As I have said previously, we are a strange people. We like killing. We may not like the idea that we like killing, but we do. We don't like killing just for the sake of killing, we prefer for there to be some good reason. I suppose many of us were raised watching good Westerns where the bad guys killed wrongfully and were punished, but the good guys make good decisions about who to kill and when to kill them, and so were rewarded for their gallant behavior. This idea of a "good killing" is very important in American society and very important in Mississippi culture. We do not mind a bad guy being killed especially if he happens to be threatening someone else. We do not mind killing a foreign enemy, it is what insulates our bubble of safety, or so we believe. So this is the first important point to understand about our culture when we are talking about issues of life, is that there are lots of times when taking a life is something we find justifiable although we never talk about ourselves is a violent culture.
America has been violent from its earliest days and I suspect will always retain its violent nature. I also suspect that America will exist as long as it is financially viable, because I truly believe we are just too violent to be overtaken. This violence runs through our culture. We love guns. We love owning guns, buying guns, shooting guns, and having our guns in their hidden places. This doesn't mean we are bad people, just that we have a touch of violence in our blood. And as I have mentioned previously, we come by it honestly.
We like the death penalty here in Mississippi. We think that there are certain crimes that warrants a sentence of death. I don't think we really believe that the death penalty is a deterrent to crime, I think we like to kill bad people who have been found to deserve death. In this,we find a sense of justice. That a man, or a woman, would have a chance to be judged and be treated fairly and justly according to their crime. There is just one problem about the death penalty. It takes human life. We know that Mississippians are pro-life. We know that it is not possible to lose the image of God bestowed upon us at conception, that we are made in the image of God, and that for this reason we should not take human life. I have always imagined that we would never be able to rid ourselves of abortion here in Mississippi as long as we have the death penalty. To me, these two issues speak of the same image of God dynamic of human existence. Indeed, people often think that those on death row are no longer fully human or have full human rights. This is exactly the problem the unborn deals with, they have no voice, no visible face to be seen on TV, robbed of their ability to scream, many are not sure they're even human.
Here in Mississippi we are predominantly pro-life, and it is being asked of us to vote for an amendment that matches our belief statement. When I reflect on proposition 26, I ask myself, how does one vote against a statement that supposedly matches one's beliefs? Yet, that is exactly what many Mississippians will ask themselves next week. It is not because we are not pro-life we say, but that the proposition is too ambiguous and leaves too many unknown consequences before us. I wonder if we are terrified that there is no one left to protect us from ourselves, and now that we have been given authority to create law that matches what we say we believe, we may legislate ourselves back into the 19th century. This, of course, is a pro-choice argument, which we say we are not. But I think the state is full of women who are frightened of losing their right of making private decisions about their reproductive healthcare. I think this is what the opponents of proposition 26 mean when they say it is too ambiguous. Without directly addressing abortion, the consequences are far extended beyond the comfort level of many here in our state. Without the ability to create a law directly denying access to abortion, I am not sure what else the good citizens of the state might have done, except wait their lives away for a federal amendment. I think our state understands for the most part what an ugly business of killing an abortion clinic is, and that abortion clinics are not exactly healthcare. We are reminded of this when the occasional story comes out of a late-term abortion clinic about a baby being born alive in a bathroom stall or other setting, and no one at the clinic knowing quite what to do with it. Such things are really too horrible speak of. It is not enough to say, "no one really wants abortions" and ignore the massive financial machine that the abortion industry is. But the story of "following the money" is another story altogether when it comes to the heirs of the American eugenics movement, Planned Parenthood. I'll save that one for another day.
I am wondering if we will discover next week that we are a state made up of closet pro-choice believers who are desperate not to lose our birth control or any other control of our reproductive healthcare. Yet, we all seem to know that proposition 26 could take us to this place, where basic reproductive health care interfaces with an ambiguous amendment. We may discover that we are a state of pro-lifers who want to retain the choice to be pro-life and not have it legislated upon them. We shall see.
The Catholic Church teaches that nothing overrides the human conscience and that we must use our conscience to make good decisions. Church teaching informs conscience, but we are not to follow church teachings like robots. I have noticed that the church frowns upon people making informed decisions that may stray from church teachings, so I haven't quite worked out all the details about the relationship between church teachings and conscience. True to form, the Bishop in Jackson is reminding Catholics that they are, as always, to vote their conscience. He has also said that although the diocese there does not oppose proposition 26, but they are not developing the habit of supporting everything that dresses itself in pro-life clothing. So again, it is up to the individual voter who, with a properly formed conscience, will decide next week if the Mississippi "personhood" rights begin at fertilization, or equivalent thereof.
So, for those in Mississippi, vote your conscience. Do not be afraid. Surely a state that does not match federal Medicaid dollars currently wouldn't do anything that would actually increase the number of children born here, and must see that they have some vested financial interest in making sure that the good citizens of Mississippi who choose to use birth control will not lose their access to it. Again, we shall see. May God lead us on the right path.
No comments:
Post a Comment