Oklahoma has effectively banned all abortions. Can the “me too” states ( like Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia, where people will follow you anywhere if you say something unctuously religious or right-wing crazy) be far behind in adopting similar legislation where it will be illegal to terminate a pregnancy for almost any reason, no matter how critical or valid? Whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, this cannot be good for anyone as a minority of people opposed to ending any pregnancy, dictate to the majority how women may control their bodies and destinies. If Oklahoma’s law, and other similarly irrational and extreme laws in Texas, Florida, and elsewhere are allowed to stand, how long will it be before all abortions are banned in America and we return to an underground, illegal network of unsafe and tragic procedures without the safety net of counseling, education, or reasonable options for women and girls facing unexpected and unwanted pregnancies with nowhere to turn for meaningful help. Can this be acceptable to anyone, even the old men creating this situation? One of the worst parts of these ill-conceived laws is that they make assumptions that women are mindless, unfeeling zombies without judgment or values who make decisions to invade their bodies and destroy life with no concerns or soul-searching.
Planned Parenthood’s office on Southside was just a couple of blocks from my home and, as I would pass it daily on my way to work, I would regularly see a handful of supposedly “pro-life” protestors harassing distressed young women already painfully facing the most difficult decision of their lives as placards with bloody fetuses emblazoned on them would be waved in their faces amid shouts and slurs coming from a bullhorn. Sometimes I would stop there and at another facility on 11th Avenue South. I would get out of my car and usually be greeted with smiles and greetings as a well-known political figure until I asked the self-righteous Bible carrying throng two simple questions: “How many of these unwanted children have you and your family personally adopted?” And “As pro-life people of faith do you also intend to be consistent and also protest the death penalty in our state?” The silence was always deafening. I never got around to asking about killing in wars or animal rights.
I was once reviled when I attended Birmingham Southern College’s Gala top honor women of distinction and met a crowd blocking the entrance to the Civic Center, protesting the presence of Faye Wattleton, national president of Planned Parenthood. I thought it was great to have a woman of color who headed one of the few organizations dealing with this complicated and sensitive issue being honored by a Methodist-sponsored college in a place like Birmingham. An anti-abortion activist Catholic priest and others disagreed, and they were really nasty as they jeered everyone who entered the event. I calmly walked toward the priest who was the leader and asked him if it was the best example of southern hospitality to greet invited guests to our city in this way? How much good did he think this was doing and how would it change minds and hearts with all these loud and low-class epithets? I doubt he heard a word I said, he kept yelling and vowed to see me defeated in my next election bid. I could only hope.
Abortion is the most difficult moral problem of my lifetime. There is no easy or apparent answer as one tries to balance respect for the sanctity of all life with the individual rights of women to control their own bodies and futures. And extremism on both sides has made it even more difficult to achieve consensus or a solution where no one loses their souls and babies are protected. I understand that one might argue that a fetus is not a baby, certainly not a viable, stand-alone life, but respectfully suggest we cannot really know and may never in this lifetime. Science may not be able to ever provide the proof of when viable life actually begins any more than it can provide proof of the existence of a soul and its life after death.
We are living in a polarized and increasingly brazen, lawless society where one group thinks God is on their side and they are justified to use terrorist tactics, if needed, to stop all abortions, no matter the circumstances. For them, it is a holy war. And unlike that last holy war they fought to preserve slavery in America, they do not intend to lose this one. The other side, sometimes just as strident, wants the government to stay out of their personal lives which is what Republicans used to argue until it did not serve their purposes anymore. The pro-choice advocates will not acknowledge in any way that a viable fetus is a possibly real person with rights of its own, independent of its host, especially from the time of inception. Without this acknowledgment and removal of religious objections which can be raised to Biblically support or oppose anything from wearing polyester to cutting sideburns, any calm and ethical debate or discussion seems futile.
As a Catholic, I have always been against abortion and took much criticism from women friends at Harvard when they discovered a check on my desk in my dorm room made out to the Georgia Right to Life Committee, as it was called in 1972. And they cringed further when they learned that I was a volunteer abortion counselor at my church in downtown Boston where I would disseminate pamphlets and information on alternatives to abortion in as non-judgmental fashion as possible. I was not a zealot, just someone whose experience made them want to respect all life, especially after it was so cheapened in the Vietnam War and Watts. And I remembered well the whispers and trauma of high school when a popular junior, ( meaning she was probably 16 years old), dropped out of school to deal with her pregnancy by her boyfriend at the time, a football star who did not have to quit school or live with the cruelty of the judgments thrown their way. It seemed like naked hypocrisy to me. I was shocked, almost stunned when a friend of mine told me that this was his cousin and they often “fooled around” (with each other) when the guys had sleepovers at his house. Clearly, this was a time of adolescent experimentation with one “date” going terribly wrong, resulting in a pregnancy.
We didn’t even have a school nurse, much less anyone else qualified to educate kids on the untended consequences of sex outside of marriage or a stable relationship. Of course, they taught animal husbandry in 4H and the Baptist preacher who conducted “Chapel” on Wednesdays in the school cafeteria, did take time to mention how horribly sinful this behavior was and how God would deal with those who emulated it. But I don’t remember any giggle-free, intelligent discussion about sexuality and birth control until I took Biology in college as part of my pre-med studies. And even then, I was confused and sexually repressed because of the guilt the Catholic Church was so good at cultivating, especially in those they intended to target for the priesthood. The bishop actually came to my home to foster the notion that I should enroll in seminary, but I had decided I would make a better monk than priest and would wait on that decision. In college, I often visited the monastery at Conyers, Georgia but soon became convinced I could not handle the “call”. I gave it another try in my early seventies with visits to two other monastic retreats after seeing Tyrone Power in Razor’s Edge and thinking that could have been me. But it didn’t catch fire with me as I realized I was probably closer to Somerset Maugham on the goodness quotient.
When the 13-year-old in the only Black family at my small church also became pregnant and I became aware of it from school, even though I was the altar boy, lector, yardman, and collection taker and should have been the first to know, Father Timothy Ryan said it was not to be discussed. So we didn’t, and even my parents stayed silent on the subject, though I could often hear them whispering about it in somber tones of disapproval. In both cases, abortion was apparently out of the question. The Church said it was a sin and that was it. End of discussion.
But reality can be a harsh and unyieldingly effective teacher and while I was studying in Sweden a year later, a friend came to me to tearfully tell me she had been raped by a staffer at the Embassy and was being forced to get an abortion. She was frightened beyond belief, also beset with guilt and shame. I helped her, even going with her to the hospital for the procedure. I was embarrassed and felt my face reddening when the nurse asked me if I was the father. I rushed to assure her I was only a friend of the patient. But clearly, the nurse and the doctor had experienced scenes like this many times before and did not seem convinced.
After the ordeal subsided, I vowed to do something about the guy who actually was the father, though that seems like an inappropriate title for a rapist. I discussed with the ambassador, Robert Strausz-Hupe, who had become a little doddering in his old age, how I thought the jerk should be sent home, if not fired and prosecuted. But it was a complicated matter, and it would be difficult to charge anyone with diplomatic immunity, especially in a country like Sweden, known at that time for the three S’s: Sex, Sin, and Socialism. He skated with no consequences for his part in this debacle and even tried to court my friend until she was forced to leave Sweden to get away from him.
A couple of years after that, close friends who already had two young children, sought my counsel when they learned from amniocentesis tests that their unborn third child would be severely disabled. They sincerely felt they could not face the challenges where their world would change so dramatically with a child who would destroy their and their existing children’s comfortable and routine lives. They were prominent and well-known in their community and ultimately went to another city, hundreds of miles away from their home, to have the procedure done.
They clearly knew my religious beliefs which I had sometimes expressed, and I wondered why they had asked me for advice. I had no easy answer except to offer empathy and tell them to do what their conscience dictated and leave the rest to God. I eventually asked them why they had sought my counsel which seemed so inadequate. They said they trusted me and knew I would place their family’s well-being above everything else. I am still not certain that this was a good thing, but sometimes it is just hard to draw a line where good people you love are concerned.
But the world has changed a lot since those days when discussion of abortion was not an everyday occurrence, and it was seldom that you would even know someone who faced having one. They may have been there in greater numbers than I knew, but it simply was not openly or honestly discussed. But neither was the plight of hundreds of thousands of unwanted children in our country about which we knew little as they suffered and died at the hands of parents who clearly did not want them and never considered giving them up for adoption as an alternative to murdering them.
Now, every day, not occasionally, but every single day, I read stories of children being harmed that would have been better off if they had never been born. Like the six-month-old in critical condition after his mother dropped him from the second-story balcony of their apartment this week or the three-month-old starved to death by her parents who said they simply forgot to feed her. And, aside from hundreds of missing children, there is one child murder after another occurring in every race and economic strata in every part of the country on a regular basis. The killing in some cases has been horrific with torture and unimaginable emotional and physical pain inflicted on the helpless child before their last breath at the hands of people they loved and trusted. And what has been our reaction to these unfathomable horrors? Not putting in place more funding for social and mental health programs and legal safeguards to prevent such atrocities, but sanctimonious political actions by self-serving, voter ignorance and prejudice exploiting politicians to bring more unwanted, but precious children into homes not prepared to love and protect them unconditionally. These leaders who are not qualified to run two-car parades, much less make decisions about the life and death of children, are aided by the Christian Taliban where self-righteous pilgrims akin to those who burned women at stakes in Salem, attempt to decide how others must believe and live. They are moralists who know exactly how other people should live while they do what they please.
People like Eunice Smith, hailed as a hero by the religious right in Alabama as a “good woman” as she ruins the lives of other “good women,” want to go further than just stopping abortions. She actively lobbied, using her Eagle Forum platform and clout, for eliminating sex education in our schools and teaching how to prevent pregnancies, even opposing a clinic in Ensley High School, so far in many ways from her white-bread world in Vestavia, which was proposed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to combat the highest rate of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease of any high school in the state. She and her narrow and simple-minded husband, Albert Lee, who got elected to Congress espousing “Christian” values above common sense and decency, have arguably done more harm to people’s lives, especially poor ones, than anyone I know. They may be canonized in Alabama, but to thinking, rational and compassionate people, they were ignorant and destructive. But they are only one of many who would impose their fact-deficient and theologically defective moral code on the rest of the world while congratulating themselves for “saving” us from eternal hellfire.
Is this really surprising in a time when just saying “gay” in Florida, of all places, can be a crime? Imagine then the reaction in a classroom to talking about vaginas and penises and how babies are actually made? The sexually repressed and selective passage Bible quoters who yearn for the return of the Victorian era, hoop skirts, and chastity belts cannot tolerate an abomination like this. I pray the day never comes when they might learn that a 33-year-old man who never dated or married and hung out full-time with 12 guys, like on a permanent camping trip or sleepover, may have been ambivalent about his own sexuality with his dual nature as God who made men and women in his likeness.
In fairness, I have not read the full Florida law and have relied on news media accounts, a mistake in a world where what the Queen had with her tea today, or Justin Bieber’s new tattoo can be a headline. It seems imminently reasonable to me to allow parents to have a major say in at what age there might be a discussion of sexuality and reproduction. And certainly, there should be no attempts to influence gender assignment or preference in kindergarten or prior to the accepted age of reason, which the last time I checked was six years old. But neither should there be the setting of a climate, at any age, in classrooms where a child’s inherent differences become a reason for them to be singled out, subjected to ridicule, or even worse, bullied by teachers, their peers and in some cases, even their parents. Yet it definitely happens in America’s schools and homes. And this behavior is encouraged when laws like those in Florida are treated as positive and acceptable in our society instead of cruel and bigoted.
Even in the rural school in Greenville, Georgia where I taught my first year in 1970, it was easy to see children as young as ten who did not fit a standard mold. No one said it aloud, but it was clear that Billy was more of a girl than any biological girl in his class. He dressed and walked in an effeminate way and could not be “butched up,” no matter how hard his teacher tried. At lunch, his teacher and I discussed him when she referred to Billy as a “sissy with lace on his pants.” I was disgusted but not surprised. “Just let him be who he is,” I advised. “But he’s going to be drag queen when he grows up or maybe by the time he reaches high school,” she replied. (Transgender was not a word that had come into common usage, much less terms like non-binary.) My heart sank when I thought of the pain this child would suffer in his life because he did not carry himself like other boys and preferred to draw horses and rainbows, rather than racecars and rockets. I wondered if he would even make it through high school and maybe drop out rather than suffer cruelty every single day. I often still wonder where he might be and how life turned out for him and pray that he was able to live life as he wished without condemnation and judgment that started in the fifth grade with his teacher. I’m sure she won teacher of the year before her career ended and possibly retired to Florida where she proudly displays a De Santis for dictator sign in her front yard.
Surely there is no more cruel joke God has played on us than placing a soul in the wrong body. To be certain, He makes no mistakes, but all through Nature, He has made differences. There are thousands of species where there exists same-sex attraction, bi-sexuality, hermaphrodites, confused gender assignment, and even asexual reproduction. It is not wrong or evil because it is not what we expect or have come to accept as normal. It is simply different. And it is in our differences and their acceptance that we can achieve strength, meaning, understanding, inner peace, and happiness.
Our quest for conformity is likely just the powerful desire for the safety of sameness where there is predictability and relative equality. But it is an artificial device that encourages discrimination and oppression, not to mention harmful suppression. I once took some of my godchildren to a party given by Elton John at his home in Atlanta thinking what a wonderful experience this would be for them when they looked back on it. But two of them would not even approach or speak to him because he was wearing a kilt and somehow, they thought it disturbing and “gross,” even if it was designed by Versace. Of course, they felt the same way when I took them to see Andrea Bocelli make his American debut at the Kennedy Center in 1998. “Why do we have to do this?” they protested. They especially disliked that he sang in Italian, which no one understood. It took them almost 25 years to appreciate the differences in both these men that make them special and to be valued. I heard one of them actually bragging to one of his friends about meeting Elton in person. Rocket Man on playing on the car radio. I could only muster a smug, silent smile.
Suppression of differences also provides comfort and safe assurance that our own proclivities are not noticed or a cause for alarm or our own abuse by others who might see us as different. I remember well when I first ran for mayor of Birmingham and was “coached” by my campaign manager on things I did he found unacceptable in my persona. For one, he hated my hand gestures. I tried to explain it was an inherited Greek thing I saw when I visited Greece and found every old man making gestures as they argued. Like the Birmingham City Council, they argued a lot. They say where there are two Greeks there are always three opinions and they are always expressed in an animated and vigorous manner, just short of fisticuffs. He also disliked my tendency to touch a person while we were speaking. That’s evident in a picture of me and Mikhail Baryshnikov where I have a hand on his shoulder as we are talking, and I especially do it when speaking to children to convey that I am really listening to them and care about what they are trying to tell me. It is not contrived, just a natural response. No one had ever complained and I never thought about it until Steve made it an issue.
Had I been married at the time; these things might have gone unnoticed. But single and not exactly a jock did not help my preferred image. Apparently, I did not fit the mold for mayor where football and wrestling at Boutwell had to be my major preoccupations. Steve was seriously concerned.
On one occasion, while running for the County Commission, I stopped by his office at the optical company I owned where I had made him president of the company, despite his desire to change my mannerisms. I was on my way to meet Bob Waldrop, the mayor of Homewood to seek his support. Steve took one look at me and said, “You can’t go like that. You have to change your tie.” “Why?” I asked. “It’s a great tie that came from Neiman’s. It may be my favorite.” “But it’s got too much purple. You need to change it,” he insisted. But there was no time. Driving to Homewood, I found myself questioning my taste and fearing what dangerous image I might be projecting because of the color of my tie.
Imagine my relief when Mayor Waldrop‘s first comment in our long and warm conversation was, “I love your tie. My wife gave me one just like it for my birthday.” I could not wait to see Steve again and share that it was more likely his insecurities than mine that needed examining and not to do that again to me. I told him we needed to focus more on what I planned to do than what I wore or my limp wrists. And I never brought up the times he had made me uncomfortable with hugs and other gestures I considered to be too intimate, even between good friends.
If a grown man who had already had significant life experiences and knew who and what he was could be rattled by a comment about the color of his tie, imagine what a child, forming their identity and sensitive to every criticism might take from seemingly innocent comments challenging their concept of self and place in the world. Look at the statistics on child and teen suicides and multiply that by 100,000 to get the number of children who have needlessly suffered because they did not match their parents’ or peers’ notion of how they should act, look, or what they should be, versus what they must project to the world.
The environment in which children are developing is a more complex and difficult place with increased challenges. Not solving the critical issue of climate change seems much more potentially catastrophic than mitigating the negative effects of abortion. But it is possible to take affirmative steps to conquer both or at least make it possible more likely that we can live in a sane world where we have done all that is possible to survive climate disaster and foster and revere life.
There are many things I would like to see done in the place of punitive and destructive legislation to stop all abortions. We can start at the earliest possible age or every child by affirming the sanctity of all life, not just human existence. This means teaching that only God has created life and only He has the right to take it. It’s simple things like showing children that even lives we barely notice, like that of ants and bugs, is supremely miraculous and here for a purpose. Read respected Harvard professor Edwin Wilson’s books on ants. A native of Birmingham, he changed the way we see the place of ants in the world and was the most honored living scientist until his recent death, opening new avenues in sociology to explain human behavior.
And though humans are among the many carnivores in the animal world, we can reduce our consumption of meat and at least acknowledge while consuming it, that it is not something we do without awareness of its consequences for the planet and regret that there are few alternatives for the protein essential to our diet. I know it sounds crazy, but we must fully recognize and admit that animals who die as a food source, may be sentient and aware of the pain they suffer to feed us. And they also have a God-given right to live. ( I don’t remember reading anything about them eating apples from the forbidden tree in Eden. So why are they being punished too?) Hiding how we raise and process these animals is certainly dishonest, but necessary if we are unwilling to reconcile respect for life with taking it daily to sustain ourselves. Few people ever think about how we keep cows pregnant and sacrifice their calves as “veal” to steal their milk for our babies and wash down Orioles. Until there are better alternatives, this is the way the world works. But there will come a day when we have evolved and make better food choices that sustain us while respecting all life and eliminating, or at least reducing, animal cruelty and exploitation. And we can begin by honestly discussing this unpleasant and very difficult issue.
So starting with the fundamental premise that all life is sacred and that stepping on ants or needlessly killing things that might annoy us or simply taste good is not consistent with that notion, we can create a world where the taking of life is less acceptable and to be done only in the most extreme circumstances.
From there we can focus on the scourge of abortion and strengthen programs that teach how to prevent unwanted pregnancies before they occur. It is unbelievable that in 2022 we cannot stop unwanted pregnancies and that abortions are ever needed. What is it that we do not understand about our own biology? Abstinence from sex may not be practical in the society we have created, permeated with a bombardment of sexual enticements in media and the arts, especially music, which make it ok to satisfy carnal needs no matter what the negative consequences may be. But we have medically accepted methods to prevent pregnancy that are readily available to everyone of reproductive age. From condoms and birth control pills to IUDs and other contraceptive devices, there is no excuse for an unplanned pregnancy, except laziness and disregard for yourself, your partner, and a life not wanted or loved.
Abortion is not a casual form of birth control. It is a last resort procedure and an extreme and violative assault on a woman’s body and psyche with damnable consequences. No one I know favors indiscriminate abortion. We all know is it a necessary evil required to counter the worse evil of a child entering an unaccepting world that will not provide what is needed to sustain its life and make certain it has a happy, productive, life as a worthwhile and contributing member of the community.
These programs must teach not only the methods to prevent pregnancy but the mental health reasons for doing so. The couple who aborted their third child with multiple disabilities ultimately divorced and I am convinced it was mostly as a consequence of the abortion they obtained. More than a fetus died that day. Guilt, shame, regret, and second-guessing dominated until all love, trust, and self-respect were eroded. And the whole family suffered the consequences.
This is not to say that this is always the case. People have a remarkable resiliency and ability to forget and move on from the worst of traumas. And I know women who have had abortions and rebounded to normal, happy lives, relatively quickly. But I do not know what they think and feel in private moments when they are alone with only their own thoughts, memories, and regrets. I suspect that a happy child that might have been, save for circumstances at that particular time in their lives when they were, emotionally immature, financially unstable, conflicted, or otherwise unprepared to care for it may still tear at their heart. I forget who made the comment on sex that the ‘position was ridiculous; the pleasure momentary; and the consequences damnable’, but they had a point. Few remember this in the throes of passion, often mistaken for love. But a child’s life must be more than a damnable consequence in a civilized and decent society that understands and appreciates the value of all life.
Putting all emotions aside, there is another consequence of the general modern trend toward unfettered, indiscriminate abortions. Every day, we see evidence of the cheapening of life where casually taking it has become the norm in American communities. America has always been a violent country with a well-documented history of murder and mayhem. But something is seriously wrong in a society where if we went for a week without a school shooting, teen murder, rape or assault, or other heinous act, it would be front-page news. We are numb to violence and have come to expect it, even accept it, as a routine part of life in contemporary America. It is beyond sad; it is a disaster for our children and grandchildren who must live in this new world where they have been conditioned to even want to arm themselves for protection against an enemy that lives among us, just adding to the climate of unfettered, acceptable and horrific violence.
Abortion is just another example of that savagery against life. But it makes me wonder why its elimination is such a priority in our country when gun violence, war, and the death penalty are not. If we are to be “pro-life: then we must be consistently pro-life, not selective, or situational when convenient or just choose to be.
Another thing we must do is increase support for adoption. Aside from grants to agencies assisting in this endeavor, there should be significant tax breaks for couples and families willing to adopt, especially older, disabled, and unwanted children. We need to get creative. Imagine an ad campaign like the public service ones against smoking but in support of adoption. Or what about spending just a fraction of Car Shield’s or Colonial Penn’s advertising budgets to promote this cause. Adoptions can be expensive and there needs to be a compendium of resources available to those willing to undertake this process which can be long and tedious, albeit ultimately gratifying.
And needless to say, our state agencies must absolutely do a better job than they are in monitoring the well-being of children in their purview. How can a child disappear for two years in New Hampshire, a small, close-knit state, with no one noticing? This is but one of many examples this year of children being abused and discarded while the agency charged with protecting them makes flimsy excuses. It would also help to strengthen criminal penalties for abuse of a child and pass laws, such as those passed fifty years ago in Sweden, that give children rights as people, separate and apart as property of their parents. It is against the law there to spank a child, yours, or anyone else’s. And decry all you want that you were spanked and it did not harm you, but you may have deluded yourself without knowing it. The harm done may not be as apparent to you as it is to others. Nonetheless, the greater good is the lesson being taught that violence is unacceptable even in mild corporal punishment administered by loving parents. There are many better ways to control undesired child behavior than by hitting a kid.
Children in Sweden have legal rights that allow them to sue their parents for neglect and on other grounds. The attitude there is that children are not chattel, but the responsibility of the community. Their well-being must be of paramount concern to every member of that community.
Another more enlightened approach to imparting values to children is that they start earlier with state-sponsored, quality daycare programs, often in private homes through “Day Mother” programs where homemakers take small groups of children under their care. This offers a more affordable system of daycare for infants and very young children but requires strict regulation and enforcement of standards to make it work properly. Still, exposing children to values and ethics in this home setting is a good beginning to what will come later when they attend regular schools.
Certainly, these things, even implemented altogether, are no panacea for all the problems we face with growing violence and disrespect for life. But these actions and others that you might conceive of from your personal experience and possibly share here may lead us closer to the day when abortions are an anomaly without the need for absurd and unenforceable, harshly punitive laws and a world that no one, decent and caring for other human lives, really wants.
john katopodis: the path well travelled 