What is a culture of life?

A Culture of Life — Really?

A "culture of life" may be reality or dogma.

A woman was diagnosed by several neurologists who examined her to be in a persistent vegetative state for several years, so her feeding tube was removed. Congressional leaders and the President objected, trumpeting the “culture of life.” Meanwhile, that same Congressional leadership and President enacted a budget that took Medicaid medical insurance away from hundreds of thousands of children and their parents who struggle to care for their children’s medical, food, and other necessities.

What kind of a “culture of life” applies to that one woman, but does not apply to so many very lively children and their beleaguered parents? Is that dogma or reality?

There is a belief by some traditional or conservative Christian groups that a fetus or zygote is more important than a living, breathing, caring mother. The basis for that belief: we are sinners due to conception, and have no hope until we have been baptized. From the time I first heard that view I wondered how an Almighty God could limit his saving grace to any act—baptism—performed by humans. I knew lots of parents who had more love and concern than that God! The more theology I studied the more I doubted original sin, and found more Bible passages against traditional original sin. Then I read how it began with Augustine. So through studying the Bible, tradition and history, logic, and experience I find the mother infinitely more important than a fetus or zygote! Then I learned two things:

Jewish religious law commands—not permits, commands—that if a fetus threatens the mother's life, the fetus is destroyed so that the mother can live. This law covers the whole pregnancy up to the moment when a newborn breathes on its own.
most women who have abortions are mothers. Their birth control failed and they feel that another child will overwhelm them.

Those conservative Christians who talk so much about the “culture of life” limit it to abortion, birth control, embryonic stem cell research, and end-of-life choices. The Bible supports birth control and Exodus 21 says someone who strikes a woman so that she miscarries a fetus is not guilty of murder.

I think a real “culture of life” focuses on domestic violence, child neglect and abuse, murder, war! These are about very real, living people who face traumatic, ultimate horrors. I believe those who are so loud about a “culture of life” want to distract us from the reality of child and domestic violence. To preach about "pre-borns" being murdered as a holocaust while already born children and adults are visibly suffering is denial of reality.

Child abuse
Instead of abortion and stem cells, start with child neglect and abuse. In 1998 in the U.S. 2,806,000 child abuse reports were filed, and 53% came from professionals. How many abused children were not reported? 204 Texas children died in 2004 due to abuse! Some of the religious right teach that parents should punish their children harshly!

Domestic violence
In Texas over the last six years over a million women have survived domestic violence, because they called or went to shelters. How many more stayed in abusive, violent relationships? How many women were stabbed, assaulted, murdered in your area? How many million survive domestic violence nationwide? Worldwide? Some of the religious right preach that men should dominate and women should be submissive! Is that a culture of life? Or are men and women to be in partnership?

Murder
In the U. S. murder is an epidemic. In Los Angeles last year 592 were murdered and 489 in New York City—well over one a day! Why do so many Americans jump from anger to murder?

Please recognize that child abuse and domestic violence and murder happen in the middle and upper class as much as among the poor.

War
World War II claimed the lives of 55,000,000 people, many women, children, elderly targeted by invading armies and in their cities by what came to be called "the blitz" and "carpet bombing." Is the scourge of war an addiction of some leaders? See the recent documentaries Fog of War and Why We Fight both now on DVD!

I think a realistic culture of life teaches

how to resolve conflicts between people,
how to manage anger,
how to respect differences and reach across differences with understanding, with acceptance, with appreciation, and
respects and affirms women and men, old and young, as having inalienable rights, and that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!

Are the real advocates of a "culture of life" the volunteers at rape crisis and domestic violence agencies and at shelters for abused children? And the professional social workers and many other professionals who work with abused children and adults to be survivors, who work with gangs to reduce violence, who teach conflict resolution, and bridge the gaps between people?