ONTD: Politics

By Martha Nussbaum

In Spain earlier this month, the Catalonian assembly narrowly rejected a proposed ban on the Muslim burqa in all public places -- reversing a vote the week before in the country's upper house of parliament supporting a ban. Similar proposals may soon become national law in France and Belgium. Even the headscarf often causes trouble. In France, girls may not wear it in school. In Germany (as in parts of Belgium and the Netherlands) some regions forbid public school teachers to wear it on the job, although nuns and priests are permitted to teach in full habit. What does political philosophy have to say about these developments? As it turns out, a long philosophical and legal tradition has reflected about similar matters.

Let's start with an assumption that is widely shared: that all human beings are equal bearers of human dignity. It is widely agreed that government must treat that dignity with equal respect. But what is it to treat people with equal respect in areas touching on religious belief and observance?

( Click for a coherent, objective, and secular defense of religious and expressive freedoms! )

[For more on this issue, visit the Times Topics page on Muslim veiling.]

Martha Nussbaum teaches law, philosophy, and divinity at The University of Chicago. She is the author of several books, including "Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America's Tradition of Religious Equality" (2008) and "Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities" (2010).

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This article is a bit lengthier than the ones that I typically post here, but it is definitely worth the read. As a minority woman, I've been uncomfortable with Europe's burqa-banning tendencies, which to me seemed like sexism and bigotry cloaked in something societally acceptable. (Think about it -- male politicians and the majority populace are restricting women's freedoms to dress and practice their faith as they choose "for their own good.") I'm not Muslim, but "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

I've never really been able to articulate my feelings properly, since all someone would have to say is something along the lines of, "Well, it's a security threat," and my argument would fall apart because "I should hope that it'd take more than some cotton covering someone's face to stump a security check if I have to pay all those taxes for Homeland Security" isn't a very solid rebuttal.

I'm glad that Dr. Nussbaum has said exactly what I have wanted to say to those who would pretend that their own intolerance is a noble cause for the greater good.

Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle has moderated a host of policy positions in her transition from a primary candidate to general election contender battling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. One thing she has not backed away from has been her insistence that abortion should be outlawed universally, even in cases of rape and incest.

( Click to read the full story. )

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Right, because being brutally violated -- especially by a parent -- is simply a lemon and carrying, giving birth to, and raising a child that has the DNA and face of your rapist is exactly like lemonade.

I call bullshit.

(Trigger warning: semi-graphic depiction of abortion, mention of violent physical and sexual assault)

Dr. X is a physician at a community health center and a medical school faculty member in the Midwest. Health Affairs does not normally publish articles under pseudonyms, but given recent murders of abortion providers and other violent attacks against them, we decided not to publish the physician's real name out of concern for her personal safety. As always, we welcome Narrative Matters essays from varying perspectives.

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"This is a clinic where they kill babies!" A woman in a black beret stopped me as I entered an abortion clinic. Pamphlets in hand, she asked me with concern, "Are you pregnant? Do you need help?"

I wasn't pregnant. I was on my way to work.

I went to medical school to promote life. I defined that loosely: I wanted to do what I could to keep individuals healthy so we could be part of loving families and build healthy communities, supporting each other and enjoying being alive. While I was in medical school, a friend became pregnant after date rape, and I supported her through an abortion.

Around that time, I attended a talk at the medical school by the journalist Jack Hitt. He discussed "Who Will Do Abortions Here?" -- his powerful, eye-opening New York Times article from 1998 about the threat to legalized abortion in the United States because of the lack of providers.

Then, as now, the number of abortion providers was dwindling. The number went from 2,680 providers in 1985 to 1,787 in 2005, the latest year for which statistics are available. Hitt described the upcoming retirement of the generation of obstetrician/gynecologists (OB/GYNs) who had watched women bleed to death from botched abortions and had responded to those tragedies by staffing clinics when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in its 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade.

But no new generation of abortion providers was being trained, Hitt told us. When teaching hospitals merged with religious hospitals where abortions were banned, abortions were no longer done -- or taught -- at the teaching institutions. Other programs began to make abortion training optional: OB/GYN or family medicine residents who wanted the training needed to add it to their already heavy loads of required courses. Threats to the lives of abortion providers and their families dissuaded some practitioners from providing these services, even though they were trained to perform them and the procedure is legal. More than half of all abortion practitioners were past retirement age, Hitt said. One elderly practitioner flew his own plane to reach women in four states -- he was the sole abortion provider in North Dakota -- despite regular death threats.

There are now an estimated 1.5 million abortions each year in the United States, making it the most common surgical procedure. Yet there are fewer and fewer abortion providers available. One-quarter of women needing abortions must travel more than fifty miles for the procedure; 6 percent must travel to another state. During my medical training, I saw many women with an unwanted pregnancy, and I witnessed wide variation in the options that doctors offered patients in that situation.

( Click for the full essay. )

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Reposted from this community's LiveJournal counterpart.

This is an issue that's extremely important to me, not only because I'm a feminist. Even though I grew up after Roe v. Wade, I know too well what the consequences of not having access to safe and legal abortions are. My grandmother was a prenatal surgeon who was relocated by the Chinese government to a labor camp during the Cultural Revolution; my mother worked in one of the largest hospitals in Shanghai (the one where I was born in) and, as a pharmacist and clinician, assisted in several medical abortions. After immigrating to the United States, my life would have been very different if, while my family was still struggling to make ends meet as strangers in a strange land, my mother did not have access to a safe, legal, and affordable abortion.

It makes me very sad that a woman's right to choose is even an issue for political debate in this country, which touts itself as the land of the free and home of the brave.