The Culture of Contempt

Who is sitting around your Thanksgiving table today? Friends, family, coworkers? Do you love those there? Probably, if you invited them, at least! Do you fight about politics with them? Do you dread the interactions because of landmine issues? Are you silently seething but won't speak up to keep the peace? Or are you the muzzled, non-disclosure type, in a sanitized group who dare not speak of those forbidden subjects- religion and politics?

It doesn't matter what your political views are right now; you probably are surprised and chagrined by the level of animosity out there in our polarized political climate. As I mentioned in a previous blog, my sister-in-law was followed by another vehicle's owners because they were angry about her bumper sticker. Our political leaders set poor examples during public discourse as rules of common decency are ignored. And who out there has de-friended or at least snoozed someone they love (or at least like) because of posts of political content? When did we get so afraid to tolerate discussion? When did discourse get replaced by insults?

I recently watched a talk by Dr. Arthur Brooks, Harvard Professor. In it, he introduced me to the words "Motive Attribution Asymetry". This is a term for 2 parties in an intractable conflict - they  believe that they each are motivated by love, but the other side is motivated by hatred, so there is no reason to talk. This is actually a cognitive error. Both sides can't be right, so one side is wrong or both. Think major world conflicts. Think of the worst divorce you've ever encountered.

Dr. Arthur Brooks, in his scholarly pursuits, read an article in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences about Motive Attribution Asymetry. What is striking is that the authors concluded (back in February 2014) that Democrats and Republicans were demonstrating the same level of Motive Attribution Asymetry as Palestinians and Isrealis! Do you think relations have improved since then? "When Left and Right are acting like hostile foes or blood enemies, there is no way we can make progress, we go nowhere" Dr. Arthur Brooks summarizes. How many government shutdowns have we encountered in recent years?

Who doesn't love to be right? To surround yourself with those who agree and sneer at those who don't. And if you are too polite to sneer to someone's face, in the more hostile worlds of social media you may be just fine reposting a meme calling someone a racist for wearing a hat. Because you agree! Without thinking about why someone else has the view they have. Without caring for them as an individual. Without understanding. They are a villain, plain and simple.

We are all so sure we're the ones who are right! Not only is that other side stupid and evil, but they are responsible for all those problems out there! Too bad problems have been happening to humanity since the beginning. That kind of throws a wrench in the works. Maybe there are some good ideas from both sides!?!

My challenge to you today? First, watch the Dr. Brooks talk (it is attached below) as he has some phenomenal ideas about actually fixing the situation! Secondly, when you run into something you don't agree with online, try to consider the other person's viewpoint and if you do respond, so so respectfully. We are all humans and deserve that. Third, for those who are afraid to discuss the "unspeakables", start up a political or religious discussion with someone you know and listen considerately to their viewpoint. This world needs more love and less hate!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=emb_title&v=3CeZb3zK_Qw&fbclid=IwAR3uYXNLmX83ZxZ3ermhh15PyaMAgMI_Om4iCZmN_UmFS-zGjD-29Tejy08

Things That Pro-Choice People Say That Drive Their Pro-Life Friends Crazy

Most of my friends and readers know that I am deeply pro-life. It is at the core of who I am and I am not afraid to share that with anyone. I have quite a number of pro-choice friends- we don't have to agree with our friends on everything and we respect each other. However, on social media right now,  the contention between pro-life and pro-choice folks has hit a fevered pitch. And the animosity is spilling over into real life. For instance, my sister in law was driving down the road in the city and the passenger in a neighboring car started flipping her off. She continued to flip her off for several blocks and when they both stopped at a traffic light, this individual got out of her car and tried to remove her pro-life bumper sticker. Luckily, that was the extent of the altercation, but it was unsettling! It seems right now that the divide between the sides in this debate is so deep. Anger is bubbling up on both sides. Here are some of the things that bother those of us on the Pro-life side of the debate

1. Antiabortion Advocates: Whenever you are opposed diametrically with an adversary and want to come together to dialogue about your differences, the respectful thing to do is to use your opponent's self chosen terms. I ask you, if you reject the words pro-life and instead use the words anti-abortion advocate, then wouldn't that leave the opposing side's term "pro-abortion"? Most, if not quite all, pro-life people would not use the term "pro-abortion" to refer to people who are pro-choice. So, be respectful and use the term pro-life or sanctity of life advocate.

 

Some people are rejecting the term pro-life because they say that the pro-life community isn't doing other things that are pro-life: opposing wars, providing education, protecting the environment, helping immigrants, or helping those in poverty. They may say that in order to be pro-life, you have to look at a multitude of factors. I would agree that these arenas are worthy and important things to do. There is always more to do! But people have to start somewhere. So, start with what is important to you! You would have to look at all of those other factors as well, but also at protecting life. So, pro-life would mean protecting life in the womb + protecting the environment, opposing wars and the death penalty, etc.  But you can't really claim to be pro-life without leading with the main sanctity of life issues such as abortion and euthanasia. It's confusing to add more things to the category, but it does not completely negate the category by saying well, why don't you care about  XYZ? Some say that those which call themselves pro-life should instead call themselves pro-pregnancy or pro-birth; but do these terms make any sense? Would a politician let you know he was an abortion advocate by saying he was anti-birth or anti-pregnancy? I hope not!

 

I can offer another example. I volunteer for a breastfeeding organization. Our primary goal is providing breastfeeding support. There are lots of other  things that are important when providing maternal support; lots of other organizations who support moms. There are maternity leave rights, there is maternal mental health, there are infant massages, there is PIWI (Parents Interacting With Infants), there is WIC, there is natural child birth. But our breastfeeding organization does not focus on any of these other categories because they look at the primacy of the mission which is to provide breastfeeding support.

 

So, for the people who are active in the pro-life ministry, the primacy of the mission has to do with trying to help prevent abortion. These individuals' main objective is to support women in a crisis pregnancy and come alongside them and help them have the resources they need to choose life. There is room for a lot of other services, but for a pro-life person, preventing abortion is a key component to the goal. So, please be respectful and use the term pro-life.

 

2. Reproductive Rights. Anything having to do with rights sounds good. We like to defend rights in our country. So, a politician might say use a euphemism like "I want to protect women's reproductive rights" instead of the more straightforward, " I want women to have access to abortion". This is probably because abortion remains one of the largest polarizing issues in our country. When a politician is talking about protecting women's reproductive rights, what is he even talking about? Abortion is the main issue that comes to mind. No one is seriously working towards or advancing any sort of legislation to end contraception, even those of us who do not use it for moral reasons or believe that it is part of the problem. Since people don't like the sound of abortion, don't like to talk about it or think about it, politicians use the cool sounding phrase "reproductive rights" instead. Why do I have a problem with this phrase? 

 

Firstly, because it is inaccurate. Abortion is not actually about reproduction, so it is inaccurate to classify it as so. It is actually the opposite. It is anti-reproduction. it is anti-fertility. You may think me nit-picky, but saying abortion is a reproductive right is like saying censorship protects the freedom of speech. 

 

Secondly, calling it a right makes us sound like we have autonomy over our bodies. We're the ones in charge. We're the ones in control- "I am a woman, so I can choose whatever I like". But this is not how the natural system or God's plan works. We don't have autonomy over our bodies at all! If we did, we could say things like, "I have the right to not get cancer" or for my daughter, "She has the right to be free of diabetes." Even something as simple as our digestive system- how many women would love to be able to say, "I have the right to have a bowel movement every day." As humans, we hate how much we don't have control of or can't even predict.

 

The reality is, if unprotected intercourse happens when a woman is fertile, she is likely to become pregnant. But there is some mystery involved here, too! As a teenager, I had unprotected intercourse plenty of times (I know, shocking!) and I luckily did not become pregnant. But there are plenty of people who are having protected (or semi-protected) sex and getting pregnant. And there are many people who are trying to conceive and they aren't guaranteed that they will conceive either, even when there is no clear reason systematically that they should not. To me, it is a mixture of the scientific formula of favorable conditions and what I'd label a God moment! There is no way you can guarantee to either conceive or to not conceive, whichever you are aiming for. In prior times, as author Jennifer Fulwiler points out, if you were having sex, the expectation was that you would be having children, and so those who weren't prepared for that were encouraged by society to abstain from sex. This in our modern times has taken a new shape and is called sexual risk avoidance. Either way, we can see that humankind would have died out many years ago if it had not been for the God given gift of our fertility. So, it is clear that we really don't have control over the situation after all.

3. Pro-life people are all white, male, Evangelical Republicans who just want to use access to abortion to control women.

Just as pro-choice people come from every possible background, so do pro-life people. For instance, there is a growing movement in the Democratic party to accommodate individuals who are pro-life. Both Catholics and Evangelicals are overwhelmingly pro-life; but many other Christian sects also are pro-life or have some pro-life members, who oftentimes support some limitations on abortion. This is also true of members of both the Jewish and Islam religions. And a remarkable tale is told in "Black and Prolife in America, the incarceration and exoneration of Walter B Hoye II", in which Walter, a Baptist minister, was arrested for holding a sign in front of a Planned Parenthood building in Oakland, California that said, "God loves you and your baby. Let us help you." The face of the pro-life movement is diverse, and it is both untruthful and simplistic to represent it in the above light.

Just as the face of the pro-life movement is diverse, the motivation behind it is also diverse. Many women who have had abortions themselves join the pro-life movement because they want to help other women avoid what they themselves have gone through. Many of them have galvanized around the "Silent No More" Campaign.  Many people hold strong religious objections to abortion due to the ending of a life of the child. Abortion survivors are another group of people who are speaking loudly in the pro-life movement. So are some individuals with disabilities and those who love them, the same disabilities of which a couple might be counseled to seek an abortion when they find out their child has it, such as Down's Syndrome.

In answer to those who say those who are pro-life are anti-women, there are many pro-life feminists, who argue that abortion itself is damaging for women. Fiorella Nash, for instance, discusses many aspects of this in her book, "The Abolition of Woman: How Radical Feminism Is Betraying Women"  Also, Sue Ellen Browder wrote her expose, "Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women's Movement", in which she explains how abortion became one of the calling cards of feminism, as it was not part of the original 1960's women's movement.

 

Many are drawn to the pro-life movement due to the issue of gender-cide, in which baby girls are aborted or suffer infanticide throughout the world based solely on the fact that they are female. Watch this heartbreaking video on the "Save a Girl" campaign to learn more.

Lastly and strongly compelling to me are the number of former abortionists and former Planned Parenthood employees who have joined the pro-life movement. Recently, "Unplanned" was released to national audiences, a movie describing the evolution of Abby Johnson's call from a volunteer to the director of a Texas Planned Parenthood clinic to the pro-life movement (There is also a book by the same title). These individuals witnessed the realities of abortion and turned away from what they could no longer defend.

Clearly there are many faces to the pro-life movement, and many reasons for joining the pro-life movement. Simply dismissing all pro-lifers as those wanting to repress women is to ignore the diversity within the pro-life movement and dismiss the motivations for each person.

I'd like to end here on a note about dialogue. Pope Francis is a big proponent of dialogue; whenever there is strife between dissenting groups, the road to collaboration and understanding begins with dialogue and looking for common ground. Perhaps we can do that here, people. It seems like tensions between Pro-life and Pro-choice people will continue to build, but instead of assuming the worst about the individual who holds the opposing opinion, engage them in a dialogue. Ask them what they believe and why they believe it. Don't be afraid of discussion. In light of that, if anyone out there wants to know more about why I am pro-life, please don't hesitate to ask me.