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LIFELONG LEARNING
Of the political issues, abortion may be the most difficult to discuss with those that hold opposing views. Lifelong learning SMTX tackled that topic, among others, in their bipartisan political conversation series that occurred over several consecutive Mondays at the San Marcos Public Library.
Terri McBryde read the definition of abortion from Merriam Webster.
“It is the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus,” she read.
Stephanie Korcheck, Lifelong Learning SMTX assistant director, said the law is largely based upon the question of when life begins.
“When does life begin? And more discreetly, as I dove into this stuff, when does that life become human, become a person, and I looked at the three major religious traditions — Judaism, Islam and Christianity,” Korcheck said. “It’s interesting to couch this issue in that fundamental question because that’s where these laws come from. In the Christian tradition, life starts at conception.
“For the Jewish tradition, for example — the soul enters the body when God bestows the soul into the fetus — it’s still not a person, again, because it’s not a person until it breathes outside the womb. But for the Islamic tradition, that ensoulment — as they call it — does make it a person.”
Jo Ann Carson said the issue centers around whether personal beliefs should inform law.
“You can have a deeply held personal belief, but the issue is whether that should be enshrined in law,” Carson said, adding that she read a book by Mario Cuomo, a devout Catholic and the former governor of New York, that argued that although he finds abortion morally objectionable, he doesn’t have the right to impose that belief on others in a democratic society.
Marianne Reese, Lifelong Learning SMTX director, brought up the phrase “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” to make the point that a fetus is not literally a person at conception. According to the Berkeley website, “an organism’s development will take it through each of the adult stages of its evolutionary history, or its phylogeny.”
“There will be time points in the gestation period where the egg going to fetus will have gills, will have tails, recapitulating the phyla from which humans have developed in terms of evolution,” Reese said. “So when you start talking about, when does it become human? [And some people say] it’s at conception. No, it won’t be human till — I don’t know whether it’s maybe eight weeks, 10 weeks, a little bit before. That’s why some children or babies are born with tails and all sorts of things because they haven’t developed quite correctly.”
Korcheck turned the conversation to statistical facts, which showed an increase in maternal mortality since the abortion ban was put into place in Texas.
“Since the Texas abortion bill passed in ‘21, maternal deaths have increased 56% in Texas compared to an increase of 11% in the United States as a whole,” Korcheck said, adding a statistic that spoke to the problems related to access to care for so many Texas women. “45% of the counties in Texas do not have an OBGYN.”
Korcheck also had statistics related to the abortion ban’s impact on physicians.
“The impact of this in Texas was surveyed. They had a return [of responses] from 450 OBGYNs and 47 residents in obstetrics and gynecology,” Korcheck said. “70% feel that the ban has negatively impacted their work. 33% don’t have a clear understanding of the law.”
Gena Fleming said that the political parties should come to a compromise on this issue.
“They both need to give some slack. If the republicans are saying that abortion should be illegal, they need to have care for these women who have unwanted pregnancies. We have to make it easier for people to adopt. We have to have some type of social support in this,” Fleming said. “If democrats are going to say abortion is legal, I think we need some safeguards; like I know some companies didn’t want to pay for abortion in their health care for employees, and I think that’s a legitimate objection. We need to respect that people are objecting on moral grounds.”
Learn more about Lifelong Learning’s upcoming courses at lllsanmarcos. org/courses.
