Saturday, October 2, 2021

Why don't pro-lifers insist on proper funerals for miscarried fetuses? And why did the Montgomery Adviser delete my comments under its excellent op-ed about that and pro-life anti-vaxxers??

A childhood Alabama friend, who says he is a political moderate and pro-lifer, tipped me off to this Alabama man's excellent op-ed in The Montgomery Advertiser:


A new take on pro-life: Anti-vaxxers need more protection than a 'fertilized speck'

Jim Vickrey
Special to the Advertiser

Once upon a time, religion held sway in American life.

From 1619 to the 1950s, it was used to deny African Americans, Native Americans, homosexuals, women, and others equal protection of the law. Today, only women are still being burdened by positive laws denying them control of their reproductive health as a result of spurious argumentation about the nature of potential new life they may be carrying.

No Bible verses support such positioning.

In legislatures in male-majority Red States like Alabama, women are subjected to draconian restrictions never visited upon men, without whom women would be unaffected by such laws. Why are the men who impregnate women against their wills, including abusive spouses and boyfriends, not subject to appropriate penalties?  In some states, even rapists have asserted more reproductive rights than their women victims.

And why are women alone being subjected to legal penalties for ending their pregnancies before viability, that is, before the entity she's carrying can exist apart from her body?  After all, that's been the rule for most of the past 2,000 years in Western civilization, during which the standard for "life" was "quickening."  There is no child before then.  Neither God nor Scriptures nor common sense requires a different result.

Abortion before viability is not "murder," for no human being is affected by the procedure, other than the woman undergoing it.

If you, Dear Reader, are really "pro-life," as I am, then you favor the life of human beings, which is what the "right to life" in the Declaration of Independence arguably refers to.  A fertilized speck in a woman's fallopian tubes or womb is not a human being.  A mass of cells before viability, no matter what it looks like and no matter what some people call it and whether or not its "heart" is "beating," is not a human being.  That's why we don't have funerals for miscarriages, which are more common than abortions, and that's why most people do not name miscarried fetuses.

If you are "pro-life," as I am, and want to deny women the right to make their own reproductive decisions before viability, then why are you seemingly so enthusiastic about not restricting the right of Alabamians to refuse COVID-19 shots to protect the health and life of the rest of us? How can you see the speck in your "pro-choice" neighbor's eye and not see the log in your own regarding saving the life of viable, fully formed, and born human beings trying to survive  Pandemic 2.0?

If you want to deny women the right to abortions, why do you not support denying anti-vaxxers the right to endanger themselves, their families, including children, and the rest of us?  That would save more living persons from hospitalizations and death then stopping pre-viability abortions.  Abortions were weaponized by the Moral Majority during the '70s and '80s in order to give Republicans an electoral advantage.  It was cynically chosen over other issues considered. It was pure politics from the beginning and still is, for Roe v. Wade was originally supported by a number of main-steam religions organizations.

Inquiring minds want to know. After all, young men still have to register with Selective Service, all children are required to be multi-vaccinated to attend in public schools (absent in most states a few narrowly defined exceptions), and, I suspect, most private schools, including the religious ones. 

In a civilized society, we all submit to a variety of "mandates" which viable civilizations require — from the payment of taxes and the use of safety equipment in automobiles to submission to health- and life-saving vaccinations.  The only thing that has changed is the weaponizing of the latter in a misguided effort by supporters of the last president to be purist partisans, but who himself was vaccinated (albeit in private) and who himself advocates getting the shot. 

There's no explaining such inconsistent behavior, but we don't have to be persuaded by it. Sigh.

Jim Vickrey, a native Montgomerian, is a retired lawyer, university president and professor emeritus of Troy University, who spent most of his career in higher education.

I made two comments, which I copied and pasted into a draft email. It was then I noticed several glitches in form, such as a word omitted here, a double word there. And, I used the word soul once, instead of the word life. I was mortified. The childhood friend told me that when he later went to the article online, there were no comments under it. I went to the article this morning, and my comments were gone. While I was spared public embarrassment for my poor editing, I was astonished to be reminded of free speech under Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Trump. Not to mention, Facebook.

Here are the two comments with the glitches repaired.

Sloan B.
This former Birmingham practicing attorney would love to put a string of pro-lifers on the witness stand, under oath, and ask them, one at a time, if they ever once adopted or paid to raise an unwanted child to prevent a pregnant mother from having an abortion?
Hearing, No, I hand them a King James Bible and ask them, one at a time, if that book is the literal inerrant word of God?
If I hear, NO, I say, have you told your family, friends and pastor that? I then dismiss that witness.
If the witness says, Yes, I ask the witness to open the Bible to Genesis 2-7, and read it out loud to the Court:
"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."
I ask the witness if that is the inerrant literal word of God as to when Adam became a living soul?
If the witness says, No, I ask the witness if he/she has told his family, friends and pastor that? 
If the witness says Yes, I ask the witness if there is anything in the Bible that says a person becomes a living soul before the first breath of life is taken? When witness fails to provide such a place in the Bible, I ask the witness if he/she knows of any scientific test or experiment that proved a soul attaches before the first breath of life?
When the witness says, No, I call the next witness.
I keep calling witnesses until the judge stops me.
I ask the judge to rule life begins at the first breath of life.

SloanB.
This Independent has had three Pfizer jabs, and while I know that doesn't guarantee I won't catch Covid-19, it does seem to mean I very probably won't star in M*A*S*H sequels if I do catch it.
As for the anti-vaxxers who tempt fate and even God by not getting vaccinated, if they catch Covid-19 and start gasping for breath, will they head straight to an ER and demand everything medicine can throw at the result of their having tempted fate and God? Should they be permitted to enter an ER or hospital? Should they be viewed as Christian Scientists and be told to rely on God alone to save them?

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

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