There is no way to justify the position described as “pro-life”. Any political idea of freedom starts with the human body. The notion that citizens proxy away the freedom to decide what to do within their own bodies is abhorrent to all cognitive people. There is no philosophical basis for moral cooperation (“politics”) without acknowledging the sovereignty of the human body. The system that lacks this fundamental basis is called “slavery”.

Equally unconvincing is the notion that the rights of unborn progeny supersede the rights of their progenitors. Those that breed have always decided the fate of the bred, before there were notions such as government, church or self-righteousness. They were the ones who were rewarded or penalized, by the courtroom of survival, for their decisions.

There is also no way to justify the so-called pro-life movement through the teachings of Jesus Christ. Devote people who have studied the Bible with a predisposition to its divinity will point out its many contradictions and absurdities. Taken as the word of God it must be interpreted, contemplated and debated to even to begin to understand. The teachings of Christ in the New Testament, by comparison, are fairly straightforward. For example, here are some of his greatest hits:

• “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.”
• “The greatest of these is love.”
• “Judge not, that you be not judged.“
• “the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you”

I am an atheist, I don’t believe in any spirituality or gods. But I admire the teachings of Jesus because he was a radical who was disgusted by the violence and close-mindedness of the status quo and was trying to empower people to throw off these chains. Love first! Don’t judge! Put others before yourself! He very much preached what we now call compassion and understanding. “The greatest of these is love.”

The person in the abortion situation that needs love and compassion is the woman. Not the single cell. Not God, Jesus or the Bible. Not the Supreme Court or the State Trooper. The woman. If you call yourself a Christian (and I used to, for the record) you have to put love first. You don’t get to pick and choose where the love is deserved. You love first. The person who needs that compassion and understanding is the woman facing this decision. She has been lied to by powerful men her whole life and told that she is going to hell if she has an abortion. She is being peer-pressured by hypocrites with no understanding of biology or theology who relish an opportunity to look pious. In some states she is being treated as a suspected criminal, with a mob of confederate bullies ready to strap her to a bed for nine months out of a deep respect for the preciousness of life. She is marketed to on billboards paid for by groups of respectable people who can’t bear to think about the horror of baby killing except when it involves American bombs dropped on foreign brown Muslim babies. Jesus, you see, would want them bombed, too. Not aborted, mind you. Murdered. Murdered for disagreeing with American foreign policy, or for being too near someone who does. That’s pro-life for you.

You might think I’m starting to slide off into partisan bickering here but I’m not. The pro-life movement is made up of two groups. There is a small group who want to protect little future maybe-babies with our laws, even when the parents of some of those maybe-babies don’t want their unsolicited action. They have compassion in there somewhere but mainly it is just horror at the thought of medically-terminated pregnancies. The other group are authoritarian fascists who are on a mission to enact What God Wants.  The have no uncertainty about What God Wants. They tell each other all the time exactly What God Wants. They decide if any particular datum is true or false based on pre-conceived truths of What God Wants. They are psychopaths and sociopaths that have been brainwashed and are in the process of brainwashing others. They don’t want to debate any of this and they feel no responsibility to explain, justify or discuss this with hell rats such as myself. It’s done already. It’s God first, dumb dumb.

I don’t care why or how you reject the so-called pro-life movement. But the time has come to throw it out of the politics of the United States of American forever. We managed to do it with slavery (although it is still a sore spot for some, apparently). We have to do it again with this flagrantly unconstitutional, sexist and idiotic idea that we should criminalize abortion. It can’t happen, it shouldn’t happen and it won’t happen.

We have evolved cognitive abilities and empathy for our fellow human beings. We have succeeded because we have cooperated. Our abilities, empathy and success have created a secular morality in our DNA, which is nothing more than the understanding that we all do better when we all do better. This morality is anti-correlated with religion, which is an authoritarian structure designed to consolidate power and steal productivity using the biggest stick ever invented: What God Wants. Religion is a bane and blight on humanity that will take centuries more to exorcise, much to the sadness of us all.

Michael Koppelman