A Call to Atheists and Secularists to Defend Women's Right to Abortion and Birth Control

Signed by:

Annie Laurie Gaylor, Freedom From Religion Foundation*; Sikivu Hutchinson, BlackSkeptics; Hemant Mehta, Friendly Atheist; Sunsara Taylor, Revolution Newspaper & sunsara.blogspot.com; Amanda Marcotte, Pandagon*, Norm Allen, former executive director of African Americans for Humanism*, and many others.

Add Your Name Here: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/atheists-and-secularists-defend-abortionrts/


Atheists and secularists generally pride themselves on respect for science, opposition to harmful religious myths, and a fierce defense of the separation of church and state.  Yet there is a critical need for atheists and secularists of conscience to collectively challenge the current moral, cultural, and political siege upon women’s right to self-determination. Flowing from each of these principles, we call on atheists and secularists to make public their support for women's right to abortion and birth control. Due to the insidious climate of anti-abortion propaganda and legislation these basic rights are being viciously imperiled.


Nearly 90% of U.S. counties have no abortion provider. 2011 saw 92 new abortion restrictions enacted throughout the states, shattering the previous record of 34 adopted in 2005 under President Bush. Doctors who provide abortion are terrorized and killed. In many communities, Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs), funded by powerful Religious Right foundations and staffed by non-medical personnel, outnumber legitimate reproductive health facilities. Due to this climate of misogynist persecution the moral stigma and shame cast on women who get abortions is as great as ever. Women of color and working class white women who live in communities without adequate reproductive health care are disproportionately impacted by these policies.


But that is not all. Birth control is also under attack. Pharmacists refuse to fill prescriptions. “Personhood” amendments threaten to criminalize miscarriages and ban all contraception. And President Obama openly upheld Kathleen Sebelius's unprecedented decision to overrule the FDA, thereby banning over-the-counter distribution of Plan B (emergency contraception).


All this constitutes an affront to science. Fetuses are not babies. Women are not incubators. Abortion is not murder. Fetuses have the potential to become babies but until they are born they are a subordinate part of a woman's body and they are not independent biological or social beings.


All this is rooted in harmful religious myth. The driving core of the anti-abortion movement has always been the biblical mandate that women bear children as “payment” for having allegedly caused original sin. This is clearly laid out in 1 Timothy 14-15: “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.” This explains why every major anti-abortion organization is also anti-birth control.


All this is an egregious violation of the separation of church and state. Given that the restrictions on a woman's right to abortion and birth control fly in the face of science and are driven primarily by religious myth and social stigma rooted in these myths, they are wholly illegitimate. In the final analysis, these incursions fundamentally undermine women’s right to self-determination.


We, the undersigned atheists and secularists, find one or all of these reasons require us to raise our voices in defense of women's right to abortion and birth control. Women who cannot decide for themselves when and whether to bear children are not free and if women are not free then none of us are free.


We call on others in the atheist community to publicly join us in this stand. Add your name to this call. Pledge that on January 22nd, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade (the Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion), and going forward after that, you will join us in publicly expressing these views through blogs, interviews, articles, Facebook and other social media; as well as to the friends and family in your lives.

*organizations for identification purposes only

Marlene Winell, Margaret Downey, Staise Gonzales, and myself at the Texas Freethought Convention/Atheist Alliance of America

Who did I meet at the Texas Freethought/Atheist Alliance of America Convention?

Lots of interesting people!

I met a slightly older white guy who wanted my thoughts on why there were so few women in his local atheist group. While I didn't feel in position to definitively answer, we discussed some of the factors in society and within his group that could lead to that situation. In the course of this, however, he told me the following story. He was walking past the University of Texas, Austin with his young son. A fraternity was sitting on bleachers they had set up in front of their frat house. Every time a woman would walk by they held up numbers to “rate her.”

It is hard to find words to describe how damaging this must have been to the women walking by. Or to convey the degree of entitlement and dehumanization of women that is revealed in these young men's thinking. At the same time, this is just bringing to the surface and making explicit the way that women are always being looked at by huge numbers of men every time they step out their door. This is extreme and cruel and humiliating, but it is also just a matter of degree worse than the routine catcalling, elevator-eyes, and talking-to-women's-breasts that goes on every day. All this is totally unacceptable and urgently needs to be revolted against.

To his great credit (and to my great pleasure), the man telling me this story said he stopped and spoke really loud to his son. “Son,” he said, “If you ever want to know what an asshole looks like, there's a whole bunch of them right there on display.”

I met a young Black man who had never attended an atheist event before. He came because he was friends on FaceBook with Sikivu Hutchinson and wanted to hear her speak. He explained that he hadn't “come out” as an atheist to his friends or family yet. He feared their reaction and explained that there weren't any other atheists among his immediate community. There was also a hysterical, although also rather painful, discussion between him, a couple older Black folks, and myself over how to handle atheist dating.

He explained that nearly every date he'd ever been on ended as soon as he told the woman he was an atheist. The older guy in the conversation (who I really enjoyed talking to overall) gave him some terrible advice (it included dishonesty and an attempt to appeal to a woman's most materialistic side), but the woman in the conversation cut through that very quickly and with a firmness. We teased and laughed over the situation, but the truth remained that it is not easy and can be lonely to be an atheist. We live in an extremely atomized and alienating society where finding real human connection and closeness based on something other than surface superficiality is not easy to begin with. Finding that as an atheist in an overwhelmingly Christian community only compounds the problem. (The same thing goes for folks who are progressive or radical or revolutionary.)

Without attempting to downplay the difficulties above, there is an absolute baseline of being honest with the people you are meeting and getting to know. There is NOTHING good that can come of trying to hook up with or forge a relationship with someone you don't respect enough to be honest with. There is no relationship worth having – not a friendship or a romantic relationship – that is not based on mutual respect and equality. Further, if they don't know where you are coming from and what you want out of life – then you will never find anyone who is actually attracted to you on the right foundation. Too often dating and relationships are treated as some special “separate realm” from our overall life's pursuits and world outlook. Like, “Over here is what I am about... over there is someone I am trying to date and what I am looking for in a relationship.”

People should live their lives fully and be as open as possible in the world about what they think needs to be different and they should act on it – and in the course of that they will find others who share similar interests, or are intrigued by and open to hearing about those interests. Dating, starting a relationship, and falling in love are not just automatic outgrowths of “shared interests,” there is a unique process and chemistry involved that goes beyond shared interests. But, all that ought to be on the foundation of shared convictions and principles. And, relationships and love are things that develop, need to be worked at, and transform over time – through a lot of learning and struggling through differences and challenges. This is what gives them richness and real closeness. This is not always easy (and this world throws up all kinds of barriers and obstacles to people being able to connect with each other on the basis of equality and mutual respect, especially all the many ways that social attitudes reflecting the oppression of women manifest – including on very intimate and personal levels) – but it is only possible by being honest, open, and above-board.

During the panel on “Diversity in the Movement” I commented that I don't think atheists should think of ourselves as an identity group that is just fighting for acceptance. What people think is not the same as whether they are born male or female, Black or Latino or white, on one side of a border or another, or whether someone is primarily attracted to one gender or another, etc. Everyone can change how they think and we all ought to repeatedly throughout life as we learn more. Further, while we should oppose bigotry against atheists, the main harm caused by religion is not the bigotry against atheists. It is the way that it enslaves and shackles people's minds and keeps them slavish towards their own oppression, instead of being able to consciously understand the world and transform it in their interests. Anyway, afterward Woody Kaplan gave a brilliant example illuminating this perspective.

James Byrd

Matthew Shepard

He recounted the horrific murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998. Matthew was tied to a fence and tortured and then left to die in Wyoming because he was gay. That same year, James Byrd – a Black man in Texas – was tied to the back of two white people's truck and dragged to his death. Kaplan pointed out that while atheists are really not accepted in public office and this is a problem, there is no comparison to this kind of violent oppression still facing by Black people and gay people (and I would add women and immigrants, among others).

There were tons of other fascinating people I met over this past weekend. A young woman who had gotten sucked very deeply into the world of conspiracy theories through that horrible film Zeitgeist. She described getting out of it being comparable to trying to get out of a cult. An older Black man who was in the military and then a school teacher who was told by family members that he couldn't really love his grandkids because he didn't love god (WTF!). He was undeterred, but think of what this actually reveals about the way in which those other family members love those children. They only love them because they love god? So, they don't really care for the kids otherwise? An anthropology professor who was as angry as I was about the biodeterminism that was preached by Michael Shermer about the supposedly “genetic” basis for men preferring large breasts (this is total BULLSHIT and perhaps the subject a future blogpost). She thanked me for saying something about it in the women's panel (a lot of people thanked me for this) and then gave me a list of titles to check out from her own field of research. And lots more folks... including a ton of good-natured non-god-fearing Texans.

Okay – that is just a small flavor. To everyone I met, thanks for taking the time to talk. Please do stay in touch. Either in the comments section – or via email: sunsara_tour (at) yahoo.com

My Thoughts on the Secular Student Alliance Conference

Last weekend I got to spend a couple days at the http://www.secularstudents.org/ conference. Anyone who has checked out the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic (Draft Proposal) from the Revolutionary Communist Party – with its emphasis on really promoting science, intellectual ferment, atheism, and the unfettered search for the truth (as part of an overall economic and social system that is meeting people's most basic needs and overcoming past oppression and inequalities) – should get pretty readily why communists would value a group of critically-thinking, religion-bucking, science-promoting students like this. Add to that the fact that Christian fascism is a real and growing force in this society right now and it seemed especially important to be in the midst of this secular gathering.

Challenging the authority of religion, exposing the non-existence of god(s), creating a community where atheists are not shamed or isolated or bullied, taking on the encroachment of religion into the state, defending and fighting for the scientific understanding of evolution, thinking critically and enabling others to learn how to do the same... these are but a few of the things that the SSA is involved in that are both significant in their own right and have significant implications for the success of any revolution worth making.

One of the main things I did at the conference was promote Bob Avakian's new book, Basics. Not surprisingly, there were many misconceptions about communism but also much concern about the state of the world, the environment, and whether there could be a better future. Shout out to everyone who got a copy. We do not have to accept a world in which the vast majority of humanity is locked in ignorance and squalor! But whether or not we get out of this world depends in no small part in whether or not people get into BAsics; You can't change the world if you don't know the BAsics!” To lift just one quote from BA that is particularly relevant to the question of religion:

“The notion of a god, or gods, was created by humanity, in its infancy, out of ignorance. This has been perpetuated by the ruling classes, for thousands of years since then, to serve their interests in exploiting and dominating the majority of people and keeping them enslaved to ignorance and irrationality.

“Bringing about a new, and far better, world and future for humanity means overthrowing such exploiting classes and breaking free of and leaving behind forever such enslaving ignorance and irrationality.”

WHO ATTENDED?

The students who turned out were from all across the country, but it was particularly interesting how many of them came from more isolated areas – small towns and campuses in Kansas or Ohio or Alabama or Minnesota. They are sticking their necks out to publicly disclaim belief in god. Many of the students told stories of tremendous bigotry they have encountered not only from other students but also teachers and administrators. Some are estranged from their families.

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