The A-word

Who's in charge here?

There simply cannot be politics without issues.  Politicians and parties need issues.  If they don’t have one, they’ll create one.  Then again, some issues are the real deal.  Abortion is one of those issues. But, instead of politicizing it the way, you know, politicians do, I’m going to examine it the way, you know, rational people do.

Let me caution you beforehand that, by the time you get to the end of this post, you will have learned little to nothing that you didn’t already know.  You will have received no hard “answers”.  But this might be the first time you have seen a rational examination of the issue.

First of all, the abortion issue is about much more than abortion.  I’ll attempt to pick away at some of the ancillary issues.  First and foremost, who makes abortion law?  You can cross the Supreme Court of that list.  The Supreme Court doesn’t pass legislation, legislatures do.  Congress is the legislative arm of the federal government, plus there are fifty state legislatures.  Which one has the greatest authority?  The fifty state legislatures, of course. Unknown to most people, as essential as it is, is that the states created the federal government, not the other way around.  They did not, even for a moment, contemplate creating a federal government with total control.  Constitutionally, they created a federal government that was intended to always be held within the purview of the states.  That’s why NO federal official is elected by the citizens of the USA.  All elected federal officials are elected by the citizens of the individual states. That includes the president, who is elected by electors that were selected by state legislatures in accordance with the laws of the individual states.  The two parties argue over whether the president should be directly elected by all the citizens.  But those two parties have NO governmental authority, and contrary to the marketing, they have little support overall.

No, the states are the ultimate authority on just about everything.  The political parties have no authority whatsoever.  Yes, the political parties have all the power, they just don’t have any authority. So, I won’t be spending any time in the remainder of this post talking about political parties and whatever it is they feel like jamming down our throats.  I’ll be talking about legitimate government, constitutional government.  Roe v Wade was essentially law, made by the Supreme Court.  Since the Supreme Court can’t make law, the Supreme Court did a work-around, saying that abortion was a constitutional right. Therefore, any state law that inhibited that right was unconstitutional.  That is one hell of a stretch. So, recently, a “conservative” Supreme Court determined that abortion is not a right.  That leaves the states free to do what was always their right and responsibility to do; make abortion law.

Have you not noticed that different states are making different laws?  That’s because each state is autonomous, just like in the European Union.  There is no EU abortion law, no EU healthcare law, no EU education law.  France, Germany, Italy, etc all make their own laws.  Those who look to Europe for enlightenment on issues can start by observing that Europe acknowledges the right of the individual states to make their own laws.  We need more of that sentiment here.  It’s United States, PLURAL.

State legislatures are of course responsive to their citizens, because if they aren’t, citizens replace them with legislators who are.  But I’ve noticed a funny thing in that regard.  Legislators don’t seek to find out what the citizens want, they seek to TELL citizens what they want.  Some are telling us that we should want abortions to be illegal, others tell us that we should want it to be entirely legal.  Nobody asks what we want.

Well, what do we want? Near as I can tell, a vast majority wants pretty much the same thing.  We are not as divided as the politicians and the media would have us believe.  There are all kinds of opinion polls, and they only have a certain level of reliability.  But I’ve settled on this and believe it to be essentially true:  About 10% of citizens are in favor of any abortion at any time for any reason.  Also, about 10% are opposed to any abortion, for any reason.  That leaves 80% of us in the middle.  How many are opposed to abortion, even in the case of rape or incest?  That would be among the 10% who are opposed to all abortions.  How many are in favor of any abortion for any reason, including partial birth abortion?  They’re in that other 10%  So, 80% of us favor availability of abortion for rape, incest, or health reasons, but not for really late-term such as partial-birth.

That leaves the 80% of us to argue over how late into the term is reasonable.  It leaves us to consider abortion of fetuses with Down’s syndrome.  Or with physical defects.  Or of an undesired sex.  Does the woman have the right to choose in all these cases?  Why?  Because “a woman’s right to choose” makes a snappy campaign slogan?  I’m going to need more than that.  What about the father?  No matter how you try to redefine biology, every fetus has a mother and a father.  No one argues that there is not a father at conception, as well as after the birth.  No one argues that the father isn’t as responsible as the mother at the time of conception, as well as after the birth.  So, how can he not have the same rights and responsibilities during pregnancy?  What caring woman, contemplating the fate of the Down’s syndrome child in her womb, would feel justified, or even comfortable, with not consulting with the father on the child’s fate?

Life is a whole lot trickier than campaign slogans would have us believe.  It’s messy.  It’s rewarding.  It’s depressing.  It’s uncertain.  It’s joyful. It’s sad.  I’ll take any and all of that over politics, any day.  I promised at the beginning that I would have no answers at the end.  And I’ve held to that.  My answers are for me.  Your answers are for you. Seek those answers.  Seek them carefully and thoughtfully.  Governments controlled by thoughtful, compassionate, fair people are governments that are as good as we can hope for government to be.  We will never all agree on anything.  That’s a GOOD thing.