Amba regretting an abortion: "if an embryo or fetus is regarded as disposable, then you are, too."

I wanted to break out this beautifully written comment that Annie Gottlieb wrote in the comments to yesterday's abortion post (the one that linked to a Bloggingheads episode featuring 2 diavloggers trying to grapple with the realization that the unborn entity isn't "a blob"):

The nonreligious conclusion I came to as the result of lasting (lifelong) regret of an abortion is that if an embryo or fetus is regarded as disposable, then you are, too. I guess it's a version of what Mother Theresa was saying. An individual either is unique and uniquely valuable or isn't. All are or none are. If your existence had happened at the wrong time (I won't use the demeaning word "inconvenient" because sometimes it's little more than that, but sometimes it's a lot worse), you could have been disposed of. Your existence is accidental and contingent.

(Of course if you believe human beings are nothing special, even a plague on the planet, then by all means let's declare open season on 'em and hasten their extinction. Oh, uh, "us" is "them.")

To consider abortion acceptable is to make a philosophical decision about the world without even knowing it.

It's a tricky thing to write into law. Nearly all traditions have recognized the primacy of the mother's life and circumstances (including economic) in the early stages of pregnancy. The irony is that they knew a lot less than we do about what's involved. They really did believe it was a "blob." We know better.

But they also believed pregnancy was something like an act of God. That's why sex was so severely policed. I can understand why Catholics believe that there's a connection between the casual attitude made possible by birth control and a casual attitude toward life itself.

But is that inevitable? If people choose, for a time or for all time, to use sex to "make self" -- to make their own lives and relationships richer, which I do believe is one of its lifegiving uses -- then they should use birth control religiously. One of the big pro-choice arguments is that "birth control fails." Certainly some percentage of that failure rate is due to wrong or careless use of it. The rest -- the true failures -- might be seen as successes of someone who is just hellbent on being here. And the unwitting invitation of such a person should be viewed at all times as one of the ineradicable risks of sex.

Annie has another comment, that links to an important post of hers from 2005:

You know there are pro-life people who would make it mandatory that a woman be shown an ultrasound of her fetus before she can have an abortion.

I was once at the hospital with a woman who was beginning to miscarry, and I watched the live ultrasound. She was, I forget, maybe 8 or 10 weeks pregnant. The embryo/fetus didn't look like a baby yet, but you could see its heart beating.

I wonder if I would have been able to go through with an abortion if I'd seen that.

Thanks for writing all that over here, Amba.

I'm very interested in this idea that sex has become, as you put it, a way to "make self." It reminds me of the way people used to talk about taking drugs — especially LSD — back in the 1960s. It was supposed to be a profound journey of self-actualization. I remember being surprised to see kids only a few years younger than me taking drugs just to have fun or because they had nothing else to do. When you first break from the old traditions, maybe you have to make up a big, weighty story about how you are proceeding onto some higher ground. I'm sure you can use sex for profound self-actualization. In fact, you can still use drugs that way if you set your mind to it. But how many people do?

R= BS Squared

One of the things that had always puzzled me about Einstein was his tenacious adherence to Judaism. It seemed such a paradox for someone who was so intimately familiar with the complexities of the Universe to adhere to the superstitions of religion. Very often, religious people would cite his practice of Judaism as a symbol of his faith and therefore his belief in GOD (Bum bum BUUUM),

Well as Richard Dawkins observed, most rational men of science defer not to the religion itself but to the tradition that binds them to it, out of an "Enormous respect" for the institutions.

Dr. Dawkins certainly knows the scientific mind, as a newly unearthed letter by Einstein in his latter years now gives us new light into the thoughts of a great mind.

"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish," Einstein wrote.

Einstein said he started questioning religion at the age of 12.

"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions," the letter said. "And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people.

"As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are better protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."

Because It's Time For a New Surrogate Controversy

Elton John.

Sir Elton John has a new Candle in the Wind.

Mr. John, the legendary British pop crooner who memorialized the late Princess Diana by rewriting the lyrics to his song, “Candle in the Wind,” will be holding a “one night only” solo concert on behalf of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign on April 9 at Radio City Music Hall in New York.

John on religion:

LONDON - Organized religion fuels anti-gay discrimination and other forms of bias, pop star Elton John said in an interview published Saturday.

“I think religion has always tried to turn hatred toward gay people,” John said in the Observer newspaper’s Music Monthly Magazine. “Religion promotes the hatred and spite against gays.”

“But there are so many people I know who are gay and love their religion,” he said. “From my point of view, I would ban religion completely. Organized religion doesn’t seem to work. It turns people into really hateful lemmings and it’s not really compassionate.”

Let the denouncing and renouncing begin!

So can "a bisexual woman who works for a university with spousal benefits" marry her gay male roommate, in order to provide him with health insurance?

The NYT ethicist Randy Cohen says yes:

People have married for many reasons -- to gain a fortune, accumulate land, forge an international alliance, secure a dynasty, raise children -- and even on account of affection, a marital motive that became widespread rather late in human history with the rise of bourgeois society. ... Marrying to obtain health insurance does not seem, historically at least, the most ignoble reason, particularly where same-sex folks are forbidden to marry for love....

We live in a country where more than 40 million people lack health insurance and thus reliable access to medical care. ... If marriage is his best means to decent medical care, I see no ethical objections to you two kids' tying the knot. Nor would you be deceiving the university if you did.

It requires only marriage, not love. ...

I'm not sure why it matters that these two persons are gay, or why it matters that it is hard to get health insurance and good health care. We wouldn't justify shoplifting based on the discriminatory practices of the store or because the thing stolen was very expensive and necessary. Cohen's point must be that marrying to share spousal benefits is perfectly legitimate whenever two persons go through the legally required steps needed to get married.

If that's okay, unmarried persons with good benefits could charitably find an uninsured cancer patient or other seriously needy person--of the opposite sex, of course--and marry them as a good deed. Or, if economic benefit is acceptable, offer to marry the highest opposite-sex bidder. On Ebay!

If that sounds terrible, consider Shari Motro's op-ed, also in today's Times:

Amid all the heated discussion on both sides of the gay marriage debate, a broader point has somehow gotten lost: why should formally committed couples, straight or gay, enjoy special privileges in the first place?

Married couples can receive thousands of dollars in benefits and discounts unavailable to single Americans, including extra tax breaks, bankruptcy protections and better insurance rates. ...

Research consistently shows that unmarried Americans are on average poorer, sicker and sadder than their married counterparts. Yet they are denied perks given to married couples who, in many cases, neither need nor deserve them. Though gay couples certainly lose out as well, singles of any preference pay a triple price for not finding love: they don't enjoy the solace and support of a life partner; they don't profit from the economies of scale that come from pooling resources with a mate; and they effectively subsidize spousal benefits that they themselves can't take advantage of.

Ending discrimination based on marital status is one way to resolve the current quandry over gay marriage, and it has the added benefit of extricating government (and employers) from a matter many people see as fundamentally religious.

Guy Coq has an op-ed in today’s NYT,

defending the proposed French law banning Muslim schoolgirls from wearing head scarves in class. He cites the long French history of religious strife to justify the ban, as if the historical problem of religious strife did not underlie American ideas about religious freedom.

By separating church and state — instituting a republic that was neutral toward all religions, and without a national religion — France finally realized the aims of the Revolution. This is laïcité, and it has worked well.

But the laïcité of schools has been eroded by the intrusion of religious symbols, prompted by an excess of individualism, that philosophy so revered by Americans. … More than ever, in this time of political-religious tensions, school secularism is for us the foundation for civil peace, and for the integration of people of all beliefs into the Republic. If the French hold laïcité so dearly, it is because that principle, as much as the republic and democracy, is essential for a cohesive society. ... They no longer have a base of common religious tradition. Instead, they are constructing social guidelines built around ethical, universal values like justice and liberty of conscience.

The question that France is posing to the world is this: Can one progress toward true respect of these universal values without relying on some sort of "laicity"? To disarm fundamentalism, notably Islamic fundamentalism, can we give up laïcité, which builds a neutral space for all of us?

It isn't a lack of understanding of history that makes the French head scarf ban seem wrong to Americans, it is respect for individual freedom. Coq's "neutral space for all" benefits those whose religion imposes no clothing requirements, just as enforced silence benefits those with nothing to say. Bans on articles of clothing might still be justifiable, but this attempt to convince us by insulting our knowledge of history and invoking superficial neutrality is quite feeble.