Yesterday I suggested that religion has become an essential part of politics. The whole debate over abortion is really one of religious belief. Let me explain. When life begins was a question the nuns working in Catholic hospitals wanted to be answered. If someone dies without baptism, they are to spend eternity in purgatory. It is neither Heaven nor Hell. The reason nuns asked that question was should the remains of miscarriages be baptized. The question was, really, when does the soul enter the body. The Catholic Church did not want to deny anyone a chance to enter heaven, so the Pope said that the soul entered the body at the moment of conception. Therefore, any remains of a miscarriage needed to be baptized. That answer satisfied the church, but today it drives the decision to outlaw abortion. It has become a cornerstone of the political belief of the Republican Party.
Let me digress here. My first wife died in childbirth, along with the baby. My first wife was Catholic and died in a Catholic hospital. The nuns baptized the baby even though she was dead. It is one of the reasons I believe that in any pregnancy, there is the promise of life, but it is not realized until the baby is born and healthy. I don’t believe my God would waste a soul on just the possibility of life. Like many over the ages, I believe the soul enters the body with the baby’s first breath.
If you want someone to fight you, challenge one of their religious beliefs. The Republican Party was seeing its numbers waning. It sought a way to increase its numbers, as any political party would. During my lifetime, I have watched the Republican Party join with religious groups over sinful rock ‘n’ roll and all the things rock ‘n’ roll in their eyes stood for. There were performers like Pat Boone. Here is part of the Wikipedia article on him, “As a conservative Christian, Boone declined certain songs and movie roles that he felt might compromise his beliefs—including a role with sex symbol Marilyn Monroe.” Boone even supported Goldwater when he ran for president.
It was a relatively slow process of the Republican Party turning to the religious right. They saw the number of members of their party increasing all due to religious conservatives, so they more fully espoused things such as antiabortion. In talking to my Republican friends, they are not too happy with some of the positions of the religious right. Still, they are delighted to see that they are winning elections and now controlling the courts from low-level courts to the Supreme Court. Unfortunately for us, we may disagree with the Republican Party’s positions. Still, we are struck by the church’s position on abortions. Since some states are challenging the antiabortion rooming, they will use whatever tools they can find. They will use any tactic, including lying. Just think about the justices who lied in their confirmation hearings by saying, “Roe is settled law.” They didn’t hesitate to do away with Roe at the first chance.
Some would say, “It is the best Supreme Court that money can buy.” We have freedom of religion, but we do not have freedom from religion. We must remove religion from politics if we are going to be true to our founders.
