How The Anti-abortionists Will Be Defeated
by Steven Morris, PhD.
The anti-abortionists will fail. Unless they can destroy civilization and return us to the Dark Ages, women will never abandon their right to choose whether they or some collar-backward cheerleaders will determine if women can have abortions. The Federal government has not prevented cocaine and marijuana from flooding into this country; there are millions of Americans who will be willing, and proud, to smuggle RU486.

To speed the inevitable defeat of the anti-abortionists, we must expose the unreality of their claims, and the hypocrisy of their beliefs. If we cannot convince those who prefer faith to knowledge, we may shame them into silence.

Christian Unreality
"Life begins at the moment of conception!" anti-abortionists insist. "Science has proved it!" But science cannot provide an exact definition for a broad philosophical concept such as 'life', and the "moment of conception" is a fantasy of Christian thinking. Biological science has revealed only a continuum of development, from separate egg and sperm cells to a newborn baby. What "moment" are the anti-abortionists talking about? When the sperm cell reaches the corona radiata? When it reaches the Zona pellucida? When egg activation occurs? When syngamy begins? When syngamy ends? When cell division starts? When implantation occurs? (1) Anti-abortionists fall silent.

If the fetus is life because it has been given a "soul", what evidence can they present that the soul exists, to show when it arrived? And where did it come from? 40% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage. (2) Their Jehovah is the biggest abortionist of all! Many fertilized egg cells are discharged unnoticed through menstruation, but anti-abortionists don't demand that these 'humans' be located and properly buried with Christian rites, as such a proposal would expose their underlying assumptions to well-deserved ridicule.

If the fetuses have souls, it ravages reason to suggest that any of them are sent to the flames of Hell. But if they all go to Heaven, then shouldn't the Christians be bombing the hospitals instead of the clinics, for endangering these fetal souls by exposing them to the mortal sins found in life among the unborn?

Perhaps the most unsettling for the anti-abortionist must be in the history of Levi; "For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Malchisedic met him" (Heb. 7: 10). The notion that Levi was alive as a sperm cell in his father's testicles leads to the horrifying thought that the average man, who produces more than 100 million sperm cells every day, (2) commits genocide on a scale that makes Hitler's efforts look trivial. This mass slaughter can only be prevented by immediate castration, but Pat Robertson and all his followers seem curiously indifferent to the logic of their own theology.

Until the anti-abortionists have provable knowledge, and not theological guesswork, it is immoral of them to tyrannize others, who merely wish to be left alone. You don't approve of abortion? Don't have one! The pro-choice position is as tolerant and humane as it can possibly be.

And what if the anti-abortionists succeed in criminalizing and prosecuting everyone involved in abortion?: A survey performed by the Kinsey Institute in 1958 (when abortion was still a crime) found that more than 200% of married white women were willing to admit to having an abortion during their reproductive years. (3) If the Christian Right is willing to send millions of women to jail for conspiracy to murder, they should first explain how they will prevent the financial crisis and social chaos that their actions will inflict upon society. The war on drugs has filled our jails; the war on women will overwhelm them.

Christian Hypocrisy
The Christian Right has been able to keep the abortion debate going long after it should have been abandoned, because the debate has been a win-win situation for them, so far. By portraying abortion as a second Holocaust, they have won the loyalty and drained the pocketbooks of believers who might otherwise have found better things to do. They have also won against their opponents, who have too often conceded the moral high ground of the pro-choice position, and have been deflected from criticizing the theocratic agenda the Right continues to pursue.

The anti-abortionists will abandon their position only when it becomes unprofitable to hold it. To find out how we can make that happen, it is worthwhile examining a previous position that the Christians have abandoned: pro-slavery.

Slavery is regulated and tolerated throughout the Bible. In the decades before the Civil War, 45% of pro-slavery pamphlets were authored by clergymen, who could quote chapter and verse of the Bible to support their position. (4) Jefferson Davis the president of the Confederacy, was well-aware that the Bible ordained slavery; "It is enough for me that it was established by decree of Almighty God, that it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations." "We recognize the negro as God and God's Book... tell us to recognize him--our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude." (5)

The Southern Baptist Convention, which now claims a membership of over 16 million, was founded in 1845 in Augusta, Georgia because of the slavery issue. (1) The Southern Baptists do not like to be reminded of their heritage, and few of them (it is to be hoped) desire slavery's return. What changed? The Bible? God? No, the only thing that changed was the prospect of losing money and membership, over an issue that had finally become an embarrassment.

The anti-abortionists will fade away only when constantly confronted with the hypocrisy and absurdity of their religious claims, which pro-choice advocates have so far failed to expose. "Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor" (Luke 18:22) should confront the anti-abortionist at every rally, and be visible at every meeting that the very-rich leaders of the Religious Right attend. "If any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children... he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26) should shame every 'pro-family' hypocrite, and "when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret" (Matt. 6:6) should embarrass even the dullest in the midst of their public and oh-so-righteous prayers.

The United States will destroy itself if it abandons the wall of separation between church and state that the First Amendment has erected. Pat Robertson and his ilk dream of running a theocracy, and despise the wall. But do they also despise the man who first asked for it, stating, "Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" (Matt. 22:21)? Perhaps not, but they are mad for power and money, and won't let mere Jesus stand in the way.


REFERENCES:
1) Encyclopedia Americana International Edition, vol. 3, pg. 212 &vol. 10, pg. 281 (1996, Grolier Inc., Danbury CN)
2) William s Obstetrics, 18th edition by G. Cunningham, P. MacDonald & N. Grant, pg. 489, 895 (1989, Appleton & Lange, San Mateo, CA)
3) Sex Research edited by M. Weinberg, pg. 192 (1976, Oxford U. Press, New York, NY)
4) Proslavery by L. Tise, pg. 371 (1987, U. of Georgia Press, Athens GA)
5) Jefferson Davis by W. Davis, pg. 195, 319 (1991, HarperCollins, New York, NY)