I
cross posted the post below over at Daily Kos, and it drew a pretty large number of comments. No one ever comments on
this thing, but hey,
se la vid. So I figured why not follow up with some more thoughts about faith and politics.
First, let me explicitly state: I am in favor of abortion rights, in favor of access to birth control, and am a committed advocate against date-rape in my college's community Senate. That said, I also am strongly pro-life on a personal level. Not that it's been an issue for me yet (cough), and I hope I'll never have to deal with an unwanted pregnancy in a relationship, but that contradiction has led me to do some serious thinking about the abortion issue.
I want to start this post by introducing you to a friend of mine, a friend named Damian. Damian taught computer sciences at my high school. He's a good guy, comes from Altoona (in the heart of PA, right between Pittsburgh and Harrisburgh if I'm not mistaken). He loved Bowling for Columbine and questioned the validity of the Iraq war. By all accounts, he should be a Democrat. He's a public school teacher, for goondess sake. But he's also a Catholic, and pro-life.
Which means that he's voting for Pat Toomey this Tuesday, and I'm sure he'll be voting for Bush in Novemeber.
All over abortion. I believe that abortion is the sole thing keeping the left from being able to unite liberal Catholics and Protestants a beat the radical right (which has co-opted their faith) forever. How can we cross this massive divide? How can we get good people of faith to look beyond this single issue and unite around our commonalities?
There are two or three things I can think of that will help. The first is probably the hardest, and might just get me in trouble...
We need to recognize that abortion is a tough issue, dealing with complex moral issues relating to where life begins -- something that medical science can't tell us us (I've seen pro-life doctors and pro-choice doctors...). Recognition of the complexity of this moral issue will help to de-froth a lot of the conservatives, and get people on both sides to calm down and listen to each other.
Once both sides are talking, how can pro-choicers convice pro-lifers that they need to look beyond this single issue and focus on a broader vision of society? I think the pro-choice side is doing good by framing today's march as being about health and reproductive justice. My brother Ben has a good post on this in his blog.
Silvia Henriquez, executive director of the Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and member of the steering committee, predicts that the focus on reproductive rights as part of a broader context will attract substantial numbers of Hispanic women. "Hispanics are the fastest-growing ethnicity in the country, and in the next twenty years millions of Latinas are going to be looking to raise their families in safe, healthy environments with full access to education and healthcare," she says, adding, "it's not that Latinas don't support abortion, or don't care about that issue. They do Â- but they tend to think of reproductive rights as part of their overall human rights and those of their families."
-snip-
"I firmly believe that if the politicians could figure out a way to make abortion illegal for white women but not women of color, they'd be sending limos to take us to the clinics," says [Loretta Ross, executive director of the National Center for Human Rights Education]. She wants more discussion on the lack of choices for low-income women, believing that many choose abortion precisely because they have no other option. "This collective supports women's right to have an abortion, but we've got to recognize that reproductive justice means the right to have a child as well as the right not to have a child. How many women who want to parent don't because they can't afford it? What social services are there to help them?"
Ideally, we all want a world where abortions don't happen. But the reason abortions happen are related to the fundamental values of our society. We value "independence" over community support, violence over peace, a purity over equality and justice.
And that's where we can unite people of faith and kick ass.