Right To Life Issues

So now the Right to Life (RTL) movement has entered into a new health care area. Health care providers whose religious beliefs include Right to Life precepts are now refusing to provide components of health care that have any link to fetal harm. This has resulted in pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for medicines that can harm a fetus (so far just the abortifacient RU486 and birth control pills) as well as resulting in physicians refusing to administer vaccines they claim were manufactured on cell lines derived from fetal tissues (ostensibly from aborted fetuses). Rubella is one, apparently.

It seems this could be the tip of the iceberg. How many medicines have been developed or require production on cell lines that are linked to fetal cells? Some of these practices are decades old I'll bet. This is a problem for righteousness.

The RTL movement has provided a powerful venue for people who want to live "in righteousness". It even might be accurate to say the whole fundamentalist movement involves righteousness. Righteousness has been the rallying cry for evangelical Christians, and a cornerstone on which they justify their promotion of belief to non-believers. It also seems to be a claim to purity. Righteousness seems to be central to a believer's preparation to meet God. Righteousness is preparing for the Rapture (being received into God's grace).

Religions of all types offer methods of purification through which the devout can be cleansed of their sins. Of course these methods start by claiming human nature is sinful, coarse, dirty and impure. "We are all born sinners," is the assertion of many fundamentalists. This may explain the appeal these religions have for people who have become lost in abuse (drug abuse or people abuse), violence, and criminality; these congregants know they are bad or have done bad things, and they appreciate a religion that speaks to their situation.

So these religions have developed a model of purity and find support from holy writings that encourage discarding sinful ways. And what is sinful? For the RTL movement, it is, among other things, harming other human beings. It certainly doesn't seem to include pridefulness itself. It even seems to endorse that false pridelessness called piety.

But these religions maintain their righteous posture for a price. Issues that might be complex or multifaceted are reduced to simple black and white positions, a kind of "posterizing" of the nuanced. This black/white does not necessarily involve race although at times that too can become part of this "posterizing" process, and lead to white supremacy groups and the "satanizing" of effective non-believers.

In the US, the RTL movement functions as a vehicle of righteousness. And it continues to enlarge. Now it has entered into some new areas of medical care. It seems the RTL movement will obtain legal protection for acts of conscience by RTL advocates. It's unclear whether these same protections will help others who don't share RTL beliefs but also feel to act in a certain way out of conscience. If the RTF agenda unfolds fully, contraceptive methods other than barrier devices will be banned, since they all could conflict with the sanctity of life of the zygote.

The issue here is when life starts. A fertilized egg is a zygote. RTL argues the sanctity of life becomes relevant with the union of sperm and egg. This viewpoint is really the sanctification of the individual human creature. I don't say "human being" since RTL proponents have in practice asserted even the body of a human without evidence of beingness is sacrosanct. Now of course we all revere the individual, from newborn to the elderly. The RTL movement has extended this reverence to the zygote, and with some merit. Who doesn't feel some protective concern toward the pregnant woman and her unborn child?

But the RTL movement has not declared its support for all the consequences of this position. For instance, fundamentalist couples probably should forego IVF (in vitro fertilization) since that procedure sets up all sorts of conflicts with RTF ideas. For starters, often many eggs are fertilized in preparation for implanting. What happens to those not implanted? They are frozen. Tens of thousands of frozen embryos sit in freezers across the US today. Suspended animation is not just a science fiction idea any more, at least for the RTL proponent.

Of course only one or two eggs could be fertilized at one time but then that would decrease the chance of successfully implanting them into the womb and thus raise considerably the cost of a successful IVF endeavor for RTL couples.

Then there's the problem of embryo culling. Because many embryos are commonly implanted (or many eggs induced, if the infertility problem is approached by only enhancing the woman's ovulations using drugs), the health care procedure has been at times to select a few to continue to birth, and to destroy (i.e., kill) any others. Of course this is against RTL principles. Never mind not doing so will often yield deformed babies from a multiple-baby birth.

So the simple solution for the infertile RTL couple is to forget about IFV and adopt. Certainly if the RTL ideas against contraception become the law of the land, there will be plenty of babies available for adoption. Infertile RTL couples can adopt these babies.

As for the elimination of vaccines grown on fetal cultures, one vaccine that may be affected is Rubella (I think). Since the illness from Rubella has not been eradicated by vaccine use (it only protects), the cessation of Rubella vaccination will result in a great increase in Rubella cases. This infection particularly causes fetal harm, so pregnant women who contract Rubella will either miscarry (directly contravening RTL policy) or produce a deformed brain-damaged child. These children will also need care, and infertile RTL couples may find their options for adoption will include these damaged children.

And for those kids who aren't adopted, orphanages will be needed, which will offer good employment for the righteous who will surely see merit in so directly working to preserve the sanctity of life.

Now all this is only to point out the RTL movement exists ONLY because technologies, including some apparently quite contrary to RTL concepts, have made a comfortable social and cultural situation -- a "nest" -- in which RTL ideas can be conceived (?recognized) and grown. It seems the RTL movement, despite its claims of holding the higher moral ground, exists only because human social development has now created a society where such concepts as RTL can gain nourishment. This may even be the situation for the total agenda of every fundamentalist religious movement today, that each exists only because social development has advanced enough to indulge such idealism.

Now the problem for the RTL people is how to refine and advance their movement without destroying the social incubator in which it has developed. If it fails to do so, the most likely outcome will be for human society to enter a period of social oscillation in which RTL ideas will recurrently exchange prominence with a sort of secular pragmatism across large time periods (decades to centuries).