By Steve Ahlquist in Rhode Island’s Future
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| He gets to judge us all. It says so somewhere. |
Even the staunchest atheists know that upon our deaths a
being possessed with absolute moral certitude will stand in judgment over us,
and no matter how honorably we serve the best urges of our conscience, we know
that unless we align ourselves absolutely with the values of the judge, we will
be found wanting, and damned.
Fortunately, the judge I am referring to is
Bishop Thomas Tobin of the Providence Diocese in Rhode Island, a man with
doubtful supernatural and ever waning temporal influence.
In his December 5th “Statement of Bishop Tobin on the
Death of Nelson Mandela” Tobin showered the great human rights
leader with false praise before calling the deceased leader to task for “his
shameful promotion of abortion in South Africa.” Mandela earned Tobin’s
admonishment by promoting and signing into law a bill that “replaced one of the
world’s toughest abortion laws with one of the most liberal.”
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| Bishop Tobin isn't too keen on Pope Francis, either, thinking him insufficiently zealous on abortion |
It has long been known that Tobin’s anti-abortion
ideology has blinded him to the fact that good and decent people can come to
different conclusions as to the morality of abortion. That is why most
Americans see the issue as a decision best made by the pregnant woman, in
consultation with her doctor, and want to live in a society where abortion and
birth control are safe, legal and available.
Further, most Americans recognize that if we as a society
really want to decrease the number of abortions performed in this country, then
we ought to be working to promote the economic well being of women and
investing resources into women’s health initiatives.
Instead of championing
these common sense ideas, Bishop Tobin and his RI Right to Life puppet show
work on reducing the public’s ability to access health care by attempting to
tear down HealthsourceRI or engaging in silly and unconstitutional theatrics
involving license plates.
A while back, the monomaniacal Christian attitude towards
issues like abortion was diagnosed as an “illness.”
The faith becomes ideology and ideology frightens,
ideology chases away the people, distances, distances the people and distances…
the Church of the people. But it is a serious illness, this of ideological
Christians. It is an illness, but it is not new, eh?
The person making this diagnosis was Pope Francis,
talking about the extremes of right wing religious ideology. Francis opined
that such attitudes are worse “when this Christian is a priest, a bishop or a
Pope.”
Not that the Pope is above reproach. His recent statements
on economic inequality, as welcome as they are in many ways, still ignore one
of the greatest obstacles towards the elimination of poverty in the developing
world, which is women’s inability to access decent reproductive healthcare,
including abortion.
As long as women are shackled to the demands of unwanted
childbirth, they are less free to pursue economic well-being for themselves and
their families. Francis might want to take some of his own advice, and reevaluate the Church’s stand on important reproductive rights issues. Even a
softening of the rules on condoms and other forms of birth control would have
amazing and positive repercussions world wide.
No human is perfect, even a person as universally revered
as Nelson Mandela has faults, failings, misdeeds and wrongs easily attached to
their legacy. But Mandela’s support for abortion rights in South Africa is not
one of them.
Guaranteeing South African women access to reproductive healthcare
has freed countless families from the kind of crushing poverty large families
might face and saved the lives of thousands of women who might have died
accessing illegal abortions.
The South African law, according to the NY Times,
assures that, “women and girls will be entitled to a state-financed abortion on
demand during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy if they have no private medical
insurance, and, subject to widely defined conditions, for a further eight
weeks.” Even minors are allowed to access abortion under this law, without
being mandated to gain consent from their families or, as is the case in Rhode
Island, from a judge.
In South Africa, because of Nelson Mandela’s forward
thinking respect for the rights of all persons, the decision as to whether or
not to have an abortion lies solely with the pregnant woman (or girl).
This is as it should be.