Bene for Benedict...

BOULDER, Colo. -- The remains of up to 1,000 fetuses, mostly from a prominent abortion clinic, will be buried Sunday by a Roman Catholic church that has quietly received ashes without the clinic's knowledge for years.

Sacred Heart of Mary Church told The Denver Post this week it would stage the ceremony to mark the 32nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized abortion in 1973.

Not CNN

With a new pope who's not shy about politicizing the pulpit, I wanted to revisit this story from January.  But my CNN link was bad.  Sometime between when I last looked at this article and now, the story was purged.  Perhaps they have a policy of deleting stories older than 3 months, you tell me.  Interestingly the Yahoo News link on this site has also expired.

The text above comes from a local news site which sadly has very little of the deferential, even reverential tone of the original CNN article.  The "mainstream" reporters from CNN appeared to feel that if something was done by Christians it was worthy of respect.  The local reporter took a more typical if lazy approach, reporting on who did what and quoting a person on each side of the issue without comment on the meaning or validity of either statement.  Ideally the reporter would attempt to answer the "why" behind the story in a useful way, for example pointing out how this is part of a published strategy by the pro-life movement to get fetal remains classified as human for the purposes of disposal.  It's just another wedge to lever early fetuses to the same legal standing as fully-formed people.

Here's a different way the story could be played:

BOULDER, Colo. -- A radical Christian sect has for years been using fetal remains in its private religious rites.  This Sunday the Sacred Heart of Mary Church intends to perform a ceremony using up to 1,000 fetuses in a grisly publicity stunt to mark the 32nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized abortion in 1973.

People living near the church were shocked to find that human tissue had been acquired for religious observances.  "I knew they had a monument to the unborn, which is weird enough," said one neighbor, "but why did they take fetuses to pray over from people who didn't even know?  That seems medieval and obsessive."

The remains were obtained secretly from Boulder Abortion Clinic without the knowledge of its director, Dr. Warren Hern.  An outraged Hern promised to investigate who was responsible for misusing medical wastes and vowed that it would not happen again.

How would Christians react if a pagan religious sect had worked out a clandestine deal to get access to fetuses, and then used those materials as part of their rituals?  One could imagine the gnashing of teeth over the impropriety of such a practice, and it would be justified.  The only problem is that the evangelical right cannot see that the same arguments should apply to them.  The simple formula "how would you feel if that happened to you?" is a useful moral heuristic, but it has to be tempered with careful considerations of the differences between the real situation and the analogy, as well as the difference between what's right and what feels right.

Religions are allowed to handle dead bodies.  Historically the state has granted churches the right to dispose of the deceased, under proper licensing constraints, out of respect for the wishes of those belonging to the church to have the burial rites of their choosing.  The only difference really between a fringe cult and a mainstream church is that the latter has built up the implicit trust to handle the materials in a respectful and proper way as defined by the standards of the community.

But that could change.

If Catholic institutions like Our Mary of the Sacred Bleeding Virgin Mary Heart Church start abusing their license to handle human remains to make blatantly political points, perhaps that power should be managed more carefully.  After all, the right is granted only because the deceased specifically asked to be disposed of by their church.  Obviously none of the fetuses asked to be buried by this random sect, and more importantly none of the mothers asked these remains to be handled by the church.  We would not, for example, think it proper to allow a Catholic church to bury a dead Jew against their wishes.  Or for a mosque to hold services for a dead Catholic in absence of specific wishes one way or another.

Ah, but I've fallen into the wing-nut trap!  The rules of normal funerals don't apply since legally these are not people.  Fetuses from abortions are technically medical waste, and although subject to regulations about handling and treatment, they don't legally deserve the same respect as humans who might have wishes or family affiliations.  The wing-nuts hope to put me in the queasy bind of arguing either that fetuses have rights that need to be respected or that these wacky parishioners can do anything they want with abortion ashes, up to and including mixing them with coffee and drinking them with breakfast.

Sorry, it won't wash.  First of all, all discarded tissues that come from a specific individual are subject to privacy rights.  Medical professionals can no more give away fetal tissues to a third party than they could conscionably auction off your appendix.  Second, the right-wing God on Earth -- G. W. Bush -- has already laid the legal groundwork for fetal tissue to be treated differently from other tissues.  If science labs with genuine humanitarian goals cannot get these materials for carefully regulated study, then surely random private groups can't get them by stealth to satisfy their perverse theological imperatives.

For myself I don't care what happens to my body after I die.  Wrap me in newspaper and throw me in a ditch if that seems like the most prudent way to dispose of my carcass.  It won't bother me, I'll be dead.  It probably will matter to my survivors, however, and I expect that they will want to do something symbolic to mark my passing as is their right.  But please, don't ever let crazy religious zealots use my body -- dead or just brainless, my whole body or just my spleen or any other part -- as some kind of insane political football.  I wouldn't wish that on any part of me, or any part of anyone else.

If this is the kind of thing New Pope will endorse, perhaps people will get tired of the constant, brazen over-assertiveness and wish for a return to the subtleties of Pope Classic.

- jack* 

Comments

[The Liberal Avenger]

Right on, Sir!

I'm going to link to this post.

[Dr. C.]

It seems to me that there are definitely some HIPPA violations here. God knows we have to do enough silly things in the office (like not call out anybody's name) just for privacy. So, it becomes a federal offense. I wouldn't want to be the procurer at the clinic who did this. May be looking at hard time.

[Ma'at's Feather]

It is grotesque & creepy that a medical facility would hand out human tissue to religious groups like this!

[Rhiannon]

Might as well bury and pray over a woman's uterus and ovaries after she's had a hysterictomy or hit menopause for crying out loud.

[Barry Freed]

If I were director of a clinic that had that happen here's how I would handle it:

BF: "That's impossible. All of our medical waste is disposed of completely. There would be no way for anyone to obtain it as there is nothing left to obtain."

Press: "But Rev. Gantry and Father Coughlin have maintained that it came from an Operation Suffer the Children member working undercover at your clinic."

BF: "Ludicrous. I see to it personally. I repeat, it is impossible for anyone to obtain for whatever gruesome and macabre purposes they have in mind."

Press: "You claimed in an earlier statement that your clinic incinerates the little munchkins. Surely someone would be able to get their hands on the ashes after they've been put out with the trash?"

BF: "Did you hear what I said? We don't put the ashes out with the trash. It is impossible for anyone to obtain the ashes of medical wastes incinerated at this clinic. Is that clear to you now?"

Press: "I'm not sure. Could you clarify just what it is that you do with the ashes? Does the clinic own a burial plot or vault somewhere where you intern them?"

BF: "Burial plot? Intern them? Hell no! If you came to my clinic to have a mole removed or the pus drained from an abscess, would you expect me to intern the resultant medical wastes in a cemetary post-incineration? This is bizarre. Are you high or something?"

Press: "But it remains unclear as to just what the final disposition of the remains of our little rug-rats is. Director, the people want to know. The people have a right to know. Will you answer the question?"

BF: "I flush the ashes down the toilet. Personally. Now good day to you, I have patients who are in need of care to attend to."