Monday, March 13, 2006

Let's Change the Definition Of Every Word In the Dictionary For Fun





the south dakota state legislature's recent grandstanding is not surprising. it had to come to this. the pressure has been building for years. a well-organized cohort of social conservatives, playing on the ambivalence most americans feel about abortion, has been pushing for a radical change in the legal status of abortion since Roe v. Wade was handed down. now that legislators are taking concrete steps to push for a final supreme court showdown, many americans, for reasons both abstract and personal, will have to resolve their ambivalence.

after reading the south dakota task force's report, i came to the conclusion that we need to make the use of science-y language to advance a religious agenda punishable by death. to call the report a steaming pile of horseshit would be a compliment. that said, i'm actually not deeply worried. the balance of the supreme court still leans pro-choice. nevertheless, for the next few years, we will be living in the tower of babel as competing narratives of 'The Meaning of Life' duke it out in the national consciousness.

there's something about abortion that provokes intense existential anxiety, even more so than the theory of evolution. i think the culture war is largely a war for control of language -- or, more accurately, a war for discursive authority. it would explain the rain of spittle and invective that the mere mention of deconstruction provokes in reactionary social conservatives. people who have a profound emotional investment in absolute truths are naturally going to hiss and scatter like creatures of the night before the spectre of deconstruction. one would think deconstruction were a movement as opposed to a method of textual analysis given the sheer hostility it engenders. threatening the integrity of someone's preferred symbolic order using their own words is a risky business anyway.

i've argued before that the very people who vilify deconstruction are often rather good at using deconstructive techniques. the political religious right already has tried to supplant scientific truth with religious truth directly and failed. the adoption of intelligent design as the alternative du jour to the theory of evolution represents a new strategy in the struggle for discursive authority between science and religion. the intent, of course, is to weaken the meaning of 'scientific truth' (and therefore its power) by muddying it with religious reasoning.

in one of my recent posts, i argued that this means the political religious right acknowledges that a scientific theory of human origins has a better chance of success than a purely religious one. when opponents of the theory of the evolution chose to adopt science-y language and argumentation, they ceded the terms of debate to science. the south dakota task force's report resorts to the same bad faith methodology. a scientific approach to any topic of study requires that one actively seek out empirical evidence that refutes one's hypothesis. in fact, that is the heart of scientific research. the authors of the report, however, tried to write something that had the ring of scientific and medical truth, while advancing an agenda based on religious values.

the assertion that the belief that a fertilized egg is the equivalent of a born human being is a religious belief rattled at least a couple of prolife commenters at Alas, A Blog. the thread degenerated into a argument over language. prolife commenters felt that it was unfair to call the law extreme. one commenter whom i stopped debating felt that the absence of overt religious vocabulary in the report meant that its findings were not based on religious beliefs.

some interesting details emerged when i started reading about the task force itself. the task force was rife with conflict from the beginning. Sen. Stan Adelstein, R-Rapid City, one of the members of the task force, attempted to insert a statement into the bill acknowledging a religious basis for the belief that a human being is formed at the moment of conception:

In addition, the report is mistaken when it asserts that it cannot be doubted that an unborn child is a whole human being from the time of conception, Adelstein said. He tried unsuccessfully to amend that statement to reflect that the idea is held only by those of some religious beliefs.

"That's a religious belief," Adelstein said. "I said on the record that as a Jew, I not only doubt but I do not believe it to be true. This is a religious belief and nothing more."

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even the task force chair was unhappy with the report:
Task Force Chair Marty Allison, an abortion-rights opponent (emphasis mine) who voted against the report, said, "The final report was authored by a few people on the task force, and it is less than completely objective and factual. It is biased and opinionated," adding that the report is "not reflective of all the information we spent so much time gathering."

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we haven't even gotten to the scientific validity of the report's data and findings:
Allison said she believes the task force should have approved a proposal requiring the report to include only rigorous scientific research that is accepted by the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American College of Gynecology and other professional organizations.

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there's a word on the tip of my tongue. i think it might be crackpottery. surely, we can depend on the wise and thoughtful task force members to make meaningful distinctions between real science and junk science, right?
Sen. Brock Greenfield, R-Clark, another member of the task force, said the report accurately reflects the testimony and written evidence the panel received during its meetings in recent months.

"As I took in the testimony and made many, many notes, it was evident to me the act of abortion has significantly hurt women and families," said Greenfield, who is also director of South Dakota Right to Life.

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well, at least we can rest assured, that Greenfield took many, many notes. he sums up the task force and its report:
Task force member and state Sen. Brock Greenfield (R) said, "For people to suggest there was no objectivity, that it was a preconceived or predetermined outcome, is a little disingenuous to the process." He added, "Based on the evidence that was presented to the task force, I really felt that the language contained in that report best described what we heard in terms of testimony."

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i wonder how much time they spent talking about the 'language' as opposed to the 'evidence', the 'data', and the 'research'? the response to criticism of the report and the process under which it was written generally boils down to assertions that the research and methodology were sound. that smells like truthiness to me. the report doesn't contain a single mention of the unforeseen consequences of fetal rights legislation in other states. that doesn't say much for its allegedly balanced assessment of the facts. the absence of any mention of these cases is damning even without the criticism of dissenting task force members.

first, let me address the claim that HB 1215 is not extreme. extreme means ‘not in the mainstream.’ if this law were within the mainstream of prolife beliefs, then the prolife advocates on the task force would largely be in agreement with the content of the report, but that is not the case:
[…] [T]he task force members recommended a full ban on all abortions, explicitly rejecting a proposal by the task force’s pro-life chair that would allow exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.

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let’s consider a dictionary definition of extremism. extremism — any political theory favoring immoderate uncompromising policies:
For example, in 2005, a self-described true believer in the Bible went to a Pennsylvania hospital to deliver her seventh wanted child. The hospital decided she needed a Caesarean section and, when she refused, went to court using the argument recommended by the South Dakota Legislature: that the fetus had full, separate constitutional rights. The hospital won. The court gave the hospital custody of the fetus before, during and after delivery and the right to take custody of the pregnant woman to force her to undergo surgery. In the end, she and her husband fled the hospital and delivered a perfectly health baby without surgery.

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i want to add that i also consider extreme any legislation that blatently ignores established legal precedent. fetal rights legislation has been challenged and defeated time and again in court. the ACLU has been fighting and winning these cases for years:
A decade ago, we saw a rash of cases in which government officials zealously embraced a misguided mission to protect fetuses by attempting to control the conduct of pregnant women. Some women were forced to accept unwanted medical treatment; others were punished for their conduct during pregnancy. Inevitably, such actions backfire: women who fear the government’s “pregnancy police” will avoid prenatal care altogether, and both they and their fetuses will suffer as a result.

The ACLU, drawing upon the expertise of both its Reproductive Freedom and Women’s Rights Projects, defended many of the women who were subject to coercive or punitive state actions. We won case after case, and attempts to bully and punish pregnant women eventually diminished

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i also consider legislation extreme when it ignores professional expertise surrounding the subject of the legislation. the American Medical Association is firmly against legal intervention in the medical care and medical decisions of pregnant women:
To address this problem, the American Medical Association has advised its members that in the unusual instances when they encounter pregnant women who refuse a suggested treatment, they should respect their patients’ wishes, without recourse to a court. Legal intervention will only result in scaring women away from prenatal care: “While the health of a few infants may be preserved by overriding a pregnant woman’s decision, the health of a great many more may be sacrificed.”

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one court-mandated surgery resulted in the death of a woman and her fetus:
In the most notorious incident, in 1987 administrators of George Washington University Hospital went to court to force Angela Carder, a pregnant woman ill with cancer, to undergo a cesarean section. When both she and her critically premature baby died shortly after the surgery, the c-section was listed as a contributing cause of her death.

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again, professional medical opinion went against legal intervention in pregnant women’s medical care and medical decisions:
The American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and 118 other organizations, including medical groups, women’s groups, religious and civil rights groups, disability rights organizations, and leading bioethicists supported us by filing friend-of-the-court briefs. […] [T]he court resoundingly concluded that in virtually all circumstances a woman — not doctors or a judge — should make medical decisions on behalf of herself and her fetus. The opinion emphasized an argument made in the American Public Health Association’s friend-of-the court brief, that court-ordered intervention “drives women at high risk of complications during pregnancy and childbirth out of the health care system to avoid coerced treatment.”

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just one more case for good measure:
“T.B.,” an Illinois woman, ran into similar difficulties in 1993 when she resisted a c-section because of religious objections. A hospital took her to court to force her to have an immediate c-section because it feared that her fetus was not getting sufficient oxygen. […]

The ACLU of Illinois, in consultation with RFP, represented the woman and persuaded the appellate court to uphold the lower court’s decision denying an order. The court recognized “T.B.’s” rights to privacy, bodily autonomy, and religious liberty. Efforts by the Public Guardian to involve the Illinois Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court failed. “T.B.” was doubly vindicated: the law upheld her rights and she vaginally delivered a healthy baby boy.

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laws that cause people to flee from hospitals or to avoid doctors are extreme laws.

(To be continued)

3 comments:

Joe said...

Whew! I scrolled down and realized I'm going to need more than the "two minutes while I sip my tea before I tackle the real work of the day in my cubicle" to read today's entry. Looks meaty though!

FM said...

there is simply no way to engage in a rational discussion with someone else with fundamentally different world views that cannot be reconciled with your own. sorry, but using "sciency" words to push a religious agenda doesn't cut it; but i don't think these people believe that what they are doing is wrong. quite the contrary. i am of the herd who believes that intelligent design should be taught in a theology class. the tricky thing is that creationists believe so strongly that their view is correct that those on the materialist side of the fence simply cannot convince those who believe so deeply in their religion that their belief system doesn't belong in a science class. the creationists think that any "life coming into being" theory which does not encompass god's guiding hand is IMPOSSIBLE. that's right. IMPOSSIBLE. they inject god into everything, because they believe that god DOES move everything along.

it's a hopeless "battle" if you ask me. the compassionate ones see us as lost sheep who need to see the light and feel the love of god (you want to know how many times AACF prayed for me at harvard?) and the assholes see us as devils spawn. they simply see NO. OTHER. WAY.

anyway, perhaps i should go on a tangent.

the people who end up in the private colleges in the northeast/california from the bible belt are more adventurous and precocious than the ones who decide to stay home and live the small town life. the ones who stayed behind in my hometown (even though jesse helms did want to turn our town into a zoo) are more conservative than the ones who left and ended up, say, writing for the New York Times. the ones who feel safe in a predicable little small town stay. the ones who are really sick of simple small town culture do end up leaving.

some people like their worlds simple and defined. others want to go forth and conquer. and maybe the less bold ones should have a safe place to live, even though it does come at a cost to them. (and hell, if they want south dakota or kansas... sure.) we have to coexist in this world with crazy motherfuckers; that's just a price we all have to pay to live here.

emily1 said...

shysterb:

thanks for the link to Sufficient Scruples. he has some great analysis of the loaded language in the report.