Aborting American ADD

by Bryan Cockfield

A brief inspection of the Constitution reveals that it is a very short document for the amount of power it contains. A basic civics class teaches that this brevity was a simple way for the founding fathers to limit the powers of government by listing only those things which it can do in one simple, easy to misconstrue Constitution.

Many things the government does today are not contained in the Constitution at all but can be justified by the “necessary and proper” clause. However, some things that have seeped into politics recently are even farther outside of this realm.

For example, global warming has somehow become a political issue despite the problem being entirely rooted in science. Apparently, what has happened is that some conservatives have caused it and wish to cover it up, and the liberals would like to point out that only people who consider themselves conservative contribute to the problem. Meanwhile, both sides criticize Al Gore as the sole contributor to greenhouse gasses. Somehow, being much wealthier than most Americans only entitles him to an average American home that consumes an average American amount of electrical power.

Sarcasm aside, while both sides of the debate battle over something which could easily be remedied by the scientific method and therefore should not be a political issue at all, both parties are distracted from other, more relevant issues. It should be noted that the group who wishes to create debate has stalled legislation calling for less consumption of fossil fuels, and this group happens to be the group in the pocket of Big Oil – the conservatives like former Chief Executive Officer of Halliburton Energy Services and current Vice President and major Halliburton stockholder, Dick Cheney.

Other “issues” have been distracting both sides of the political realm as well. For example, it has been called into question whether or not the government can dictate which people can marry other people. The politics to the uninformed citizen are usually based on one’s religion, whether or not the married couple can have children, or whether or not the action of a same sex marriage is natural or not. However, underneath all of this are things like the tax code. Governments at many levels grant tax breaks to couples who are married. Also, a spouse (or civil union-er) is one’s closest relative for medical reasons.

As Americans, we should be defending a questionable practice because it does not infringe on the rights of others. First and foremost, however, we should question whether or not this practice should be a political issue. How can the government expect to legislate who people can and can’t marry (and therefore, who people can and can’t love) without restricting “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” or discriminating who the tax code applies to?

It is no coincidence that South Carolina chose the time it did to ratify an amendment to its constitution. The purpose was not to limit freedom for same-sex couples, but rather to distract the voter base during midterm elections. While liberals were starting a ruckus about how “unconstitutional” the law was, they were doing so for all of the wrong reasons. The South Carolina law books held the same exact law (no state-recognized civil unions) for years before the amendment was even considered.

A good American would only have been opposed to the amendment itself because it circumvents judicial review. A good liberal would have been protesting the law already on the books before the conservatives brought it up as a proposed amendment. But liberals took the bait and focused on a non-political issue rather than pushing for their state representatives in the election. The amendment passed any way, largely because of the huge amount of political ignorance due to particular religions in the Bible Belt. Conservatives: 2. Liberals: 0. Liberty: -1.

The fact of this matter is that most Christian churches, from Roman Catholicism to American fundamentalist organizations, do not accept same-sex marriage. However, since we have a Constitution which says that any law “respecting an establishment of religion” is illegal, and same-sex marriages do not harm anyone, it would seem that if one church accepted same-sex couples, then the argument from against same sex marriage from a religious standpoint would be nullified. Since the Episcopal Church in the United States opposes legislation restricting gay and lesbian civil unions, there is no religious basis for opposition. The “gay marriage” dispute is moot.

However, no respected church in the United States wishes to protect abortion. The practice of abortion is condemned by nearly everyone in religious circles, but, like all of these other issues, should still not be brought into the political realm regardless of whether one thinks the practice is gruesome, immoral, acceptable, or harmless.

In fact, most of the political opposition to abortion comes from the same group of religious fanatics who wish to bring gay marriage into the political arena. The catch, however, is that all of these groups (with the exception of the Roman Catholic Church) accept birth control as a legitimate means to avoid pregnancy. Since many forms of birth control do not prevent an egg and a sperm from fertilizing but rather only prevent a fertilized egg from being implanted in the uterine lining, it is a less gruesome way to have an abortion. The egg, in the case of birth control, has been fertilized and, according to some is already living. It would have a chance to grow and mature without the influence of certain hormone-containing drugs.

Before the “morning after” pill came around, doctors would give a large dose of a birth control regimen to a woman for the same effect. So, why is it that birth control is widely accepted but abortion is not? The answer is that few who are opposed to abortion understand the medicine behind the practice of birth control, the debate itself it distracts more ignorant political activists away from real issues, and it makes some religious Americans feel good for at least being semi-moral.

Again, one should not accept or condemn the practice of abortion in the political realm. Even if the practice is morally wrong, the problem cannot be solved politically because politicians only tie red tape around medical practices they do not understand, thus harming many innocent people. This was the case with the recent ban on “partial-birth abortion,” in which politicians invented this medical term and then banned it. Now even if a pregnancy would endanger the life of the mother or a terminal congenital disease was detected through ultrasound in the second trimester, the surgical solution would be illegal. Again, the debate should not be a political one, but a personal religious and medical choice.

All of these non-political but sensational issues allow Congress to deal with other important issues with little to no input from the American populace. Most Americans are ignorant to almost all economic policy while they are bickering over irrelevant social policy. These economic issues include the amount of income, sales, property, and estate taxes we pay (which rise no matter which of the two major political parties are in power) to support government institutions like the CIA, FBI, NSA, welfare, social security. Also relevant issues concerning economics are trade policies with other nations and the national debt.

Why, then, do we debate so many pointless issues? It seems as though we should be able to point out the issues that really matter to our society, the issues that can be solved, and discard debate about other issues which will either never be solved or which the government has no Constitutional authority over. As long as politicians can manipulate our debates, however, they can create uninformed voting masses when it comes to issues that matter.