Tag Archives: birth control

All Posts, Constitution, guns, health, lgbtq, north carolina, poverty, public education, taxes, war

What to do on the morning after?

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The day after the election will be the first day of the rest of our lives. What should we expect of our elected officials? Will we help or undermine each other and elected leaders?  If individuals, families and communities listen to each other’s ideas and agree on how to move forward together, we can invigorate the idea of “commonwealth”, a society that is organized to benefit all.  Everybody wins.  If, on the other hand, winners kick losers while they’re down in order to maintain dominance and if losers do all they can to stop winners from implementing their ideas then the republic will decline.  Everybody loses.

It’s happened in great societies throughout history and it’s especially clear in the Bible’s Old Testament. When those in power dominate and abuse the powerless, everybody loses and the society fails.  When the principle of commonwealth guides decisions, the society blossoms.

Poverty, income inequality and homelessness are at crisis levels in many places.  Rural America has depended on agriculture and manufacturing to provide family incomes and property tax revenue for local governments.  Both of those economic sectors now produce more goods with fewer people than ever before.  At the same time that rural employment opportunities paying middle class wages have become scarce, the tax revenues of rural communities have stagnated.  Budgets for public education, safety, and human services are under severe stress at a time when they are critical to redevelopment of communities.  The plight of rural America has much in common with high poverty neighborhoods of urban America.  Low incomes and insufficient resources have similar effects in both places.

Will legislatures reconsider how public services are funded and which tax revenues are available at local, state and federal levels?  Will high poverty areas have funding for education, high-speed internet, water, sewer, quality of life, health and other priorities at a level that is proportionate to wealthy areas?  If not, will their future be inter-generational poverty and emigration of successful residents to more desirable areas?  Will legislators work at solving the underlying problems or will they pit urban vs rural and white vs black vs Hispanic for partisan gain?

What about the sanctity of human life?  Will we expect our congress, legislatures and executives to behave as if “all lives matter”?  Does someone who wants a gun have the right to own an assault rifle designed for mass killing?  Does a woman have the right to remove a fetus from her body?  In which decisions should government have a role?

Conflicts between personal and constitutional values will not be fully resolved but can we make progress for the common good?   Could we agree to reduce the demand for abortion by providing free birth control, better access to pre-natal care, simple and inexpensive adoption procedures, and by solving our income inequality problems?   Will we expect legislators to find ways to preserve gun ownership for self-defense and recreation while getting weapons designed for mass killing out of circulation and screening gun purchasers to rule out suspected terrorists and known criminals?  Or will we reward leaders for continuing to insult each other?

The Republican controlled Senate has refused to consider President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court.  They hope to win the Presidential election and get a conservative-leaning nominee. Senators Richard Burr and Ted Cruz have made the radical statement that if Hillary Clinton is elected, they will refuse to confirm nominees and let the court shrink.  That abrogation of a senator’s constitutional responsibility would invite similar behavior from Democrats toward a Republican president. Will we insist that senators fulfill their constitutional duties?

Differences of race, wealth, religion and philosophy divide us on a long list of issues: immigration, transpacific partnership, climate change, war, taxes, LBGTQ rights, health care, and more.

We’re not all going to miraculously agree after the election. Continued success for our republic will require two things of us.  First, we must look honestly at facts.  Second, we must engage each other in ongoing conversation (listening more than arguing) about the principle of commonwealth – making decisions and laws that create opportunity and peace for all of us.

Our legislators are capable of that, but they will do it only if they know that we voters expect it, demand it, and that we’re doing it ourselves.

We can start on November 9.

All Posts, Christianity, Congress, islam, justice, religion, Terrorism, war

WILL PEOPLE CONSENT TO BE GOVERNED?

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Some Americans have begun to speak of the USA as a failing nation.  I don’t agree. Our internal divisions are nothing new; they have persisted throughout our history. We succeed because most of us remain committed to working out our differences for the common good. We are justifiably worried about anarchy and terrorism, but they too have always been present. From the British point of view, our Revolutionary War heroes were domestic terrorists.  From the point of view of many colonists, the war was a justified and necessary step toward freedom.  The principal difference between terrorism and a “just war” is which side you are on.

Anarchy and terrorism lost when colonists created a new government based on “the consent of the governed”.  Within it they argued, debated and compromised to create something that the great majority of them would support.  That kind of political struggle is at the core of “consent of the governed”.  Our constitution protects the rights of individuals over the wishes and whims of majorities but our government is strong enough to make laws for the public good. That balance makes consent of the governed possible.

Terrorism emerges when extremely angry people who don’t get what they want through politics decide to use violence instead. An early example was the whiskey rebellion of 1791. Congress levied a tax on distilled spirits to pay off war debts. Farmers who made whiskey from their surplus corn were so opposed to the tax that they banded together and killed tax collectors. President George Washington personally led an army of 13,000 to put down the rebellion and enforce the law.  Our civil war, the biggest threat the nation has faced, was organized by slaveholders because they knew they were losing their political struggle to preserve slavery.

Americans’ ever-changing attitudes bring debate, conflict and changed laws. There was violence (terrorism) in opposition to the constitutional amendment that allowed women to vote. Our electorate was once dominated by religious extremists who passed laws to ban birth control and racially segregate society. As attitudes and beliefs changed, those laws have been repealed or found unconstitutional. The same can be said of the Prohibition Amendment that banned alcoholic beverages. Examples of terrorists in those causes include organized criminal gangs (alcohol) and KKK (segregation). 20th century arguments over civil rights, union rights, abortion rights, and the Viet Nam War brought violence and uncountable deaths.  As the issues were addressed some very angry people resorted to violence.

We shouldn’t expect today’s challenges to be easier than those faced by prior generations. Terrorists continue to attack both freedom and the government that protects it.  A majority of us now see marriage equality as a right, and our Supreme Court has determined that it is protected by our Constitution. That change was preceded by decades of homophobic violence. In 1973, women gained the legal right to control their own bodies, including the right to make their own decisions about ending a pregnancy. “Lone wolf” terrorist Eric Rudolph bombed the Atlanta Olympics to protest abortion rights and government protection of homosexuals. Timothy McVeigh, a “Christian” white supremacist, bombed the Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City as revenge for government support of civil rights.

Today we still have angry people who think their needs are not being addressed.   That includes Americans who lack adequate education and skills. They face a bleak economic outlook; suffer from depression and die younger than previous generations. Many African-Americans think that new voting laws are designed to reduce their influence. Some religious conservatives say their nation has been stolen by a majority that won’t accept literal interpretation of scripture as a basis for laws. Readers can probably add to the list of reasons why people are angry. In Biloxi, Mississippi a restaurant customer was enraged when a waitress told him that smoking was not allowed.  He shot her dead on the spot.  She might be angry too if she could talk to us.

So much anger makes it difficult to listen, to understand, and to accept our differences.  It also feeds the desire to control others through laws or violence rather than nurturing the individual freedoms that we cherish. Our “culture war” will continue in legislatures, courtrooms, and in our streets. Yes, there is terrorism, but there is also hope.  I remain optimistic that we will listen, learn, acknowledge our differences; and then find sufficient agreement for future “consent of the governed”.  Then we can move on to argue about another set of issues.  It’s what Americans do.

 

All Posts, Congress, health, religion

THOUGHTS ABOUT PLANNED PARENTHOOD

Is it OK to use unethical methods to accomplish goals that you think are good?  Does the end justify the means?  Anti-abortion forces are using dishonest propaganda and character assassination in their assault on Planned Parenthood.  They have adopted devilish methods in pursuit of goals that they consider godly. They posed as representatives of companies seeking to acquire fetal tissue for medical research and secretly recorded conversations with Planned Parenthood executives.  Then they extensively edited the recordings to make it appear that Planned Parenthood was selling fetal tissue for a profit.  The accusation is unproven, but their propaganda has convinced a lot of people. Continue reading THOUGHTS ABOUT PLANNED PARENTHOOD →

All Posts, health, justice, religion

SUPREME COURT LOGIC

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In decisions about Obamacare the Supreme Court has ruled that the federal government can levy a tax on individuals who do not purchase health insurance and that it can require employers who do not provide health benefits to pay a penalty (tax).   Only a few months later the court ruled that business owners who profess religious objections to some forms of birth control can opt out of that particular portion of coverage without paying a penalty.

Reductio ad absurdum is a Latin phrase that the Court’s Justices surely encountered in their introductory logic classes. It is a method of showing that a decision or argument is absurd because it gives rise to ridiculous or unworkable conclusions. Their decisions imply that five of the justices may have been napping during logic classes. Continue reading SUPREME COURT LOGIC →

All Posts, economy, environment

ARE WE VICTIMS OF SUCCESS?

We human inhabitants of planet earth have a problem that we would rather not face or discuss. That problem is our astonishing rate of population growth. The human population of our world was estimated to be about 1,000 million in 1800. By 1900 our numbers had increased by 65% to 1,650 million. By 2000 it had increased to 5,973 million – roughly six times as many as in 1800. At expected rates of growth, we will be close to 9,000 million souls by 2050.

So far, we have been reasonably successful in adapting the way we live to accommodate more people. When there was conflict over rights to graze animals wherever we wanted, we invented the idea of private property rights so that we would know who had the right to use which land. When our cities reached a size which allowed vermin to transmit disease, we suffered the plague. Eventually we learned that by getting garbage and sewage out of the city, we could avoid the plague and many other health problems. Later on we learned how to share water with rules that regulate how much one person can take from a stream or well so that there will be water left for others to use. When rules were ineffective or inconvenient, warfare has sometimes been an alternative. Biblical history says that the tribes of Israel slaughtered the inhabitants of the land that they wanted and took it as a place to live. In a similar situation, Americans of European ancestry killed off the Native American population and forced the survivors to relocate to reservations. The competition for land and resources has sometimes been brutal but humans have thrived as a species through whatever means seemed necessary at the time.

Modern health care, agribusiness and industrial scale animal production have succeeded in extending our lives, feeding our burgeoning population and avoiding famine. They enabled the record-breaking population growth of the 20th and 21st centuries but added dangerous chemicals to our food and environment in the process. We ignore warnings about poor air quality and fish that are unsafe to eat. In some places (Beijing for example) the air is often unsafe to breathe and hard to see through. Global warming is creating sea level rise which will make some coastal population centers uninhabitable in the next century. New York, Miami, and New Orleans are endangered along with many coastal cities around the world. Mountain gorillas, tigers and elephants are among those who will not survive in the wild if we continue taking their land for human habitation. There are predictions that future wars are more likely to be fought over scarce clean water than oil.

While US states sue each other for allowing their businesses to create pollution which crosses into other states, advocates of economic development and job growth are winning legislative debates to allow hydraulic fracturing for natural gas and expanded use of coal without holding the energy companies responsible for correcting environmental damage that they cause. 21st century children born around the world will want modern, high tech lives requiring more jobs and more energy.

There is no one with the power or authority to restrict population growth. That is up to individuals. By all appearances, decisions about consumption of energy and other resources will be much the same. I don’t know who first said that, “When everyone is responsible, no one is responsible.” but that sentence sums up the situation in which we find ourselves. Individuals will decide to create more children and the population will continue to grow.

The idea of collective action to control population may seem as repugnant today as restrictions on water use seemed when they were first suggested. China’s “one child per family” law has been withdrawn. Ideas, such as higher taxes on anyone with more than two children or life-long tax reduction to anyone who undergoes voluntary sterilization are generally dismissed as “extremist” and no “moderate” alternatives are offered. Some of our religions (fundamentalist Islam and traditional Mormonism) teach procreation as a responsibility. The largest Christian denomination (Catholicism) teaches that artificial birth control is morally wrong. They fight against including birth control in foreign aid to poor nations with high birth rates and against including it in health care plans. They are so effective that one of our major political parties (Republican) backs those positions. The prospects for meaningful collective action seem dim.

With improving technology, we can probably continue growing our population for a few more generations before some science-fiction sounding combination of disease, famine and war imposes population control on a hotter planet with less land and bigger oceans. In the meantime we might do well to explore this lesson in humility. Modern humans as a species have existed for about 200,000 years. Dinosaurs lasted over 160,000,000 years. Now all of them are gone. There is little question that the Earth and life will survive. There is less certainty about humanity. No individual needs population control but humanity does. When everyone is responsible, no one is responsible. That leaves considerable doubt as to whether we can last as long as the dinosaurs did. Will humans be victims of our own success or will we evolve enough and care enough to leave a healthy planet for our descendants? We are all responsible.