The Chaff

Tuesday, November 9th, 2004

Kool Aid Remedy, Part 1a

I was raised in a conservative Catholic family, went to Catholic schools all the way through college. I was raised on the kool-aid. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing up the arguments I was taught on each of the major issues and the different events and information that gradually chipped away at them. I hope that my experience might shed some light on how the faith-based community thinks and what kind of education might help. I also hope others with a similar background might share their experiences, too.

In this first post, I powered up the way back machine and tried to remember all the various lessons I learned about abortion. Next post, I’ll examine the events in my life that led me question, doubt, and then reject these things I’d been taught.

The ultimate goal is to come up with some balance between the ethical dilemmas of abortion and individual rights.

We had our first “sex ed” class in 7th grade, 1978. The only thing we covered was fetal development, with a heavy emphasis on why abortion was the most horrible thing imaginable. The class was taught by our regular teachers, the same women who taught us math and history and science every day; that gave everything they said an additional air of authority. The basic argument was very grounded in biology, and it was very convincing–because it was totally one-sided:

1) At conception, the zygote has different DNA from the mother. “Abortionists” claim that the zygote is just part of the mother’s body, but no other body part has different DNA. “Obviously” the zygote is a separate person.

2) The development information focused on characteristics that we would all recognize as human. The two most important ones were “the heart begins beating at 18 days, usually before the woman knows she’s pregnant”–and we were reminded that heartbeat was the sign doctors used to determine life–and “at six weeks an EEG can be performed.”

3) We saw pictures of a premature infant, born at 28 weeks, showing how early children can survive, thanks to the miracles of modern medicine.

4) Then we talked about the various abortion techniques, phrased to sound as chilling as possible. We saw pictures of aborted fetuses; we talked about when fetuses could begin to feel pain. Probably the worst technique we learned about was called a “hysterotomy”, where the doctor performed a C-section and then simply left the baby to die instead of taking it to an incubator.

5) Rape and incest? Not an issue. Most cases of incest occur before the girl reaches puberty. And when a woman is under extreme stress, she won’t ovulate, therefore she won’t get pregnant. Besides, you can’t punish the baby for the sins of the father.

That was the scientific argument that we were taught in school And it was very convincing. I joined the local Youth for Life chapter. In theory, we worked against abortion and euthanasia, but the only thing we did was picket an “abortion clinic” (actually an ob/gyn office). No word was ever said about the death penalty. And we got slide presentations and leaflets and brochures that laid out the ethical and moral arguments:

6) They always compared abortion to slavery and the Holocaust–that unborn children were not considered persons in the same way as blacks and Jews. (This is the reason the Dred Scott decision is so important to right-to-life groups: they believe it codified the “blacks are not people” in the same way that Roe v Wade established that unborn children were not persons under the law.)

7) In Catholic doctrine, not only does “life” begin at conception, but “ensoulment” happens at conception. And since anyone who dies without being baptized goes to hell, abortion not only takes a life, it also damns a soul to hell. (This isn’t part of every right-to-life group, mind you.)

Because life began specifically at conception, IUDs and other “abortive” methods of birth control were also a target. They never said anything about the pill per se, but morning after pills were definitely on the bad list.

9) The “abortion pill” was seen as the ultimate horror, the ability to kill just by swallowing a pill.

10) The extreme selfishness of the pregnant woman was emphasized. It was pointed out that she could abort the child in the middle of labor if she wanted, without notifying the father of the child. Minors could do this without the consent of their parents. There was an undertone of “she got herself into this position”, but it was never stated directly. Mostly it was the injustice of allowing one person such complete and arbitrary control over another life.

11) The other thing we learned was the unethical, greedy practices of “abortionists.” We were told stories of brave members of our movement who infiltrated Planned Parenthood seeking a pregnancy test. They substituted male horse urine for their own, and were told they were pregnant and needed an abortion. In every version of the story, Planned Parenthood browbeat our members into getting an abortion: even when our members begged for alternatives, they claimed Planned Parenthood gave them none.

12) The horror aspect of the abortion clinics was always played up. We were told stories of fully formed babies piled in dumpsters behind the clinics.

So that was how I was taught as a child to fight for the rights of unborn children. By the time I was 12 I could rattle off an impressive array of statistics and arguments, passionately and convincingly. And I did, to anyone who would listen, whenever the subject came up. It became my personal goal to convert as many people as possible to my way of thinking. It was this instinct that started me on the path to reality.

The journey out of the cave begins in the next post.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 9th, 2004 at 9:25 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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