As we all know, despite wage stagnation, devastating impacts from climate change, instability in global markets and mass migrations due to drought and armed conflict, the GOP has placed the destruction of Planned Parenthood as its primary objective in 2015.
Raise high the roofbeams, carpenters, we have some high-minded folks comin' through!
Republicans are in complete consensus as to the urgency of this, such that in this week's GOP debate we bore witness to umpteen uncontested minutes of hallucinatory and unison caterwauling over the (utterly fabricated) sins of this century-old women's healthcare organization – all calculated theater to preface a government shutdown this month over Planned Parenthood funding.
No doubt we've experienced this before. This is a proposed shutdown, mind you, which has a financial cost – in lost services and productivity, decreased consumer spending and market declines – that will dwarf, in less than a month, the amount of government spending earmarked for Planned Parenthood over the next decade.
Clearly Planned Parenthood could use our help. There are so many ways to help Planned Parenthood, it's well worth your time, and yes, yes, you should.
The single best way is to help is to donate to them. They've been successfully defunded in multiple states since the James O'Keefe-inspired stunt videos landed, and the deadly threats on the lives of their doctors and workers are increasing.
Secondly, you can push back on the utter lies and fabrications around those videos, not least the brain-addled fantasies of Carly Fiorina in this week's debate. You can educate yourself on how Planned Parenthood uses its funding, focus on the tons of amazing good Planned Parenthood does, especially for the poor, and emphasize the human cost to hundreds of thousands of women of discontinuing funding for their clinics.
Thirdly, you can bring to others' attention the longstanding value of fetal tissue research, and remind everyone that none other than Ben Carson availed himself of aborted fetal tissue for medical research, and is unapologetic about it. This is a fact that strangely didn't make it into the discussion at the CNN debate. Go figure.
And fourthly, you can point out that US abortion rates are at a 30-year low, and that has virtually nothing to do with recent antiabortion legislation. It's due instead to greater availability of effective contraception and family planning, which is Planned Parenthood's raison d'etre. Moreover, you can point out that nations with restrictive abortion laws actually see significantly higher abortion rates, and more unsafe abortions at that. If you believe that outcomes matter, rather than pious posturing, providing pregnancy termination services alongside robust contraceptive services is the best way to make abortion very rare.
All of the above is critically important. But there's another small way you can help that may not always be obvious.
Since, at base, the argument against Planned Parenthood is a (very deceptive) argument against abortion, and that argument is (supposedly) rooted firmly in Biblical law and verse, you can familiarize yourself with some critical passages in the Biblical text, and strengthen yourself against the false teachings of self-said "true believers" and anti-choice culture warriors. Because, in the end, the consensus opposition of the GOP to women's choice is ultimately reducible to a knee-buckling panderfest to this constituency.
Now, progressives and secular Democrats are often uncomfortable debating evangelical conservatives and anti-choicers on their own "turf", and tend to frame the debate in terms of civil rights, rule of law, and the state/church divide. That's fine as far as appealing to fellow progressives and secular Democrats goes, but it's rarely going to get one anywhere when talking to people who believe divine law overrules any individual right or earthly system of governance.
But the Bible – whether you believe it a spiritual guiderail, the revealed Word of God, or the chaotic seed of all conflict – is a complicated and multi-voiced text. It can, however, be made familiar with dedicated reading. And for those who have substituted its complexity with easy myths and false truths for conservative political ends, it can be made unfamiliar again by turning to its actual pages.
Let's do that for a few minutes here, with an eye to what the Bible says on the subject of the unborn, untimely births, and the moment life begins.
First off, let me offer a very good resource that discusses, at length, Biblical support for pro-choice activists and Biblical evidence against simpleminded forced-birtherism. There are many such resources, but this one condenses a lot rather economically, and most everything I mention here is mentioned there as well.
Now let's dig in.
Leaping Babes and Earthen Depths
So what does the Biblical support for the fundamentalist anti-choice position look like? You may be surprised to know that it's bracingly thin.
Jesus Christ never says a single word about abortion, nor does God in any place specify a penalty for choosing to abort a pregnancy (though he recommends it for many women, as you will see). Abortion was never a serious flashpoint for the Church over two full millenia, and it only became politicized in the 1970s and 1980s via the Catholic Church and later as a Reagan-era wedge-based electioneering strategy. In fact, the first antiabortion laws in the 19th century were actually introduced by liberals, secularists and suffragists who wanted to draw attention to the dangers of the (very unsanitary and crude) procedure in that era.
So if Christ doesn't mention abortion, and the Church didn't foreground it for the better part of twenty centuries, where do forced birthers go to manufacture a Biblical case against it? Well, in large part, three short ambiguous and poetic passages are most often cited, none of which comes directly from the voice of God, none of which addresses the penalty for abortion, and none of which discusses the value of the unborn. Nevertheless, here they are for your consideration:
Luke 1:39-41
39 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, 40 where she entered Zechariah's home and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.
Jeremiah 1:4-5
4 The word of the LORD came to me, saying, 5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."
Psalms 139:13-16
13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, 16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
In the first passage, we have a simple description of a pregnant woman feeling her late-stage child kicking in the womb. No zygotes or embryos here. Just a half sentence narration of a common sensation in late pregnancy. And the women in question are the mothers of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ respectively, so a sense of the Holy Spirit hovers over them in general. These are special men, and central characters in the Biblical story. It's not certain how this generalizes to human beings two thousand years later, and if it was meant to, God certainly would have provided more explicit guidance to that end, no?
In the second and third passages, we have two Biblical characters, a prophet (Jeremiah) and a king (David), each rhapsodizing about their origins. In Jeremiah's case, he claims his future was predestined, and God chose him specially to go to Earth on a specific mission. The verse itself is explicit in saying that Jeremiah's case was an exception (he was "set apart"). How this generalizes to average human beings is again anyone's guess, but there is certainly no guidance here on where earthly life begins, or why an ancient prophet's destiny speaks to whether the countless human beings of our time should choose to procreate at a given moment.
Meanwhile, King David, the reputed author of most of the Psalms, is caught here in a rhapsodic moment, almost Whitmanesque, where he imagines his own creation. David was a passionate guy – many Christians still struggle with his legacy of rape, torture and murderous conquest – and here he feverishly conflates his mother's womb with the earth itself, and poetically composes his own origin myth in a very non-linear and figurative way. Though again, this retrospective musing says very little about the value of the unborn in general – it's a singular, exceptional adult figure who had been chosen to do specific "great things" in the Biblical narrative.
According to the Bible, God creates all things: bugs, fishes, non-sentient earth and vegetation. Claiming that God has a role in the formation of a human being really has no bearing on when earthly life begins or whether it is right or wrong to terminate a pregnancy by choice. God's agency is absolute; if He does not want a pregnancy terminated, He can certainly prevent it. And in many places in the Bible, He not only allows it to happen, He mandates that it happen.
And, well, that's about it, gals. Do you feel adequately informed and ready to take that IUD out yet? Well, hold on, let's look at another side of this.
Bitter Waters and the Breath of Life
Setting aside the poetry, is there counterevidence to support that God not only tolerates abortion but in some cases calls for it? Unfortunately, for the megachurch millions, Mike Huckabee and Carly Fiorina, it certainly exists. And it's far more abundant, and much clearer, than the thin porridge above.
Spend some time (when you have it) with the following passages to learn some uncomfortable truths for forced birthers and those who would claim God places the unborn above the living. Here are five tough lessons from the Bible for those who would seek to speak for God on the subject of abortion.
1. In the Bible, God's law values the mother's life over that of the unborn child.
Exodus 21:22-25 is really unequivocal in this respect. If men cause the loss of a woman's child, they are assessed a fine, and the loss is treated much like a property loss. (This derives from the Code of Hammurabi, where a miscarriage requires the assaulter to pay ten silver shekels for the fetus.) but if they hurt the mother, they are to be hurt in kind. If they kill the mother, they will be subject to capital punishment.
Exodus 21:22-25
22 "If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. 23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
Anti-choicers who are familiar with this passage know that it is a real point of vulnerability for them, and they will attempt to cherrypick bad translations of the phrase "born prematurely" to suggest a healthy birth, or that harm means harm to the child, but the original Hebrew (and Greek for that matter) does not support these mistranslations in context. This is, after all, the point in Exodus when men are to be put to death for even cursing their parents, so the amount of qualification here for miscarriages is extremely telling. Here's
a thoughtful rejoinder to those anti-choicer perversions of the Biblical text.
2. There are places in the Bible where God Himself actually prescribes abortion for women.
In very explicit terms, God instructed Moses to have all unfaithful women abort their children and be made barren. In the 5th chapter of Numbers, women who have sexual relations out of wedlock, pregnant or no, are to go to a priest and "drink a bitter water" that curses her body, makes her miscarry, and makes her ultimately become barren:
Numbers 5:27-30
27 If she has defiled herself and been unfaithful to her husband, then when she is made to drink the water that brings a curse, it will go into her and cause bitter suffering; her abdomen will swell and her thigh waste away, and she will become accursed among her people. 28 If, however, the woman has not defiled herself and is free from impurity, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children. 29 This, then, is the law of jealousy when a woman goes astray and defiles herself while married to her husband, 30 or when feelings of jealousy come over a man because he suspects his wife. The priest is to have her stand before the LORD and is to apply this entire law to her.
"Thigh" here, Biblical scholars agree, refers to a woman's sexual organs.
Beyond the primitive brutality of this – and make no mistake, if Biblical literalists are going to cherrypick the Bible elsewhere, they must clearly respect this passage that comes from God's own words to Moses – there are no allowances made for the unborn child's life in these cases. Clearly, many women who have extramarital relations in this time get pregnant. This was not an era of IUDs and the pill. Moreover, other translations make this quite unambiguous – the New International Version, for example, specifying: "She will have barrenness and a miscarrying womb."
Try to fathom that. In the full context of this passage, God is mandating that any unfaithfulness is punished by forced abortion and sterilization – the removal of all reproductive capacity. And far more than that, the woman does not even have to be guilty of infidelity. The husband simply has to suspect guilt, or be jealous, to effect this result. The passage explicitly says: this is the law of jealousy.
In an era where adultery is commonplace, not least among GOP politicians, and half of marriages end in divorce, if we follow the words of God literally, He has prescribed a holocaust of a scale far greater than the typical anti-choicer's imagination could possible attribute to Planned Parenthood and others. The divine priority of the unborn is just not supportable given this critical passage.
Even further, while the Bible makes clear that God knows the future of each child, unborn or born, it's also quite clear that He intends for many children to be miscarried or forcibly aborted.
3. Both young children and the unborn have very little value in the Bible, and infanticide is frequent and wanton.
Reading through the Old Testament in particular, it becomes increasing difficult to credibly argue that children are a subject of real reverence there. Leviticus, after all, assigns a value of only three to five shekels for children under the age of five, and children under one month are not worth anything. That's the economics, but value before the eyes of God is even more questionable. Children, both born and unborn, are so often the collateral damage of divine rage and retribution, it's virtually impossible to argue for a "culture of life" with the child at its center.
Even those with casual knowledge of the Biblical plagues of Egypt knows this to be so. Exodus is a terrifying chapter to bookmark God's rage against children, but Numbers and Samuel are not much better. In fact there are many, many verses where youth are the targets of a vengeful deity. (Trigger warning: do not click above if you do not want to read lots and lots of God-ordered bloodshed.)
One actual example should suffice. In Samuel 15, God orders Saul to slaughter all children and infants of the Amalekites (and Saul is even taken to task later in the chapter for failing to kill enough):
Samuel 15:2-3
2 This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.'
This is representative – throughout the Old Testament and in some of the New, women are made barren, infants "dashed to pieces", male children exterminated at time of birth, thousands of progeny destroyed. All at the Lord's behest. If the Bible is the revealed Word of God, and infanticide is so common throughout the text, and meanwhile abortion hardly discussed at all, how can religious extremists make the case that God is punishing humans for an excess of abortion (
a practice which has in fact always been relatively common) in our present times?
4. Life in the Bible begins not at conception, but with the first breath.
Given that the Bible's own treatment of infants and children provides poor example for "pro-life" advocacy, and setting aside the brief poetic imaginings of Jeremiah and David, what's left? Does it all hinge on some subjective, extra-Biblical interpretation of the sixth commandment "Thou shalt not murder"? Even in the context of one of the books of the Bible most full of slaughter and human destruction, murder remains essentially a legal category, as it does now.
We know that according to Jewish law of the time, a baby was not considered to be a human person until it had exited the birth canal. Before then, it is considered pre-human. The very vocabulary used to describe spirit, the living soul and human life in the Hebrew and the Greek (nephesh and ruach in Hebrew, and pneuma in Greek) also carries the senses of moving air and breath. These definitions are further reinforced in the primary Biblical passages related to birth and creation.
Here's a good primer on this. The passages to support this are many, but suffice to begin with the beginning:
Genesis 2:7 God made Adam's body out of the dust of the earth. Later, the "man became a living soul" only after God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life."
Life throughout the Bible is associated with motile breath. If you can find definitive passages that define life or personhood as the moment an egg is fertilized, I'd love to see it. It would have to be the work of a very creative translator to produce them.
5. The Bible says taxation and government authority have their places, and you should respect both.
So, with all the primary arguments for abortion restriction and forced birth brought under severe duress, is there at last an argument that government should simply never have any authority to prescribe reproductive freedoms, or intervene in our personal lives? Should no person be taxed to provide women's healthcare, or should no government authority ever intervene in nature or God's divine plan?
Well, frankly, the Bible really doesn't have a problem with it.
Romans 13:1-7
1 Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. 4 For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. 6 This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. 7 Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.
Doesn't get much clearer than that, does it?
Now It's Your Turn
Naturally, this is just a beginning. Your reading and research is important too. If you want to argue for the preservation of female agency and women's healthcare services, it's your word too that matters in this fight.
So please go forth and multiply your dissent. Amplify your corrections. When anti-choicers cherrypick and attempt to twist these verses beyond their obvious senses, remind them that they are placing the vanity of their interpretations above God's word. Whether it be your guiding text or not, those that claim it as the revealed Word of God can't ignore the uncomfortable passages or simply have it this way and that. If they want to pursue a relative, subjective and personal interpretation of their Bibles, then they must allow the same for the rest of us.
Remind them that the Bible virtually guarantees that many of those they count as teachers are in fact deceivers:
2 Timothy 4:2-4
2 Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage--with great patience and careful instruction. 3 For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
I'd say that shifty folks who are quoting the Bible in an attempt to secure political office need their ears scratched, don't you agree?
Trusting a politician with a Bible is like trusting your dog with the Christmas roast. In either case, you'll be going hungry in the end. Be wary, be watchful, and do your best to feed the many with your own wisdom, friends.