In 2000, 12 years after RU-486 (a.k.a. Mifepristone or the abortion pill) became available in France, the U.S Food and Drug Administration finally approved it (with several restrictions) for the early medical termi­nation of preg­nancies. By 2008 medical abortions accounted for about one-fourth of all abortions nation­wide.

Why the 12 year delay? Because since the late 1970s there has been a “civil war” of sorts in the U.S. over abortion. There have been bombings, shoot­ings, death threats, clinic destruction and physicians murdered. Anti-choice literature continues to claim that it’s no coinci­dence that RU-486 was produced by the same German com­pa­ny that made the poison gas for the death camps in Nazi Germany.

By Charles L. Rulon Emeritus, Life & Health Sciences Long Beach City College ([email protected]) Fetal idolatry and ensoulment Elevating tiny, mindless, senseless human em­br­yos and fetuses to a rever­ed exalted status is fetal idolatry according to Rev. John Swomley, Emeritus Professor of Social Ethics, St. Paul School of Theology.[1] Swomley writes that “Fetal idolatry is […]

By Charles L. Rulon Emeritus, Life & Health Sciences Long Beach City College ([email protected]) No fetal pain until 28th week By 8 weeks a fetus in utero will react to needle stimu­lation. But as with paraplegics, this is a reflex media­ted by the spinal cord, not the brain. It’s not a conscious reaction and no […]

Elevating human em­br­yos and fetuses to a rever­ed, exalted, even sacred status is fetal idolatry, according to Rev. John Swomley, Emeritus Professor of Social Ethics, St. Paul School of Theology.[1] Fetal idolaters have trans­formed a mindless, senseless fetus the size of my thumb into a kind of demigod—a help­less, innocent, unborn baby with awareness and feel­ings—a baby that is playfully suck­ing its thumb and only needs to grow—a conscious baby that will under­go excruciat­ing pain as it is torn apart in an abortion—a pre-born baby with the sacred, inalienable, self-evident, funda­mental right to life. Yet, the scientific reality is quite different.

Fetal idolatry is only able to thrive in religiously conservative, scientifically ignorant, patriarchal cultures with seriously flawed anti-rational educational systems. It has no place in any civilized, rational society that values the separation of church and state and values female equality. “Glamor­i­zing” and “personalizing” mindless, senseless human embryos has distracted us for decades from the fundamental question: Do we really want to live in a country that tries to force women to use their bodies against their will to incubate unwanted embryos

If the large majority of anti-choice Americans, by their own behavior, don’t REALLY believe their “baby killing” rhetoric, why do they REALLY want to force women with unwanted pregnancies to stay pregnant against their will—to be essentially unwilling embryo incubators? What REALLY is going on? Well, consider: Anti-abortion efforts have been almost entirely driven by men — men in Congress and state legislatures and conservative churches. It’s about those men who want to keep women “in their place”, to punish “loose” women, and to force those women who are trying to “avoid their natural roles in life” to fulfill their responsibilities.