"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed "

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .

So said Thomas Jefferson, a claim of the basis of legitimate government that the signers of the Declaration of Independence put their names to and which has been ratified in any number of ways - however observed at least as much in the breech as in the observance as soon as the Revolution that the document started was won by those who sought independence for the thirteen colonies.

I am going to be doing something that I have at best no business getting involved in, though in reality some interest in, writing about the issue of abortion and how it has and is going to continue to play the role of a sticking point in American politics, perhaps the pivotal one in turning elections in the United States, certainly in the Senate, to Republican-fascism.

That issue doesn't properly appertain to me because I am a man and abortion is an issue that does not directly impinge on the life and body of any man. Only women become pregnant, only women either need or want to end a pregnancy, only women have abortions. Only women are governed by laws on abortion, men are not governed by those laws, arguably doctors who provide abortion may have a minor, secondary legitimate interest in those laws but those laws do not regulate or determine the most intimate aspects of their lives, their own bodies. Just as I think the legitimate right of the state to regulate things stops at a person's own body, the legitimate interest of the individual to determine what other adults do in their bodies stops there as well. 

 

That statement I made the title of this piece, when those men said "among Men" they really meant men, there is no reason we should limit the meaning of it in the same way.  We certainly know better than they did, just one of the advantages of time and learning from hard experience which the "originalists" think we're supposed to ignore for all time. 

 

Abortion does, though, have an enormous effect in who wins elections in the United States, the people who comprise the legislatures and executive branches of the federal and state governments, and, so, in that way all of us have an interest in the issue and how it is thought about.  I don't think most people think about it in a particularly productive way, that is as true for those who favor abortion being legal and those who oppose it.  Abortion as an issue has not gone away despite the large majority of Americans favoring the legality of abortion anymore than there is any real prospect of the Republican-fascist packed court really overturning abortion except in those states where people imagine they want it to be illegal.  I suspect that if the Supreme Court did overturn it and many states made it illegal, the effect may not be what the opponents of abortion believe it will be.  I remember when abortion was uniformly illegal, very illegal.  There were many abortions and there were many women injured and killed by them, many women who endured terrible ordeals.  Making abortion illegal has never ended abortions, it has only made them dangerous, deadly and the business of organized crime.  I don't remember the churches much being bothered by that, for reasons I'll get into. 

That phrase that I am certain any American who has any awareness of the Declaration of Independence or who holds with American democracy will certainly agree with, Jefferson's definition of legitimate governance, I certainly do agree with. He would have gone down through history as a far greater man if he had consistently held with it in his life and his career as a politician, though he would certainly have had to have had far larger numbers of American voters who would have practiced what they no doubt professed in so far as that idealistic statement claimed was a self-evident truth.  That majority or plurality was not to be found in 18th or early 19th century America, it's hardly reliably decisive in elections today.

But, then, the even more self-evident truth that only women are governed by any law made in regard to abortion and so THEY are the ones whose just consent to any such law is required to make any law in regard to abortion and that men, who cannot have abortions, cannot have the same standing to consent to laws made in regard to abortion as women do, those self-evident truths hardly make it into the discussion of abortion laws.

The Catholic Church, the Southern Baptists (whose shifting position on abortion is a whole epoch in hypocrisy, in itself) and other churches which presume to dictate the morality of abortion are entirely under the control of men.  Especially in the Catholic Church that issues is essential in understanding, among other things, why a majority of Catholic Lay People do not agree with the central authority of the Church. The glacial pace of inclusion of women in the effective decision making in the Catholic Church is so far behind that it is big news that Pope Francis has appointed exactly one woman in the entire history of the Church to have that kind of role and as of the other day it wasn't clear that the one Religious Sister he appointed will have equal voting rights with the men on that body. Clearly, women's' voices are not part of the decision making on much of any issues in the Catholic Church, that this one woman's appointment is world-wide news shows that in no way have women as a whole have never given just consent on any issue, never mind those issues that either entirely or almost entirely concern them, their lives and their bodies. In no way can any such laws, whether made by the hierarchy of any religion or secular government have the level of legitimacy that I have no doubt if you caught them unaware and put the question to them, every single cardinal, bishop, priest in the United States or throughout most of the world would assert is the very definition of legitimacy in governance or law.

The line that the Church is not a democracy is often recited by those who have no problem with it being an oligarchy or autocracy of men, of unmarried men, of men who have consciously and deliberately excluded women from decision making and law making from time immemorial.  If God didn't intend the Church to be a democracy, there is no evidence God intended it to be an autocracy, either.

The history of the United States is most comprehensible as a struggle between the words of Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, the promises of equality and democracy made in it to those they sought to fight their war of independence, if you overlook the racist slanders against the Native People and some other passages of it, and the successful attempt by the slave power, the wealthy and the advantaged to renig on those promises and to install inequality and anti-democracy within the Constitution. The entire struggle for justice in the United States, the only thing that is great in our history and in our country is a struggle for the principle that government is legitimate only when it is a product of the consent of those who it governs. ALL OF US.

The United States has no state religion, its government is a secular one, something it must be to establish its egalitarian nature in a religiously diverse country. It has no higher authority than the will of The People, the just consent of those it governs. The struggle against slavery, against the genocide of the Native People, against the denial of the vote to women, the rights of workers to the product of their work, all of the many rights all of that is a struggle against the Constitution and, as The Reverend Martin Luther King jr. noted, it is The People who are deprived of justice calling the promissory note that was written and signed in July 1776 with a demand that the debt be paid. Any politician who has any legitimacy has taken it upon himself or herself to be answerable to The People on an equal basis. The churches may declare that they are not democracies and be satisfied with that, the American government should not have the luxury of not noting that any such church which excludes women from decisive decision making are not, by the definition of American democracy legitimate deciders of those decisions and dogmas and doctrines that impinge exclusively on women. The US Catholic Conference of Bishops have no moral standing to make those decisions and try to force them on the government and so, The People, of the United States. They may have standing to do so in other areas WHICH DO NOT EXCLUSIVELY APPERTAIN TO A HALF OF THE POPULATION WHICH THE BISHOPS EXCLUDE FROM DECISION MAKING, but not in the matter of abortion, by their own choice. 

I don't think there can be any just law making in regard to abortion if the fact that women are the ones governed by them is not the decisive factor in making those laws.