ABORTION

With the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, there are several pundits who are saying that the nomination of her replacement becomes a bigger campaign issue that the Coronavirus pandemic. (I can't help but think of the quote attributed to Stalin: "One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic."

With Ginsburg's passing, the conservatives hold a firm 4-3 advantage over the liberals with Chief Justice John Roberts, originally designated a conservative, exhibiting an independent streak on several key votes. When a vacancy became available at the end of Obama's last term, the Republicans wouldn't grant him a hearing for his nomination because they contended it was too close to the election and the electorate should decide by the president they chose. Trump prevailed and he has placed two conservative judges on the court. 

Even though Democrats are making the same argument with early voting actually taking place, Trump is ignoring the Republican hypocrisy. He believes the confrontation over a third nominee will indubitably distract from COVID-19 and may provide him with an issue that will motivate his base with renewed enthusiasm, particularly the Religious Right. Democrats, on the other hand, are counting on independent women moving to their side based on pro-choice beliefs. Regardless, with less than 45 days until the election, this will be a showdown over the justice selection like few others. 

The Religious Right will never discover heaven on earth until abortion is outlawed. I am a Catholic who believes there is no consciousness after death, but I hold beliefs and perspectives that reflect a Catholic upbringing. I went from first through eighth grades in parochial schools and studying religion was part of our daily curriculum. We never studied the Bible. It was more like a literature class in which the Bible's major events were presented to us in a short-story format.

But we did learn about sin. They were separated in two groups--venial and mortal. If you died with only venial sins on your soul, you were sentenced to purgatory. If you died with one mortal sin on your soul, it was a straight ticket to hell, and hell, as we learned in first grade was not a pleasant destination: You would burn eternally. When that impression is etched into your six-year-old mind, it's no wonder I still fear hell to this day even though my logic tells me it is another myth that can be traced to ancient stories that preceded Judaism and Christianity.

I have read the Bible. In all honesty--I don't want to commit a venial sin--I haven't cut my way through all the prophets, but I'm currently reading Revelations in Spanish. Seven seems to be the magic number. As to the Ten Commandments, the first three I ignore because I don't see God any differently from Zeus or Jupiter so his existence is a non-starter for me. I keep the Sabbath holy by never missing a Dallas Cowboy game. Fifth and sixth are easy because I love my parents and I would never kill unless Trump recruited me to kill Taliban fanatics. Number seven takes all the fun out of life because everyone wants to commit adultery. Eight and ninth are no-brainers because I'm against stealing and lying. And as to not coveting my buddy's wife as commanded by number ten, that's not a difficult decision. Women are a dime a dozen, but a good friend is rare.

With the exception of killing, I'm not sure which ones are venial sins and which ones are mortal sins, but in general it's a solid moral code because it makes common sense except for the first three which are nonsense unless you have drunk the Kool-Aid. The three that confused me for many years contained in their mandates "bear false witness" "adultery" and "covet." I am sure the nuns must have explained to us that bearing false witness was lying, but I don't think they were as forthright with the latter two. And imagine if we did read the Bible in those days and we stumbled across "fornication" in our readings. The poor sisters would have lost the little hair they had.

I could write a novel about my Catholic upbringing. It would be humorous. I have said that once we discovered the crock of shit Catholicism was, it has made us less susceptible to other Christian beliefs. Percentage wise, I would estimate that the largest number of atheists come from the Jewish and Christian ranks and the largest number of Zen converts rise from the same sources.

But I'm here to talk about abortion. I had a daughter--Gabriela Cristina--born prematurely at seven months. She weighed three pounds and appeared perfectly normal, but since an infant's lungs are the last organ to fully develop, she was hooked to oxygen. Every few days the doctors and nurses would disconnect her, but she could never learn to breath on her own. Then infections assailed her and for the next three months she slowly deteriorated until she passed. With the exception of the immediate grief, her death did not haunt me just like my father's passing hasn't plagued me. I have no problem accepting that babies and octogenarians die. You can't bet against the odds.

Gabby, as we called her the few months she blessed us, taught me an important lesson. At a certain time during the gestation--I would say in the middle of the second trimester when the embryo has evolved into significant development in the the fetal stage--the dye has been cast. The fetus is now human. I'm not a doctor, so I'm not prepared to say if the fifth month is the cut-off date. Nevertheless, an abortion this late in the second trimester borders on murder. I can accept an abortion at this stage if the mother is the victim of incest, rape, a life-threatening disease or if the baby is diagnosed as abnormal with an affliction that undermines its quality of life.

(I would lie awake at night cursing God that he hadn't ended my life at birth. I could have been saved the mental torture of hell. Since we were free of sin although there were some Catholic fundamentalists who would argue that we were all born with original sin as a result of Adam and Eve disobeying God and eating the forbidden fruit, it was generally accepted that innocent infants went to limbo. And what was limbo? It was exactly the same as heaven only its inhabitants would never see the face of God. Transfixed by the choice between hell and limbo, I found limbo worth the loss of never seeing God's face. A few decades ago, the Catholic Church, in spite of defending its existence for centuries, ruled there was no longer a limbo. I have never received an answer from the good fathers, the ones that don't sodomized you, about the destination of babies and even fetuses for that matter: Are they branded with original sin and sentenced to purgatory--I would assume it would be a very short stay--or do they ascend directly to heaven like the Virgin Mother?)

Since neither pro-choice nor pro-life proponents seem able to find common ground because they fear they would be victims of the slippery slope argument, what is the compromise? For some pro-choice sympathizers, there is no compromise. They fervently believe that life begins at conception. No amount of reasoning can convince them otherwise. Are they the vast majority and it's all or nothing with them or is there a substantial group that perceives the first trimester as a gray area?

I don't believe when the seed coat ruptures and the radicle emerges and becomes the first root that we have a plant, whether it is a spear of grass or a giant redwood. To have the potential to become something does not mean that you have become that something. The same mentality works for me when a sperm cell fertilizes the egg. This is not a human being nor does it become a human being for a period of time. Therefore, I do not believe an abortion is a process that murders a human being. In my estimation this mass of matter is meaningless.

At the end of the first trimester, all bets are off. I can imagine supporting an abortion into the fourth and fifth months, but I'm opened to negotiation of this subject. Since I'm placing my pro-abortion sympathies on the first trimester, women of all ages should have easy accessible and affordable birth control remedies widely available at their beck-and-call. Teenagers should be able to purchase day-after or week-after or month-after pills without their parents' permission. If during the first three months a woman determines that she is pregnant and decides that she doesn't want to have a child, then a girl or a woman should have a wide assortment of options within easy reach to terminate her pregnancy. And if for any reason she can't cover the costs, the government should provide the means to assist her with her dilemma.

I'm a good ol' Catholic boy who received communion and confirmation, who had wonderful memories of the Church which often involved my family, who had to mumble when he admitted in the confessional that he had been masturbating with accompanying erotic thoughts, who served on the altar for many years and could respond in Latin with the best of them and who still stops at the Immaculate Conception Cathedral downtown and lights a candle before the statue of St. Jude Thaddeus, my family's patron saint. Just like I was lucky to be raised in California, I give thanks that I was raised a Catholic.