On Those Who Hate Roe

Please just get it straight! As I've said, I'm no fan of unnecessary medical procedures and in 2006, rape and incest aside, I cannot say I understand why the United States is so far behind the rest of the civilized world in terms of demand for abortion and unwanted pregnancies. However, let's get some perspective on the "religious" rationale behind why women should be forced to carry any and all pregnancies to term. That view wasn't always the case.

If Roe were just about abortion at the national level--if abolishing Roe meant that each state could make its own laws about abortion--I wouldn't be so absolute in my support. But the right has made such a big deal over Roe that it's become a symbol. Of what, I'm not quite sure, so greatly have the "right to lifers"--the irony is so great this needs always to be in quotes--fetishized the fetus.

The thing is, this obsession with the fetus as a full-fledged person is quite recent. Surprised? Check this out:

In the early 7th Century, the Church began codifying what it considered sexual sins and abortion made the list, but was well behind the "sins" of birth control, oral sex, and anal sex. In fact, the punishment for oral sex was at least 7 years of penance, while the punishment for abortion was a mere 120 days.

In the centuries that followed, Popes came on the scene with widely varying viewpoints--changing and re-changing the rules as the mitre passed on. Significantly, Pope Innocent III in the early 1200s ruled that the fetus had no soul until it was "animated" (the "quickening," when the mother can feel the fetus' movements, usually around the 24th week). In his ruling--and this is significant--a monk was found not guilty of homicide for aborting his lover's unborn child under this argument. Pope Sixtus V in 1588 made all abortions illegal, but was reversed again by Pope Gregory XIV, codifying abortions at up to 16 ½ weeks as not equivalent to the killing of a human being, as no soul was present. Even St. Thomas Aquinas himself--arguably the most influential theologian in Roman Catholic Christianity--did not consider a fetus human until the quickening.

This was the way it was for the most part until 1869. That's when Pope Pius IX declared all abortion to be homicide. That's right, for nearly the entire history of Christianity, the Catholic Church was officially tolerant of first-trimester abortion. The change was well after the Enlightenment, after the Civil War, and into the modern scientific era. In fact, it was only as recently as 1983 that all vestiges of the distinction between the "fetus animatus" and "fetus inanimatus" were quietly purged from Canon Law. (Yes, that was 1983... only 23 years ago.)

Well, you say, things change. Science, for example, helps us know more. Sorry, non-start there. The people who hate Roe also hate science. But not, I would wager, as much as they hate women.

I won't even say it's about hating women. I think it is the ancient belief that women just plain aren't equal to a man and that their bodies are, therefore, subject to a man's control.