The post Republicans Have A Very Strange Perspective on the Here and Now appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>Here’s a tough philosophical question for you. What is more important to you – the well-being of those of us presently living on Earth, or the well-being of succeeding generations?
Over the past fifty years, the Republican Party has taken a definite stance of minimizing its commitment to the well-being of those of us who currently inhabit Planet Earth. The GOP has become more callous in how it regards, or disregards, the well-being of those of us who currently on Earth.
In recent years, when America has been in crisis such as the Great Recession of 2008-09, or the recent and current COVID pandemic, Republicans become extremely miserly. They resist providing necessary financial aid to those who are suffering the most. This is odd, because many people believe that it is natural for currently alive human beings to look out for their own well-being first and worry less about those who come later.
Some believe that an inherent element of evolution is for each generation to want to make the world better for those that come next. But the history of our world has been replete with wars; ones in which billions of children have had their parents taken from them. Left behind are children with limited resources and bitter memories. If the Republican philosophy of prioritizing the future over the present held true, each generation would have become more peace-loving and prosperous. While there is some evidence of that, for the most part the economic and human rights status of today’s children is falling behind that of their parents, most particularly those in the United States.
There are clear political explanations to these conundrums. Democrats, particularly the progressives among them, are consistently seeking to improve the quality of life for those of us who are currently inhabiting Planet Earth. It may seem odd to speak of the New Deal or the Great Society in the context of cosmic issues such as planetary or universal evolution, but what is essential to know about Democratic policies is that they have a key common denominator. They are always working to make the quality of life better for those of us who at any point in time happen to be alive on earth. The New Deal was essential in moving millions of Americans out of poverty and misery. The Great Society provided enhanced civil liberties, health care, job training, educational opportunities and more for those who were alive in the 1960s. Republicans were largely opposed to these programs, just as they have recently been to the stimulus and social welfare programs of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
In Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s book Peril, about the end of the Trump Administration and beginning of the Biden one, we see how Republicans are very parsimonious when it comes to providing needed aid to those Americans who are suffering through the COVID pandemic as well as growing economic inequality.
Upon becoming president, Joe Biden sought $1.9 trillion for Americans to recover from the COVID pandemic and the damage it was doing to the economy. Republicans wanted far less. Maine’s GOP senator Susan Collins cobbled together a group of ten Republicans with the express purpose of forging a reasonable compromise with the new administration. The figure that the Republicans offer is $618 billion, less than a third of Democratic $1.9 trillion amount from President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
There have been times in American history when the political parties would have a disagreement like this. Each side recognized that its figure was a starting point. Representatives would meet in small groups. In this case of relief from the COVID pandemic, the Democrats would figure out how low they could go; the Republicans, how high they could go.
But in this case, the Republicans felt that the fact that their figure was greater than zero demonstrated that they were negotiating in good faith. They felt that it was good enough to let the American people, including the Democrats, know that they cared enough about the COVID problem that they were willing to do something, no matter how little.
The problem is that the Republicans expressed no awareness of the suffering that so many Americans, and individuals outside the United States, were experiencing at a time of severe illness, double-digit unemployment, and psychological isolation.
Simply put, the Republicans showed virtually no empathy for hundreds of millions of Americans who were suffering through the pandemic and related maladies. An illustrative component of the Republicans’ lack of concern and commitment about the suffering of the American people was that it did not seem to matter that millions of Republicans were among those hardest hit. This became particularly clear in early 2021 when COVID vaccinations hit the market and many Republicans chose to forgo them.
A second contemporary issues that clearly demonstrates how Republicans have minimal regard to for the currently living is abortion. Republicans have gone to all lengths to make legal abortion difficult, even impossible, in the United States. The bizarre Texas law with bounty hunters is only the latest in their efforts to suppress of women’s reproductive rights.
Republicans seem comfortable abrogating the rights of their wives, girlfriends, sisters, daughters for the vague commitment to protecting the lives of fetuses. While protecting the lives of fetuses is sound policy when examined in isolation, it pales in comparison to protecting the well-being of currently-living woman who is experiencing an unwanted pregnancy. The result is that we have more women, and men, who reluctantly become parents and often do not provide the necessary love and attention to their unwanted children.
Why is it that many Republicans place so little value on women and men and even children who are living now, and place greater importance on yet to be born generations? It is difficult to fathom. The impact of this public policy is huge. It reduces our collective chances of improving the quality of life for those among us who are currently living.
What is essential to keep in mind is that when we diminish the quality of life for those among us currently on Earth, we sacrifice opportunities for each current generation to improve life for itself, and equally important, for those who will follow. By addressing current needs on earth, we allow for subsequent generations to live more complete lives because the generations before them will have enjoyed greater human and economic rights.
Building from one generation to the next is not that difficult a concept, but regrettably, most Republicans have a difficult time grasping it. We see the results of their myopic view. Republicans give us the likes Donald Trump for a president and manipulate our political system so that even when Democrats such as Barack Obama or Joe Biden to win elections, it is difficult for them to govern effectively.
Democracy is at risk. A big step towards saving it is for Republicans to refocus their main concern to the well-being of those currently alive. This will help both the present and the future. It may be in the category of wishful thinking, but at this point, wishing is our best hope.
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]]>The post Progressives need to move beyond their fear of talking about abortion appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>Conventional wisdom says that “in polite company,” we don’t talk about sex, politics, or religion. Of the three, sex is clearly the least comfortable topic to broach.
You see, sex is a ‘hot’ topic; it’s erotic. Some may regard sex as joy; others regard it with shame; and still others with no apparent emotion. While nearly everyone has an opinion about it that does not mean that all are willing to engage in open conversation about sex.
This problem is particularly difficult with the topic of abortion. When abortion is brought up, what is missing is the honesty in the conversation – the honesty about how and why a woman becomes pregnant; what her thinking was before, during and after the act, and how the impregnator (the man) can frequently walk away from an act in which he was either an aggressor or a collaborator or some combination of the two.
Under the best of circumstances, the sex act is a consensual on the part of both individuals. At the time, the two may or may not have desired to pro-create. Under the best of circumstances, this is how the human race commits acts of love and carries on its existence from generation to generation.
But it doesn’t always evolve that way. There are numerous ways for complications or unfortunate circumstances to develop. Following the intercourse, the couple may decide that they are not in love and no longer want to be joint parents to a child.
If both believe in a traditional nuclear family, then the change in their relationship may cause one or both to decide that now is not a good time to give birth to a child. This can be particularly so with the woman who bears major responsibility for the pregnancy and the subsequent child-rearing.
Another dynamic may also be that there are other life changes for one or both progenitors. One is diagnosed with an illness or sustains an injury. It clearly is not a good time to bring a child into the world.
It may also be that as the adults’ lives evolve during the months following the pregnancy, that one or both parties decide that they are not ready to be parents; that they feel a greater compulsion now to pursue a career or avocation. This may seem crass to a strict pro-life advocate, but it is among the myriad of reasons why one or both parties to a pregnancy may want an abortion at a difficult time.
Perhaps the most likely cause of one or both parents not wanting to carry a pregnancy to term is that the process started off informally and then morphed into a “we just want to have a good time” occasion and little or no thought was given to a possible pregnancy during the act of intercourse.
The arguments in favor of abortion for women who have been victims of rape or incest are so compelling that it is hard to fathom why anyone would oppose them. It is often said that many conservatives are mean-spirited; their opposition to abortion following a rape or incest adds clear evidence to that assertion.
All of these reasons are tried and true parts of the ongoing human experience. As you read this, similar scenarios to the ones described above are happening all around the globe, and there is no stopping them.
Because sex is viewed by most as either ‘hot’ or ‘cold,’ most people have reasons to not discuss it in so-called polite company. But it’s too tempting to simply ignore. So rather than pretend that it does not exist, most of us, and especially the news media, either ignore it, or talk about it in code. This is something in which conservatives are exceptionally skilled. They frame issues in a way that do not use literal definitions. Instead, that they are cloaked in verbiage that assuages those conservatives who think that the only way to reference it is to disguise it. They talk about it as life, and what could be more pure. But their big fallacy is that they totally ignore the life of the mother, and the father. The force of the conservatives is so strong that it essentially inundates the mainstream media as well.
Conservatives will continue to dominate the abortion issue and wreak tremendous damage on the civil liberties and economic well-being of non-conservatives. The alternative is for progressives to discuss abortion and sex at the same time, and describe how abortion policy without a realization that “sex happens” will never reflect reality, empathy, and respect for basic civil liberties. Come on, progressives. News organizations now let us use the ‘F’ word as an expletive; why can’t we talk about it for what it really means. It will greatly help the whole country better come to terms with the abortion issue and make more logical and empathetic decisions.
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]]>The post US attempts to abort UN resolution on conflict-related sexual violence appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>Another day. Another outrage by the Trump administration. This time the outrage happened on the floor of the United Nations. While the attention of the American people was focused on the troubling conclusions of the Mueller investigation, the Trump administration’s U.N. delegation bullied its way to dominating the terms and diluting the intentions of what was an otherwise noble effort to prevent, treat the aftermath, and pursue justice for sexually victimized civilians in conflict zones – commonly referred to as conflict-related sexual violence.
Conflict-related sexual violence is understood to be sexual violence committed by armed actors during conflict. This type of sexual violence most often is aimed at girls and women but sometimes includes boys and men. It is often based on ethnic or political identity. A 2017 report by the U.N. secretary general called conflict-related sexual violence a global epidemic employed as a systematic tactic of warfare, intimidation, terrorism, and torture that destroys the social fabric of communities.
The list of recent conflicts in which documented cases of conflict-related sexual violence have commonly been employed as intimidation tactics spans the continents. Afghanistan, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Colombia, Darfur, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Myanmar, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, and Yemen are just some of the places where hundreds of thousands of non-combatants have been systematically brutalized and traumatized.
A decades-long, painstaking process to gather data, document survivors’ first-hand accounts, and negotiate terms for a resolution addressing conflict-related sexual violence was suddenly and unexpectedly upended by the U.S. threatening to veto the final language due to ideological concerns about implications in the resolution’s language for providing abortion services to victims of sexual violence and forced rape.
In a particularly out-of-touch and cruel display of disregard for the suffering of victims and their need for survivor-related services, the Trump administration threatened to veto the resolution and set back years of international efforts to address the violence and suffering if the resolution contained any reference to reproductive rights. Here’s how Foreign Policy magazine described the Trump administration’s outrageous and factually dubious reasoning for the threatened veto:
“The Trump administration pressured Germany into watering down a United Nations resolution aimed at preventing rape in conflict situations, forcing it to remove language on sexual and reproductive health that key Trump administration officials say normalizes sexual activity and condones abortion, according to U.N.-based diplomats and an internal State Department cable.”
Ultimately the authors of the resolution, the German delegation, were so desperate to save what they could that they gave in to the Americans’ demands and stripped the resolution of the language on reproductive rights. On Tuesday, April 23, 2019, Resolution 2467 (2019) passed, with thirteen votes in favor, none against, and the Russian Federation and China abstaining.
Following the vote, it was reported that one diplomat observed that the resolution had been “reduced so much that it’s now inadequate and there isn’t much left.” In a joint statement, four countries–-Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden—dared to speak out against what they saw as “the lack of reference to victims’ rights due to the threat of a U.S. veto.” A French diplomat didn’t bother to hide the scorn shared by a majority of the international community when condemning the American tactics. “The Americans have taken negotiations hostage based on their own ideology. It’s scandalous.”
I suppose most Americans will never hear about what just happened at the United Nations. They probably will never hear about the continued suffering of millions of victims of conflict-related sexual violence in places too far away to pay attention to, nor understand how the Trump administration, with its penchant for ignoring the suffering its policies inflict, forced the international community to back down from their well-intentioned efforts to address the victims’ suffering. Once again—in our name—the Trump administration brought shame upon this country on the international stage.
The video below, produced by the U.N. Departments of Peacekeeping Operations and Field Support, documents the staggering scale of conflict-related sexual violence and explains how this brutality rises to the definition of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or acts of torture or genocide.
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]]>The post Abortion: as old as pregnancy itself appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>One of the most contentious and emotionally charged issues in American politics today is the issue of abortion and a woman’s right to choose. Forgotten in the increasingly divisive crusade to deny women the right to make decisions over the autonomy of their own bodies and their right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term is the fact that abortion is as old as pregnancy itself.
Contemporary discussions about abortion often seem to begin and end with 1973 – the year of the ruling in Roe v. Wade, in which the Supreme Court handed down one of the most life-altering decisions for women in the court’s history. That decision has rippled through American culture – and, indeed, across the world – in multiple ways that continue to profoundly impact women, their life choices, their financial well-being, and their expectations of fulfilling the promise of their lives.
As the debate rages on, and as countless numbers of women’s lives and the lives of their families are impacted by the narrowing of abortion access in states across the country, it’s important to remember that the undeniable fact of women seeking to control the destinies of their bodies predates by centuries that decision in 1973. It’s also important to remember that the history of abortion cannot be recalled without acknowledging the fears and sheer desperation that led our female forebears to tolerate the dangers, the pain, and the risk of remedies and procedures they hoped would end an unwanted pregnancy but often led instead to permanent bodily harm or death.
Let’s acknowledge as well that, contrary to popular belief, abortion restrictions and the outright denial of abortion access is a relatively new development in America’s history. In her definitive history of abortion in America, “When Abortion Was a Crime,” historian Leslie Reagan recounts how abortion used to be a part of everyday American life. In the eighteenth century until the late nineteenth century, abortions were commonly performed and were permitted under common law until “quickening” – a term that describes the stage when fetal movement in the womb may be felt by the mother. Prior to 1880, even the Catholic Church tolerated the reality of abortion. As Reagan explains, “the Catholic Church implicitly accepted early abortions prior to ensoulment. Not until 1869, at about the same time that abortion became politicized in this country, did the church condemn abortion; in 1895 it condemned therapeutic abortion [procedures performed to save the life of the mother].”
In 1857, the newly constituted American Medical Association undertook what could be considered one of the first large-scale lobbying efforts to criminalize abortion. Due to concerns about poisonings, but also reflecting a growing backlash to women’s emerging role in American public life and the desire of member physicians to professionalize the practice of medicine and limit the competition of midwives and homeopaths, the AMA pushed for state laws restricting abortion. In 1873, Congress passed the Comstock Law, banning abortion drugs. By 1880, the AMA’s efforts lobbying for state laws restricting abortion bore their bitter fruit.
Even earlier historic accounts provide a glimpse into the common practice of women seeking to abort unwanted pregnancies. These accounts not only comment on procedures but also recount a long list of recipes for pastes, pessaries, ingestions, salves, suppositories, and ingested herbal toxins. Folk cultures across the world and across time abound with an almost limitless variety of abortifacients and methods for their use passed on from one generation to the next. The acknowledgment of abortion as a fact of women’s reproductive lives was not limited to folk culture and the ministrations of shamans, herbalists, and midwives. The most influential philosophers, scientists, and physicians of ancient times wrote about and often provided advice about the most effective abortion techniques.
In the Kahun Gynecological Papyrus, one of the earliest known medical texts from ancient Egypt, the use of crocodile dung made into a pessary to be inserted into the vagina was the recommended method to induce abortion.
In ancient Greece, the musings of Aristotle in his work “Politics” foreshadow some of the thorniest terms of the debate raging through to our own time.
Aristotle wrote:
“. . . when couples have children in excess, let abortion be procured before sense and life have begun; what may or may not be lawfully done in these cases depends on the question of life and sensation.”
The Greek physician Hippocrates, although mostly opposed to abortion, counseled that a woman seeking to end a pregnancy could “jump up and down, touching her buttocks with her heels at each leap” – causing the embryo to come “loose” and fall out. This was a technique that later became known as the Lacedaemonian Leap. Other Greek physicians recommended the ingestion of myrrh, rue, and juniper.
In the days of the Roman Empire, Pliny the Elder’s “Natural History” provided evidence that women of his time sought to limit the number of pregnancies. His practical–-if ineffective—advice confirmed that “if a pregnant woman steps over a viper, she will be sure to miscarry.”
An eighth-century Sanskrit manuscript recommended sitting over a pot of boiling water or steamed onions –a questionable pregnancy-ending technique used by Jewish women on New York’s Lower East Side well into the twentieth century.
Here are some of the methods women have used, throughout history, to try to induce abortions
Today in America, one in four women will have an abortion by the age of forty-five. Tellingly, 59 percent of women seeking abortions are mothers. Many of us believed that the Roe v. Wade decision was settled law and that the decision would forever protect a woman’s right to choose. We also believed that access to safe, legal abortions would relegate to the ash heap of history the home-induced abortions using toxic, poisonous chemicals or the back-alley horrors of knitting needles and coat hangers. Will we be proven wrong? And will women be returned once again to the uncertainties and dangers that women who came before us were forced to face?
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