Alabama: A Sham Of Religion And Law

Before, during, and in the wake of the Alabama (and now Missouri) abortion ban legislation—as in the run-ups and final votes in similar state houses and governors' mansions—I, a male, viewed, and continue to view, such medieval, muddle-headed, misbegotten actions levied on women by (mostly) men as sexually hypocritical, socially harmful, and sacredly heretical. To me, any legislation directed at a woman’s right to choose whether to have a child runs counter to three principles: 

• the right of any person to reflect, without external pressure, on her (or his) internal moral and ethical compasses;
• the right of any person to decide on a path of intimate action that is not harmful to society;
• and the right of any person, unimpeded by secular or church-based organizations, to come to terms with her or his religious, agnostic, or atheistic precepts and the outcomes of actions based on those precepts.

The last point, relative to the heavy-handed teachings of religious orders which have little or no tolerance for abortion, has bothered me for much of my life—certainly since, as a protestant attending a Catholic boys' prep school, I observed the hypocrisy of the pulpit: On the one hand, priests, ministers, rabbis, and imams are bold to say, “Act righteously (according to our religious myth), and God will welcome you into (his) loving arms; act defiantly, and God will punish you for your apostasy.” 

On the other hand, these same intolerant religious leaders, and their intolerant congregations, are unwilling to let their gods be the final arbiters absent a prejudiced public thrashing and shaming from an outraged human assembly. Such religious orders lack the confidence in their god-belief and myth story to leave the judgement of a person’s actions to the ultimate judge of their deeds. If a congregation and its leader believe in their god as the apex justice, then why do they find it necessary to act as prosecutor, jury, and earthly judge in lieu of their final judge’s decision? If you are worried “He” won’t get it right, why bother with “Him” anyway? (Of course this intolerance applies to more than abortion-seeking women, but that is for a different column)

Then there is the civil law side in which mostly male legislators in state and national forums, have taken upon themselves the mantle of all-knowing, all-seeing, all powerful decision-makers over what women should do with their bodies. Unlike intolerant religious societies, which embrace ancient myths, lore, and highly-interpreted and oft-poorly-translated writings defining their anti-abortion (principally, “thou shalt not kill”) strictures, democratically-elected male legislators and presidents care little for well-documented founding principles when it comes to usurping a woman’s right to choose. That some women legislators and female governors fall into this category says more about religious intolerance and ignorance than it does about women in general. 

I have combed the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution (and all its Amendments) to find the key words that encourage or permit elected officials or judicial panels authority over a woman’s body and to thus violate her private decision-making by legislative or judicial fiat. Those words aren’t there. Rather, Roe v. Wade made it abundantly clear: The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides a fundamental "right to privacy" that protects a pregnant woman's liberty to choose whether to have an abortion. Legislators in Alabama, Missouri, and all the other states where a woman’s right to her own privacy—her liberty to choose—is in jeopardy, are overstepping their roles as lawmakers for society writ large. They are attempting to legislate the private path of a person’s conscience—a goal more metaphysical than legal.

To be sure, there are civil penalties for murder, manslaughter, the unintentional, accidental taking of a life, etc. Such laws are in place to protect society from its darker elements, and to compensate society for its losses. It is here that the argument founded on “Thou shalt not kill,” gets very murky when it comes to abortion, and the definition of life is as clear or as vague as suits special interests. In the chaotic world outside a woman’s body—a world fraught with myriad life-and-death decisions, from willful homicide to tragic accidental deaths—a catalog of specific laws exist to apply justice, mete out penalties, and determine compensation as necessary to promote a sense of social and personal well being and safety.

In order to function freely as a vibrant society, we need to perceive and believe in a safe world in which to thrive as persons. The world of a mother and her unborn child is not a world in which male-dominated legislation or religious stricture should have any bearing, in my humanist opinion. As frustratingly dogmatic and pragmatic as I can often be, I am mostly a rational and empirical thinker. I admit I cannot see into the workings of a mother’s mind, nor can I see into her womb. I can never know her absolute circumstances of conscience and emotion; I cannot presume to judge what her decision-making factors are. What I do know is that her decision, either way, will not hurt secular society, nor will any tut-tutting, shaming, or overreach of law on society’s part affect any final judgment alleged by any religion.

If Roe v. Wade is a religious matter (which, if one believes in the separation of church and state as I do), then it has no standing in secular society and should not have been a social-civil case to begin with. If Roe v. Wade is a matter of settled civil legislation based on Constitutional precedent (which it is, see the Fourteenth Amendment), it has no standing in the religious community, and, therefore, it should not be an issue for debate within that community, nor should that community have any standing in court arguments. You cannot have it both ways. And yet, both sides—secular and religious—embrace the issue as falling within the four corners of their contracts with their constituents and congregants respectively.

In the end, it is the woman stripped of her freedom to choose who is harmed by society and religion. Alabama’s law, a clearly-stated test of Roe v. Wade and not a true law for public protection or advancement, is a sham and a shame. With no exceptions for rape and incest added to the overall insult of the legislation, and the Draconian penalty of life in prison for any doctor performing an abortion, Alabama has sunk further into the acidic depths of social ignorance, public shaming, and religious fear-mongering that characterize too many states—and too many political operations—today.

Trump's Fourth of July Desecrates The Spirit Of The National Mall

Fireworks, National Park Service photo

“President Trump has effectively taken charge of the nation’s premier Fourth of July celebration in Washington, moving the gargantuan fireworks display from its usual spot on the Mall to be closer to the Potomac River and making tentative plans to address the nation from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, according to top administration officials. The president’s starring role has the potential to turn what has long been a nonpartisan celebration of the nation’s founding into another version of a Trump campaign rally. Officials said it is unclear how much the changes may cost, but the plans have already raised alarms among city officials and some lawmakers about the potential impact of such major alterations to a time-honored and well-organized summer tradition.”

This lede to a May 11 Washington Post story written by Josh Dawsey, Juliet Eilperin, and Peter Jamison, depicts, once again, the (so far) relentless rising red tide filled with the stinking detritus of blatant executive overreach, proud ignorance, and willful arrogance by a sociopathic president who has no business being in the White House, much less in the business of orchestrating his selfish version of our national celebration.

When I was a boy growing up here in Washington seven decades ago, the Mall was a place of peace, tranquility, beauty, and reflection. I’ve lost count of the evenings my father drove my mother, sister, and me down to the Lincoln Memorial and parked right in front of the steps so we could walk right up to Mr. Lincoln. I was so small…he was so impressive, 175 tons of Georgia white marble bathed in soft light, sitting tall, his steady gaze taking in the Reflecting Pool, the Washington Monument, and the Capitol. As I got older, my father would read aloud the words of the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address—both of which I would quote regularly, as a speechwriter for Members of Congress and Cabinet secretaries. 

For me, those words, along with the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution, define the full span of America’s greatness, humility, and noble purpose—qualities sadly lacking not only in our president, but in all those secular politicians, media fawners, and religious leaders who continue to enable his insanity.

The Mall has been the preferred site of massive marches, concerts, and tent cities that filled the greenswards paralleling the Reflecting Pool. Those events were demonstrations of the most fundamental of all American rights—the First Amendment’s Right of Free Speech. I’ve attended many of those events—anti-war demonstrations, Earth Day celebrations, civil rights speeches, and open-air concerts filled with protest songs sung in the full voice of free expression. Such is the glory of our democracy that a place as apolitical as the National Mall--neutral ground for any national conversation--can become the crowd-swarming nexus for myriad points of view, untrammeled, unfettered, and unbreached by self-serving political pontification. Until now.

Instead of exulting in our hard-won independence, and exhorting all Americans to redouble our efforts to eradicate the troublesome vestiges of xenophobia and all the dark and hateful -isms that divide us, the president preaches a poorly-written sermon filled with lies and scorn and shaming. Instead of encouraging us to stand on the shoulders of our Founders (whose faults we acknowledge) and look with clear vision beyond our horizons, this administration holds us down, pits us against each other, gaslights the poorest and most vulnerable of our fellow citizens, and, when called out by the news media for his baseless claims, the president bangs the drum for his own sick Twitter version of violence against journalists and justice.

If this president could, he would dissolve the First Amendment overnight. And his most recent assault on the separation of powers, his desire to roll over Article I of the Constitution, his nose-thumbing at our system of laws and our judiciary, his affection for foreign powers aligned against us, do not portend a madman in power…they are the “real-and-now” exemplars of a man whose unhinged and unrestrained grabs for dictatorship tear away at the blood-won parchment contract between the People and their government.

Now, he wants to turn our national celebration of Independence from Red-Coat tyranny into a red-capped rally designed to stick his own tyrannical fingers in the eyes of the rest of us who just want to enjoy a fireworks-filled evening of fun and music on our beloved Mall. 

He can never just let us be us. It has to be about him 24/7/365, and if we all want to spend some quality time with our families, friends, fellow citizens, and visitors from afar, he will find some way to subvert our best plans and traditions into ugliness. That’s exactly what he wants to do by moving the Fourth of July celebration from the Mall to a corner of the Potomac that will allow him to direct his own sad production of Trumpian back-patting, aided and abetted by his even sadder collection of administration appointees, up-sucking media acolytes, and MAGA followers who will, no doubt, draw themselves around their sick leader.

If, in fact, the president prevails and the Fourth of July celebration becomes just one more political miasma through which we can see but darkly the once-bright flares and bouquets of Independence bursting over the Mall in unalloyed joy, I will encourage my fellow Americans to turn away. The stink from Trump’s Stygian stalls would be too much to bear.