Hypocrisy And Republicans Go Together Like Peanut Butter And Jelly
Everything's bigger in Texas, especially the hypocrisy
Under Texas’ new S.B. 8 law…[its] ban on abortion after six weeks functionally outlaws the vast majority of pregnancy terminations, even if the pregnancy results from rape or incest. Texas Republicans have wielded the bluntest of legal instruments on some of our most nuanced personal and ethical decisions.
S.B. 8 turns neighbor against neighbor by allowing any individual to sue anyone else whom they believe provided or assisted a patient with an abortion, and collect $10,000 for each successful claim…. When we reward anger and punish accompaniment, we ignore God’s condemnation of those who sow discord (Proverbs 6:19) and disregard the Gospel’s call to love our neighbor. While anti-abortion lawmakers often cloak their positions in Christian faith, S.B. 8 is theologically unsound.
I’ve always found it rather amusing that so many Christian zealots portray themselves as “pro-life.” For example, they believe abortion to be murder, yet many of these same people strongly support capital punishment- “an eye for an eye,” don’tchaknow?
This contradiction is just part of the hypocrisy many Christians bring to the abortion issue, of which Jesus Christ had exactly nothing to say. Moreover, to couch abortion in religious terms is both inaccurate and dishonest, in that abortion is never addressed directly in the Bible.
Yes, murder is condemned by both Christians and non-Christians, but what constitutes murder depends on the definition of when life begins. Christians have for years attempted to define the beginning of life in a way that fits their moral and religious arguments but has nothing to do with scientific reality.
The problem with the argument over abortion is that the “pro-life/anti-choice” crowd tends to defend it in black and white terms. But moral arguments are seldom black and white. They almost always are colored in shades of grey, if only because there are few absolutes in life.
We must approach abortion with nuance, rather than stark binaries. While Americans identify as “pro-choice” and “pro-life” in almost equal numbers, polls consistently show that fewer than 30% of Americans support overturning Roe v. Wade (a legal precedent that S.B. 8 flouts). Given the very personal impact of the issue and the wide range of theologies on it, it’s only natural that people hold complex beliefs and see shades of gray.
The nuance comes down to a distinction that most who can be identified as pro-life/anti-choice fail to acknowledge. Most Americans ARE uncomfortable with abortion as a concept, but they support a woman’s right to control her own reproductive functions. They might not choose to have an abortion themselves, but they aren’t comfortable forcing their morality upon all women.
It’s difficult to imagine a reasonable woman deliberately setting out to have an abortion. It’s not a destination one seeks out. In most cases, it’s a port of last resort because a woman discovers herself to be pregnant but isn’t ready to bear a child. In a perfect world, of course, all children would be wanted, but some women aren’t in a position to bring a child into the world. That’s not something we should condemn a woman for. Instead, we should offer her support as she makes the best decision for her and her situation.
But human beings have much clearer feelings about hypocrisy. The contrast between S.B. 8 and Texas’ deadly COVID-19 policies shows a deep disconnect between “pro-life” rhetoric and “pro-life” policies. When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed S.B. 8, he said that “our Creator endowed us with a right to life.” But Abbott has unleashed unnecessary death by banning school districts statewide from protecting children’s lives with classroom mask mandates, and by forbidding businesses from requiring that patrons and employees be vaccinated to enter. The dissonance will only become sharper as hospital beds and mortuaries fill with COVID victims while court dockets proliferate with lawsuits against people sued for acts of friendship and compassion toward women seeking abortion care.
It’s interesting that while Abbott and other Republican Governors claim to stand for a “culture of life,” they oppose policies that would help people survive COVID-19. They oppose mask mandates. They resist policies that would encourage their constituents to get vaccinated. Worst of all, they’re placing the lives of children too young to be vaccinated at risk by forcing them back into classrooms without masks being required.
Combine this hypocrisy with the “pro-life/anti-choice” stance supporting the death penalty, and it’s even more difficult to reconcile the religious argument opposing abortion.
What Rev. Butler refers to as “dissonance” is really the hypocritical desire of the GOP, which has long styled itself as the “party of small government,” to control women’s reproductive functions. What Republicans really want is to create a government small enough to fit into a woman’s vagina.
I’ll put an end to the idea that a woman’s body belongs to her…. Nazi ideals demand that the practice of abortion shall be exterminated with a strong hand.
- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
As much as I hate to run the risk of invoking Godwin’s Law by referencing Hitler, the approach taken by the “pro-life/anti-choice” crowd is distressingly similar. They want to remove the control of reproductive functions from individual women and place that authority in the hands of the state.
How’s that “small government” working for you?
Policies that rob us of the agency to make such weighty moral decisions about the direction of our lives demean the fullness of our humanity. And suing people into bankruptcy for acts of compassion is the height of cruelty. As a pastor, the words of Scripture and the stories of my neighbors compel me to rebuke this unjust law.
As with so much Republican policy these days, it seems as if the cruelty IS the point. Wealthy White Christians want to make their pre-eminence clear to the poor, the less well-connected, and people of color. It’s not about the unborn; it’s about power and control.
If it were about children, people in positions of power would be helping to ensure that children, once born, had the support they need. Unfortunately, though, the concern for the unborn ends once a child exits the womb. Then the “pro-life/anti-choice” crowd wants nothing to do with a child, and it becomes the mother's sole responsibility. If she can’t afford to raise it, then she shouldn’t have become pregnant to begin with.
Those who want to protect the unborn care little for babies and even less for the mothers who bear them. They often oppose programs intended to strengthen families, support single mothers, or provide opportunities for children from disadvantaged homes. They certainly aren’t about to support programs that provide family planning services, including birth control. Very often, they’re trying to demonize women and/or make sex so potentially consequential that women will think twice before doing the horizontal mambo for any reason but procreation.
What Texas’ new law does is lay bare the absolute worst motives of the “pro-life/anti-choice” movement. The sheer, abject cruelty behind S.B. 8 is stunning. Even worse is that the wealthy White Christians behind the bill are busily patting each other on the back for doing an end-run around Roe v. Wade.
As if circumventing the Constitution is something to be proud of.
The odds are good that S.B. 8 won’t hold up in court, but to think that this will be seen as a defeat for the “pro-life/anti-choice” movement would be a mistake. There will be other attempts to work around, over, and through Roe v. Wade…until and unless Congress acts to pass a law codifying a woman’s right to choose as the law of the land.
S.B. 8 may be theologically unsound, but hypocrites are never going to let a little thing like that stand in their way.
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