Aborting the Randomly Religious

The Supreme Court's decision to allow for the banning of abortion -- or limiting it to just the first couple of weeks of a pregnancy -- reflects a very limited Christian view of the issue.  First, not all Christians in this country agree with the decision:  18% of Jehovah's Witnesses, 27% of Mormons, 33% of Evangelicals, 48% of Catholics, 52% of Black Protestants, and 60% of "mainline" Protestants believe that abortion should be legal in most, if not all, cases.  Second, the bans might actually be a violation of the 1st Amendment's Free Exercise clause in that a reading of the Talmud and the Quran shows that there is a religious basis for allowing, if not requiring in some cases, for abortion. 

Under Judaic tradition, for the first 40 days of a pregnancy, the fetus is considered to be a 'fluid' and, more importantly, for the entirety of the pregnancy, the fetus is considered to be part of the mother and not seen has having 'personhood' until birth.  The Jewish Mishnah teaches that when the pregnancy endangers the mother's life, even at the point of labor, then the choice must be to save the mother even if that causes the death of the fetus -- up to the point of the baby's head being visible outside of the mother.  When the pro-life (or as some have put it 'forced-birth') politicians quote the Old Testament, such as Psalms 139, rabbis tend to get irritated:  “It makes me apoplectic. Most of the proof texts that they’re bringing in for this are ridiculous. They’re using my sacred text to justify taking away my rights in a way that is just so calculated and craven” (Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg).  As the Torah (Exodus) makes explicit, there's no penalty for causing a woman to miscarry beyond a monetary payment; no "eye for an eye", because the fetus does not yet contain a nefesh (soul).  This may be the reason why 83% of Jews in this country support the pro-choice position.  

Then there's the Muslim tradition.  Most (55%) Muslims in America state that abortion should be legal, yet a lot of them are not very vocal because theirs is more along the lines of the original ruling of Roe v. Wade (1973), in that it's not an absolute right.  Some Islamic scholars in the US point the Quran and the hadithes, which state that for the first 40 days, the fetus is merely a nutfah, that the angels have not yet caused the 'ensoulment' of the child.  The Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) Council of North America has stated that abortion could be allowed up to the 120th day of the pregnancy, stating that before that time it is a life and should be given the same respect as we give to any life on earth, but after that it is a human and thus should be held at higher regard.   Daisy Khan, a Muslim activist working in Afghanistan pointed out that the anti-abortion laws being passed in the US make them more strict that then ones being passed by the Taliban. She makes an excellent point: “We cannot preach women’s rights to other countries when we are stepping back the rights [American] women have to control their own reproduction.”

Crazy Randomness

End of the semester harks the end of the silence of Randomness.

From under the pile of term papers and final exams, out crawls La Professora to see a world that has gone on with its crazy randomness without her.

Case in point: some anti-abortion fundamentalist Christian shot a doctor at his church. For the most part, the leadership of the various anti-abortion groups have been condemning, albeit faintly, the shooting. Perhaps because of where it occurred. One, a preacher and director of Operation Save America, is reported to have said Dr George Tiller "has shed the blood of countless thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of little baby boys and girls and burned them up in his on-premises incinerator. Now this thing has come home to him."

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of late term abortions. However, there is something fundamentally wrong about a group of people who believe that it is reprehensible for a doctor to abort a fetus, but it is morally commendable to kill that doctor for doing so. The mind boggles.

There is hope, however. In another part of the world, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Ali Gomaa, issued a fatwa 'banning' weapons of mass destruction. Seems that WMDs are likely to kill Muslims as indiscriminately as non-Muslims. Not that his ruling will influence the clerics and politicians of Iran.

Speaking of Iran and having things come home, it appears that the nation known for being a supporter of terrorist activities elsewhere in the Middle East is now reaping its own whirlwind of distruction. On May 28, a bomb exploded at a mosque near the eastern portion of that country, where it borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan, killing 25. Of course, Iranian officials claimed that the bombers were American and Israeli, with ties to al-Qaeda. The following day, gunmen attacked the campaign headquarters of the incumbent presidential candidate. Today, a bomb was discovered in the toilet of a domestic airplane. The attacks are believed to be the work of the Jundullah (Allah's Soldiers), a Sunni separatist group. While the links al-Qaeda may be overdone -- yet not inconceivable, there has been disagreement between the likes of the Taliban and the ayatollahs of Iran over the nature of a true Islamic State -- it would appear that there might be some truth to the link with America. Rumors abound that under the Bush administration, there was a $400 million fund for covert operations assisting the religious and ethnic minorities in Iran in their push to destabilize that country. It is, after all, part of the Axis of Evil.

Maybe being under that pile of student work wasn't so bad after all.

Grades are posted. Let the whining begin.

Truly Random Art

Having taught at a handful of universities and colleges, I've seen my fair share of what I'd call -- not being a trained artist, I don't know if there's a technical word for it -- temporary art. Over a decade ago, when I was still a grad student at UCSB, there was a student who had covered himself with so much protective gear that you couldn't see who it was, tied his bike to a rope lead with a light pole as the center, and rode 'round and 'round the pole. My fellow graduate student and I had a great time interpreting the "message" of the temporary art project -- we saw it as a metaphor for the life of a student at that university: The bike was the student's drive to succeed; the rope lead was the strange and contradictory rules and regulations for getting done; the light pole was the immovable administration which had no real interest in helping the student succeed in a timely manner. We were pleased with our interpretation and never did find out what the true message of the piece was.

Every quarter, the art department would send its students out onto the wider campus to express themselves through some sort of temporary art. That kid on the bike making endless circles has always stuck with me. Along with the kid who raised money by swinging in a hammock in a spiny coral tree and allowing the females to rub his chest hairs, which he had shaved into the form of a heart, for romantic luck. As temporary art that one was noticeable for its mercenary interpretation -- self-objectification as art. Yet each quarter, we looked forward to what would be next crop of temporary art.

I had forgotten about those installations until midnight -- the magical hour -- between Tuesday and Wednesday when I found a random art project that tickled my funny bone: an homage to random thoughts.

In the darkest hour of the night, the piece seemed a bit piratical. Bits of magnetized words were plastered randomly on a bit of normally boring artwork on campus. This "soft metal" work is in one of the main walkways, yet is often overlooked and ignored.

Not that night.

That Tuesday night, when it bordered on Wednesday, the sculpture spoke in random words. Inviting the passerby to express themselves in poetry and prose, only to have that expression erased in the temporariness of the piece -- words would be shifted and used by others and, finally, removed.

I could not help but be intrigued. And take pictures so that this temporary piece could find permanency in the greatest gallery of permanently fixed temporary art, the Internet.




































Perhaps this message was prophetic.






By 5 p.m. the next day, all the magical words had disappeared.

All that remained after someone had removed most -- but not all -- of the words were these, remaining above eye level and so missed by the cleaners.

Or, perhaps, they were the final message of the temporary artist.

Civil Randomness

Yesterday, I participated in a panel of professors discussing various aspects of Terrorism. Each of us had been given a question to prepare in advance and 15 minutes to present our answers. The question for me was “What is the threat to civil liberties in the War against Terrorism?”

As much as it grieved me to be quoting Justice Rehnquist, he had made a good point: Democracy is a fine balance between freedom and order, and in times of war, Americans have traditionally chosen to have more order than freedom. The trouble now lies in the question of whether or not the “war” on terrorism counts as one of those times.

The thrust of my talk was that civil liberties are each individual’s responsibility to defend. If one fears the government taking away one’s liberties, then one should exercise one’s political power and vote. Yes, vote. With only 19% of the college-age citizens voting, it is hardly fitting that those other 81% complain that the government is trying to restrict their rights.

The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states quite clearly that the people have the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects. However, the Supreme Court, when ruling on whether that right extends to the public interaction, has consistently said that if a person has no expectation of privacy, then the 4th Amendment does not come into play.

Furthermore, the 4th Amendment is not applied to business when it comes to the collecting of personal information. That’s not to say that stealing is perfectly acceptable when done by businesses; stealing is stealing, and is punishable by law. It is not, however, a violation of the Constitution.

What is being discussed here is the collection of data on people’s purchasing habits and other bits of personal information. If you have in your wallet a credit card, a store “loyalty” card, or any other card for which you filled out an application form with your personal data, then a business has your personal information. That business can then sell your information to others.

If you have a MySpace, FaceBook, or any of the numerous other Internet blog-like pages, then you have been giving out free information. Employers are known to surf those sites for information about prospective, and current, employees. Think carefully about what your pages say about you.

I have often been amazed at the conversations I have overheard walking down the street in the vicinity of someone chatting on a cell phone. It is as if T.M.I. Chatter believes there’s some sort of cone of silence and no one can tell that Mr/s Chatter is discussing the most intimate of details. Sorry, there’s no such cone and we really can hear everything. I do mean everything, even the parts most of us would be happier not knowing.

It seems incredible, then, that citizens are complaining of the government wanting to collect the data that they are so wantonly giving away.

The Fifth Amendment only says that the government cannot compel you to give up information that may incriminate you. It does not say that the government can’t collect any information about you at all. If businesses can trade in personal information, if all of your cyber-friends can know every last detail about your life, if you blather loudly on your cell phone on a public street, you do not have an expectation of privacy, and thus should not be concerned about the government collecting your data.

What this has to do with terrorism is simple. To protect the country from those who wish to harm it from within, citizens expect their government, at all levels, to provide security. In order to make the country secure, the government has to know what is going on within the country. Data mining seems the best and easiest way to go about it.

Despite what Hollywood has fed us over the decades, terrorists are not evil geniuses. They have not figured out how to exist outside modern society and the reach of all its technology. If Barnes and Nobles can know what reading materials terrorists have purchased by tracking that information on their B&N membership card, if Visa can know what reading materials terrorists purchased at Barnes and Noble using that credit card, it should surprise no one that the U.S. government would also like to know.

In the continuing effort to keep terrorists from flying, the government has a “no fly” list of suspects, or, if you’d like, persons of interest. If your name is on the list because you are unlucky enough to share that name with someone else out there in the world who is of interest to the U.S. government, life is about to become simpler: soon, when you purchase a airline ticket, you will be asked for your birthdate. If you don’t want to share that information, do not be surprised that you will have difficulty getting through security at the airport. Furthermore, this data – your name, birthdate, and flight information – will be shared with the U.S. government. If you don’t want it to know, don’t fly; I hear the train is a lovely way to see the country, even if it is usually late.

As for me, I am La Professora; I know how to keep my technological profile low and my personal information private.

Random Bias

If I've taught my methodology students anything, it's that one should own up to one's biases. When doing research -- and by that I mean real research, not the stuff students do in a library -- political scientists must identify their own biases in hopes that it will make their studies more scientific. That being the case, I have always identified to my students my political ideology.

I am a good Southern Democrat -- not a Dixiecrat, which is vastly different -- a social liberal and a fiscal conservative: I believe that we should help everyone in need, just not with my tax money.

But now, I find out, I can be kept from doing my civic duty of serving on a jury for the mere reason that I am an instructor, because everyone knows that teachers are notoriously liberal and will always find in favor of the defendant.

Okay, I will admit that traditionally there have been a greater number of liberals than conservatives in the teaching profession, and there's no concrete evidence as to why that is. Some say it's because only liberals would take such a thankless job at such low pay. Some say that only liberals feel the need to serve the community, whereas conservatives only serve themselves. Still others say that liberals become involved in education because it's the only place where their ideology can be indoctrinated into the young. Perhaps there's some small truth to any of those ideas, but that would hardly explain my Republican colleagues in the department.

As I did, these colleagues gave up the possibility of very lucrative careers to be paid very little of what they are worth -- both in terms of what it took to get their degrees and what they bring to the classroom -- and they certainly do not think their job is to counteract any liberal 'indoctrination' the rest of us are accused of instilling in our students. If anything, we all rejoice in the diversity of opinion that is expressed. One of my favorite courses as an undergraduate was team-taught by a conservative and a liberal, which made for a very interesting and informative course on War.

In my classes, it quickly becomes clear: I do not care what your political flavor is, you must be able to defend your position or opinion with logically presented evidence. I have played Devil's Advocate so many times, arguing alternatively the extreme right or the extreme left positions, that most of my students forget what my ideology is. In point of fact, one budding journalist, who visited my classroom when I had a guest speaker talk about his work in a Republican assemblyman's office, wrote that I agreed with all things conservative.

Which just goes to show that the other part of Deputy District Attorney Gregory Dolge's statement, that journalists are also notoriously liberal, is wrong. The young man reporting on my visitor's presentation was clearly of the conservative bent. He follows in the footsteps of other 'notoriously liberal' journalists: Pat Buchanan, George Will, and Bill O'Reilly, to name a few.

So, thanks to the California Appeals Court, I cannot do my duty as a citizen because most of the members of my profession are liberal. My students would recognize this -- or should, else their grade in the course be subject to question -- as an ecological fallacy, which is the origin of stereotyping. Which in and of itself is a form of bias. That's okay, said the Appeals Court; society can discriminate against me because of my profession, so long as it doesn't consider my gender into the equation.

Oh, how I long for the day when I could be excluded from the jury pool because my degrees made me "too smart" for lawyers' comfort.

Image credit: http://www.courts.wa.gov/newsinfo/resources/

Random Words Matter

You'd think that a common three-letter word wouldn't upset someone. Imagine being upset by the word "any". But that little word is the cause of a great deal of Sturm und Drang among the anti-abortion crowd of Virginia.

It comes down to one judge, one critical word, and one pregnant woman who shot herself as a form of self-induced abortion.

This mother, with little in the way of resources, beyond access to a gun, shot herself in the abdomen when she went into labor rather than face having yet another child, a child whose father was an abusive excuse for a man. A full-term child, who was about to make its entrance into the world, dead because its mother had really bad judgment all the way around.

Under Virginia law, "Any person who knowingly performs partial birth infanticide and thereby kills a human infant is guilty of a Class 4 felony." Is the mother "any" person? The anti-abortion activitists say yes; the judge says no. And rightly so.

If courts hold the mother accountable for an action that may lead in turn to the premature death of her fetus, then the courts would be opening the door to the prosecution of mothers who don't eat right, or enough, and her body rejects the fetus as a way of preserving itself. Or mothers who cannot seem to kick the habit of smoking while pregnant and the child is unable to come to term due to damage caused by that habit. Drugs, drinking, failure to follow doctors' advice, a fall down the stairs -- all could lead to the prosecution of the mother.

The human species is not generally known for its brilliance. We make piss poor decisions every day. Throw in some wildly fluctuating hormones into the mix and those decisions get even worse. As an example, take the recent report that pregnant teenagers in Great Britain are taking up smoking from the moment they find out they're pregnant in order to keep the baby's weight down and thus have a less painful labor. Not exactly Nobel Prize winning brilliance, that.

But back to our hapless mother with a bullet wound. I understand the need for such laws and the need to protect a pregnant woman from a man who's less than pleased with her and her pregnancy. This case goes beyond that. This woman was the victim of a lot of things, not the least of which was circumstance. Just like the rest of us, she should be held accountable for her actions. She should have been charged with discharging a firearm in a public place, or for making a false report. Instead, the D.A. chose to push for this Class 4 felony charge.

The judge rightly said that the woman was both victim and instigator; she does not count as just "any" person.

A look at the end of the law makes this a little bit clearer: "The mother may not be prosecuted for any criminal offense based on the performance of any act or procedure by a physician in violation of this section." Meaning that a woman may make the choice to abort late-term, but it is the physician who carries out the act who is legally responsible. As the mother, Tammy Skinner is absolved because she was not a 'physician' who shot the fetus.

All this has the moral conservatives in a tizzy. In their mind, no one, not even the mother herself, should be able to get away with shooting a pregnant woman in the abdomen, killing her fetus. To them, 'any' means absolutely any. To the D.A., 'any' means 'all'. To the court, 'any' means 'any', but not necessarily 'all' -- the mother would be included in 'all' but not in 'any' -- given the final section of the statute. If the legislature meant 'all', it would have written 'all' into the law.

Amazing the power of a simple, three-letter word.

Photo Credit: http://www.robynsnest.com/alcdrugs.htm

Cleaning out the Random

In the summer of 2005, the Socialist Government of Spain passed a new divorce law. In and of itself, that’s not too unusual. What was surprising was the addition of brand new grounds for divorce: lack of doing chores.

It is now mandatory for the newly married people of Spain to do their ‘fair’ share of the household chores. This new rule was added to the marriage contract signed in civil weddings, and if one of the partners feels that the other is not living up to the contract, then that’s a legitimate reason to call it quits.

Imagine the poor divorce judge who must decide what is a fair distribution of the chores in order to grant the divorce.

My own parents had worked out a fairly good system given that both worked full-time and jointly raised 4 girls. Dad would make sure the cars were in good running order, with enough gas to get everyone where they need to be each day, and kept the house in good physical shape. My mother did the laundry and a good portion of the cooking. Setting the table and cleaning up afterwards were done by us kids. Yard work was a joint parental project, whereas cleaning of the common rooms was a family effort. Each kid cleaned their own room and looked after their own pet. Being the much younger child, for a while there I was a chore that was rotated among the family members – until I was old enough to join in on the cleaning routine, as measured by the ability to reach the bottom of the sink while standing on a stool.

This system seemed fair enough for our family.

Spain, however, is the originating country of the Macho Male. Yet, the reaction among men toward the idea of legalizing the shared chores doctrine was mixed. Within a month of passage of the new divorce law, there were numerous ‘Chores Schools’: Places where men could go to learn how to do laundry and iron their shirts. To be taught how to be manly as they dusted. Enrollment has been steadily increasing over the past year. On the other hand, in the bars and cafes where the men come to be men, the older generation have grumbled that the law would change the cultural dynamics of the country, that the work around the house they’ve done for generations would now become undervalued. If a man is to be expected to wash and iron his own shirts, could he not expect that when he hands his wife the keys to the car she’d fix the ‘odd rumbling’ coming from the engine?

What I find interesting is the fact that even in this country the old question still exists: “What’s the difference between a cook and a chef? Gender.” What, exactly, is “women’s work” and “a man’s job” – in the modern world there hardly seems to be much difference between the two. That being the case, imagine the person or persons who must come up with some sort of exchange system: Three cleaned and ironed shirts is equal to one mowed lawn. One mopped kitchen is equal to one vacuumed livingroom. One fed and walked dog is equal to one fed and groomed cat. One dirty diaper is equal to one spit up cleaning. And so on.

While I applaud the Spanish Government in trying to generate more gender equality, I hardly think making chores legally mandatory is going to improve the lot of women. If anything, it will make life for them harder – sons won’t want to move out and get married if Mom is already doing all their chores for them. The better solution might be to establish mandatory pre-nuptial agreements in which the couples would outline the division of chores for themselves. Chores are like vegetables: they’re good for you, but no one wants to deal with them, and everyone has a preference. I’ll trade you my peas for your spinach; Clean dishes for a clean bathroom sink.

On the whole, the mandated 50% split of chores that the Spanish Government has put into place might be a good thing, in the long run, but for now it makes me wonder if there might not be some poor person who counts sex as a chore. For what chore would they be willing to trade?

Photo Credit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/lancashire/lifestyle/2005/03/07/vintage_housekeeping.shtml

Virtually Random

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