Obamacare, Abortion, and the Politics of Science

Maybe everybody knows this story.

In a college sex-education class, the professor showed a film about the fertilization of an egg. The film showed a magnified view of a sperm swimming, its tail whipping behind it. The film also showed an egg. Then the sperm again. Then the egg again. The sperm. The egg. Suddenly, a woman cried out from the back: "Run, egg, run!"

But it turns out that the egg could have stayed safe by walking.

1. Fertilization and birth-control pills after sex.

It turns out that pregnancy, if it happens, typically doesn’t happen right away after sex. The tiny sperm has a long trek through a fallopian tube to find its bliss in an egg.

I didn't know this fact until recently. And it might not be widely known to the public. (I’m just guessing; in my sixth-grade class, the boys played outside while the girls watched a movie.) This maybe-widespread ignorance makes it easy to believe that two after-intercourse birth-control pills actually induce abortions.

The best known of these pills is called Plan B. Plan B and its generic versions are also known as "the morning-after pill". That’s a misnomer. They actually works up to 72 hours after sex.

There is also Ella. Ella works up to five days after sex. It’s known by some as "the week-after pill". Because it’s effective only up to five days after sex, maybe it should be called "the work-week-after pill".

2. Plan B, Ella, and abortion.

The federal Food and Drug Administration states that both Plan B and Ella work by keeping an egg from being released from the ovaries. So like other contraceptives, these pills stop the fertilization of an egg.

But the the FDA also states that Ella (but not Plan B) can stop a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus wall. If that were to happen, the egg would simply exit the woman’s body. Abortion foes typically claim that a fertilized egg is a human being and should be protected. So destruction of a fertilized egg would make Ella, to abortion foes, a means of inducing abortion.

3. Plan B, Ella, and the journalists’ integrity.

But it’s not clear what that conclusion about Ella and implantation is based on. According to the New York Times, officials responsible for the decision to claim that Ella stops implantation, or who are knowledgeable about that decision, refuse to be interviewed.

And according to the New York Times’s June, 2012 article:

It turns out that the politically charged debate over morning-after pills and abortion, a divisive issue in this election year, is probably rooted in outdated or incorrect scientific guesses about how the pills work. Because they block creation of fertilized eggs, they would not meet abortion opponents’ definition of abortion-inducing drugs.

According to the New York Times, the National Institutes of Health has revised its web description of how Ella works to reflect the best scientific knowledge. It no longer claims that Ella stops an egg’s implantation in the uterus.

Presently, the Mayo Clinic’s website says:

[R]ecent evidence strongly suggests that Plan B One-Step and Next Choice [the generic version] do not inhibit implantation. It's not clear if the same is true for Ella.

But The New York Times interviewed the Mayo Clinic’s physician in charge of its website. He says that the hospital is "chomping at the bit" to revise its website to conform with the best scientific studies; it only waits for confirmation from government authorities like the FDA.

The conservative Weekly Standard goes the other way. It touts the supposedly un-deniable truth that Ella causes abortions. It does so in a web piece titled "Obamacare Mandates (Free) Coverage of Abortion Drug".

The Weekly Standard sourcing is weak. Sources for their conclusion include partisans like The Family Research Council; or a Dr. Justo Aznar, an ethics professor at a Catholic university in Spain. It also cites the generic web source WebMD that parrots the FDA.

The Weekly Standard insinuates much from reliable sources like CBS, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. These sources, according to The Weekly Standard, say that Ella is chemically similar to RU-486, which does induce abortions. RU-486 and Ella have the same chemical agent, but RU-486 is twenty times more potent. That’s the difference between sprinkling salt on your steak and pouring salt into your mouth. Dose is everything. The Weekly Standard puts too much weight on too little information.

4. Abortion and Obamacare.

The Hobby Lobby is a major retailer. They say that they will defy the Affordable Care Act’s mandate to supply their employees free with contraceptives like Plan B and Ella. They explain that they believe that these pills produce abortions, and that abortion is an offense to God.

They stand on solid ground as to how Ella operates as long as the FDA continues to agree with them, in apparent defiance of the best scientific research.Their ground for objecting to Plan B is more shrouded. But if they choose they could take cover under The Weekly Standard.

5. Love and consequences.

A lot rides on Hobby Lobby’s decision to defy the law. Defiance comes with a penalty to them of $1.3 million a day.

Hobby Lobby lost its lawsuit in federal district court to liberate themselves from having to pay for Plan B and Ella for their employees. They have appealed. In the meantime, they face the fines. The fines start on New Years Day, 2013.

They went to the court of appeal to suspend the fines pending appeal. The court of appeal turned them down. They carried their plea for relief pending appeal to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court also turned them down. Nothing now stands between them and the penalty for defiance of the law.

Maybe this is an acceptable price for their clean consciences.

I don’t understand these people.

That’s not a dismissive remark. I mean it sincerely. Maybe their love for the unborn is so deep that the money doesn’t matter.

But even if their assumption about how Ella and Plan B work is right, their love is a love of life in the form of maybe six-hundred un-differentiated cells. This life that they protect at great cost to their wealth has no fingers, no toes, no eyes, nor even discrete organs. To me, life in a form that so little resembles a human or any other visible creature, and which has no feelings or thoughts, is not lovable.

Alternatively, maybe they are not moved by love toward any undifferentiated group of cells, but by a tenderness toward God and a Godly desire for God’s will on earth. Maybe this love moves them to part with nearly half-a-billion dollars a year.

If they have such love, I need to learn at their feet. And if they cannot trace by words their spiritual minds upon mine, maybe they would pray for me to know the tenderness and fullness that they know. God would answer that prayer of such righteous men and women, and I would be lifted up by their prayers.  I wish that were so because I crave prayers and would like to be lifted up.

I do not judge them because I do not know them. But I would be naive if I were to automatically reject the possibility that they did not act with love but with a religious legalism, a probity by which they judge others. And I would be naive if I were to automatically reject the possibility that their Christianity is infused with a hard-right sensibility that conflates the love of God with hatred of anything Democratic. I have seen such Christianity.

Or maybe they're like me. Maybe they make moral decisions with some mixture of love or fear of God, love of others, legalism, and ideology.

6.  Science and relief from $1.3 million a day.

Hobby Lobby's difficulty is not only a religious difficulty. It is also a scientific difficulty.

Hobby Lobby says that it has no moral difficulty paying for ordinary contraceptives. It quarrels with Plan B and Ella because they believe that these harm fertilized eggs.

But as we have seen, the weight of science is against that position. Hobby Lobby could accept the clear consensus of science and the findings of the FDA as to Plan B. They could accept the emerging consensus of the latest findings of the scientific community as to Ella. If they did those things, Hobby Lobby could come to agreement with their accuser. They would not have to choose between their consciences and painful fines.

7. Climate change, crime statistics, and the casual disregard of science.

But good science is routinely rejected in America.

For example, there is a broad scientific consensus that human activity causes global warming. How broad this consensus is is stated by the National Science Foundation. They’re the body of scientists that turned forensic DNA testing from a crap-shoot that could convict the innocent into something highly reliable. They did that by examining the science of DNA testing and perfecting it.

Here’s what the National Science Foundation says about man-made global warming:

(i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [finding that humans contribute to global warming], and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers. ["Expert Credibility in Climate Change" (abstract) (2010).]

Yet the two-to-three percent of deniers, who have substantially less expertise, command broad attention among the American public and right-wing politicians and the fossil-fuel industry.

And, of course, the techno-thriller writer Michael Crichton wrote a novel that purported to demolish the idea of man-made global warming (State of Fear). His undergraduate concentration was anthropology, although he later got a medical degree (1969). If, as an M.D., he had written a book about home-surgery, it probably would have done less harm than his novel about climate change.

But for many, a techno-thriller writer matters more than the National Science Foundation.

Selective hostility toward science taints public judgment of  other scientific conclusions. Economists Donohue and Levitt wrote a paper that studied the effect of legalizing abortion on crime. They concluded that legalized abortion leads to less crime, including violent crime, as the generations subject to legal abortions come of age.

This conclusion was attacked. I cannot say that it was attacked by fringe science; but Donohue and Levitt’s principal opponent on this issue seems to have abandoned statistics and embraced moral arguments. Steven Levitt’s article that summarizes his argument and answers his critics is linked below.

There is a lengthy reply to Levitt’s piece that purports to be by Levitt’s committed opponent, Steve Sailer. He waives at statistics and presses into the tall grass of child "wantedness" and other un-measurable concepts. He’s bold to argue based upon what is "pretty likely" and what is his "guess". He speaks knowingly about what "the educated assume". He describes facts as "pretty murky" and then makes assumptions about those facts.

Of course, as a reason for or against legalized abortion, statistics do not end the discussion. A moral argument can justly outweigh an argument based on utility. Sailer calls abortion a "pre-emptive death penalty". Someone might or might not agree with him, but the argument is fairly made.

Fair point or not, we shouldn’t despise science because we hate its findings.

8. The politics of science.

A definition of politics is "The often internally conflicting interrelationships among people in a society." (American Heritage Dictionary of English Language (fourth edition).) There is a politics of science. We war with each other in the media, in courtrooms, in classrooms, and in legislatures over science and its usefulness in particular cases. We choose direction for ourselves and our society based on the outcome of these wars.

9. Bearing the burden of the politics of science.

Sometimes, disregard of science has no personal consequence.

A person might or might not believe in evolution. But not believing in it usually has no consequences. I remember, from my youth, an argument with a high school science teacher about evolution. He didn’t believe in it. Still he taught science.

Sometimes disregard of science has grave personal consequences.

In my youth, I sat in on the trial of a couple, the Parkers, who did not get treatment for their son Wesley’s diabetes. They did not believe in medicine. Wesley died, and the jury convicted the Parkers of manslaughter.

Sometimes disregard of science has grave collective consequences.

Man-made global warming is affecting America. Any given storm or drought cannot be reliably blamed on global warming. But the mechanisms of global warming and droughts and storms are well understood by climate scientists. And if the public largely rejects the science behind man-made global warming, still we live with the consequences of the steady rise in temperature since the industrial revolution. These consequences exist, for example, in the form of crop-destroying droughts and deadly storms.

Sometimes disregard of science starts out as a burden on others and becomes a burden on ones self.

10. Hobby Lobby and the politics of science.

The last case is the case with Hobby Lobby. While they initially clung to an outdated understanding about the workings of Plan B and Ella, the consequence fell, potentially, only on their employees. An employee might have used poor judgement during sex, or used good judgement and suffered an accidental failure of a condom, or exercised no judgment because she was raped. Hobby Lobby has made it more difficult for them to prevent an unwanted pregnancy.

But the burden of knowing the science of these contraceptives has now shifted onto Hobby Lobby. That, of course, is where it belongs. Facing huge fines, Hobby Lobby probably should use its vast resources to get the best possible advice about how these contraceptives work. It would pay them to believe that advice.

11. Science and faith.

If I had to choose between living in a society where God was known and science was not, or a society where science was known and God was not, I know which I would choose. Others would make a different choice.

But it’s a false dilemma. I believe that ignorance of God is a hazard to anyone in any place at any time. To anyone in our nation in our time, I believe that ignorance of science can have consequences. But science and faith don't exclude each other. Most Americans believe in God, and they accept much science. They readily use techology, which is based on science.

12. Conscience and Country.

A time comes when conscience must oppose law. And a time comes when conscience must yield to the national will expressed in law. I once prosecuted a man for driving without a license. He considered it an affront to accept a driver's license. He thought driving was a natural right, beyond government dispensation.

I would have a problem if the law compelled an employer to pay for abortion. There is no wide agreement in society as to that. But relatively few people cling to the belief that contraception is evil.

I hope Hobby Lobby keeps their piety and learns science.

_______________________________________

The New York Times on morning-after and week-after pills:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/health/research/morning-after-pills-dont-block-implantation-science-suggests.html?pagewanted=all

The Weekly Standard on morning-after and week-after pills:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamacare-mandates-coverage-abortion-drug_581969.html

Steven D. Levitt on legalized abortion and crime rates:
http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-who-should-you-believe/

National Science Foundation on man-made global warming (summary of findings):
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract?sid=c4aba312-61f9-4189-a37d-6062a033a93b

 

A Christian Defense of Roe v. Wade

I walk more in ignorance than in knowledge. When I don’t feel this way, I take it on faith.

I try to live my life as if the Bible were the inspired word of God; I believe that it is. I read it faithfully. I read it to learn how to live. I read it to know God better.

But I wrestle with it. If it’s inspired by the Holy Spirit, as I believe it is, I have no simple answer about why this inspired book has two different descriptions of the death of Judas Iscariot, one in Matthew and one in Acts. I have no simple answer about why Paul, John, and Luke can’t agree about who was the first person to see Christ risen from the dead. I have no simple answer about why the man of God Paul thinks that women are innately more sinful than men, as he suggests in his first letter to Timothy; yet with all the men that lived in Judea in the time described by the Book of Acts, God chose to speak to the daughters of Phillip the Evangelist, who were prophets. And with all the men in ancient Israel, he raised up Deborah in her time, who was both a wartime leader and a prophet. (I consider not accidental Paul's attitude toward women and his assertion that Peter was the first to meet the risen Christ. John says it was Mary Magdalene.)

Once when I was young and well-traveled in the Bible, I explained to my brother Peter that I felt that I could answer any theological question. He promptly asked me a question that I could not answer.

It’s a good working hypothesis that I’m prone to error.

So I hope that I approach with due humility an area of much controversy. There is a rough divide between Republicans and Democrats over the issue of right-to-life versus freedom-of-choice. It’s a controversy that some right-leaning Republicans use to paint Democrats as innately un-godly. When a Democrat prevails in the contest for the White House, I imagine conservative Christians crying out, "Why, O God, and how long?"

Bless their piety, and bless their yearning for God’s will on Earth. May I be blessed in the penumbra of their faith.

I make here a Christian case for Roe v. Wade.

1. A fundamental concept: the image of God.

 This is my core concept to assay the rightness or wrongness of abortion: that mankind is created in the image of God.

This concept appears in the first chapter of the Bible:

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. [Genesis 1:27 (NIV).]
More pertinently, Genesis chapter 9:
"Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind." [Genesis 9:6 (NIV).]
The question is: at what point does the unborn acquire the image of God, such that destruction of the unborn is murder?

2. "Created in the image of God": what does this mean?

The meaning "image of God" is not self-evident. Certainly, Genesis speaks of God as walking in the Garden of Eden as a man would, so that in some sense it can be taken literally – we physically resemble God, and he physically resembles us. This is true at least when he chooses a corporeal form.

The concept of created in the image of God might also foreshadow the incarnation of God as a man. Jesus was one with God, and he looked, fundamentally, like we do.

So there is a literal way in which humankind bears the image of God.

But mere physical resemblance doesn’t satisfy. There must be a mystical way in which humankind bears God’s image; but what is that mystical way isn’t clear. It’s not necessarily the capacity for moral judgment, because God created humankind in his image before humankind ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Nor is it moral purity, the state of innocense before the fall. This is true because God proclaimed humankind to be made in his image as he spoke to Noah, and that was after the fall of humankind. (Genesis chapter 9.)

This condition of bearing God’s image has persisted through history. Jesus was asked whether it was right to pay taxes. Jesus asked who's image was on a coin. He was told that Caesar's image was on a coin. So Jesus said to give to Caesar what was Caesar's, and to God what was God's. The kicker to that story is that while Caesar's image was stamped on the coin, we ourselves bear the image of God.

And then we crucified Christ.

Maybe there is a good and precise and satisfying answer to the question of the full meaning of "created the image of God." I don’t have it.

3. "Created in the image of God": what it doesn’t mean.

But I doubt that the meaning of "created in the image of God" reposes in a genetic sequence of DNA. And at the time of fertilization, that is the zygotes’s sole claim to being human. It doesn’t look human; it doesn’t have a mind. It isn’t aware of itself or its surroundings, and in that way it is less human-like than any variety of fully-formed mammal.

Being uncertain of the precise meaning of "created in the image of God", I lack a clear idea of when in the chain of existence between a human zygote and an infant that breathes air – I have no clear idea of when in that chain of existence a fertilized human egg becomes the "image of God". I do trust that there is a time between these states that a fertilized egg – a zygote – ceases to be mere tissue. I do not believe that that moment necessarily comes at the moment that the father’s DNA mixes with the mother’s.

4. Roe v. Wade and emerging human-ness.

Roe v. Wade acknowledges this. Roe v. Wade is clear: government's interest in forbidding the artificial ending of a pregnancy expands as the pregnancy proceeds. I find this analysis to be intuitively and morally defensible.

 Therefore, the mother has greatest freedom of choice to end a pregnancy at the beginning of it. The government has the greatest freedom to protect the unborn at the end of the pregnancy. In between lies judicial and legislative line-drawing.

5. The reason for this piece.

These words appear near the beginning of the majority opinion of Roe v. Wade, written by Justice Harry Blackmun. They acknowledge strong feelings against abortion and suggest the legitimacy of those feelings.
We forthwith acknowledge our awareness of the sensitive and emotional nature of the abortion controversy, of the vigorous opposing views, even among physicians, and of the deep and seemingly absolute convictions that the subject inspires. One's philosophy, one's experiences, one's exposure to the raw edges of human existence, one's religious training, one's attitudes toward life and family and their values, and the moral standards one establishes and seeks to observe, are all likely to influence and to color one's thinking and conclusions about abortion. That was true then; it’s true now.

This piece isn’t designed to stir up anger or hard feelings. But I have a friend who as a young man got his girlfriend pregnant. He helped her get an abortion. For this, he considers himself literally to be a murderer. I hope that this piece is balm to him and to others like him.

Some pregnant women have been poor, ill, crushed by shame, or all three of those. They were financially or emotionally or physically unable of bringing the unborn to term. I hope that this piece is balm to women like them who have made a hard choice and now feel guilty.

I write this so that my conservative friends might consider that Roe v. Wade was not defiance of the will of God but a reflection of it. I hope that some who are mystified by the moral blindness of persons who support a woman’s right to choose to end a pregnancy might see that there are godly arguments on the side of choice, so that they don’t judge others harshly.

I acknowledge that there are arguments that persons who oppose Roe v. Wade can make, and that those arguments have moral force. Certainly, abortion would not exist in a perfect world. But rightly or wrongly I believe that abortion has a place in this imperfect world, within some of the limits outlined by Justice Blackmun and his majority four decades ago

Legitimate Rape, Forcible Rape, and Rape

An old, dead debate is clawing up out of the ground: whether a woman who can’t show two black eyes and missing teeth or the legal equivalent of that was really raped.

That debate was called back by Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin and his reference to "legitimate rape". But that reference led to a search for the position of other Republican candidates. That search led to the discovery that Akin and Paul Ryan had co-sponsored the so-called "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act". That bill proposed to limit the rape-exception in a ban on government-funded abortions. The bill proposed to limit the exception from rape to "forcible rape". That language that narrowed the definition of rape eventually was dropped from the bill.

So there we go. What’s old becomes new. But the answers to this old argument have been around for over three decades. In fact, we can find answers in a case that was decided by the California Supreme Court that talks about rape law in California.

1. Threats, coercion, and sex.

Juoquin sold marijuana. Marsha smoked a little marijuana with Juoquin at his house. After 10-15 minutes, he started to hug Marsha. She pushed him away and told him to stop. He had overstepped, but she didn’t think that it was any big deal. But he kept on hitting on her, so she told him that she wanted to go.

He told her that he didn’t want her to go. But she got up, left the house, and went to the front gate.

Things turned hostile outside. He yelled at her. He refused to open the gate, and she didn’t know how to open it herself. Then he said that he would open the gate, but that he wanted to put on his shoes first. She followed him inside.

Inside, he continued bullying her. Several times, he reared back his fist like he was going to hit her. He told her that he was a man. He flexed his arm muscles. He grabbed her sweater collar and told her that with one hand he could lift her up and throw her out.

He boasted. He said, "I had bitches do anything I want. I have had bitches suck me . . . I have had them do that. I can make you do anything I want. You understand me?" He said, "You're so used to see[ing] the good side of me. Now you get to see the bad." She expected him to hit her.

She was afraid. About 40 minutes after she followed him back inside, he turned affectionate and started hugging her. She thought that he was psychotic. She decided to act as if she were going along with what he wanted.

Then he said that he wanted sex. He told her to take off her clothes. She refused. He said that she was going to make him angry. She took off her clothes. They had sex

2. Criminal courts.

In Superior Court, the jurors convicted Juoquin of rape.

But the Court of Appeal overturned the conviction. The justices said that the conviction could not stand because Marsha had not physically resisted.

And in fact that had been the law before Joachin confined and grabbed and threatened Marsha and had sex with her. But it was not the law when he did these things.

The case went up to the California Supreme Court. In a decision written by Chief Justice Rose Bird, the Supreme Court reinstated the conviction. (People v. Barnes (1986) 42 Cal. 3d 284.)

The Supreme Court first noted that physical resistance was no longer needed to prove rape. In 1980 the rape-statute was changed so that a rape was rape if the rapist accomplished it by forcing the victim to have sex by fear of violence.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court noted how the new definition of rape reflects a new understanding of women and proof of consent.
Historically, it was considered inconceivable that a woman who truly did not consent to sexual intercourse would not meet force with force. [Citations.] The law originally demanded "utmost resistance" from the woman to ensure she had submitted rather than consented. [Citations.] Not only must she have resisted to the "utmost" of her physical capacity, the resistance must not have ceased throughout the assault. The law evolved, so that that need to show utmost resistance became a historical relic. Nevertheless, until 1980 in California rape wasn’t rape if the victim had not physically resisted or physically resisted only slightly.

This need for proof of physical resistance was based on distrust of women’s claims of rape. It was also based on false assumptions about a woman’s inevitable response to rape. As the California Supreme Court said, some women resist; others freeze. This "frozen fright" can be a "psychological infantilism" that looks like "cooperative behavior". Far from showing consent, the Supreme Court understood that lack of physical resistance could be the product of "profound primal terror". All of these conclusions were supported by reliable studies.

In fact, studies showed that physical resistance could fend off a rape, but that it could also lead to greater violence to complete the rape.

3. Judicial burdens.

The end of the need in rape cases to prove physical resistance has had judicial effects.

The effect of this law is that, yes, it is easier to convict a man of rape who in fact had consensual sex. This adds to the burden of an innocent defendant and his hopefully hard-charging lawyer.

But it also means that women have greater freedom from rape. A rapist’s ability to squelch physical resistance by making his victim feel a paralyzing primal fear is no longer a get-out-of-jail-free card.

4. Psychological burdens.

Any successful efforts of legislators to re-introduce the issue of "forcible rape" into abortion laws would have deep psychological effects.

I suppose that a rape victim who physically resists has at least the consolation of her courage. I would suppose that someone who was frozen in fear bears the risk of increased shame from her non-resistance. Efforts of the Todd Akins and the Paul Ryans would have the effect of narrowing the options and adding to the great burden of those victims who suffer the greatest feelings of shame.

5. Burdens on advocates

Some of my friends believe that a woman should not have the option of ending a pregnancy if she has been raped. I respectfully disagree. I mean both of those words. I respect them. And I disagree with them.

A substantial majority of Americans take the side of the rape victim. Given that substantial majority, any likely versions of the laws about abortion will protect the freedom of choice of rape victims.

That means that persons driven to protect the product of a rape will have to walk their efforts along the ancient ways. They will not be the law of the land; they must be the light of the world. If they succeed, it will be through love not compulsion. The choice will rest with the victim.

Mercy and Abortion

I think that the far sides of the abortion debate both get it wrong. Here’s why.

1. Pro-abortion: a failure of mercy.

A womb is the sacred place where life is created. Abortion makes a womb a waiting-room next to the grave. (Though burial in any sacramental sense rarely if ever follows an abortion.) Through abortion, death enters this place for the creation of life.

And a mother who ends her pregnancy early isn’t merciful to her unborn, over whom she has care.  (I wonder whether this is true of the unborn who have such illnesses that their lives would be only suffering.)

A New York Times guest-columnist recently defended abortion-rights. The writer supported her decision to end a long-ago pregnancy. The column was articulate and thoughtful and chilling. The writer explained that she did what she did because she "didn’t want" another child.

I was unsettled because she spoke of ending a pregnancy with a phrase that a person might use toward a brand or model of car. The column unsettled a friend of mine with whom I shared it, too. I wonder if it unsettled many who read it who are on both sides of the abortion debate. I recently saw a poll in which 48 percent of Democrats believe that abortion is not moral.

The hard cases are rape, incest, and severe disability. But in cases where the burden on the mother is greatest, the mercy also is greatest. A woman who chooses to bear a child when that child will be a burden, or a great burden, is a saint.

Calling the early-term unborn mere "tissue", or whatever term de-humanizes them, only emphasizes their helplessness. They are so helpless that they do not even yet resemble what they almost inevitably will become if allowed to prosper in the womb and pass through birth. I think that too much of the debate about abortion has been unproductive combat over labels. I will speak of that more when I speak of the anti-choice side.

2. Anti-choice: a failure of mercy.

Jesus replied, "And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens that they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them." (Luke 11 (NIV).)

That, in 33 words, is how I perceive anti-choice partisans. They tend to be conservative. That usually means that when a child is born, their protectiveness dissolves. They surrender the child to the Darwinist, every-family-to-itself philosophy that largely prevails in modern conservative thought, unlike liberal thought, which believes that government should provide a social safety-net. I’m not defending or denying the rightness of the social-safety net. I’m just pointing out the change of attitude of the anti-choice partisans before and after a birth. It makes the anti-choice partisans like the experts in the law that Jesus spoke of.

The anti-choice partisans make no distinction between a person, like the New York Times guest-columnist, who simply didn’t want another child, and a woman who, by bringing an unborn to term, will suffer overwhelming financial burden, risk of death or infirmity, or profound shame.

And they judge. That’s something that Christians are commanded not to do. (Matthew 7; Luke 6; Romans 2.) I’m not saying that only observant Christians don’t judge (or aren’t supposed to). Members of other religions might or might not be faithful to this principle, just as Christians might or might not be faithful to it. But it’s a core part of the New Testament. (I admit that I might be judging here. (Romans 2).)

This urge to judge adds to wrangling over when "life" begins, and whether the unborn is "human". The debate could be about the strength or the mercy or the capacity for burden of the woman who considers an abortion. But there seems to be an eagerness to condemn. And the harshest label in the anti-choice dictionary is "murderer". So they choose that harsh label for a woman who chooses to end a pregnancy. Arguing that "life" begins at conception and that the unborn are "human" is a conduit to this condemnation.

I don’t doubt that the belief that abortion is murder is sincere. Buts it’s judgmental in the extreme and it doesn’t move us to a solution.

What I’m about to say might seem like a diversion, but it isn’t. Historians have considered why slavery in England was ended without the rancor with which it was ended in America. ("Rancor", of course, falls short of describing the up-to-the-bridle blood of the American conflict.) There were many reasons for the relative ease with which England ended slavery. One was the language of the anti-slavery partisans in England. They tended not to use language of moral condemnation against their opponents, unlike abolitionists in America. The American abolitionists harshly condemned the pro-slavery partisans in America, leading to bitterness, anger, resentment, and resistance. In contrast, in England, the anti-slavery partisans tended to be like Abraham Lincoln: they did not condemn the morals of those that took the position opposite of theirs. England’s slavery was ended by law. America’s was ended by war.

3. Conclusion.

This history provides a path to start to resolve a controversy that has embittered partisans on both sides. The harsh rhetoric hurts more than it helps, however much it thrills pride to condemn another.

And both sides need more mercy: pro-abortion partisans need more mercy toward the unborn; anti-choice partisans need more mercy toward travelers who must make a particular choice of direction in their passage between life and death.

Humor Now

A writer on Facebook thinks that jokes about the abortion controversy are outside of good taste and untethered to reasonable restraint.

Maybe she should lighten up.

Yes, sometimes things happen that are too serious to joke about.  Even The Daily Show went on hiatus after 9/11.  There is a time for everything, and the time is not always for making jokes.

But censure of humor sometimes has nothing to do with time and taste.  Often, it has to do with hostility to the point of view expressed humorously.  A person who despises a joke about the abortion controversy might – might – think hilarious a photo-shopped picture of President Obama as a bone-in-the-nose witch doctor.  So when somebody criticizes something that I smiled at, I don’t necessarily put on my shame face.

Timing and taste are important.  They are also subjective.  One person might be ready to see humor in something earlier than another.

So a German tourist couple was strangled in Bolivia and their bodies were returned to Germany.  Before they left for their exotic vacation, they probably expected to return and be surrounded by friends eager to find out about their adventure in the Third World.  And, in fact, when they returned to Germany, their friends did gather around them.

That is an irony best unmentioned at grave-side.  But as a comment on the irony and unpredictability of life, ghoulish as it is, it might be worth mentioning at another occasion.  And, certainly, a hard knot of grief might be massaged after the funeral by mourners trading light-hearted stories about their dead friends.

Another example.  I am dismayed by Fox News.  I am dismayed by incidents like their coverage of a D.C. rally featuring Sarah Palin.  Fox News showed a teeming crowd on the Washington Mall.  But the teeming crowd was from a different, better-attended rally.  You could tell that by looking at the foliage on the trees in the background.  (As pointed out by The Daily Show.)  And Fox’s coverage of the public-worker protesters in Wisconsin featured an unruly man shoving another man – with palm trees in the background.

I find these examples emblematic of Fox News.

Now, when he was on the air, Keith Olbermann blasted Fox News with indignation.  That indignation made Fox News seem big and dangerous.  Which they are, because they effectively masquerade as a news organization, and they are zealously followed.  But they are really an American version of The People’s Daily, a Chinese newspaper that I read for lack of a better option while I lived China.  So good on Keith Olbermann.

But good on The Daily Show for cutting Fox down to size by showing how their slavishness to conservative ideology makes them ridiculously manipulate “news”.

Is it really necessary to defend humor?  It’s not hard to do.

Humor is inherently creative.  It can shake us out of customary mental paths.  That can lead to good approaches to problems.  I talked with my brother about a brief written by an opposing lawyer.  The judge had requested briefing on an issue.  The opposing lawyer made a weak attempt to address the issue, then wrote an attack on our motives and characters.  I remarked, “If the law and the facts are against you, change the subject.”  It was a little bit of humor in lieu of angst.  It’s going into my reply brief.

Humor diverts.  Unhappiness comes; humor can make it a little lighter.   In law school, I had a happy apartment-sharing arrangement with two women.  While one of them, a beautiful, charming woman, was on vacation, she sent me a letter.  The letter asked me to move out.  My sorrow at being asked to move out was leavened because I could see humor in the contrast between the message and my initial joy of getting the letter.  Later, I shared this with the letter-writer, and we laughed.

But is there a difference in stolen laughs over little things and humor about the wider, dangerous world?  There is no question that the world is a very serious place right now.  Ours is a world of threats and menace.  Our material comfort is at risk and, I believe, we cannot take for granted the continuation of democracy in America.  Just to say two things.

In serious times, humor is an act of courage.  Fritz Gerlich wrote a satiric article in a Munich newspaper about eugenics-crazed Adolph Hitler.  He asked, “Does Hitler have Mongolian blood?”  That was courageous.  Gerlich was murdered in Dachau.

Sometimes humor is optimism. Persian king Xerxes sent word to Spartan king Leonidas that Persia’s arrows unleashed against the Spartans would “blot out the sun”.   Leonidas replied, “So much the better, we will fight in the shade.”

Sometimes humor is resignation, or hoping for the best in a bad situation.  We can’t do anything about the evil in the world, so we might as well grin and bear it.  If humor helps us to grin and bear it, fine.  So, in “Fiddler on the Roof”, the rabbi says, “A blessing for the Tsar? Of course! May God bless and keep the Tsar... far away from us!”

But again, time and place are all-important.  Winston Churchill didn’t start his “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” speech by warming up Parliament with a humorous anecdote.  Nor did Abraham Lincoln crack wise in the Gettysburg Address.  But Winston Churchill had a keen wit, and Abraham Lincoln was a genius teller of humorous stories.  Time and place.

So, to the woman who tolerates no jokes about the abortion controversy: you’re entitled to your opinion.  Bless you.  Who knows, maybe you’re right.  If I do the Long Fall after Divine Judgment, maybe it will be because, in my time on Earth, I wasn't serious enough.  That might be.

But I think that the salient sins that will eject me from eternal joy will have a bigger bore than jokes I’ve told or secret smiles at shocking quips.  And if the world is a waiting room for eternal compression, I won’t change it into the backstage for eternal expansion by never cracking a smile.  Nor will anyone, I think.

And if there’s humor in Hell, I’m sure I won’t enjoy it.  So on Earth, let me laugh.