Living in Alabama, from a political perspective one thing is for certain, it’s always interesting and always dubious. I have previously proffered my opinion that abortion is an inevitable evil, not mind you necessary, and don’t actively promote my own “pro-life” views as I once did. And so, even I am a bit taken aback by the recently passed “most restrictive abortion law in the nation” that makes abortion in virtually all circumstances a felony for which a doctor could be sentenced up to 99 years in prison for performing.
What sets Alabama’s new law aside from the plethora of other states also passing pro-life legislation is that it makes an exception only for the life of the mother – not for rape and incest. It’s interesting to note, that even fundamentalist conservative TV evangelist Pat Robertson has called the Alabama law “extreme.” To me, this is a revelation, because it is where I believe the so-called pro-lifers reveal their lack of integrity leading to a better understanding of their true motives for opposing abortion.
My pro-life stance never has been based on a religious perspective and when I consider the moral and ethical facets of what it means to be a human being, and then arrive at the conclusion that unborn children are in fact autonomous human beings, I can’t come up with any rational reason to then proclaim “except” babies conceived by rape or incest. The religious cultism
reveals its intent to engage in eugenics and ethnic cleansing – illegal in all fifty states – when it proclaims that how a human being is conceived changes whether or not they are actually a human being. Basically, it’s neo-nazi code-speak.
Now, I love my Catholic friends but as mentioned before I’m not Catholic and I regard Catholicism as a cult. And even though I’m protestant, when my protestant friends state that there is this “exception” for being a human being they basically have devolved themselves into practicing a form of Catholic cultism. This is also the point where Catholicism then devolves from it’s own inherent cultism into a cultural disease.
I found out a long time ago that the pro-life movement has it’s own set of ulterior motives which has more to do with religious authoritarianism than it does pro-life. Likewise, I’ve become aware that “pro-choice” advocates are anything but, more often than not pushing a woman to have an abortion and then branding her as an infidel when she doesn’t. They don’t accept the idea that “choice” can mean a stay at home mom with a quiver full.
So Alabama has actually gotten it right. But what about the heartbeat? Interestingly enough, Georgia’s new “fetal heartbeat” bill basically limits abortion to within the first 6 weeks. But for some irrational reason Georgia has made the not-really-a-human-being exception like most other states now passing restrictive abortion laws. Georgia, according to one media report, actually requires a police report to be filed if an abortion is to be performed based on those exceptions.
Which is the long way around to saying, if there is a scientific argument for determining when an unborn child is a real human being, it seems to me that finding a heartbeat indicates all systems are go. The heartbeat perspective is substantially more restrictive than the standard 20 weeks that isn’t really honored anyway, but at least there is an almost rational argument – until Georgia gets to that not-really-a-human-being exception which is totally irrational and indefensible given their own declared parameters.
Where will it end up? No doubt at least one of the state cases will end up before the Supreme Court which will then have an enormous opportunity to further restrict abortion by overturning Roe V Wade. I’m not a legal expert, but it is my understanding that a “reversal” by the Supreme Court would likely return the legal authority over abortion to each individual state. For a number of reasons – that would make another lengthy column that I’m not writing today – I think giving each individual state legal authority over abortion would be a cataclysmic disaster that would ultimately drive the fifty states to divide into separate nations.
And that is the caveat for pro-lifers. I honestly doubt that the Supreme Court will allow each individual state to determine it’s own abortion laws. But I do think the conservative majority will find the case it wants and then further restrict abortion by federal law. It may look like Alabama’s law, it might look like Georgia’s law, but it will almost certainly be more restrictive than it is today.
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© 2019 – Jim Casey
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