I hope that this doesn’t fall under the category of too good to be true (hat tip to Feministing):

Operation Rescue, one of the nation’s highest-profile groups in the anti-abortion movement, has told its supporters it is facing a “major financial crisis” and is very close to shutting down unless emergency help arrives soon.

The group’s president, Troy Newman, blamed the economic downturn for its money woes in a desperate plea e-mailed Monday night to donors. But the Wichita-based organization has also been under attack from both fringe anti-abortion militants and abortion rights supporters since the May 31 shooting death of Dr. George Tiller.

The Associated Press goes on to report that, according to Troy Newman, donations to the organization are down 30 to 40 percent this year.

Why could that be? Could it be that people have had enough of the violent anti-abortion rhetoric that may have emboldened Tiller’s assassin, Scott Roeder? Could it be that more people have come to realize that Operation Rescue represents the most extreme elements of the anti-choice movement? Or perhaps people were put off by idiotic stunts like this?

The Associated Press makes a note of how Operation Rescue was linked in the media to the assassination of Dr. Tiller:

Tiller’s killing has also been a public relations nightmare for the group — despite its public condemnation of the slaying — since the name and phone number of the group’s senior policy adviser was found in Roeder’s car when he was arrested. A television crew zoomed in on the scrawled note inside the car in images that made their way to the Internet.

Furthermore, the president of the National Abortion Federation, Vicki Saporta, noted in the article that there is no way that Operation Rescue can be separated from Tiller’s murder, especially since the organization moved itself to Wichita, Kansas, in order to maintain a constant level of harassment at Tiller’s clinic, and because Roeder obviously had dealings with Operation Rescue’s staff.

Time will tell what this will spell for the anti-choice movement in the United States. But I welcome the possibility that Operation Rescue will fade from the scene. While I doubt that all of us will ever reach consensus on reproductive rights, I do hope that this is a sign that Americans are becoming less tolerant of open harassment and violent rhetoric on the part of the anti-choice movement.

I’m sure you’ve heard of Randall Terry, who for years was the face of the anti-choice movement in the United States. Even though he hasn’t been the head of Operation Rescue, an organization that he founded, since 1989, he has managed to keep his name out there as a prominent anti-abortion and anti-reproductive choice activist. Although his star has faded in recent years, he is trying harder than ever to make a comeback to national prominence.

The Washington Post has an article today about some of Terry’s recent efforts to stay relevant and keep his face on the national anti-abortion brand. It begins with the startlingly creepy image of Terry and his acolytes smearing fake blood all over their hands and copies of the Roe v. Wade ruling while standing outside the confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor. And it’s all downhill from there, as Terry tells the journalist that using fake blood for his protests came to him in a “vision” (is that what he vaingloriously calls having a thought?) while he was planning ways to disrupt the hearings.

It turns out, though, that this was not his first vision; as the Washington Post article states, in reference to the founding of Operation Rescue:

Terry, 50, was in his 20s when he founded Operation Rescue — the result, he said, of a vision from God that appeared before his eyes at a prayer meeting. The vision was, he said, a scroll with instructions to stop abortion. Along with the scroll, he saw thousands of people gathered in front of abortion clinics to save babies, and he saw himself being interviewed on “Donahue,” the popular TV talk show hosted by Phil Donahue.

After serving as a primary spokesperson in favor of federal interference in the Terri Schiavo case in 2005, the Post states that Terry had more or less faded from view for several years. But he is on the upswing once more, getting his name back in the press for the demonstrations against President Obama’s speech at Notre Dame University and his unbelievably hateful comments after the assassination of Dr. George Tiller. (Amongst other things, he said, “George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God…Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God.)

And now he is attempting to lead the charge against President Obama’s middle-of-the-road Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor. Adele M. Stan of AlterNet attended Terry’s demonstration this past Sunday on the steps of the US Supreme Court, and reported on Terry’s demand that the anti-abortion senators filibuster Sotomayor’s nomination:

Terry made the camera operators move forward and adjust their mikes. “Pro-life senators have a moral obligation to filibuster Sotomayor,” he began. “Pro-life Republicans, pro-life Democrats seduce us with their words. They use our money, they take our man-hours, they take our votes, and then throw us away like a used-up mistress after an election. It’s disgusting! If Sen. [Sam] Brownback and Sen. [John] McCain and Sen. [Knute] Nelson and Sen. [Bob] Casey believe that Roe v. Wade must be overturned, then they must filibuster Sotomayor. You can’t say you want to overturn Roe on the one hand, and then vote for somebody who will uphold Roe on the other. It is treachery, hypocrisy, laziness and betrayal.”

He certainly sounds frustrated! Perhaps this ties into Amanda Marcotte’s assertion in the Guardian that Republicans overall have not made abortion front and center in Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings, opting to focus on race and gender-based attacks against her instead. Says Marcotte:

Anti-choice activists used to own the issue of Supreme Court nominations so thoroughly, they were able to bully George Bush out of nominating Harriet Miers, despite her anti-choice views, in no small part because they simply don’t trust women not to stick by their own. Obviously, with Republicans out of power, anti-choice activists can’t block the nomination, but now they can’t even get Republicans to consider their demands a top priority.

The most obvious reason is that gender has been demoted to a second-tier issue so that Republicans can work more efficiently with arguments over race against Sotomayor, playing off anti-Hispanic sentiment and rightwing folk beliefs about a Latino “takeover” to inculcate resentment in their base. Anti-choicers are feeling the sting of falling out of fashion in the circles of rightwing nastiness and resentment.

Marcotte goes on to say that she also believes Republicans may be a little more toned down on anti-choice rhetoric this time around because of the recent murder of Dr. George Tiller. Perhaps they don’t want to be associated with a movement that is so violent in the eyes of many Americans. She’s not optimistic, though, that this distance will last.

I would be shocked if the Republicans filibuster Sotomayor, and I’m sure she’ll sail through confirmation. So the real question here is, what does the future hold for Randall Terry after his stunts at the Capitol are over? The Post notes that some anti-choice activists are less than enthusiastic about his desire to be a more public figure once again:

Leaders of the antiabortion movement are cringing at Terry’s sudden return. They say his incendiary rhetoric and showy tactics turn off ordinary Americans and reflect Terry’s struggle to regain his glory years.

“It’s sad in a way,” said Fredericksburg antiabortion activist Patrick Mahoney, who was close to Terry at one time but, like others in the movement, is now estranged from him. “It’s almost like a heavyweight boxer who’s past his prime. The movement has gone by him.”

While I fear the harmful consequences of his horrific rhetoric and stunts, particularly because they could inspire further violent acts, nevertheless I do feel that Randall Terry serves a useful function for those of us that favor reproductive rights. With his stunts, his jugs of fake blood, his followers disrupting Senate Judiciary Committee meetings, and his references to having “visions” that guide how he organizes his protests, he does represent one idea very well: that his anti-choice position is on the outer fringe. He makes it clear that his strong belief that women should not have control over their own bodies is in fact an extremist position to be defended by fringe and even dangerous characters such as him, operating on the margins of society. His extremist tactics lay bare the extremist nature of the entire anti-choice stance. Even so, we cannot discount the constant threat that Terry’s ugly and explosive language poses. He represents the worst of the intertwining of religion and social activism, when a fanatic believes that he speaks on behalf of his god and that his actions bear a holy endorsement. And we certainly know what kind of trouble that can lead to.

(Crossposted at Friendly Atheist)

Is religion the primary source of people’s moral judgments?

It looks like a nation’s culture plays a larger role than religion itself. David Hume had an interesting post on SecularRight.org last week examining data from the World Values Survey on abortion opinions between religions and between religions within a country:

All things equal there was an international tendency for Catholics to be somewhat more anti-abortion than non-Catholics, but a far better predictor of attitudes was not religion but nationality. In other words Catholic Germans resembled Protestant Germans while Catholic Chileans resembled Protestant Chileans.

But what about religion and irreligion more generally on the international level? That is, do religious and irreligious people within a nation tend to correlate in their attitudes toward abortion? Do atheists in Germany resemble religious people in Germany more than they do atheists in Nigeria?

Lo and behond, atheists in Germany DO resemble religious people in Germany more than they do atheists in Nigeria.

It turns out that there’s huge variability between nations’ views on abortion, and it’s a better predictor than religion. To put it another way: If religion were the primary source of moral judgments, the best way to guess an individual’s views on abortion would be to know that person’s religion. But country is more closely tied – it’s more helpful to know what country the person is from than his religion.

Hume doesn’t include the trendline’s equation in his blog post, but he was helpful enough to include the raw data, which I used to create my own scatterplot:

Here’s an explanation of what you’re looking at:

Each data point is one country. Its horizontal position is what percent of the religious population in that country said abortion is never justified. The country’s vertical position is what percent of the NON-religious population said abortion is never justified. The red line is what we would expect if religion had no effect on people’s opinion. If a country is below the red line (as almost all are), then its religious population is more opposed to abortion than the non-religious population.

On average, those who identify as religious in a country are 13.2% more likely than the non-religious to say that abortion is never acceptable.

What should we take away from this? Well, as always, correlation is not the same as causation. Religious individuals are more likely to interact with their community, which could shape their opinions. People opposed to abortion could be more likely to seek out religious groups.

I suspect that these are true, but it also seems likely that religion does influence opinion. If you believe that a god spoke out against homosexuality, you’ll be more likely to oppose gay relationships.

… It’s just not the biggest influence. Secular society has a culture of its own, one with a huge impact on views. I’d bet it even influences how people interpret their scripture. People might claim to derive moral values from a holy book, but it looks much more as if they get their views largely from society and then skew them a bit based on their book.

What do you get from the data?

In the aftermath of the tragic assassination of Dr. George Tiller, we need to remember what is at stake in the debate over abortion. Indeed, we don’t need to use our imaginations to envision what our nation would be like without legalized abortion; we only need to look at countries like Tanzania, where women suffer and die from policies that religious fanatics are trying to impose in our own country right now. The New York Times reports (h/t to Hullabaloo):

Abortion is illegal in Tanzania (except to save the mother’s life or health), so women and girls turn to amateurs, who may dose them with herbs or other concoctions, pummel their bellies or insert objects vaginally. Infections, bleeding and punctures of the uterus or bowel can result, and can be fatal. Doctors treating women after these bungled attempts sometimes have no choice but to remove the uterus.

Pregnancy and childbirth are among the greatest dangers that women face in Africa, which has the world’s highest rates of maternal mortality — at least 100 times those in developed countries. Abortion accounts for a significant part of the death toll.

Maternal mortality is high in Tanzania: for every 100,000 births, 950 women die. In the United States, the figure is 11, and it is even lower in other developed countries. But Tanzania’s record is neither the best nor the worst in Africa. Many other countries have similar statistics; quite a few do better and a handful do markedly worse.

Even more stunning is the effect that backroom abortions have on maternal mortality around the world:

Worldwide, there are 19 million unsafe abortions a year, and they kill 70,000 women (accounting for 13 percent of maternal deaths), mostly in poor countries like Tanzania where abortion is illegal, according to the World Health Organization. More than two million women a year suffer serious complications. According to Unicef, unsafe abortions cause 4 percent of deaths among pregnant women in Africa, 6 percent in Asia and 12 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Is it clear now what we’re talking about when we talk about choice? Is it clear now that when we talk about access to safe and legal abortion, we’re talking about saving tens of thousands of lives and preventing millions of hospitalizations and crippling aftereffects every year?

Keeping abortion outlawed does not actually reduce the number of abortions; rather, it reduces the safety of those performed. The Guttmacher Institute reports:

Legal restrictions on abortion do not affect its incidence. For example, the abortion rate is 29 [per 1,000 women aged 15–44] in Africa, where abortion is illegal in many circumstances in most countries, and it is 28 [per 1,000 women aged 15–44] in Europe, where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds. The lowest rates in the world are in Western and Northern Europe, where abortion is accessible with few restrictions.

Where abortion is legal and permitted on broad grounds, it is generally safe, and where it is illegal in many circumstances, it is often unsafe. For example, in South Africa, the incidence of infection resulting from abortion decreased by 52% after the abortion law was liberalized in 1996.

The anti-choice movement won’t paint this picture for you, but this is what they’re advocating: a world where women do not have legal rights over their own bodies and are injured or die due to lack of access to safe and legal abortion. It is a horrifying vision, but it’s one that some anti-choice people are willing to kill for. The best response to the terror waged by Dr. Tiller’s murderer and the hatred of the anti-choice movement is to rededicate ourselves to expanding access to safe and legal reproductive health services and ensure that clinics receive the support and security that they need to operate safely. And we need to ensure that freedom of choice in the United States rests on more than Supreme Court rulings by codifying a right to reproductive choice into law.

There are some things I don’t like about American culture, but stories like this one in the Times Online really make me glad to live here:

A group of Afghan women who braved an enraged mob yesterday to protest against an “abhorrent” new Afghan law had to be rescued by police from a hail of stones and abuse.

The protest by about 200 women, unprecedented in recent Afghanistan history, was directed at the Shia Family Law passed last month by the Afghan parliament which appears to legalise marital rape and child marriage.

The rally, staged by mostly young women with their faces exposed, was a highly inflammatory act of defiance in a country as conservative as Afghanistan. It provoked a furious reaction from local men and a rapidly expanding mob threatened to swamp the demonstrators as they tried to approach the Afghan parliament.

The Times Online article quotes supporters of the law:

Those in favour of the new law chanted “Down with the Christians. Down with the apostates.” At one stage both sides chanted “We want honour and dignity for women” — reflecting their starkly different interpretations of the new law.

“We think those who oppose this law in fact oppose the Koran,” said Nesa Naseri, a female student of Sharia Studies who took part in the women’s counter-demonstration.

“This law does not approve rape, it is rather about loyalty of wife to husband and husband to wife. Rape is what you can see in the West, where men don’t feel responsibility for their wives and leave them to go with several men.”

If “loyalty of the wife to husband” implies that she must have sex with him when he demands, I’m thinking the word ‘rape’ is appropriate. It might also have something to do with the statistic quoted in the Times Online article that 57% of all Afghan brides are under the age of 16. By the way, in the first line the word ‘abhorrent’ is in quotes because that was President Obama’s reaction to the bill. I’m with him.

New Development:

In an article today entitled “Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai vows to change Afghan marital rape law“:

KABUL, Afghanistan – President Hamid Karzai said Thursday that the controversial law permitting men to rape their wives will be changed.

…

The law has drawn international criticism, and Karzai’s comments came a day after several hundred protesters demonstrated against it. Critics say the law bars women from opting out of sex, effectively legalizing marital rape.

The measure applies to the 20% of Afghans who are Shiite Muslims. It was part of a massive piece of legislation aimed at bolstering the nation’s Shiite minority.

The Pope’s visit to Africa has already produced some interesting quotes for discussion, but in reading the Boston Globe today, I found other disturbing passages:

In his homily, Benedict expressed compassion for African children being kidnapped and forced to fight by rebel groups trying to carve up parts of Africa.

“God loves you, he has not forgotten you,” he said in a message to these children.

Child soldiers have been used by rebels in eastern Congo and by Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army. An estimated 3,500 children are still with armed groups in Congo alone.

Of course he hasn’t ‘forgotten’ them; the Catholic god isn’t anthropomorphized with human flaws like Zeus.  So what can we take away from the Pope’s message?  God is aware of the suffering children, loves them, and yet they are still suffering.  The more I think about it, the more I understand why the Problem of Suffering has caused theologians so much trouble over the years.

Many people act as if they believe that God intervenes in the natural world.  They credit God with countless wonderful occurrences like a medical recovery, an overwhelming emotional experience, or a hurricane sent to punish the sinful.  But anyone who believes God has ever taken action in the world must therefore believe that God chose to act in those situations.  He must choose not to act in the situations of suffering children.

The Pope seems to be telling the children: “You’re suffering intensely here in this world, but cheer up!  An entity in another world loves you!”  I suppose it’s better than when the Catholic Church did the reverse earlier this month.  A nine year-old girl was raped by her step-father and became pregnant with twins.  Carrying the pregnancy to term would have put her life in danger, so she had an abortion.  The church’s reaction to the whole thing?  Excommunicate the girl’s mother and the doctor.  It’s as if they were saying: “Your family is suffering intensely here in this world, but God is displeased with your decision.”

The church is ignoring suffering in this world – sometimes even exacerbating it, as with AIDS in Africa – because they have beliefs about another world.  I would love it if we all spent our energy focusing on this world, our opinions, and our suffering.  Thoughts about God’s opinion are distracting us.  He isn’t saving the poor and the hungry.  In his new book Losing my Religion, William Lobdell describes the reaction of a friend who came to the realization:

“It nearly drove him insane that no loving God was protecting his children.  I had the advantage of seeing too much on the religion beat.  I knew of many times when faithful Christian parents lost their children.  I hadn’t seen any evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, that children were safer with God watching over them.  It reminds me of a bumper sticker peddled by atheists that makes the point rather bluntly: ’20,000 children died of hunger today.  Why should God answer YOUR prayers?’”

He doesn’t.  If we stop holding mistaken beliefs about the supernatural, we can do a better job caring for this world.

Yesterday the Colorado state legislature voted on a bill that would require the health care providers of pregnant women to give them HIV tests (although the women may opt out). The reasons are pretty clear–if the mother is HIV-positive, it helps to know so that the baby can be protected and treated. The measure passed 32-1. The lone dissenter was Republican state Sen. Dave Schultheis. Why did he vote against the bill? According to the Colorado Independent, he claims that HIV “stems from sexual promiscuity” and didn’t want to “remove the negative consequences that take place from poor behavior and unacceptable behavior.”

My first reaction was that it’s not the mother being punished for promiscuity; it’s the child who doesn’t get treated for HIV. I was sure that Schultheis had just failed to think it through because he couldn’t really mean THAT, could he? Apparently he could:

“What I’m hoping is that, yes, that person may have AIDS, have it seriously as a baby and when they grow up, but the mother will begin to feel guilt as a result of that,” he said. “The family will see the negative consequences of that promiscuity and it may make a number of people over the coming years begin to realize that there are negative consequences and maybe they should adjust their behavior.”

I was horrified when I read that. There are many ways to contract HIV besides careless and promiscuous sex–blood transfusions come to mind. But even for someone who believes promiscuity is a sin, it is despicable to advocate that the child suffer for it. It is contrary to our conception of justice. Luckily the thirty-two other legislators agreed.

Crazy things keep coming out of Texas (where I once lived decades ago) – the Texas pledge of “one state under God,” public school Bible courses, Religious Viewpoints Anti-discrimination Act and now, defining a fetus (or unborn child to some) as a “person” for purposes of the capital murder statute.

My real concern is not with the bonus for prosecutors — two convictions for one murder. That’s right. Under TX Penal Code 1.07(a)(26), an “‘Individual’ means a human being who is alive, including an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth.”

No, my concern is that the Texas legislature routinely drinks Christian right Kool-Aid, which can be seen from above example of its definition of individual being religious-based, not science-based.

Two weeks ago on Nov. 20, a Texas Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction of Jacob Eguia for capital
murder for causing the death of Ruby Elaine Garcia and her fetus during the same criminal transaction. Eguia was sentenced to life in prison, which was the only possible sentence since the State did not seek the death penalty.

Among other defenses, Eguia filed a motion to quash the indictment against him for causing the death of Garcia’s fetus because the Texas statute that defines an “unborn child” as a “person” for purposes of the capital murder statute is unconstitutional. In particular, he alleged that the definition violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of U.S. Constitution because the definition “has the effect of endorsing religion as it is based solely upon a religious belief that life begins at conception.” (Eguia also complained of a violation of Texas’ constitution – “no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious society or mode of worship.” Tex. Const. Art I, § 6.)

In holding that the Texas law defining an “individual” did not violate either the U.S. or Texas Constitutions, the appeals court said: “A statute is not automatically rendered unconstitutional simply because it advances ideals that harmonize with religious ideals. Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. 297, 319-20 … (noting that Judeo-Christian religions’ forbiddance of stealing does not preclude state or federal legislatures from outlawing larceny).”

The appeals court also said that Eguia also “fail[ed] to demonstrate how the statute’s principal or primary effect advances religion, or how the statute fosters excessive government entanglement with religion.”

I believe that the appeals court analogy with stealing is misplaced because, unlike stealing, the notion that life begins at conception is uniquely a religious viewpoint.

However, because I am not familiar with the trial record, it would be inappropriate for me to comment on whether or not the defendant sufficiently proved of his Establishment Clause violation claim.

Instead, I’ll close by saying that in our judicial system the deck is stacked heavily against those who claim a violation of the principle of separation of church and state and that complainants probably need two, three or four times as much evidence as they think would be sufficient. What is needed is a smoking gun (so to speak) where there is a record of a religious purpose for enacting the challenged legislation.

Anti-choice groups in the United States have increasingly turned to the ballot initiative process to attempt to restrict reproductive freedom on a state-by-state basis. This year, however, they failed in three states.

The most extreme measure was in Colorado:

“Colorado voters on Tuesday rejected Amendment 48, which would have defined a ‘person’ from the point of egg fertilization. If the measure had passed, Colorado would have become the first state to grant full constitutional rights to a fertilized egg.”

The Colorado amendment ended up being rejected nearly three to one. It was so far-reaching that National Right to Life and several prominent Republican candidates in Colorado declined to support it. Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family did lend its support. But in the end Coloradans rejected the attempt to make their state one of the most extreme anti-choice states in the nation. Not only would the measure have made abortion illegal in all cases, even if the life of the mother was at risk, but it also could have led to some forms of birth control being banned. A strong No on 48 campaign, led by the medical community of Colorado and supported by leading civil liberties, reproductive rights, and legal groups, pushed back and successfully defended a woman’s right to choose in the state.

South Dakota wasn’t reaching quite that far, but Measure 11, which received a “no” vote of 56 percent, was still extreme. A revised version of the last attempt to ban abortion there, which was rejected by voters by a 10 percentage point margin in 2006, proponents hoped to pass Measure 11 by providing for exceptions in the case of rape or if the life of the mother was in danger. However, these provisions were still incredibly strict:

“Opponents argued the exceptions were still too narrow — abortions were only permissible if the woman identified her assailant and proved paternity through DNA testing, or if a doctor found the mother faced possible organ failure if the pregnancy came to term.”

In other words, a rape victim would have to endure the additional trauma of quickly proving a case against her assailant and receiving permission from the state to terminate the pregnancy. It is not at all clear that a state as anti-choice as South Dakota would let that happen anyway. And the health exception could only be applied in the most extreme cases and would effectively tie a doctor’s hands with a narrow legal definition of “health risk.” In the end, South Dakotans said no to the law that very well could have ended up in front of the US Supreme Court.

Finally, as part of the nation-wide effort of anti-choice groups to chip away, incrementally, at access to abortion, Proposition 4 in California proposed to require that doctors notify parents 48 hours in advance of performing an abortion on a minor. In the case that the minor did not want to inform her own parents of the abortion, she could have another adult family member informed, but a child abuse investigation would subsequently have to be opened against her parents. Or perhaps the minor could persuade a judge to grant her a non-notification abortion.

But what are all of those requirements, really? They are obstacles. The goal of Proposition 4 was to restrict reproductive choice as much as possible without stepping over the line and violating the constitutionally protected right to privacy, as defined in Roe v. Wade. Proponents were trying to dress the proposition in the idea of protecting minors from sexual abuse, but doctors are already mandated reporters of abuse and rape. So if a minor seeks an abortion in the state of California today, and the doctor suspects that the pregnancy was the result of sexual abuse or rape, the doctor is already required by law to report this to the police.

Thankfully, Californians saw through Proposition 4. It failed.

This isn’t the last time we’ll hear from the anti-choice forces in the United States. But by defeating these three measures, the voters are making their support for a woman’s right to reproductive choice increasingly clear. Combine that with the fact that we can expect better appointments to the US Supreme Court in the coming years, and we can see that reproductive freedom will overall be better protected in the years to come. But it will take years of hard work to undo the damage already done in so many states by similar measures. And I doubt that the anti-choice organizations are going to go quietly.

The latest drug store to stop selling contraceptives and filling birth control prescriptions–appropriately named Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy–has set up shop in Chantilly, Virginia, according to today’s Washington Post.

Apparently, this pharmacy is also not selling candy or soda. And don’t forget about the bishop who came in to sprinkle holy water on the store’s shelves. What is this, the 19th century?

Virginia already has the unfortunate law that allows pharmacists to refuse to fill a prescription without any justification whatsoever. It’s a classic case of an individual’s faith trumping safe, medical access for all, and a spokesperson from NARAL Pro-Choice America sums this up nicely:

“If this emboldens other pharmacies in other parts of the state, it could really affect low-income and rural women in terms of access,” said Tarina Keene, executive director of the Virginia chapter of the National Abortion Rights Action League.

If pharmacists are allowed to refuse service to “sinful” men or women having–God forbid–sex, what could stop other pharmacists from filling prescriptions for lung cancer patients because they object to the individual’s history of smoking? Or worse–pharmacists who will eventually be allowed to discriminate based on race?

One surprising statistic: a Gallop poll reveals that 75 percent of U.S. Catholics believe you can be a “good Catholic” even if you use birth control. The culture is already changing, and pharmacists need to be available to provide safe contraceptives for people who need it.

A Massachusetts federal district judge rejected last week a challenge to a state law requiring a 35-foot buffer zone around driveways and entrances of reproductive health care facilities.

In a Boston Globe article last February, Angus McQuilken, vice president of public affairs for the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts is quoted saying: “For too long, patients and staff had to endure in-your-face screaming and harassment just to get to doctor’s appointments. This 35-foot zone is more than reasonable.”

In a 75-page opinion by U.S. District Judge Joseph L. Tauro in McCullen v. Coakley (D MA, Aug. 22, 2008), the court rejected First Amendment, Equal Protection and Due Process challenges.

In denying the Free Speech claim, Judge Tauro wrote: “The Act does not regulate speech, expression, prayer, singing, worship or display of religious articles. It merely regulates where such expression may take place, i.e., outside of a clearly marked buffer zone during the normal business hours of an RHCF. The Act also applies to all non-exempt persons equally. As a result, this court is ‘bound to conclude that the regulation does not discriminate against a particular religion or religious practice.’ ”

In a different context, but same legal principle, the Supreme Court has said: “the right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a ‘valid and neutral law of general applicability.’ ” Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990).

Thus, not withstanding my strong support for free speech rights, I would expect that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit would uphold the District Court’s decision should the plaintiffs appeal.

The New York Times provides a disturbing look at the state of legalized abortion in Mexico City.

When Mexico City’s government made abortion legal last year, it also set out to make it available to any woman who asked for one. That includes the city’s poorest, who for years resorted to illegal clinics and midwives as wealthy women visited private doctors willing to quietly end unwanted pregnancies…

Since the city’s legislature voted for the law in April 2007, some 85 percent of the gynecologists in the city’s public hospitals have declared themselves conscientious objectors. And women complain that even at those hospitals that perform abortions, staff members are often hostile, demeaning them and throwing up bureaucratic hurdles.

In other words, abortion was made legal, but actually having access to abortion, especially for poor women, could not be guaranteed in the face of so many health providers refusing to perform the procedure or refusing to treat patients with respect and dignity.

Women in the United States struggle with lack of access to abortion as well, even though the legality of the procedure is protected by the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling. And new regulations (in PDF) released by the Department of Health and Human Services (and previously discussed on this blog here) may make the situation worse. While the exact implications (particularly whether or not they will apply to pharmacists) are not yet entirely clear, the broad language of the regulations could lead to some unfortunate results, especially in areas of the United States where access to abortion and other family planning services is already limited. The regulations state, in essence, that a medical institution could lose federal funding if it discriminates against medical personnel that refuse to perform certain procedures due to religious or moral objections. While it certainly is true, as HHS states, that medical providers do not have an obligation to leave their personal beliefs aside in their work, on the other hand, I can see some disturbing possibilities in these regulations, including but not limited to:

- Would a family planning clinic be forced to tolerate the presence of a doctor that refused to perform essential services of the clinic, including abortion? Would a family planning clinic be forced to reckon with lawsuits from anti-choice doctors who were not hired for open positions because refusing to hire an anti-choice doctor would constitute discrimination?

-Would a family planning clinic be forced to tolerate the presence of other staff that refused to perform essential tasks of their job? What if the appointment scheduler refused to serve patients that called to make appointments for abortions?

-Do these new regulations protect pharmacists that refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control or the morning after pill? Does it protect their ability to discriminate against some patients (for example, refusing to prescribe birth control to unmarried women) because of a supposed religious objection?

-Just how broad will the enshrined right to refuse to provide medical services be? While the California Supreme Court recently held that medical providers in California cannot discriminate against LGBT patients on religious grounds, it appears to me that these HHS regulations might open the door to discrimination of this nature. Does this mean that medical providers in California complying with state law would run afoul of federal HHS regulation?

There are many more unanswered questions with these new rules (which, by the way, have entered their 30 day public comment period; see the above link to the regulations for instructions on how to submit comments). While freedom of conscience for medical providers is important, access for patients to medical care and constitutionally guaranteed medical procedures is essential to maintain the health of society. It is already so difficult for women in many parts of the United States to access their right to safe and legal abortion; any additional obstacle will only hinder this access further. We must be careful as we proceed, or we risk ending up with a morass like that of Mexico City — a guaranteed right without protection of access, worth no more than the paper it is printed on.

Michael Leavitt, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, responded on his blog to concerns that a proposed HHS regulation would surreptitiously redefine abortion to include a variety of contraceptives, such as birth control pills, the morning after pill and the IUD. He claims:

An early draft of the regulations found its way into public circulation before it had reached my review. It contained words that lead some to conclude my intent is to deal with the subject of contraceptives, somehow defining them as abortion. Not true.

This statement, however, has failed to reassure pro-choice organizations. As quoted in the LA Times, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Cecile Richards, said:

“Secretary Leavitt’s vague comments on the draft HHS rule do nothing to reassure Americans that the administration is not considering redefining abortion to include forms of contraception, thereby jeopardizing women’s access to basic healthcare.”

The regulation in question is allegedly intended to protect the religious freedom of health care workers. It would deny federal funding to any medical institution that did not accommodate the beliefs of employees by allowing them to decline to perform any medical treatments or work (including dispensing prescriptions) to which they morally object. Included in an earlier draft of the regulations was a redefinition of abortion that would have included a lot of contraceptives, including birth control pills and IUDs. Now it appears that the Bush administration is backtracking on this aspect of it.

But even without this redefinition of abortion included (assuming that it ultimately isn’t), pro-choice groups still object to other provisions of the proposed regulations. As Reuters reports:

The National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association said it was concerned the proposed regulation would target 37 state laws.

“These laws mandate the availability of EC (emergency contraception) in emergency rooms, bar pharmacies from flatly refusing to fill prescriptions and mandate coverage of contraception when other prescriptions are covered,” the group said in a statement.

The organization goes on to state:

“Given that at least 17.5 million women in America are in need of publicly funded contraceptive services … we believe the department should be working to increase access to these crucial health care services, rather than working to limit them.”

When activists cross the line into extremism, the border between causes becomes blurry.

Two firebombs targeting UC Santa Cruz biologists appear to mark an escalation in violence by militant opponents to animal research, a transition from threats and harassment to acts of terrorism and attempted homicide, authorities said Monday.

The San Francisco Chronicle goes on to report:

Early Saturday, and just minutes apart, firebombs destroyed a car outside the campus home of one researcher and torched the front door of another, who had to flee with his wife and two young children by lowering a ladder out a second-story window. A third researcher received a threatening telephone message around the same time, police said.

The article notes this as a new wave of violence and intimidation targeting scientists that use animals for some of their research. In fact, fliers publicizing the names and home addresses of UC Santa Cruz researchers alleged to be testing on animals had appeared in the city of Santa Cruz prior to the attacks.

Now, if some of this sounds familiar, it is because we have seen these types of tactics before. The National Abortion Federation notes in its History of Clinic Violence:

What began as peaceful protests with picketing moved to harassing clinic staff and patients as they entered clinics…This foundation of harassment led to violence with the first reported clinic arson in 1976 and a series of bombings in 1978. Arsons and bombings have continued until this day.

And, in fact, anti-abortion extremists have long published the names and home addresses of abortion clinic workers, such as in the infamous Nuremberg Files.

The causes might be different, but fanaticism brings the methods closer and closer together. And along the way, the message of the fanatics is lost in the hatred and the fire, until only the violence remains.

In the meantime, the rest of us can continue to work to create a society safe and free from fanaticism, governed by reason, and respectful of science.

Though I haven’t been following everything that the chattering masses have been saying about NARAL Pro-Choice America’s endorsement of Barack Obama for president, I wanted to toss out my support for their decision. Not because they endorsed Obama per se, but because they were willing to actually endorse a man, in an election cycle that included a woman.

I don’t know about the specific voting records of Obama or Hillary Clinton when it comes to choice issues, and I don’t pretend to know about the internal deliberations that must have gone on inside NARAL Pro-Choice America when coming to this decision (at a party over the weekend, a NARAL staffer summed it up as “blowback” when talking about the endorsement). However, NARAL for whatever reason, looked beyond just endorsing a woman because she’s a woman, and made an endorsement on who they honestly thought was the best choice.

As a guy who is pro-choice, I’ve always felt slightly unwelcome in the pro-choice/feminist movements. I’m not sure if it’s me projecting, or if there is a disconnect, ever so slight. Where does a man fit in, in the framework of women’s empowerment? Is my support appreciated, or seen as condescending? If it is allowable for my voice to stand out in support of choice issues, what about the man who stands against a woman’s right to choose? If his voice negated because he’s a man and against choice, why should mine be allowed simply because I’m saying the right things?

For NARAL Pro-Choice America to take this step, shows, ever so slightly, the direction they’re leaning in the debate about a man’s place in the women’s movement.

A federal judge temporarily blocked a new Missouri abortion law Monday after Planned Parenthood said the law would harm women by dramatically reducing the clinics available to provide the procedure. The new law, Missouri Senate Bill 370, would categorize any facility that provides more than five first-trimester abortions a month, or any second- or third-trimester abortions as outpatient surgery centers.

The law requires the facilities to meet specific state building, staffing, and health standards. These standards include regulations such as requiring that hallways at the facilities be at least six feet wide and doors at least 44 inches wide.

U.S. District Judge Ortrie Smith granted Planned Parenthood a temporary injunction after hearing the argument that the organization would have to halt abortions at its Columbia and Kansas City offices–either permanently or while expensive and “medically unnecessary” renovations were made. Ortrie will hold a hearing today, September 10, to determine if the injunction should be made permanent.

Some conservatives claim that if Planned Parenthood truly wanted abortions to be safe, legal, and rare, they would be all about supporting this bill. But what about the charges that the law does little to support safety and in reality merely puts “medically unnecessary” blocks up to women getting abortions?

This law and the conservative response to it seem like scare tactics and false advertising to me. If we really want to make abortion safe, legal, and rare, we would provide real sex education, provide condoms, and have better laws protecting women in general against domestic violence and rape. Plan B would be made more accessible especially for rape and incest victims and if an abortion has to be performed we would make it possible early in the pregnancy. I think those are the humane choices, but how do other Humanists weigh in on this issue? Do you agree that clinics should be treated like outpatient surgery centers, even if they only prescribe medication? Or do you think they should be exempted from this law because of the nature of what they do?

If abortion were illegal, how much jail time should a woman serve for obtaining one?

That’s the question being asked of anti-abortion protesters in a fascinating mini-documentary posted on YouTube. Taking place outside of an abortion clinic in Libertyville, Ill., these series of interviews highlight an aspect of the anti-abortion crusade that in retrospect seems so glaringly obvious that I’m chagrined to admit it’s one which I myself hadn’t considered before. But I’m definitely not the only one — upon being asked how much time women should serve for obtaining hypothetically illegal abortions, protesters in the video appear taken aback, many of them stammering while admitting they’d never given it much thought. When pressed for answers as to the punishment such a crime would warrant, the ones given range from “counseling” to “pray for them.”

If you believe that abortion is murder then it follows that you should endorse severe punishment for women who undergo the procedure. However, most of the protesters seem to shy away from such a position and my guess is that most people in the broader society who identify as pro-life would as well. This logical contradiction — it’s unreasonable to argue abortion is murder but should go lightly punished — illuminates the highly emotional aspect of the abortion debate for anti-choicers: it’s a moral issue, not a rational or even practical one, and who cares about the consequences of a ban? Perhaps if we in the pro-choice camp can begin demanding answers to these sorts of very practical questions we can begin to get anti-choicers to at least consider their position more rationally, if not moderate their stance.