Anyhow. Glad to be jumping back on the wagon here. I’ve been meaning to get in on this for a while but I was so busy.

Many sociologists and anthropologists blame the religious brainwashing to be a crucial source of the male-female inequality. When the Roman empire re-wrote the Bible in the 4th century under the leadership of Constantine (emperor Constantine, that is) they modified many books of the Bible in a way in which it disgraces women, and disgraces sex as a sinful act. Similar trends can be seen in many different religious cultures. In many (or most) middle-easter cultures, women are “picked” or “bought” between families, and wealthier men can afford multiples of these wives. In Asian cultures, although not predominantly noticed globally as a sexually unequal society as much as the Middle Easterners stand out, women were still considered as some sort of a trade-off to be sent to a rich family to get married and what not.

It’s a very interesting phenomenon that has swept our civilization for millenia. And is it a coincidence that this trend applied to most civilizations in the world? Apart from very few cultures in the world where females took over, and apart from some phases in human civilization where men and women had more equality, this has been a pre-dominating trend. Men conquer the women.

The truth is, it still happens today at a sublimal level. A lot of women try to score the rich guy and rely on him to pay the bills while they pretty much trade away the sex. This may seem like women have the power to choose, but in other ways, it’s not. It’s a point where those women just degrade themselves into an object that trades favours for a secure life.

The sexual archetypes of men and women also say it. Men are dominant. Women are rather.. passive, submissive, whatever you want to call it. More women feel turned on when a guy is on top ravaging her rather than the other way around. Is this a cultural thing fed by religious beliefs and doctrines, which have been built over thousands of years? Or does this have a lot to do with hormonal and instinctual differences?

Men and women have different mentalities, and different ways of thinking, often. THey have different hormones. Trying to pin down the reason behind sexual inequality, in my opinion, is the same as trying to ask the question “Which is first, the egg or the hen?” It’s a self-feeding cycle. It’s probably true that the psychological differences between men and women is what spawned the religious stuff that says it out loud, and that probably re-enforced it for a long time, so it’s a cycle, a circle, however you may want to put it.

That being said. Can we justify some of the things that women go through in some cultures? No. That being said, are men still always at the upper hand with women? No.

What do we need to do? Be considerate for each other and be caring. There’s no point in digging up the past to see who’s at fault, or who is to blame. Let’s not stereotype (altho I’m guilty of it sometimes) and let’s not judge.

Another liberal Jewish atheist, Peter Singer, concedes this point. In his article, “Taking Life: the Embryo and the Fetus”, Singer quotes a report of a British government committee inquiring into laws about homosexuality and prostitution, which concludes: “There must remain a realm of private morality and immorality that is, in brief and
crude terms, not the law’s business.” (”Not the Law’s Business?”–the Wolfenden Committee– issued the Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, Command Paper 247, London, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1957, p. 24)

Singer goes on to quote John Stuart Mill (in his essay “On Liberty”) as having said: “…the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others…” Singer writes that “Mill’s view is often and properly quoted in support of the repeal of laws that create
‘victimless crimes’–like the laws prohibiting homosexual relations between consenting adults, the use of marijuana and other drugs, prostitution, gambling and so on. Abortion is often included in this list…

“The fallacy involved in numbering abortion among the victimless crimes should be obvious,” concedes Singer. “The dispute about abortion is, largely, a dispute about whether or not abortion does have a ‘victim.’ ” So even Peter Singer, who can hardly be called a right-to-lifer, concedes that the abortion debate centers on whether or not the unborn have rights. Nat Hentoff’s observation is correct!

A rational, secular case thus exists for the rights of the human unborn. Individual human life is a continuum from fertilization until death. Zygote, embryo, fetus, infant, toddler, adolescent, adult, etc. are all different stages of development. To destroy that life at any stage of development is to destroy that individual. The real question in the abortion debate is not the seemingly absurd scenario of giving full human rights to human zygotes, but rather on the thorny question of how to protect those rights without violating a new mother’s privacy and civil liberties. And the right to privacy is not absolute. If parents are abusing an already born child, for example, government “intrusion” is warranted–children have rights.

Recognizing the rights of another class of beings limits our freedoms and our choices and requires a change in our lifestyle–the abolition of (human) slavery is a good example of this. A 1964 New Jersey court ruling required a pregnant woman to undergo blood transfusions–even if her religion forbade it–for the sake of her unborn child. One could
argue, therefore–apart from religion–that recongizing the rights of the human unborn, like the rights of blacks, women, lesbians and gays, children, animals, and the environment, is a sign of social progress.

In his 1992 book, Visions of Liberty, former Executive Director of the ACLU, Ira Glasser writes:

“The use of wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping emerged during the Prohibition era. Roy Olmstead was a suspected bootlegger whom the government wished to search. It placed taps in the basement of his office building and on wires in the streets near his home. No physical entry into his office or home took place. Olmstead was convicted entirely on the basis of evidence from the wiretaps.

“In his appeal to the Supreme Court, Olmstead argued that the taps were a search conducted without a warrant and without probable cause, and that the evidence seized against him should have been excluded because it was illegally gathered. He also argued that his Fifth Amendment right not to be a witness against himself was violated.

“By a 5-4 vote, the Court rejected his arguments and upheld the government’s power to wiretap without limit and without any Fourth Amendment restrictions, on the grounds that no actual physical intrusion had taken place.

“Olmstead’s Fifth Amendment claim was also dismissed on the grounds that he had not been compelled to talk on the telephone, but had done so voluntarily. Thus the Court upheld the government’s power to do by trickery and surreptitious means what it was not permitted to do honestly and openly. It wasn’t until 1967, in a similar case involving gambling, that the Court overruled the Olmstead decision by an 8-1 margin and recognized that the Fourth Amendment applied to retapping
and electronic surveillance.

“Interestingly, these cases arose in the context of crimes like bootlegging and gambling. During the past twenty years, the majority of wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping by both state and federal officials has been in cases involving drug dealing and gambling.

“Serious crimes of violence, such as homicide, assault, rape, robbery, and burglary, are rarely the target of electronic eavesdropping, which is not normally a useful tool in such cases.

“From the beginning, when wiretapping was virtually invented to enforce laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol, to the late 1960s, when gambling was a major target, to the present, when the use and sale of drugs other than alcohol are the main target, these intrusive devices have been used mostly to enforce laws aimed at punishing and proscribing personal conduct that society deems immoral.

“Because such conduct essentially involves private activities among consenting adults who are all likely to want to keep those activities secret, they are harder to investigate and prosecute than crimes like robbery or burglary, in which an unwilling victim will probably aid any investigation…the invasion of privacy inherent in wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping remains with us as part of the legacy of our
attempts to criminalize personal conduct.

“The other major use of electronic eavesdropping has been to punish political dissent. For decades, former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover used wiretaps and other electronic devices to spy on political figures and citizens not yetr suspected of having committed a crime. He built vast dossiers on their political activities and personal lives. Special units of local police called ‘Red Squads’ did the same.”

The central issues in the abortion debate are thus the “personhood” or moral status of the unborn, and the extent of individual and marital privacy.

Stephen Douglas has been quoted as having said in debate with Abraham Lincoln that human slavery should be resolved through the democratic process. Let the people decide: if they “want slavery, they shall have it; if they prohibit slavery, it shall be prohibited.”

Whether or not democracy is the ideal form of government is not the issue here, but since we live in a democracy, what is wrong with Douglas’ statement? It was through the democratic process that we abolished (human) slavery, gave women the right to vote, gave 18 year olds the right to vote, and even attempted the Equal Rights Amendment. Isn’t this how we should extend human rights to the unborn? Isn’t this
how we should give rights to animals?

Roe v. Wade was decided in part by denying rights to the unborn, but also by assuming a right to privacy (Griswold v. Connecticut assumed a right to marital privacy regarding the use of contraception) which is not clearly spelled out in the Constitution.

Can we overturn Roe without overturning Griswold? Is the solution to the abortion crisis to pack the Court with conservatives who might also oppose things like church-state separation (Nat Hentoff, an atheist, must know that in the Newdow case regarding the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, Justice Scalia had to excuse himself from the
case, because he doesn’t believe in complete church-state separation) and deny us contraception (Griswold again!) and a right to privacy (Olmstead AND Griswold!)…or is the solution to enact a Constitutional Amendment to extend human rights to the unborn?

In 1986, the Supreme Court upheld a sodomy law. A few years ago, they reversed themselves, which outraged the religious right, but pleased lesbians and gays, the parents and friends of lesbians and gays, and political liberals. I cannot understand how pro-life liberals and pro-life Democrats, most of whom respect the private nonviolent behavior of consenting adults, most of whom support church-state separation, and most of whom support contraception and better sex
education as the most effective way to prevent unwanted pregnancies, would want to align themselves with pro-life conservatives and pro-life Republicans in order to pack the courts with conservatives in the hopes of eventually overturning Roe v. Wade.

It’s my conviction that we do have a fundamental right to privacy, and I cannot advocate putting the women of America unwillingly under electronic surveillance, probing their past without their consent, denying them contraception, or even going through their personal effects (although the Fourth Amendment does protect us against unwarranted search and seizure). There must be a better way.

Unlike Republicans, pro-life liberals advocate real social support for pregnant women and mothers. In Pro-Life Feminism: Different Voices, editor Gail Grenier Sweet calls for:

Easy access to contraception, sufficient maternity and paternity leaves, job protection, job-sharing and flex-time, aid to women who wish to stay home to raise young children, tax breaks and subsidies for women caring for elderly relatives at home, community based shelters for pregnant single women to learn parenting skills and finish their
education, upgraded pension plans to alleviate the poverty faced by many elderly women, humane care of the handicapped and elderly in nursing homes, hospices for the terminally ill, medical care for infants born with handicaps, shelters for battered women, childcare programs, etc.

Similarly, in the December 1993 issue of Harmony: Voices for a Just Future, a peace and justice publication on the religious left, in an article entitled “How Will we Revere Life?”, editor Rose Evans writes:

“This editor has long been aware of the relative success of the Dutch support system for pregnant women, compared to that of the U.S. The Dutch abortion rate is a minute fraction of the American. I believe the rate for young women in their teens is about one-twentieth of the U.S. rate. And this is done not so much by restrictive laws (although there are some restrictions) as by real social support for pregnant women and mothers.

“The situation for pregnant women in the U.S. who don’t have assured income, family support and medical insurance is abysmal and getting worse. Choice is a joke. Women don’t have money for decent food, decent housing, or decent medical care, nor adequate support after the child is born.”

“Want to Stop Abortions?” asks the June 1995 newsletter for the Colorado Peace Mission in Boulder, CO. “Make them unnecessary. Provide everyone with: A choice of whether to have sex…and with whom; Comprehensive sex education; Non-coercive family planning; Safe, affordable birth control; Open, honest talk about sex; Loving parents…”

Until we pro-life Democrats have enough numbers within our party to change the Democratic Party platform to one advocating a Constitutional Amendment extending human rights to the unborn (as is the case with the Republican Party), I think we should be advocating the following: real social support for pregnant women and mothers, along with reasonable
restrictions, such as a 24 hour waiting period, parental
consent/notification, informed consent laws, a ban on partial-birth abortions, etc. Doing this would bring down the abortion rate, which would please pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike within our party, and it would be consistent with Bill Clinton’s “safe, legal and rare” position.

If “safe, legal and rare” becomes the mantra of the
Democratic Party with regards to abortion, I would consider it real progress from the ’70s, when pro-choice bumper stickers read: “Abortion is every woman’s choice.”