People v. State

Here’s a quick personal history: I joined the Navy in 1987 at the age of 17. Being in the Navy and reading The Brothers Karamazov led to my conversion to Catholicism. My conversion to Catholicism led to me becoming “pro-life” and leaving the Navy. Leaving the Navy led to law school. Being pro-life led to me becoming aware of the abortion-breast cancer link. Becoming aware of the abortion-breast cancer link led me to write a law review article about it and to become focused on litigation related to it. The outrageously unjust judicial disposal of that litigation led to me becoming an anarchist. Becoming an anarchist coincided with my gradual recognition that I no longer believed in the authority of the Catholic Church and led me to become, not exactly “pro-choice,” but no longer supportive of efforts to legislatively re-criminalize abortion. My rejection of Catholicism led to my discovery of Quakerism.

So, where do I stand today? I still consider myself a Quaker, being particularly drawn to its testimony against war, its non-dogmatic “theology,” and its history of civil disobedience, while being much more ambivalent towards its professed across-the-board pacifism (which I regard as inconsistent with its support of the state’s right to prevent and punish crime) and the big-D Democratic liberalism endemic in its modern-day membership. I will never describe myself as “pro-choice,” because I believe that the decision to have an abortion is almost always a bad choice and preceded by bad choices, and it makes no sense to describe oneself as being in favor of bad choices. Nevertheless, I think the decision to punish with the criminal law a woman who procures an abortion (at least before the point at which the unborn child could feel pain) would also be a bad choice (largely because the law could not justly prohibit abortion in cases of rape, and practical considerations would argue in favor of allowing this necessary exception to swallow any rule outlawing abortion). I remain a convinced anarchist, but see no inconsistency between this conviction and my approval of the recent Indiana legislation requiring abortion providers to inform women considering abortion of the abortion-breast cancer link. Anarchism principally means to me that an unjust “law” (such as the laws by which the State funds itself and its friends through coercive taxation) is no law at all — and is in fact itself a crime. This particular legislation is eminently just, especially in light of the fact that the federal government through the National Cancer Institute is directly and primarily responsible for actively misleading women about the abortion-breast cancer link.

Last Friday Congress narrowly averted a “government shutdown.” That’s too bad. Supposedly, the big hang-up in budget negotiations was the Republicans’ objection, spearheaded by Hoosier Tea Partier Mike Spence, to continued taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood. Whether this objection was sincere or just a bargaining chip for what the Republicans really wanted, they ultimately caved, in the shameful style that characterizes politicians. Planned Parenthood’s big talking point was that, even though it is the nation’s largest provider of abortions and gets one-third of its entire budget from taxpayer funding, taxpayer funding isn’t used to pay for all those abortions but rather for all of the other wonderful things Planned Parenthood does, like provide breast cancer screening to women who otherwise couldn’t afford it (including, presumably, many women whose risk of breast cancer has been increased by abortions Planned Parenthood has provided without informed consent).

Even taking Planned Parenthood’s talking point at face value, and setting aside the question of whether the federal government should even be in the business of health care (it shouldn’t), my observation is this: Planned Parenthood doesn’t “provide” all these wonderful non-abortive health care services. Taxpayers do. Whatever genuine health care services Planned Parenthood might now provide using taxpayer funds could be provided by other organizations that aren’t objectionable to large numbers of taxpayers, leaving Planned Parenthood to do — with private funding — what it was born to do and does best. But I bet the good will and respectability Planned Parenthood enjoys among women by being the conduit of these taxpayer funded health care services does wonders for its lucrative abortion business. And I suspect that’s the point.

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