Another Religion

by Groff Schroeder

Since the dawn of time, spontaneous abortion (“miscarriage”), defects, illness, inadequate finances or support etc. have created life and death medical necessities related to problem and unintended pregnancies. Today, numerous effective forms of birth control help to reduce both pregnancy and abortion. Planned Parenthood and other medical care providers provide not only various types of low cost preventative health care, but also reduced cost birth control - and between 2009 and 2017, participation in Colorado's pioneering LARC (long acting reversible contraception) experiment yielded a 35% decrease in birth rate and a 41% decrease in abortion for women ages 20 and 24 years, and a 50% decrease in birth rate and a 60% decrease in abortion for women between 16 and 19.

Sadly, such successes do not satisfy those whose “religious beliefs” prohibit birth control and abortion. Yet, there appear to be no religious scriptures anywhere stating that “life begins at conception” or prohibiting abortion or birth control. Christian scriptures repeatedly associate the beginning of life with the act of breathing. The teachings of Christ revolve around love, helping others, and reciprocity (“the golden rule”) - not cynically judging and publicly condemning other people’s reproductive tragedies. Similarly, no religion or religious scripture advocates corrupting governments, passing laws that regulate citizen’s sex lives, or forcing others to comply with sexual or religious mandates. This suggests that those holding “religious beliefs” prohibiting birth control and abortion are followers of a new anti-birth control anti-abortion religion that has basically nothing to do with any existing religion – especially Christianity.

The First Amendment and United States Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, and the Fourth Amendment guarantees security in our persons. How can we exercise our freedom of religion if we are forced to comply with the rigid, often-harsh dogma of the anti-birth control anti-abortion religion and yield to apparently deeply duplicitous, cynical, and immoral manipulations of the American judiciary? How can we assert our freedom to control our own bodies if the anti-birth control anti-abortion religion imprisons women for having spontaneous abortions, sanctions physicians for providing lifesaving medical care, grants openly dishonest politicians rancher-type powers to monitor and control our reproductive processes under penalty of law, and gives rapists the government-enforced power to basically enslave any woman they choose for life by impregnating them?

Today’s struggle for religious freedom revolves around whether followers of an obscure, but sexually obsessive religion have the “religious freedom” to revoke everyone else’s human right to control our own bodies and sex lives in privacy, as well as our civil right to exercise our personal religious freedom without being forced to submit to government/religious sexual oversight, regulation, and punishment under penalty of law. Someday, determined, well funded, and apparently deeply immoral adherents of an aggressive, intrusive, and voyeuristic religion dedicated to forced societal compliance with apparently made up, anti-science sexual mandates will no longer threaten our freedoms and rights with deceitful, hypocritical, unethical, and historically violent tactics. Until then, whether you seek medical care, birth control, or to make a donation, when you visit our nationally-famous "bunker-like" women’s clinic, adherents of the anti-birth control anti-abortion religion will probably exercise their alleged “religious freedom” to apparently threaten your personal safety and violate your sexual privacy, aided by politician cohorts who attack all American freedoms by deliberately and openly corrupting America’s courts.

Please, VOTE!

Published October 7-14, 2020 in the Freethinkers of Colorado Springs Freethought Views column in the Colorado Springs Independent with the quotation below.

"There is a concept called body autonomy. It’s generally considered a human
right."

Hannah Goff