HHS Moves to Define Contraception as Abortion

In what it must consider an act of Wilberforcian moral leadership, the Bush administration seems to want to force an increase in the American birth rate and remove freedoms Americans currently enjoy in the name of freedom of choice for health care providers.

They propose to do this with the kind of superficial logic that manipulates thoughts the way someone first learning a foreign language manipulates words in a dictionary. Government officials transferred the reasoning they deciphered from public polling data into legal arguments as if the public has a consistent and logically held medical and ethical position on fertilization and abortion issues. They translated generic polling data into precise legal arguments.

You will have to read the logic for yourself as documented in this source; only the barest outline can be afforded in this post.

Here are key excerpts from this source:

There are two commonly held views on the question of when a pregnancy begins. Some consider a pregnancy to begin at conception (that is, the fertilization of the egg by the sperm), while others consider it to begin with implantation (when the embryo implants in the lining of the uterus).

Up until now, the federal government followed the definition of pregnancy accepted by the American Medical Association and … the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which is: pregnancy begins at implantation.

So [now] HHS proposes that anyone can enforce his or her own definition of abortion “within the bounds of reason.”

The practical outcome of this logic led to the next step in the following headline:

Redefining abortion

Federal officials considering a rule allowing health care workers to refuse to provide contraceptives

Already “an existing regulation allows health care providers with objections to abortion to abstain from providing it to patients.”

By extending the definition of abortion to cover contraceptives, the new rule being promoted at HHS “would allow health care workers who object to abortion on moral or religious grounds to refuse to counsel women on their birth control options or supply contraceptives.”

Who’s “Good” does this new rule serve?

1. Obviously this rule is not for the good of unwanted babies who will be born, since many providers may opt out. Nor is it for the good of poor people who will be channeled into less than healthy options for dealing with the resulting consequences of unwanted pregnancies or alternative attempts to avoid them. Given the state of the economy, we can be fairly sure that there is no intent to ensure that other providers will be made available in every situation.

2. The rule that exempted health care providers with objections to abortion from providing it to patients was good because it allows them to avoid the direct act of what they perceive as killing. But indirect acts such as providing supplies cannot so simply and so arbitrarily be prescribed because this is a far more complicated issue. Do everyday store clerks have the right to refuse to sell condoms? One can at least imagine a host of legal controversies and more business for the legal profession as a result. One can even imagine a backlash against the original exemption.

3. According to the Houston Chronicle, this federal administrative rule would probably void a great many state laws. This rule is obviously not for the good of democracy, because it does not reflect a democratic decision-making process nor does it come close to reflecting decisions made by that process in the past.

4. Instead, this rule is widely viewed as payback to the Christian and religious right for its support of the Bush administration. Perhaps it is a cynical concession to the belief that the Democrats will win in November and immediately overturn it. But what if they don’t win? After all, John McCain has sided with the religious right on abortion. Real leaders do not play with fire like this. One has to wonder whether tainted hiring practices have also affected this area of the Bush administration.

Fanaticism takes what is good to an extreme. As we pointed out above, exempting conscientious objectors from providing abortions was good. But sneaking in exemptions for indirect contributions, however defined, without extensive debate and democratic decision-making is fanaticism.

Avoiding fanaticism involves a bit of relativistic thinking. A truly Christian approach to social change is not absolutist. Following the Apostle Paul’s example, one does not simply appeal to God’s revelation, but also recognizes the importance of social mores, because the objective of God’s law is love and peace. The goal of such social action is always to gain voluntary agreement.

What is Good about this Rule?

Absolutely nothing as far as I can see, for reasons already cited above.

Then why is it proposed?

The stated reason based on public opinion polls cited and refuted above is also invalid. A professional philosopher could provide a better explanation and the Bush administration would have done well to consult one. Even research specialists would be able to spot some of the errors in this approach since they would recognize the limitations of interpreting social surveys.

The underlying rationale for the rule is patent, however. The rule extends the likelihood of denial of abortions by giving high status to the definition of pregnancy as simply fertilization (apart from implantation) and by allowing providers such as pharmacists who contribute indirectly to opt out of providing.

In giving “equal” status to such a narrow ethical stance it allows that view to dominate the broader approach much like having a significant number of non-drinkers in a church tends to mean that alcohol may not be served on church property even though there are also a significant number of drinkers, who may actually be in the majority. The strong must accept the weak, but the weak do not have to accept the strong, because the weak think they are right. A teaching that was intended to express mutual concern becomes a tool for domination of others in express violation of Jesus’ commands to the contrary. Christians who deny Jesus’ paradigm as they contend for the “kingdom” in the civil arena are doing no better than those Jesus condemned for their practice of Corban.

Incidents like these help us begin to understand why Jesus predicted that both the sheep and the goats will be surprised about the verdicts on judgment day!

I’ve already expressed my view on the fertilization issue in a previous post. It boils down to the belief that human beings are called to be more than mere physical matter, including even the aspects of soul that the Bible always associates with the body (which is everything that fertilization represents). We must be “called” in some sense to become human. In a Christian theological sense, we are all are born spiritually dead. To have any spark of life and a chance of making it, individuals have to be wanted. My mother-in-law used to tell my children they used to be “a gleam in your father’s eye.” For communities to survive, older members need to reproduce and draw younger members into them. There are no stand-alone human beings.

Our responsibility is to draw individuals into human relationships and into relationship with God. It is not an isolatable responsibility to protect fertilized eggs. You can’t ethically fulfill the duty of protecting a fertilized egg without also fulfilling the duty to draw that being into the human family. A commitment of our country to a higher birth rate given our history and current economic conditions must be accompanied by a correspondingly huge investment in relevant social services supporting this commitment. It is the very fact that this rule is being introduced in such a backdoor manner that demonstrates that it does not reflect the high moral caliber that its backers would like to claim for it.

I do not believe that the “fertilized” ovum that do not implant are human beings that will some day be resurrected like everyone else. But that is what you as a Christian believe if you believe what the Bush administration is promoting to take precedent over other established laws.

Does that sound “good” to you?

Court Clears Way for Egg Rights Showdown

by P. Solomon Banda

Associated Press (Nov 13, 2007)

The Colorado Supreme Court has cleared the way for the anti-abortion group, Colorado for Equal Rights, to collect signatures for a ballot measure that would define a fertilized egg as a person.  If 76,000 signatures are collected within the next six months, Colorado voters will be forced to decide whether to approve a measure which would give fertilized human embryos the state constitutional protections of inalienable rights, justice and due process.

Nothing could be more obvious than to conclude that human cells at every stage of development constitute human life.  The question our society wants us to ask for legal purposes is at what point do these cells become a person. That point is when the power of the state will begin to enforce all the constitutional rights to which every individual is entitled.

As one supporter of the proposed Colorado amendment says, “If it’s a human being, it’s a person, and hey, they deserve equal rights under our law.”

This logic is based on the one-dimensional logic of ontology, with its assumption that the objective, physical status of the human being determines its human personhood and therefore its human rights.

Those who take the teachings of Jesus seriously would not uncritically accept this one-dimensional reasoning, however.

Jesus demonstrated that more that mere existence is needed in order to have the life God intended when he said…

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ (Matthew 7:21-23 NIV)

To experience human life in all its dimensions one must experience life in relation to God; and even apart from God, we only experience our created life as human beings when we experience it in relationship with each other.  We must be valued by another in order to have value.  A baby that is not nurtured dies.  Our mere existence alone does not give us value: we must also be valued.  That is true beginning at our conception and remains so throughout our existence.  We will find our strongest identity needs fulfilled in our relationship with God; but we also have daily practical needs we depend on others to supply.

Jesus strongly emphasized our inter-connectedness when he taught his followers the importance of forgiveness, but then left it up to them to decide who would be admitted into his kingdom, assigning his followers the responsibility to serve as a virtual gateway to God’s forgiveness in their earthly community - “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19; cf. Matthew 18:15-20).  Jesus wanted his followers to be known for their love for one another.

That we only exist in relationship, and therefore do not have value simply because we exist but because we are also valued may sound oxymoronic, as if the two aspects of value automatically go together.  But this is not so.

Mechanistic processes are not usually quite that preferential.  Natural processes apparently do not expend extraordinary effort to preserve every fertilized human ovum.  Many are lost at various stages after conception: “About 15 percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, most of which occur between the 4th and 12th weeks of pregnancy.”  If lost at the ovum level, they might never even be noticed.

All human beings must also accept the reality of separation from their loved ones by death at some point.  As health technology has improved, people are more and more forced into a position traditionally left to God and must make decisions that affect how long they or their loved ones will live.  As the Apostle Paul said, we still await the day when “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:20-21).  Death and many other consequences of sin are inevitable and unavoidable.

When we create a law such as the one proposed in Colorado, we are affirming our collective will to so value the independent human status of the fertilized ovum that we are committing ourselves and our collective resources to protecting it and to holding those who have created it accountable for maintaining it.  The Colorado proposal seems to reject the responsibility to make ongoing value judgments and instead attempts to make a once-and-for-all absolute value judgment that will supposedly resolve all those other moral conflicts. 

The proposed Colorado law makes heroic efforts to save every unborn human obligatory.  There is no other way to avoid this conclusion because by definition the law takes effect at the moment of conception, when the number of cells is at the lowest possible level.  Could babies with gross deformities that were not predicted before conception be aborted if they were identified shortly after conception?  Not if they were defined as human persons and therefore protected by the Colorado constitution.  But to their credit if they approve this amendment, Colorado voters will also be committing themselves to the medical and social services to pay for these lifelong dependent citizens.

Think what it would mean if every fertilized egg is considered a human person even though nobody in particular cares about it.  Society would still have an obligation to protect every fertilized egg as long as possible.  In this scenario every unused egg conceived for in vitro fertilization would be required to be preserved forever.  Fertilized embryos can be stored in liquid nitrogen for indefinite periods of time. People who recognize the absurdity of creating this legal responsibility most likely recognize that some specific humans must also value those eggs, or at least should value those eggs if they must be preserved.

However, by all accounts this proposed Colorado law appears to require the absurd conclusion that all fertilized eggs are human persons and therefore must be guaranteed full constitutional rights.  That means any fertilized ovums left over after the in vitro fertilization process would still be considered human beings under the Colorado constitution.

There are other possible complications of this Colorado law including creating conflicts of interest between the rights of the mother and the rights of the unborn fetus:

Treating the fetus as a legal entity separate from the pregnant woman creates the potential for an adversarial relationship between the woman’s health needs and those of her developing fetus and further confuses the issues of the health care provider’s duty to his or her “patient”…. (Smock, et.al., 2003)

Some are also concerned that certain types of IUD birth control devices might become illegal since they may prevent implantation of the fertilized cell in the uterus after conception.  That could be seen as a kind of murder if the fertilized cell is defined as a human person, for as one anti-abortionist put it, “Most methods of birth control kill babies in the womb by preventing implantation.”

It appears that the main immediate goal of the proposed Colorado law is to legally establish high moral ideals; but it also appears that the far-reaching legal consequences of the law have not been well considered or communicated.

The proposed Colorado law will obviously eliminate abortion in Colorado.  But it will also, as we have already seen, most likely create the requirement that all embryos produced by infertile couples during in vitro fertilization will be their responsibility to maintain forever, since these embryos are their offspring and therefore their responsibility.  These embryos will be “people” before the law forever, even though they are contained in freezers. 

Can you imagine the commercial possibilities?  I wonder if anyone has begun locking in patents, copyrights and .com names.  Given that the amendment is presented in an innocuous format completely unrelated to any controversial setting, it has a very good chance of passing simply because those who are not informed on this issue and see the proposal for the first time either on the petition or in the voting booth may not give it much thought and conclude it really does not matter, but must be needed for some good reason.

Considering that this would be a constitutional amendment, and that the future consequences of this law are so likely to be unwelcome and expensive, this proposal really does set a new standard for condensing extremism in a small package.  Hopefully the citizens of Colorado will sincerely and accurately count the cost before they cast their votes on this measure.