Trump, Roe and Dobbs

Finance: Chaos and Control: How Trump Criminalized Women’s Health Care, September 24, 2024

A Moral End to Roe and Dobbs

In the November 2023 edition of Logos, Crumley and Jones took on the question of a moral vindication of Roe v. Wade, doing a good job of covering the waterfront on the moral status of pre-born – the term unborn calls forth images of a zombie apocalypse. I argue that the more important debate is how to weigh the interests of the various actors in the drama that is abortion law and politics. Let us begin by casting the play. Not every actor will make the cut.

The main characters are the child at various stages in the roles of zygote, blastocyst,  post-gastrulation embryo, doomed fetus and viable child; mothers, supported by their doctor and family members; American citizens and residents in general; James Madison and the ratifiers of the Bill of Rights and the authors and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment; State Governments; the Confederacy and its heirs - Team Pro-Life, which include the American Catholic Bishops, their Evangelical enablers and true believers (until the Moral Majority – Evangelicals were not pro-life) and the various organizations who are active in the movement;  Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin; the Supreme Court; the various organizations supporting choice; Congressional Republicans and Congressional Democrats and God.

Since the last shall be first, let us give God the first audition. God sends regrets and has been trying to tell his agents to take Them off the casting list (take that as either trinitarian or woke). God has no personal stake in this play, nor will They punish anyone on the cast. God, to be qualified as a Supreme Being, must not depend on Their creatures for moral validation. They are not codependent. 

For those who are Christian, the Son said that He/They were gentle and humble of heart, Their yoke is easy and Their burden light – and that the Father (YHWH aka Being) is perfect, and we should be perfect in the same way – in Love (aka Shekinah – the Spirit), not conduct. This is for our temporal happiness. God cannot see what God does not have – sinfulness – this is the true interpretation of the axiom that God cannot bear the sight of sin – it is because God has no relation to it, having none of it. God must, therefore, be considered a Humanist, having no personal interest in this particular drama, but loves the entire cast anyway – even Trump.

The relationship between Trump and Putin turns the pro-life movement into a scandal, especially as there are those who excuse the Insurrection because of it. Any moral authority they had – although I will address the bishops separately – is gone. The fact that many of them have grown wealthy and turned the issue to a cash cow earns them the Bum’s Rush. Paging Security! The Choice Movement will also be dealt with later, although their activities in support of the Democrats do not earn them style points. 

We now have the cast. Without reference to Divine Authority, the play must be based on constitutional and legal relationships and a humanistic view of morality. Absolutism left the audition with God.  Humanism is not necessarily relativistic. If it were, it would not exist as a separate entity absent its social construction. 

Humanism has at its basis, personal and social/moral happiness within this life. For instance, we do not countenance murder because doing so leads to our being murdered – as is too often the case when youth take revenge into their own hands and the community allows them to do so. Theft and infidelity are moral or immoral on the same basis, although people may make arrangements on either – although personal experience has taught that such things do not work out. 

This sets up the dialogue on abortion perfectly. How does the Golden Rule, which is ultimately humanistic, relate. Some would say that abortion is the same thing as murder in the above context. No, it is not. 

The related situation is whether one has an opinion on ending one kind of pregnancy allows them to be free of other such interference with their own pregnancy loss. This is where the pro-choice movement get style points back, because being left alone with one’s family and doctor regarding the death of a child must be considered a universal right. We could end there, but that would be premature. Society, the child and the mother (with doctors and family as supporting characters) now enter the stage.

To keep this rated PG-13, we will omit what got the child to the zygote stage. At this point, a zygote has chromosomes from each parent, but is not using the entire set. At this point, it is a collection of stem cells that, with the development of the chorion – which becomes the bag of waters or placenta, becomes a blastocyst. If you remove a few stem cells, or even half in the case of twinning, the child has no loss of integrity – so it is not really a child yet. At gastrulation, this changes. Regardless of whether there is an eternal soul (and I believe there is), the materialistic soul picks up at this point and keeps on chugging until its electro-chemical activity has ceased at death (or is restarted after a near death experience or if the cold-water reflex preserves life before decay starts). 

Does this end the question, regardless of the right of families to be left alone (the violation of which might lead to few police officers being attacked by protective fathers)? No. This is where the American Public, as a Greek Chorus, enters the play, along with James Madison and the other constitutional actors.

At this point of the story, we examine what is meant by the right to life, not as proffered by the self-styled movement, but the one actually found in the Bill of Rights. In the Fifth Amendment, the right to life is limited to its taking by the Government. It has no other meaning. In the Fourteenth Amendment, this right is expanded to being taken by State governments. In both cases, the Child at all stages has an equal right to life. For this reason, pregnant women cannot be executed. 

This logic also applies to the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. If the child is harmed with its mother, it and its heirs have a right to civil and criminal redress. In the Act itself, however, the right to abortion is guaranteed. In other words, there is no need for a so-called Freedom of Choice Act. The Supreme Court erred when it did not consider this question and the Pro-Choice movement erred when it did not cite the Act during the argument over Dobbs, instead relying on stare decisis. They did a bad job of reading the room.

Cue the Supreme Court. The reason that Roe was rightly decided was that viability, which was not well defended as a principle, implies the ability to be born. Prior to that ability, there can be no enforceable right to life against the mother. Further, the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments do not protect an individual from being murdered. That is a social contract question, not an essential rights question. Thank you to Locke and Hobbes for the Cameo role.

Cue the Confederacy and State Governments and then haul them off the stage. The reason Dobbs was wrongly decided  is that letting this matter reside with the State Governments is the same mistake the Founders made by allowing slavery to exist as a matter of state power, and later segregation in the matter of Plessey v. Ferguson. That Justice Alito cited Plessey to resurrect the same view of state power on the abortion issue would be funny save for the fact that it is so harmful to both women and the rule of law in this country. 

The mistake the pro-choice movement made was not making this point and not justifying the right to abortion in terms of viability, rather than birth, as its border – as under Roe and the Constitution they are the same thing – but only if the point is made. The other mistake that the pro-choice movement and Justice Brenan made was not specifically stating the role of Congress in further defining when the right to be considered as if born begins. That was a bridge too far for the movement, but it was a necessary one to prevent the current status quo. 

The current post-Dobbs regime allows Attorney General Paxton to pursue cheap publicity for threatening a woman who needed a necessary abortion because the child she was carrying could not survive. Because her moral right to life is absolute and because her child could never be born, the child has no moral right against hers. 

This is where I bring back the Catholic Church so that we may all boo them, as they teach differently. They still fear that God will smite them if they follow this very rational point to its conclusion. Boo them twice for thinking that the honor of God must be protected, when it is their own honor that they are seeking. Again, from the start, God has no personal stake it this over what is good for people in this life. Now use their own bishops crooks to remove them from the stage.

Cue the Democrats and Republicans from Congress. Like it or not, the Fourteenth Amendment has given them the power to decide this issue – and in a way that the Supreme Court cannot resist, and that State Governments cannot usurp. We are now left with the mother, the doomed child, Mitch McConnell and Chuck Shumer. Each side wants Congress to enact a law to either affirm Roe or nationalize Dobbs. To end the debate, their wish needs to be granted – and this can only happen if they compromise.

Up to the point when a fetus can be delivered live, abortion must remain unrestricted. After that point, the child has a right to be born – and a right to be allowed to then die. There is no moral responsibility to give extraordinary measures to the dying, no matter what age. Those who wish to do so are pursuing a political position, not a moral one. 

What bothers our Greek Chorus are those methods that are used to terminate a pregnancy once a child can be physically delivered. A lethal injection of sodium pentothal without first tranquilizing the condemned man is considered cruel and unusual. It shocks the conscience, even if administered in utero. The subsequent dismembering of the fetus, especially without the lethal dose, is even more abhorrent. Those who object to these acts are not wrong. 

Induction, therefore, is the only acceptable way to end a pregnancy once it can physically occur. It should be allowed, however, at any time in the pregnancy – especially for the doomed child whose eventual stillbirth is injurious to the mother. No one has a right to not be born. This is the appropriate place to draw the line and the inevitable conclusion for any political compromise. When this occurs, both the pro-life and pro-choice movements can exit the stage, with the curtain descending to leave the mother, the child, the doctor and, if called, clergy for baptism. 

The alternative for the Church is to let the unsavory methods of abortion continue. If it stands in the way of compromise, it is causing such methods to continue under the pretext of honoring God. This makes absolutely no sense. This implies that Catholic hospitals should participate in the movement for fetal hospice, which is exactly what I propose.

On the matter of Down’s Syndrome children, no one has any room to object to their early birth and hospice period, but especially without providing for respite care for parents and a life-long right to full disability benefits at the maximum level, regardless of work history. It is the lack of these that cause families to face the agonizing decision of whether to abort these children or not. 

Speaking for the disabled, the rest of us could use a raise as well. Four-fifths of retirees and all the disabled have only benefit checks to sustain us. The thought that we must be punished for not saving adequately is abhorrent, as is not enacting a child tax credit at median income levels so that all families can comfortably afford having an additional child. If the Catholic Bishops wish to redeem themselves after some of them supported Trump and other Republicans, it is their moral duty to insist on such benefits as a positive (social contract) right.