Freedom of Choice or Enslaved to Death?
January 20, 2009
By Monica Ashour, MTS, M. Hum
(MetroCatholic) – The first thing to remember is that the “Freedom of Choice Act” (FOCA) is not about choice but rather abortion on demand. This article will be the first of two parts dealing with this current act. Today we consider the philosophical basis for FOCA and tomorrow’s article will deal with the political issues surrounding it.
Now, let’s consider, what is FOCA, the so-called Freedom of Choice Act? The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) says that “FOCA will secure the right to choose by establishing a federal law that will guarantee reproductive freedom for future generations of American women. This guarantee will protect women’s rights even if President Bush and an anti-choice Congress are successful in reversing Roe v. Wade or enacting even more restrictions on our right to choose.”
If this measure is passed, many state laws will be overturned including parental consent, waiting periods, conscience clauses that exempt a hospital from performing abortions, etc.
Here I will concentrate on FOCA — its background and its likelihood of passing in congress and then what we can do. But before I give to you the facts/statistics of the foreboding future, I want to submit to you my conjecture as to how such legislation as FOCA could even come about. How is such insidious legislation even viable? Where did we go wrong? What is the ideology and philosophy behind it? I would submit to you that it has to do with a lack of the Incarnational View of Reality and the move toward abstraction.
Let me first explain what I mean by an Incarnational View of Reality and what I mean by abstraction. Then, I will demonstrate to you that the measures of FOCA are based in abstraction. As a point of departure, I would like to read from one of John’s letters: “For many seducers are gone out into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh: this is a seducer and an Antichrist” (2 John 7). Some of you might think that I am calling our future president the anti-Christ . . . not exactly, but I do think that FOCA denies the body and is based in abstraction.
The Incarnational View of Reality is primarily a Catholic understanding, but such a religious approach, per se, does not need to be used in the political arena — I will get to that at the end when we talk about what we can do practically. The word, Incarnation, has within it, carn — that is body; so it is about He who was only spirit becoming flesh, becoming human which means having a body. So, Jesus’ becoming human reveals the invisible realities of God. Thus, the visible/sense-perceptible reveals the invisible realities. We, then, apply it to one of the things that makes us truly human: language. The key words here are language and symbol, the latter which comes from the Greek word, symbolon, meaning, “to throw together.” Language is vital to what I am suggesting. Body and words are symbols of deeper realities; this is based on our Catholic belief of the Incarnational View of Reality.
The body speaks a language. Those of you who are familiar with Pope John Paul’s Theology of the Body (TOB) will recognize this idea-which the Church has always had, but it has been brought to the fore by TOB. For example, sacramentally in baptism, water being poured is a sign of cleansing-and that visible action points to what is really going on-spiritually, a person is being cleansed of original sin. Our bodies are outward signs of inner realities-the smile says that internally, a person is glad you are here; a kiss shows the invisible reality that one is loved, etc.
Specifically in relation to pregnancy the act of sexual intercourse conveys a sacred union that the two become one flesh. In the least, it ought to be seen as a way to propagate the species — an act whose end is the possibility of a baby. All women, at least spiritually, are meant to be mothers. The womb of a woman says to her that her essence is in welcoming others, particularly the unborn baby. Welcoming that person into one’s very body ought to be the safest place on earth. The Scripture verse “were a mother to forget her baby” was meant to be hyperbole-the most far-fetched idea.
Men are physically bigger and give the seed to the woman and so should see that they are fathers and with their bodies should protect and provide for women and children, especially their own. (All men would defend against an aggressive attack on a woman, especially a wife and 2 year old; why can he not now)
The baby has his/her own body, with forty-six chromosomes, two arms, two legs, etc. Thus, he or she is a person with an eternal soul.
Along with bodily realities, words also are to be of an incarnational nature. They, too, are symbols. For instance if I say, “I love you,” that conveys a deep reality within me. “Get away from me,” tells very plainly what is going on within me-I want you gone. “And I absolve you of your sins” does the job, we might say, ex opere operato-it conveys what is really happening.
Relating this to pregnancy, a husband and wife’s relationship is the proper context in which a child ought to be conceived. But, we are re-defining the word marriage nowadays; this is extremely problematic.
Mother is the proper way of defining a pregnant woman.
Sexual acts outside of marriage are abstractions such that those actions are merely bodies bumping with no meaning, not an expression of total love between husband and wife. When a girl/woman becomes pregnant, we ought to think that at least two people are bound to her: the man and the baby. No woman has ever all of the sudden awaken, “Oh, I am pregnant today.” Through abstraction, it is almost as if the normal cause and effect (sex can lead to pregnancy) is gone from our imaginations.
Rather than seeing herself as mother of the person she FEELS BODILY in her very body — trusting her body to convey something to her about the life inside — the baby simply has “invaded” and becomes a “punishment,” to quote our new President Barack Obama.
Rather than the man following his natural instincts to protect his beloved and his child, he is scared. To be a father means to have responsibilities.
Rather than listening to the language of the body — feeling the body of the unborn baby move, grow, turn — the mother now refers to her baby as an IT and as a blob/tissue. The disintegration and abstraction of words reminds us of Nietzsche’s transvaluation of values-where what is bad becomes good. Relativism (the worst evil of our time according to Pope Benedict), in my view, is the result of abstraction. Politically correct language does not allow us to express reality; we are fearful of speaking. In regards to pregnancy the FOCA supporters see marital love as sex; mother as pregnant teen/woman; Father — is silenced or labeled a misogynist; the unborn baby is merely a fetus.
In FOCA we see the application of abstraction, the codification of the idea that the body does not convey a deeper meaning. Words are used euphemistically and therefore emptied of meaning.
From the bill itself; FOCA Sec. 3.3: “VIABILITY-The term ‘viability’ means that stage of pregnancy when…there is a reasonable likelihood of the sustained survival of the fetus outside of the woman.” Notice that there is no mention of responsibility regarding how one became pregnant. The mother, who must be well-along in her maternity, denies her own body, which is saying, “You have a son/daughter within your very body.” The father is not mentioned. The fact that the baby can live outside of the womb of his/her mother does not mean anything.
We also see in Sec. 2.10 that “Congress finds the following: (10) Legal and practical barriers to the full range of reproductive services endanger women’s health and lives.” This denies the reality that having surgery to remove the fruit of intercourse is really the danger. More abstraction of love/sex/babies. No discussion is undertaken about the mental health/life of a woman who has had an abortion. It is as if this physical surgery, which rends mother from child, has no emotional bearing on her. I have talked to many women who have had abortions; their health IS harmed by abortion — mostly their emotional and spiritual health. Once again the father is not mentioned — he is abstracted from the entire decision. Only the mother’s “health” is mentioned; the baby is abstracted from the equation.
Most ironically of all Sec. 2.1 states, “The United States was founded on core principles, such as liberty, personal privacy, and equality which ensure that individuals are free to make their most intimate decisions without governmental interference and discrimination.” Nowhere does it say in the Constitution or Declaration of Independence there is a “right to privacy.” That is a modern idea only created with Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 to allow for the distribution of contraception which gave all types of sexual acts to go on without consequences of babies.
However, The Declaration of Independence does say that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Furthermore our Constitution asserts that, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Thus, what our Founding Fathers actually stated in words is abstracted and made up. What those two documents actually say is that “all men are created equal… (with) a right to “life” and “Liberty” for our “Posterity.” The mother, with this accretion of “personal privacy,” is no longer mother or wife or daughter (to the grandmother or grandfather of the unborn baby), nor is she a citizen who is interested in the “common welfare”
Perhaps this is the most important conjecture presented here — that the woman with child is abstracted on many levels from being wife, mother, child, herself, Christian, or citizen.
She is abstracted:
From her husband (either they are not married so she thinks she will keep the guy if she kills her baby, which does not work in the long run, or her husband turns on her, not protecting her and his son/daughter). Without his support, she feels alone; no wonder she says, “I had no choice.”
From her parents (if FOCA passes, parental consent laws are done away with). The pregnant woman whose father should protect her and his grandson/granddaughter at all costs is often the one who promotes the abortion. Without his support and her mom’s support, she feels alone; no wonder she says, “I had no choice.”
From her son/daughter (if FOCA passes, informed consent which often takes the form of being able to see her son/daughter via sonogram would be stripped from her). “Personal privacy” says, “I get to decide what is best for me, not for anyone else.” Without viewing her baby as her son/daughter, she feels alone; no wonder she says, “I had no choice.”
From herself — (if FOCA passes, the waiting period will be done away with — with such time of waiting, one can recollect about who one, making a better decision). To find oneself, says Guadium et Spes in the Documents of Vatican II, one has to give oneself away. Instead of saying the most important words of the universe with Jesus, “This is my body, GIVEN UP FOR YOU,” for another, and thus finding herself, she says in accord with “Personal privacy” “This is my body, I will do whatever I want with it” making the baby’s body hers not his/her own-which, taken to its logical conclusion, means killing a part of herself so that she feels alone; no wonder she says, “I had no choice.”
From her society-starting from the closest to the largest-school, local community, city, state, country, even the world (if FOCA passes, even sidewalk counselors can be banned from letting her know someone cares. To say to her that she has “personal privacy,” society is saying, “You are on your own. We will not help you in your decision.”) At such an emotionally distraught time-especially if she is a believer who knows she did wrong-she is in desperate need of help from others; otherwise she stays in her sin, so she feels all alone; no wonder she says, “I had no choice.”
From her Church…from God. For people in churches to say, “Abortion is bad to me but you do whatever you want,” they are shirking their duty to the mother. (This is another problem with abstraction-when people think that their faith-life and society/political life are separate. The Catholic Church teaches that our faith ought to inform how we live as citizens; this is not “Christianizing” society; rather, it is living out the Gospel properly. So, we all should say, “I will be there with you. We will help you no matter what,” but what the mother hears from her well-meaning friends and church members is “God will forgive you,” not letting her know that forgiving herself will be almost impossible without deep healing later. Thus, she feels alone; no wonder she says, “I had no choice.”
Pope Benedict speaks of the root of the word privacy being private as in deprivation. While acknowledging some privacy is good, he points out the wrongful use of the word leads to the fact that, then, a person is deprived of a communion of persons. “Right to privacy” is a deprivation of the context of a communion of persons; the mother is abstracted from people around her to help support her. The father does not have the same “equal rights” as the mother in the decision-making regarding their unborn baby. One reason marriage is important on a political level is that men then begin to understand responsibility. The baby is deprived of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; he/she cannot be given liberty for he is not part of the posterity of the country; he/she is discriminated against more than any human person on earth, simply because he/she is abstracted from body and words. He/she is no longer a symbol of hope for a mother, a father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, the Church, society as a whole.
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“it is almost as if the normal cause and effect (sex can lead to pregnancy) is gone from our imaginations.”
Not almost! It is definitely gone. Any parents with more than 3 kids will tell you that they are often asked the question “Don’t you know what causes that?” The asker is not looking for the correct answer: “Sex”. No! Children are a result of planning.