4 years ago
Unverified comment
Navi- Religious liberty in America may be very good right now, but it should never be taken for granted. As President Reagan once said, freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction. In 2018, the Supreme Court upheld pro-life medical clinics' First Amendment right to not make abortion referrals by only a 5-4 margin (NIFLA v. Becerra). Had the 2016 presidential election gone differently, that case could've had a very different outcome. And now, the villain of this story is on the verge of becoming the United States Secretary for Health and Human Services.
- Most other developed countries have much less robust protections. In Sweden, a nurse was fired for refusing to participate in an abortion (despite making her objection known well in advance and without impacting the woman’s ability to have the abortion), and she had no legal remedy other than moving to another country. In Canada, doctors in Ontario have to refer for abortions or euthanasia and the requirement was upheld in court. Alberta (supposedly Canada’s most conservative province, and the only one to have a nominally pro-life premier) had a broad conscience protection bill meant to prevent this kind of situation, but it failed due to opposition from cabinet ministers (so much for having a pro-life premier) and a euthanasia activist killing himself outside the legislature building as a publicity stunt (he must’ve had some other issues too). Ontario’s previous government banned all pro-life activity outside of abortion clinics just to score political points against the then-opposition leader (discussed in a previous podcast). Linda Gibbons, a harmless grandmother, spent much of the last two decades in jail for peaceful sidewalk counselling. A pro-life club at Ryerson University was shut down, a decision that was also upheld in court (though the current Premier of Ontario effectively reversed the decision by requiring all universities to support free speech if they want taxpayer funding).
- Now it would be harder for all of this to happen in the US. The US Constitution is actually worth the paper it’s written on, unlike the Canadian Charter (which subjects all freedoms to “reasonable limitations”, expressly encourages judicial activism, and has a legislative override provision), and there are more elaborate separations of powers. But any constitutional system is only as good as the people making and adjudicating the laws, and Americans could very well lose their religious freedom if the wrong people get too much power. I am not saying that pro-lifers would be justified in resorting to vigilante violence in a country like Canada or Sweden. Just as you would not be justified in lynching a rapist that you know is guilty (even in a flawed justice system where rapists usually get off free and go on to do it again), it would be wrong to effectively lynch an abortion practitioner or bomb his clinic. Civil disobedience, particularly in the case of healthcare workers, would be morally permissible (if not obligatory in some cases – to my knowledge, the abortion referral requirement is not really enforced in Canada) on the other hand. But violence is only permissible in a despotic regime, and there’s a massive gulf between America’s state of religious freedom and a despotic regime.
- I don't think making abortion practitioners feel unsafe is, by itself, a good reason for pro-lifers not to do a certain thing. Clinic blockades, the Center for Medical Progress videos, innocuous Lila Rose tweets stating that abortion is violence, posters of healthy babies urging people to "choose life", silent prayer, and polite sidewalk counselling have all made some abortion workers feel unsafe (or so they say). But drug mules, human traffickers, and poachers all have very dangerous jobs yet that doesn’t prevent us from taking any actions to stop them. We don’t want any of these people to get hurt and would hope they’d eventually come over to the right side, but I’m not really concerned with whether they feel safe doing these things. And I’d have a lot more sympathy for a low-level drug criminal or member of an ivory poaching ring (neither of which typically has the benefits of bulletproof glass) than I would for a multi-millionaire that uses his training as a physician to rip babies to shreds rather than to heal the sick.
- Many years ago I recall you mentioning a form for sidewalk counsellors to distribute to women and girls, to show to the abortion clinic at some point if they’re being coerced. The form threatens legal action against the clinic if they go ahead and do the abortion. Do you have a link to this form anywhere?