Tag: Culture

The Feminist Idea of Reproductive Justice

~ Evan Lenow

I have already written a few pieces about the Health and Human Services mandate requiring contraceptives and birth control to be dispensed at no charge as part of group insurance plans. I have made theological and political arguments about the issue here. In a piece published this past weekend on The Public Discourse, Mary Rose Somarriba develops a natural law argument against the mandate and exposes the feminist idea of reproductive justice. Here are a few highlights:

For supporters of the recent HHS mandate that forces religious institutions to buy insurance that makes these items free to their employees and students, the cause served is “reproductive justice.” It was as past president of Law Students for Reproductive Justice that Sandra Fluke testified to Congress—as a victim of injustice who, along with her female peers at Georgetown, suffers from not having contraception paid for her in full.

But what is “reproductive justice”? To help answer that question, perhaps we should first ask: Who is guilty of the injustice? For Fluke, it’s her school that “creates untenable burdens that impede our academic success.” But of course it’s unfair to say that an institution, by not covering the cost of some product, implicitly creates burdens for its female students. My employer, by not covering my preferred allergy medicine, doesn’t create my burden of allergies. My allergy problems are internal to myself. They are, so to speak, natural problems I live with, ones I cannot label as someone else’s fault. Unless I were futilely to blame, say, God or nature.

Even though it seems ridiculous to blame nature for this “injustice,” Somarriba argues that blaming nature is exactly what feminists are doing with their arguments for reproductive justice and reproductive freedom. She continues:

But I would argue that underneath it all, advocates of “reproductive justice” do blame nature. Nature is the true obstacle to these women’s idea of justice.

Fluke might not put it this way, but radical feminists who cling to terms like “reproductive justice” and “reproductive freedom” are really trying to beat the cards that nature dealt them. They want sexual license outside the scope of what nature provides as the healthiest course—sex with one person for a lifetime. They object to the reality that sex can naturally lead to babies, creating burdens that research shows they’d be best suited to bear with the help of a husband. Underneath sexual liberationists’ wish to overthrow patriarchal traditions of marriage and religious institutions’ principles of sexual ethics, there seems to be a wish to overthrow the most stubborn foundation of all—nature herself.

The conclusion of the article is that reproductive justice and reproductive freedom are manufactured “rights” that have no grounding in nature nor the Constitution. Somarriba writes:

So, getting back to our original question: What is “true reproductive freedom”? If it means absolute sexual license without consequences such as pregnancy and children, then it has the unfortunate attribute of never before existing in history. It’s not a freedom that women have ever fully exercised; it isn’t one that was possessed by women at some time but was taken from them and thus needs to be safeguarded from violators.

Nevertheless, terms like “reproductive freedom” and “reproductive justice” are the rallying cries of such advocates. For Hoffman and her comrades, unwanted pregnancy is an unjust imposition on women who are sexually active. Technology such as contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization have nearly evened the scales of reproductive justice—even if not completely; as long as women have had to pay for these things, they’re still being treated unjustly.

The article is an interesting read and worth your time.

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Mary Rose Somarriba, “The Battle Against Nature’s Sexism,” The Public Discourse, April 20, 2012.

For my other articles on the so-called “contraceptive mandate,” visit https://evanlenow.wordpress.com/tag/contraception/.

Is Atheism Ethically Rational?

~ Evan Lenow ~ 14 Comments

Yesterday morning the local Dallas-Fort Worth Fox affiliate (KDFW, Fox 4) ran a story about a local group of atheists who are sponsoring some billboards in the DFW Metroplex targeting families and children. The billboards promoting the Dallas-Fort Worth Coalition of Reason are specifically timed to be up during the Easter season and proclaim, “Our families are great without religion.” This same group focused advertising campaigns toward African Americans during Black History Month and paid for ads on the sides of Fort Worth buses leading up to Christmas that read, “Millions of Americans are good without God.”

With freedom of speech and freedom of religion in this country, the DFWCoR is certainly free to hold such beliefs and even to advertise to potential constituents. In the marketplace of ideas, however, we need to ask the question: Are their claims rational? Specifically of interest to me is whether or not their ethical claims are rational.

On their website, the DFWCoR makes the following claim:

For the religious community, we want them to realize that, although nontheists reject the supernatural, we share with them compassionate human values that most religious believers embrace. In most ways, we are like them, hard working, tax paying, moral citizens who care deeply about our families, our communities, our state and our country.

My question is on what basis and from which foundation do they reach the same “compassionate human values” that religious believers hold? For most “religious believers,” be they Christian, Jewish, Mormon, or even Muslim, they draw their morals and values from a source they claim to be divinely inspired. For Christians, we believe that the Bible is God’s inspired Word and that He communicates to us His expectations for our lives and our ethics.

Atheists, on the other hand, reject any supernatural source of revelation regarding ethics, morals, and values. At best, they rely upon their own reason to reach the conclusion that certain values are desirable or even (dare I say) required. Thus, an individual’s reason becomes supreme in the formulation of ethics.

This is not a new position. John Frame discusses the historical evidence of this position as he writes:

[T]he Greek philosophers sought to understand the world without reference to religion or tradition—and certainly without reference to the God of Scripture. Their chief authority was human reason, functioning independently of revelation and tradition. That view of reason I describe by the phrase rational autonomy.

The problem with such rational autonomy is that it is not inerrant. There are times when reason fails the individual or the society. Rather than blaming human reason for error and thus acknowledging that it is incapable of determining morals, the Greek philosophers blamed the universe. Frame notes:

Their most common answer was that if reason itself is our ultimate guide, then its failures must be failures, not of reason itself, but of the universe. The problem is not the knower, but in what he seeks to know; not the subject, but in the object of knowledge. We fall into error because the world in which we live is in some measure unknowable. . . .  But then the philosophical task proves impossibly difficult, for no rational account can be given of an irrational universe. Thus appears the rationalist-irrationalist dialectic.

Here we see the problem with a purely rational approach to ethics. When reason fails, the error has to be blamed on someone or something. If one were to blame reason, then the entire rational system breaks down and is proven worthless for ethics. If one blames the universe, then the rational person cannot rightly say that the universe is knowable; therefore, reason is incapable of reaching authoritative conclusions about a universe it cannot know.

At the end of the day, rational autonomy is inconsistent at best and most likely incoherent as an ethical system. The DFWCoR cannot rightly claim that they hold to the same “compassionate human values” that religious believers hold unless they reach a conclusion about those values on an irrational basis (tradition or divine revelation). So that leads us to the question: Are their families great without religion? If by great they mean upholding such “compassionate human values” believers hold, then the answer is no.

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Dionne Anglin, “Atheist Ads Target Families, Children,” KDFW Fox 4, March 26, 2012.

Dallas-Fort Worth Coalition of Reason, http://www.dfwcor.org/.

John Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2008), 73.

Can an Unjust Law Be a Law at All?: The Contraceptive Mandate

~ Evan Lenow ~ 1 Comment

I have previously written about the Health and Human Services guideline to the Affordable Care Act (aka, ObamaCare) that will require religious institutions to provide all FDA-approved contraceptives to their employees at no charge through their group health insurance plans. I believe that such a mandate violates religious liberty and freedom of conscience that is guaranteed protection under the First Amendment of the Constitution.

Today the United States Senate voted to table the Blunt Amendment which would have protected those who object to this new insurance mandate. The vote was predictably along party lines with all but one Republican favoring the amendment and all but three Democrats opposing the amendment.

As this new mandate proceeds to take the form of law, we need to ask the questions:

Is this law unjust?

Can an unjust law be a law at all?

In relation to the justice of this law, I have previously argued that it violates the freedom of religion granted by the First Amendment. In addition, I believe this law is unjust because it violates God’s eternal law of protection of innocent life. We see in Genesis 1:27 that human beings are created in the image of God. Thus, the inherent value of humans begins at conception. Any attempt to end life after conception (e.g., Plan B, Ella, abortion, etc.) is a violation of the eternal law of God.

Thomas Aquinas gives us a good historical perspective from which to evaluate the justice of human law. Aquinas writes:

Laws framed by man are either just or unjust. If they be just, they have the power of binding in conscience, from the eternal law whence they are derived. . . . On the other hand laws may be unjust in two ways: first, by being contrary to human good . . . either in respect of the end . . . ; or in respect to the author, as when a man makes a law that goes beyond the power committed to him;—or in respect of the form, as when burdens are imposed unequally on the community, although with a view to the common good. . . . Secondly, laws may be unjust through being opposed to the Divine good: such are the laws of tyrants inducing idolatry, or to anything contrary to the Divine law: and laws of this kind must nowise be observed, because, as stated in Acts 5:29, we ought to obey God rather than men.

If we look at this mandate through a Thomistic lens, the contraception requirement is unjust on both levels. It is contrary to the human good because it goes beyond the power granted to the federal government and imposes an unequal burden on society. The Constitution does not grant the federal government the power to require purchase of health insurance nor to tell health insurance plans what must be offered and for how much money. Those with religious convictions against such birth control are burdened with violating their consciences. If no such mandate existed, those with no religious conviction against contraception could buy it on the open market. Those with convictions against it would not be unduly burdened.

Second, this mandate is opposed to the divine good because it violates the law of God to protect innocent human life. In Psalm 139:13–16, we read that God forms children in the womb, and He has planned our days before we are ever born. God is intimately involved in the creation of life from the very moment of conception. God values human life and calls upon us to protect it (Exodus 20:13).

That leads to the second question: Can an unjust law be a law at all? Turning to Aquinas again, he answers with a resounding “No!” Speaking of unjust laws, Aquinas writes, “The like are acts of violence rather than laws; because, as Augustine says, a law that is not just, seems to be no law at all.”

Believing this new mandate to be unjust and opposed to both the common good and divine good, I applaud Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) and his colleagues for attempting to protect religious liberty. Those 51 senators who voted to table the amendment, effectively killing it, should recognize they have violated the sacred trust of their office to govern justly for the American people. We should strive for just laws enacted by our government and condemn unjust laws that are in fact no law at all.

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Tom Cohen and Dan Merica, “Senate kills controversial ‘conscience’ amendment,” CNN, March 1, 2012.

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I–II.96.4.

My previous articles on this issue include: ObamaCare and the First Amendment and To Mr. Obama, From a Conscientious Objector.

Face-Washing or Whitewashed Tombs?

~ Evan Lenow

The Chinese government appears to be getting a little more politically correct in the enforcement of one of its most notorious policies—the one-child policy. According to the Shanghai Daily, the National Population and Family Planning Commission has initiated a new program called the “Face-Washing Project.” In an attempt to enforce this policy, apparently some local officials have threatened violators with forced sterilization, arrest, and even death.

The newspaper reports:

Some local officials in rural areas have come up with nasty slogans to intimidate couples planning to have more than one child. Simply reading some of them can send chills down one’s spine.

Some examples: “If you don’t receive the tubal ligation surgery by the deadline, your house will be demolished!” “We would rather scrape your womb than allow you to have a second child!” “Kill all your family members if you don’t follow the rule!”

“Once you get captured, an immediate tubal ligation will be done; Should you escape, we’ll hunt you down; If you attempt a suicide, we’ll offer you either the rope or a bottle of poison.”

Instead of using such intimidating slogans, the face-washing project wants to substitute “milder expressions in an effort to ‘avoid offending the public and stoking social tensions.’”

Population control has been a concern in China for quite some time. With the world’s largest population in excess of 1.3 billion people, the Chinese government has employed a number of measures in their attempt to curb population growth. The one-child policy was implemented in the 1970’s and restricts families in urban areas to one child. Violators face steep fines and even forced sterilization.

Rather than using threats of violence, the new government mandate wants to focus on China’s population problems. Forty years of the one-child policy has created gender imbalance in the nation. Li Bin, director of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, stated that there were 118 boys born in 2010 for every 100 girls. As a result of gender imbalance, it is estimated that 30–40 million men will have difficulty finding a wife by 2020.

In addition, the population of China is aging. “Currently, 13.26 percent of China’s population is aged 60 or above. The percentage is expected to hit one-third, or 440 million people, by 2050, according to Li.” With only one child for every two adults, care for the elderly will become a major burden for the Chinese government.

In light of these problems, China is not backing down from its policy. Population control is still a major issue. The Chinese government is simply trying to put a new face on its policy.

This face-washing project reminds me of a condemnation Jesus made against the Pharisees. In Matthew 23:27–28, Jesus proclaimed:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

The problem is that the government is putting a coat of whitewash on a tomb. The unspoken problem with China’s policy is the proliferation of abortion, especially of little girls. If the people are only allowed one child, they want a son who will take care of them and carry their family name. The new slogans may present a nicer face, but the policy is still full of dead men’s bones, literally.

Before we condemn China for a policy that leads to sex-selective abortions, we need to recognize that only now is there legislation in the House Judiciary Committee to prevent sex-selective abortions in the US. The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act is working its way through the House of Representatives, but not without opposition. While there may not be a policy in the United States that limits families to one child, there is a sense among many Americans that having more than one or two children leads to imminent financial disaster. Therefore, we are beginning to see such sex-selective abortions in our own country as well.

May we heed the words of Jesus and recognize the underlying sin in our own lives and in our nation rather than simply applying a coat of whitewash.

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Li Qian, “Gentler reminders to replace ugliness,” Shanghai Daily, February 25, 2012.

Mark Norton, “House panel OKs ban on sex-based abortions,” Baptist Press, February 27, 2012.

To Mr. Obama, From a Conscientious Objector

~ Evan Lenow ~ 6 Comments

Dear Mr. President:

In recent weeks, a decision by your Administration has stirred great controversy among people of faith regarding the requirement that insurance policies offer free access to all FDA-approved contraceptives and sterilization. On the basis of the freedom of religion guaranteed to me as a citizen of the United States of America in the First Amendment of the Constitution, I want to state my conscientious objection to this policy.

First, the requirement of insurance policies to offer contraceptives to all people at no charge violates my religiously-held belief that life begins at conception. Among these contraceptives are drugs known to cause the elimination of a fetus after conception by preventing implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterine wall. Such drugs (e.g., Plan B, Ella) are more properly called birth control because contraceptives, strictly defined, prevent conception. These drugs act to prevent birth after conception. On the grounds of teaching in the Bible, I believe that all life begins at conception. In Psalm 139:13–16, we read that God forms children in the womb, and He has planned our days before we are ever born. God is intimately involved in the creation of life from the very moment of conception. In addition, Genesis 1:27 tells us that all humans are created in the image of God. The inherent value of God’s image begins at the moment human life begins—at conception.

Second, the requirement of insurance policies to offer contraceptives to all people at no charge makes me complicit in funding these abortifacient drugs. While you have offered exemptions to churches, I work at a religious school. It is debatable whether my school will meet the exemption standard. However, it is clear that the insurance program my school uses will be forced to comply. In the insurance business, it is an elementary principle that costs are passed along to the consumer through higher premiums. Even if the insurance companies have to “pay out of pocket” for those contraceptives (according to last week’s “compromise”), the burden will merely shift to the individual consumer—making us all complicit. This too violates my conscience and freedom of religion.

Third, the requirement of insurance policies to offer contraceptives to all people at no charge extends beyond the constitutional authority of the federal government. Insurance companies are businesses that are not owned by the federal government. Government has no constitutional authority to require business to offer a service at their own expense. In addition, the mandate of the Affordable Care Act that requires all individuals to have insurance extends beyond the constitutional authority of the federal government. In order to live and breathe in America, the government is attempting to force citizens to buy insurance. This is a gross abuse of power on the part of the federal government.

I humbly request that you rescind the current contraception regulation proposed by Secretary Sebelius and rescind the insurance mandate of the Affordable Care Act. These actions are a violation of your constitutional authority, and the contraceptive mandate is a violation of my guaranteed right to freedom of religion. I would like to remind you that the Bill of Rights was written “in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of [the federal government’s] powers” (Preamble to the Bill of Rights). The current mandates are both a misconstruction and abuse of powers. The First Amendment trumps these mandates.

Please know that even today I have prayed for you and your Administration as instructed in 1 Timothy 2:1–2, which reads, “First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.” I pray for wisdom on your behalf to protect the consciences of the citizens over whom you have authority and to respect the teachings of Scripture which you claim to believe.

Sincerely,

Evan Lenow
Conscientious Objector