctrines, they
started by relaxing their views concerning contraception. This clarity among and within churches
regarding contraception is no longer present and it has without a doubt
contributed significantly to the muddled pro-life philosophy for many
well-intentioned individuals. This link
must be made clear again, especially since it is now evident that certain forms
of contraception can lead to abortions.
(And, not just the “Morning After Pill,” but also certain forms of “the
Pill,” IUDs, etc.) If life begins at
conception and the embryo is a person, then one cannot support abortifacient
contraception.
And, what about the
"selective reductions" after a successful IVF or the destruction of
unused embryos? The IVF-using couples
who want a child so badly pay (handsomely) for the procedure which most of the time
implants more than a one embryo at a time because so many perish in the
process. Most
of the time, if the couple is blessed with more than one or two of these
embryos surviving, there is often the process of "selectively
reducing" the number of children alive and growing in their mother’s
womb. It is an abortion. For just one IVF doctor’s view of this
process, where he makes clear that selective reduction is acceptable and advisable.
There
are some who might say that the Personhood Amendment was an attempt at
“incrementalism.” In the pro-life movement, there is a split among those who
support an “all or nothing” approach (ban it all or don’t bother and we won’t
support it) and those who support a “let’s do what we can, a little at a time”
approach, sometimes called an “incremental” approach. There are merits to both arguments and the
point here is not to advocate for or against either one; it is beside the
point. The point here is that there is
nothing in the language above indicating this was an incremental approach. It seems that all that was intended was
protection and personhood status for some
embryos, but not all.
As
such, there is a fundamental, but unacknowledged, inconsistency by the
proponents of the Amendment when they say the Amendment will “protect human embryos from the moment of conception”
and “recogniz[e]
everyone as a legal person” while simultaneously saying the Amendment will not ban IVF and certain forms of
abortifacient contraception. By its
proponent’s own comments, it allows for the destruction of some of the very
“persons” they claim to want to protect based on how they came to be in
existence. So,
there is a massive education effort needed – apparently within the pro-life
community and for the promoters of this Amendment as much as for anyone else –
so that the pro-life movement is consistently intellectually honest and has the
moral authority necessary to engage in this vital effort. Let’s get started!
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I have not really written about IVF before, but the concerns with it - and the reasons it is morally wrong - should be even more apparent. Perhaps I'll write another post about it in the future. In the meantime, I hope this helps show in another way why we cannot support contraception that is even potentially abortifacient in the pro-life movement.
Thanks for reading!
