On Abortion...A Classical Conservative Speaks...Finally!

Classical conservatives find the issue of abortion not only disturbing when confronted by the fundamentalist or the evangelical sect of the modern conservative movement on this issue, but also confused and shocked by the self-refuting logic of their entrenched stand.

Any law passed, under the banner of modern conservatism based on organized religion, will not stop abortion. It will simply make abortion less safe for those women who choose or are forced into this extreme act. The number of women who get abortions will simply not change if it went from being legal to illegal, despite what cut-rate televangelists the likes of Pat Robertson, or for that matter, what the Pope conveys onto his followers when it comes to this issue.

There is absolutely no role for the government or organized religion when it comes to the issue of abortion. Most of our lawmakers are men and will never become pregnant. If a law would never in any circumstance apply to a man, a man creating a law against women and women only, is ludicrous.

When it comes to the restrictions placed on women to have unencumbered access to birth control and contraceptives over the counter at any local drug store, I would submit that if men could become pregnant, every kind of birth control and contraceptives would be freely accessible in a gum ball machine for 25 cents.

Classical conservatism is about limiting the role of government in the very private decisions of the individual.

A specific or collective religious ideology should not be the primary foundation for America law, and if we travel down this road then we highly risk becoming the equivalent of those nations who have imposed a religious and totalitarian theocracy on non-religious people. We now see this type of religious extremism enforced against many people in the Middle East.

Freedom of religion is guaranteed to every citizen in the United States, but I question as to why should the beliefs and principles of one dominant religious sect should mandate governmental actions against women who comprise 52% of the US population? It would be unfair, unjust, depraved and extremely dictatorial!

We do not have laws against eating fish, nor do we have laws that declare it is legal to sell one’s daughter or keep a person as a slave, all things that are promoted in the major and minor religious texts.

Doctors, not governments, should always be the people to make medical recommendations and opinions. Would modern conservatives elect to have the government dictate if they could have a kidney transplant, a vasectomy (because men you are killing “life “if you choose to have this procedure ) or a blood transfusion?

Of course not!

The fact that we even consider, let alone allow, government to regulate a medical procedure is both illogical and foolish. Was not this an issue during the healthcare debate?

So, maybe religious conservatives should stop assuming that they alone occupy the modern conservative landscape. The classical conservative must demand they should actively retreat on their religious superiority. Non-believers, or those who do not profess a particular orthodoxy are good conservatives, too.

Religion should not be used as a litmus test before one is allowed to engage in the political process. I would advise that it is possible for the classical conservative to unite on policy with my corresponding social conservatives on political issues that confront the body politic, without forcing me to agree on a disjointed or any other religions self-serving propaganda ideology that poses as modern conservatism.

There are those of us within the classical conservative movement, who have actually read the Bible, Quran and Torah, as opposed to those within the modern conservative movement who use their religious texts for political and financial ends.

And, in many respects, many classical conservatives know these religious texts better than the modern conservative politicians who play to the emotions of the low information and the rigid evangelical voter.

God will punish women by aborting their fetus through a miscarriage. “Give them, O LORD–what will you give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.” (Hosea 9:14).

Most religious and social conservatives simplistically and ignorantly deny the concept and scientific fact when it comes to the evolution of the human species.

As Texas Governor Rick Perry said: Evolution! It’s just a theory!

Then, it follows that a Supreme God created the human reproductive system for both man and woman.

Two (2) out of every five (5) pregnancies in the United States (and perhaps even higher worldwide) result in spontaneous abortion, making your respective God (the Creator of the women’s reproductive organs) the most prolific abortionist of them all!

God teaches the use of a bizarre ritual using cursed “bitter water” to abort a fetus who was conceived through infidelity. (Numbers 5:11-21)

I know many modern conservative religious women who have borne children through infidelity. However, there is no just cause for me to name them because it would belittle me, and subject them to public scorn.

However, if a modern conservative or conservative religious woman was gang-raped and became pregnant as a result of this horrible crime against her, but had always been sexually faithful to her husband, would you have me deny her access to a medical professional for the “bitter waters” medicinal prophylaxis? It would be her choice, and not mine.

God orders Moses to kill every Midianite woman who was no longer a virgin. (Many of these women would obviously have been pregnant) (Numbers 31:15-18). I guess God forgot to tell them to check every woman as to their virginal status before they killed them!

God promises to destroy the infants of Samaria and rip open the stomachs of pregnant women. “The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open.” (Hosea 13:16). Sounds like late term abortion to me!

God allows the pregnant women of Tappuah to be ripped open. “At that time Menahem, starting out from Tirzah, attacked Tiphsah and everyone in the city and its vicinity, because they refused to open their gates. He sacked Tiphsah and ripped open all the pregnant women. (2 Kings 15:16)

Apparently, all life is precious to the god you have created and endorsed based on your respective religious texts, unless it is a fetus conceived out of wedlock or conception happens within an “enemy” nation that does not worship him. The Bible teaches that abortion is acceptable if God performs it or he commands it to be done through contaminated water or by violent force through his followers.

I am a four –time decorated Vietnam Veteran. At the tender age of 19, I witnessed (and engaged by proxy) prosecuted horrible violence against innocent Vietnamese women who were pregnant. Would you have been happier had I used the “bitter waters” if I had known they were unfaithful to their husbands? Or, would you have been much happier had I used my bayonet to slit open her pregnant stomach because her “nation was the enemy of God”?

I did not take consolation when a senior Army officer told me to “shake it off soldier…you’re killing Gooks for Christ.”

You can be a pro-life supporter, but I would respectfully ask that you keep your religion away from me and my family, and do not come knocking on my door trying to convert me on a Sunday morning. The ancient texts you so heavily rely on are rife with horrific and violent stories against innocent infants and unborn children and they will never have any place in my life or in any discussion about my politics, nor are you qualify to judge any member of my family’s morality or my thoughts on the value of human life.

Indeed, for many people within the modern conservative movement and who profess a religious doctrine you should not judge anyone! Your arguments are without foundation or merit. I will never know what your God might tell you to do next, because your God has commanded just about every imaginable evil according to his own words and your alleged sacred book.

I am a classical conservative and I believe in the rights of the individual far above that of an over-reaching government at all levels, and against any over reaching organized religion that would do the same.

— Karl Neathammer resides in Carson City. He does not respond to his critics.