This one ought to be interesting...
Tennessee House member Karen Camper (D-Memphis) has proposed House Resolution HJR132 which would add a provision to the Tennessee State Constitution that "Nothing in the Constitution of Tennessee secures or protects right to a vasectomy."
The resolution was proposed earlier this week, responding to a similar proposal HJR127 which was proposed by Republican Brian Kelsey, stating that "nothing in Constitution of Tennessee secures or protects right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion."
What makes it even more fascinating was a statement today coming from House Democratic Caucus Chair Mike Turner (D-Nashville) indicating that he would likely vote for Camper's vasectomy resolution.
It's the only consistently pro-life position to take in light of Catholic social teaching on sexuality, right?
I'm still a neophyte when it comes to understanding Catholic social teaching, but Pepperdine Law School dean and Catholic pro-life scholar Doug Kmiec took a lot of heat for endorsing Barack Obama this year.
We are all called to build a culture of life - but there's more to it than just hoping that the next Supreme Court justice somehow deals with Roe v. Wade. A bad economy is threatening to human life. Women facing the moral tragedy of abortion - are facing it, now, today - and they need a supportive community and tangible help, not condemnation.
As Ronald Reagan's legal counsel and as a dean and professor at Catholic University and Notre Dame, I have worked to put the law on the side of life where it belongs.
But after 35 years, a new approach is needed. Too many unborn lives are being lost as we wait for judges to get it right. Barack Obama's strengthening of support for prenatal care, health care, maternity leave, and adoption will make the difference. Studies confirm it.
Republicans have long used reproductive rights and abortion as wedge issues to divide women, Catholics, and Evangelicals. In response to Christians and social progressives who argue for economic equality on the basis of moral arguments, Republicans have used the abortion issue to great effect. "You want us to be moral leaders? Care for the poor? Help the helpless? Well, what about abortion?"
But the tide is starting to turn. Among younger Evangelicals, the focus has moved from prohibitions of abortion to abortion reduction plans which include pre-natal healthcare for mothers, improved economic opportunities for women, equal pay for equal work, and protections of women from domestic and sexual violence.
And here's where Camper's resolution gets so interesting.
You want to get into our private lives? Want to tell us what to do with our sexuality? Want to limit women's access to healthcare? OK. Fine. But let's be consistent.
A truly pro-life approach to human sexuality is affirming and calls all people to "be fruitful and multiply". Catholic social teaching doesn't simply prohibit abortion, but goes so far as to prohibit all artificial forms of birth control, including barrier methods like condoms and diaphragms and surgical procedures like tubal ligation or vasectomy.
A 1961 Time Magazine article highlighted the challenges of Catholic teaching on sexuality and procreation:
Over the centuries, the Roman Catholic Church has reasoned its opposition to mechanical birth control on the basis of natural law: i.e., God gave man his sexual pleasure with a reproductive string attached, and to separate one from the other is to thwart the will of God.
But if the only permissible means of birth control is to shun sexual intercourse (either totally, or during a wife's fertile period—the so-called rhythm method), how can the church hope to cope with the zooming population, which demographers maintain will jam the earth with six billion humans by the turn of the century, compared with 1.85 billion in 1920?
In the most recent version of the Catholic catechism, Catholic social teaching on sexuality and chasity continued to uphold the idea that sexuality is not intended for pleasure alone, but is fundamentally designed for procreation. Consequently:
By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. "Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action." "The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose." For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of "the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved."
(Wonder if the GOP will do anything to monitor and prohibit this perversion of our sexuality which is running so rampant.)
The Catechism explicitly states that coercion and state control over sexuality are not in keeping with Catholic teaching on human freedom:
The state has a responsibility for its citizens' well-being. In this capacity it is legitimate for it to intervene to orient the demography of the population. This can be done by means of objective and respectful information, but certainly not by authoritarian, coercive measures. The state may not legitimately usurp the initiative of spouses, who have the primary responsibility for the procreation and education of their children.
But at the same time, Catholic teaching on contraception is clear:
The innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality
Translation: Sex is great, and having sex makes babies! If you use birth control, you're limiting your love for each other and that's just not right.
I have not seen any clear statement from Rep. Camper about the reason for her proposed House Resolution, but I am guessing that this is a move which demands consistency from the hypocritical, mostly male, mostly privileged Republicans who are trying to set up limits on abortion access for women (especially women with low-income).
In other news, Republicans in the Tennessee State Legislature are moving forward on a bill that would prohibit unmarried cohabitants (including gays, who are legally prohibited from marriage after a marriage amendment a few years ago) from adopting children. This bill ignores the fact that there are too few adoptive parents applying for adoption and still too many children in need of responsible parents.
All of this in addition to the TN GOP's "Honk if you're paying my mortgage" bumper sticker, and the 4 TN House members who are joining the lawsuit questioning the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate.
Note to GOP: This is why I left your stupid party.