Equal Rights for Some
A friend and fellow priest responds to my concern about ECUSA's affiliation with the RCRC and says, inter alia,
Last week, my wife, a physician at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, invited me to meet one of her patients – an infant with no name of his own, abandoned by his crack-addicted mother. This child had been born two months previously, very premature at only twenty-seven weeks gestation. Which meant, of course, that the child I was holding in my arms, who was grasping my finger in his little hand, would, had gestation proceeded normally, have had yet another month or so in his mother’s womb. And this meant, as we all know but hate to ponder, that this child’s life in America would have been worth nothing, but for the happy/tragic accident of his premature birth. (One of the great abortion myths in America is that late-term abortions are illegal under the Roe v. Wade ruling; not so.*) Somehow, that child possessed the full rights of any American citizen outside the womb, but could be legally dismembered and killed inside the womb. This is purely a question of our laws, because there can be no question of the humanity of the child, or of “ensoulment”, whatever that may mean – he would have been exactly the same (but covered in amniotic goop) inside the womb.
So, are these laws just? Yet these are the laws ECUSA – and hence all Episcopalians – are advocating. We can leave the varying views of varying religious traditions out of it (at least for my limited purposes here). Our constitutional order is founded on the premise that all human beings are of equal dignity and worth (yes, I realize that our constitution is informed by a certain religious tradition - an inconvenient fact for some) and so should enjoy equal rights under the law; in fact, they do have these rights, whether recognized in the law or not, because the rights are not conferred by the government and its laws but by "Nature and Nature's God." There can be no doubt that the child I held that night at Vanderbilt was a human child, and had I wrung his neck I would have been prosecuted for murder. And there can be no doubt that the same child enjoying a normal period of gestation would have been a fully human child, and at the same time subject to the legal termination of his life. So, again, are these laws just? Should you have to pay for their advocacy in order to be an Episcopalian in good standing?
*See, for instance, Mary Ann Glendon's (Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard) "The Women of Roe v. Wade."
I looked at the "Clergy for Choice Pledge" on the RCRC website and found this,
with which I fully agree:
"We honor the value and dignity of all human life, but recognize that different religious traditions hold different views regarding when life begins and when ensoulment occurs. Because of these honest disagreements and because we live in a society where all are free to live according to their own consciences and religious beliefs, we do not believe any one religious philosophy should govern the law for all Americans."
Last week, my wife, a physician at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, invited me to meet one of her patients – an infant with no name of his own, abandoned by his crack-addicted mother. This child had been born two months previously, very premature at only twenty-seven weeks gestation. Which meant, of course, that the child I was holding in my arms, who was grasping my finger in his little hand, would, had gestation proceeded normally, have had yet another month or so in his mother’s womb. And this meant, as we all know but hate to ponder, that this child’s life in America would have been worth nothing, but for the happy/tragic accident of his premature birth. (One of the great abortion myths in America is that late-term abortions are illegal under the Roe v. Wade ruling; not so.*) Somehow, that child possessed the full rights of any American citizen outside the womb, but could be legally dismembered and killed inside the womb. This is purely a question of our laws, because there can be no question of the humanity of the child, or of “ensoulment”, whatever that may mean – he would have been exactly the same (but covered in amniotic goop) inside the womb.
So, are these laws just? Yet these are the laws ECUSA – and hence all Episcopalians – are advocating. We can leave the varying views of varying religious traditions out of it (at least for my limited purposes here). Our constitutional order is founded on the premise that all human beings are of equal dignity and worth (yes, I realize that our constitution is informed by a certain religious tradition - an inconvenient fact for some) and so should enjoy equal rights under the law; in fact, they do have these rights, whether recognized in the law or not, because the rights are not conferred by the government and its laws but by "Nature and Nature's God." There can be no doubt that the child I held that night at Vanderbilt was a human child, and had I wrung his neck I would have been prosecuted for murder. And there can be no doubt that the same child enjoying a normal period of gestation would have been a fully human child, and at the same time subject to the legal termination of his life. So, again, are these laws just? Should you have to pay for their advocacy in order to be an Episcopalian in good standing?
*See, for instance, Mary Ann Glendon's (Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard) "The Women of Roe v. Wade."
posted by PSA+ at 09:05
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