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African-Americans are aborted more frequently than Anyone else in the USA

Uwe Siemon-Netto, in “Poison directly to the Heart,” which appeared in the Rheinische Merkur newspaper (No. 19, May 7, 2005), wrote the following: “It appears odd that of all people, in the culture war the African-American Barack Obama is on the side of people such as Tiller and Sebelius. Abortion is a form of genocide against blacks: This wording on a banner in front of a Planned Parenthood facility in St. Louis was not an exaggeration. Rather, it corresponds to the statistics of all relevant institutes. Blacks account for only 12.3% of American women, but 37% of all babies killed are black; half of the pregnancies of black women end violently. In many black neighborhoods there is one live birth for every three abortions, states Rev. Clenard Childress, an African-American pastor. Abortion is the largest killer in our local community. Several years ago in southern California 15,000 dead fetuses were found in waste containers behind a clinic; 12,000 of them were black. It counts as a confusing fact of American politics that blacks almost exclusively vote for Democrats, where one finds that a commitment to the right to an abortion has become unshakeable dogma. 78% of all Planned Parenthood clinics, also the one in St.Louis, are located in black residential areas, and this is not by accident: the founder of this organization was the eugenicist Margaret Singer (1879-1966), who had the habit of speaking before the Ku Klux Klan and who advocated a rigid policy of sterilization and segregation of the weaker parts of the population, such as blacks , Irish Catholics, and the poor.”

If this had to do with some other topic beside Abortion, it would be a scandal of the first order. European media would confront the USA on its underlying racism, Anti-discrimination programs would be called for and the topic would be discussed daily. Since, however, a broad reactivation of the abortion discussion is not desired, the fortune of the black population is also not discussed.

Something similar also applies to gender selection procedures which happen a million times over and where boys are more significantly valued than girls, for instance in China, India, and the Islamic world. Indeed this is happening increasingly around the world. Just most recently The Swedish National Institute of Public Health officials have decided that abortion on the basis of gender may not be denied. There is the case of a mother who had two daughters and had already aborted two additional girls. She wanted to abort the third girl, since she at that point only wanted to have a boy. If this case did not have to do with abortion, it would be a scandal of the first order, and women’s representatives from around the world would protest.

The most dangerous Place on Earth

In Germany as in many other countries the most dangerous place one can be is in the womb, that is to say, the place which in general linguistic usage and literature used to be the epitome of security and dependability. Nowhere is an individual nowadays more defenseless, less protected, and more deprived of rights.

Increasingly happiness, affluence, and self actualization are the values which hold our society together, while more and more, with respect to other values, a consensus is missing. When everything is subject to a cost-benefit analysis, it is no surprise that this also applies to pregnancy and children. The domination of economic and materialistic concerns in our culture strikes through to the weakest in our culture.

Opponents to abortion start by simply assuming the position of the unborn individual. Everything else follows on its own. Their position is completely easy to describe – all other things are logical consequences: when human procreation takes place, a new biological, intectual and spiritual being occurs, a person with unmistakable dignity. Later on there is no break in development at which point something even close to this in meaning becomes apparent and where out of a non-person a person emerges.

The protection of human life is without a doubt the central and most important task of the state, and it serves as a basis for duties as well as rights. From this the German Supreme Court concluded in 1993 that the state can never actively pursue the ending of human life – also that of the unborn – nor can it hold that it is fit to end human life.

While compared to the history of bygone centuries things in democratic countries look very good with respect to protection of the individual during life, these same countries almost completely fail when it comes to the phase prior to birth (and increasingly also at the end of life) and in so doing deny to the weakest in society protection from other people who want to kill them. In our opinion this shakes the very foundations of the state. Furthermore, by habituation it leads to a situation where generally the protection of life becomes more and more one issue among many that by all means can be subordinated to other considerations.

If we have again come so far that the state thinks that it can vote on the right to life for entire parts of the population, then the state has lost its most important justification for existence, namely that of protecting the life of its citizens from other people. At the same time that a species protection act for plants and animals was signed, the German Bundestag decided that one may kill the human ‘species’ in the womb.

The most frequent Cause of Death worldwide

Abortion is the most frequent cause of death on the planet. According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), in 2007 there were 136 million births and 54 million deaths over against 42 million reported abortions. Of the 54 million 17.5 million died of cardiovascular disease and 11 million people died from cancer. Fewer than one-fifth of the 54 million were children. Thus almost four times as many children who are killed in the womb than die as born children.

In a report by the research institute World Watch published in Washington, it follows that annually almost as many children are aborted as people died in World War II. While in World War II 55 to 60 million people died, annually at least 50 million children are killed in the womb, whereby additionally 200,000 women also die.

In Japan and France one half of all children are killed in the womb. In Germany and the Netherlands that percentage is one quarter.

However, if one looks at the German media, one could get the impression that statistically we are dealing with is a side issue and a moral bagatelle.

Truths that bind Democracy

The Catholic systematic theologian William J. Hoye, who teaches at the State University in Muenster (Westfalia), has rightly emphasized that candid rational discourse between all parties involved in democracies is based upon inviolable ‘truths’ [William J. Hoye. Demokratie und Christentum: Die christliche Verantwortung für demokratische Prinzipien (Democracy and Christianity: The Christian Responsibility for democratic Principles]. Aschendorff: Muenster, 1999. pp. 29-33, 47-49).

The German constitution “commits itself” to human rights, and the preamble of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948 speaks of “recognition” and even of “faith” when it says: “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,” and “faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women.” Similar formulations, which presuppose the recognition of a prescribed, manifest and incontrovertible truth, are found in many human rights and constitutional texts, according to Hoye. German state constitutions speak of “esteeming” the “truth” and of an “attitude.” In the Constitution of Bremen (Article 26.3) mention is made of “education towards esteeming truth” and in the Constitution of the Rhineland Palatinate of “a freely democratic attitude” (Article 33).

The thought that all people should share truth (Hoye, ibid., p. 39) is inherent to democracy. This is due to the fact that “unlike all other political systems, democracy is, in its essence, not reliant upon philosophical thought” (ibid., p. 53).  Even if the least democratic systems seek to impose their structure upon other countries, democracy is a strongly missionary model that by no means is based on randomly gained votes but rather on final truths. And if a person scrutinizes these final truths, that individual is ‘undemocratic.’ One can see with what sort of final commitment the superiority of democracies is presented by politicians, how the word ‘democratic’ is treated as the ultimate mark of quality, or for instance how radically Muslims are called upon to subordinate to the constitution.

Does not the erection of an international court for genocide, before which heads of state have to answer, amount to a situation where there is an ethic that transcends all countries and all positive law? Is there not too little discussion about whether from a secular point of view there is just as much a presupposed comprehensive and universal ethos as there is from religious standpoints? Is not the secular point of view similar to what Christianity has known with the Torah from Judaism or what was once known as prevailing natural law? Or what Islam has known with the Sharia in a much more concrete model and with a completely different meaning? And wouldn’t such a global ethic need to be as much subject to an intensive discussion about its final justification as Christianity has been subject to in its history? Do not many hide their lack of a final justification behind the pretext that they alone want to avoid arguing religiously or even fundamentally?

People often behave as if religions, with their truth claims, are per se not capable of being democratic and are subordinate the state to their own truths. However, is it really any different with secular humanism – if one were to contrast these opposite poles rather boldly and simply? Is not the dispute all too often one of the respective final truths held by both sides, that is, which ones should bind the state with respect to human rights?

Does not German and European law correctly place religious and non-religious world views on one plane when it comes to religious freedom and freedom of expression. Does that not also mean at the same time that non-religious world views are just as lacking in neutrality as religions and should be so honestly described, as far as what they have as final, non-scrutinized foundations? In everyday life as well as in the academic world it has been observed for a long time that non-religious people – on account of their non-religiosity – are automatically viewed as more neutral, more committed to truth, and more rational, and who do not even have to disclose their foundations of thinking, while religious people have the buck passed to them for being narrow-minded and biased. How fair, rational, and capable of dialog someone is, and how much he or she is committed to true research, is not to be found in whether the individual is religious or not.

Let us take the example of the admissibility of abortion. Both sides argue with rights that transcend the state, if for the moment we overlook the large spectrum that seeks a compromise. The magisterium of the Catholic Church and the large majority of the Evangelical movement view unborn children as individuals with full human dignity and do not grant the state the right to infringe upon this human life (the classical presentation is found in Defending Life. A moral and legal Case against Abortion Choice, Cambridge 2007 by the Evangelical who converted to Catholicism, Francis J. Beckwith). The state is actually measured by religious truth which, however, according to the understanding of its proponents, should actually be understandable to every reasonable individual.

However, its opponents do not only refer to positive law which rests upon the parliamentary majority decision in favor of the freedom to abort. Otherwise, they would have to accept that in Ireland, Poland, or in many non-western countries it is just as legal on the basis of laws based on decisions made according to parliamentary procedure or by referendums that abortion is not permissible. Here they argue with rights for all individuals that transcend the state, such as the right of the woman to choose, or directly with a human right to abortion. To a degree, both sides measure the state in a fundamentalist manner on rights they will not give up or that bind democracies with ‘eternal’ values. They assume furthermore that there are some who do not want to understood these values in spite of all reason.

Alternatively, let us take the cultural war raging in California around the introduction of marriage for homosexuals and the current vote under the catchword  “Proposition 8.” Surely there is a coalition of people unwilling to compromise – both religious (primarily Catholics, Latinos, Mormons, and a portion of Evangelicals) and non-religious (otherwise there would not be such majorities!) – who are against the introduction of such a measure, but their opponents are just as unwilling to compromise and are fighting at the level of final truths. It does not matter to the one that a vote in November 2008 showed that 52% were against the introduction of homosexual marriage: Nor does it matter what the state legislature or judges decided. Rather, democratic mechanisms are for both sides the tools used to implement their own truth, which in a certain sense lie ‘fundamentalistically’ above the state. Democracy can often produce a balance between ‘truth’ and interests, but sometimes the verdict comes only through the decision of the majority or even only arises on the basis of randomly available mechanisms (the mode of voting, referendum, validity of court decisions).

In the final event, democracy does not, however, get along without binding itself to such higher values. Democracy is not an end in itself. It can conspicuously use its own mechanisms to vote itself out of office. Only if and when democracy is able to better ensure higher values such as the dignity of man, the constitutional state, minority protection, justice, or social state procedure is it in a position to be superior to all other states forms. For instance, how would a democracy practice the protection of minorities if the opinion of the majority and of the voting majority were holy and incontrovertible?

It would be better if all proponents of democracy would lay out in the open which values and truths are highest and which ones democracy should defend. This is preferable to a situation where some individuals act as if they were neutral while really only wanting to impose their truths of democracy.

The Right to Life Movement as a Human Rights Movement

The right to life movement has always understood itself to be a human rights movement. Above all it advocates the right to life for those who cannot represent themselves. While at the beginning it only had to do with the unborn, societal and medical developments in the meantime have brought along additional spheres: the aged, the sick, and the handicapped as well as test tube embryos.

Nowadays the unborn individual is in a sense not a person who is received, but rather, and contrary to all logic, not a person until he or she is received – an unwanted child does not have a right to life.

Human rights means, however, that a person is endowed with dignity before encountering any other person or institution such as the family or the state. Every other person, and a fortiori the state, finds us imbued with dignity. No one creates it by the power of his or her office.

The prohibition against killing the innocent belongs to the essence of a constitutional state. All opponents of the death penalty in fact expect from the state that they will not even kill anyone who is guilty. But the most innocent and the most helpless, those who are in a mother’s womb, are left without any government protection when those who should actually protect them more than everyone else, the mother, father, and physician, determine their death.

At present there is one national or European anti-discrimination measure and guideline chasing the other. However, the fact that the unborn are discriminated against, or additionally the handicapped or unloved, or even worse, those because of their gender, does not concern those who say that protection against discrimination so far does not go far enough.

Every unborn child is, from the moment it is conceived, a person who has a claim on the same human rights as every member of the human community. His or her life is to be protected unconditionally, and to kill that individual is unthinkable.

As are all human rights, the human rights of embryos are also independent of others’ consciences, for instance the consciences of mothers or physicians.

Cases where an individual can still be legally killed include the situation where it is done to prevent that individual from killing (e.g., self-defense, the self-defense of the state) – something that is excluded with respect to the unborn.  Another case where an individual can be legally killed is in a grave situation where there is a collision of obligations, one in which life is pitted against life (e.g., just war, self-sacrifice for another individual), but never, however, in order to defend a lesser value.