The Creativity of the Foreclosed Option

Here is an interesting reflection, just in from Dr. Rachel MacNair, a peace psychologist, Quaker, and vegetarian activist who has been involved in social justice issues practically from the cradle onwards.

She finds insights into the psychology of violence and nonviolence in scientific research, literature, and popular culture. With Linda Naranjo-Huebl and Mary Krane Derr, she is editor of ProLife Feminism Yesterday and Today, Second Expanded Edition, the book that inspired the Nonviolent Choice Directory.

And I also should say here, she is one of the people who persuaded me, through her gentle speech and example, to reconsider meateating and become a vegetarian, over a decade ago.--Marysia

The recent discovery of how skin cells can be made into stem cells that do what embryonic stem cells do made the news in late November, 2007 as an exciting new development that would do what people wanted to do with cures, but without the ethical dilemma that made prolifers oppose it. Setting aside that adult stem cells are showing more promise now anyway and even with this new development any possible cures are still way off, it’s possible that scientists might not have been looking for this alternative if the unethical method had not been foreclosed to them under the federal funding ban. The case against embryonic stem cells was not just the death of newly formed human beings; to do it right, they needed to clone, which meant getting those embryos from women donating eggs – a dangerous procedure from which a handful of women have died, more have been injured, and women in poverty were most likely to be subjected. Skin cells, on the other hand, are much more easily come by.

With obvious benefits of the ethical version over the unethical one, why not have thought in those terms in the first place? The fact is, there are many areas where avoiding something that is violent brings about more and better options than using violence does. Consider:

•Studies (and my own experience) show that vegetarians have a more varied diet than average. That should be odd – wouldn’t a diet that’s defined by what’s not in it necessarily have fewer options?

•Pacifists know that if you can’t use violence against brutal dictatorships, invaders and vicious policies, then you have to have some way to counter them. Not just violence, but apathy and cowardice are options that are foreclosed under pacifism. Hence, the proliferation of a wide variety of methods of nonviolence. Lo and behold, experience throughout history and all over the world has shown this to be more effective. Nonviolent revolutions lead to more peaceful aftermath.

•In an episode of Star Trek, The Next Generation, the Klingon Worf was in an accident leaving him paralyzed. According to Klingon tradition, this meant he should commit ritual suicide, and he was intent on doing so. The doctor was appalled. She tried to research Klingon physiology to find treatment, but Klingons had no advice to give. Since they always committed suicide on such occasions, they had no information. Various creative things were tried for allowing him to live and function with dignity even if not full use of his legs, and finally a procedure which cured him was found. Solutions could be found because one option – the option of suicide – was foreclosed in the doctor's mind.

•Women-helping-women crisis pregnancy centers now vastly outnumber abortion clinics. If abortion isn’t an option for women already pregnant, then public policy and programs that empower them to bear their children can become more prevalent than if women are simply abandoned to the abortion clinic. The late Henry Hyde himself supported the Family and Medical Leave Act on the floor of the House on this very reasoning (would but that more politicians would understand this!)

Once a violent solution is on the table, it tends to preclude the development of alternatives. Violence as a problem-solving technique has the apparent advantage of being quick and efficient. One need only ignore the long-term aftermath and other negative impact on society. Nonviolent alternatives must of necessity take more care, attention, resources and time. They have obvious advantages in the long run, but the short-term consequence is more work.

This leads to the ironic outcome that foreclosing an option means more options available, rather than fewer. In the psychology of creativity, this is called “divergent thinking.” This is a form of thinking that by deviating from the obvious and the conventional produces several possible solutions to a particular problem. Brainstorming is an exercise in divergent thinking. Many possible solutions are generated when people don’t limit themselves to the obvious or conventional. I call this the “creativity of the foreclosed option.”

--Rachel MacNair

Web Page: www.rachelmacnair.com
Books written or edited: http://www.rachelmacnair.com/books and http://www.rachelmacnair.comprolifebooks

Alternatives to the Military

We have added some resources on alternatives to the military (http://www.nonviolentchoice.info/education.html#altmil if the link doesn't work) to our Education pages. These are mostly for people in the US, during this time of most unjust war, but some apply worldwide. (Note: If the above hyperlink does not work, please paste the URL into your browser: http://www.nonviolentchoice.info/education.html#altmil )

These resources can help if:
--you are wondering how to pay for your education or have a good career and take care of yourself and/or your family without enlisting in the military.
--you have ethical reasons for wanting to no longer keep military commitments you have made (for example, in the US military, you are concerned about your safety as a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered person, or you are questioning the wisdom of the Iraq War).
--you have decided you are a conscientious objector and wonder what your next step is.
--you want to join in the global movement to defend the human right of refusal to kill in wartime.
--you are interested in a career as a peacemaker or nonviolence advocate.

What's Messed Up About the Abortion Debate: A Little Case Study

From the annals of why the abortion debate seldom moves towards practical resolution...And I hope I have the good grace to avoid ad hominem attacks and dissing anybody's spirituality myself while I'm at it... I'm trying, please forgive me if I don't quite pull it off...

Theologically and politically conservative US Catholic Matt Abbott complains "Pro-abortion nun still active." He is referring to Beth Rindler, and faulting her for the 2004 National Catholic Reporter letter she wrote with two other leftist-feminist Catholic nuns, Donna Quinn and Jeannine Gramick, entitled "Pro-choice isn't pro-abortion."

This letter asks why Catholic Church leaders don't listen to women more about the reasons why they might seek abortions, and poses a question further: "If war can be understood as acceptable in some circumstances, why cannot abortion be at least similarly understood?"

Abbott's assessment of this ethical analysis? A dismissive "Good grief." The end.

Not!

Good grief indeed...But not for the reasons he uttered these same words...Where to begin?

How about with Abbott's basic failure--refusal?-- to respect that Rindler and the other nuns define themselves as prochoice rather than proabortion? No one likes to be told who they are or what they are really about, as if they did not have the head, heart, or conscience, let alone jurisdiction, to determine that for themselves.

For example...prolifers generally don't cotton to having the term "antichoicers" or "woman-haters" imposed on them...And no fair protesting, "But we're the ones who are RIGHT! THEY monstrously decidedly aren't, so THEY don't get to define THEMselves like we do!" An outcry, by the way, I've also heard from prochoicers re: prolifers.

(If there's any route around the abovementioned tautologies, I'd love to see the map!)

Of course Abbott has the right to disagree with the nuns' position on abortion. It would even be valid for him to ask (albeit with utmost respect and commitment to listening deeply) whether their position on abortion is the one that best serves their aspiration to secure women's freedoms. He could inquire into the parallel they draw between war and abortion and whether and what sense(s) it might be warranted.

But that's not what he does with the disagreement. No, he immediately casts doubt on the nuns' good intentions, their good faith, so to speak--and that in the absence of any evidence that they are, for instance, all about forcing other women to have abortions because abortions are such great things to have!

His "evidence" against Rindler and her cohorts appears to be (or so I gather from a reading of his other writings re: other instances of women who question or challenge certain points of Catholic officialdom on sexuality and reproduction) that they are women-out-of-order, and therefore suspect, even "bad," by definition.

Now, I definitely don't want to get involved here with the intra-Catholic question of "Who's a real, faithful Catholic?"! For one, a big one, it's the wrong frame for the issue of abortion. Abortion is not just a turf war between two camps within this one religion...a big, ancient, and influential religion, yes, but, by the way, it's not the only one on the planet. And not every person belongs to a religion, for that matter.

Abortion is a universal human rights issue for people of all faiths and none. It is a matter where every day the lives and well-being of real, live flesh-and-blood human beings, female as well as male, born as well as unborn, are under threat.

The sooner it gets massively recast as such, the sooner (dare I hope?) the burning practical issues of our shared human responsibility to care for women and children, born and unborn, in need can be effectively engaged.

However...Abbott's thing re: women-out-of-order is one that immediately arouses my suspicions...because it is the same old same old argument that has been levelled for how many centuries of patriarchy, in contexts Catholic and other-than-Catholic alike, against any woman who dares challenge the treatment she and other women receive at the hands of men. The same old same old way of (however consciously or unconsciously) deflecting the justice that may actually (!) inhere in those very voices of protest.

One of feminism's founding mothers, Mary Wollstonecraft, was excoriated as "a hyena in petticoats" bent on "unsexing" herself and other women. The "evidence"? Why, of course--analogus to being an "uppity" nun, she had intercourse and became a mother without being a legal wife. That "evidence" prevented many otherwise potentially sympathetic souls from recognizing and respecting her deep passion for justice, her eloquent and deeply intelligent sense of what it was and wasn't, and how to bring the world closer to it.

Abbott gives no hint here that he has seriously considered whether the nuns may actually be asking fair questions, out of real insight and passion for justice. But their questions are eminently fair....

People in positions of authority have a responsibility to listen to and respond to the very human beings their actions most affect. If male Catholic leaders--or any other men--are going to say to women, "Abortion is wrong, don't have an abortion"--then they are...OBLIGATED (1) to find out why women consider it and resort to it in the first place and (2) to personally devote themselves to alleviating the root causes of abortion.

And certainly it is right on the mark to ask, as these three nuns do, why male Catholic leaders, or anyone else, would empathize with (generally, historically) men's dilemmas over war but not with women's dilemmas over abortion. Can anyone say, Double Standard?

The selfsame Double Standard that directly causes many an abortion! I am talking about the setup whereby men don't have to take any responsibility for sex, family planning, pregnancy care, or parenting--but woe be unto the woman who conceives and bears a child in "unauthorized" circumstances--she'll just have to go it all by herself and suffer in every possible way!

I do have to admit, I am troubled by the parallel the nuns draw between war and abortion. It's apt in that both are deeply institutionalized forms of violence and lifetaking with all manner of complex and disturbing repercussions. And in that sense, I think it's valid to encompass both issues under a nonsectarian/interfaith/secular "consistent life ethic."

However, if the comparison is valid, the following needs to be made clear in it: Decisions over if, whether, and when when war is justifiable tend to be made by men in positions of power...and women facing problematic pregnancies tend to be in situations of deep disempowerment. Women facing such pregnancies are often more akin to soldiers who have been drafted and face heavy, heavy penalties if they refuse to commit violence, or who joined the army because a racist, poverty-making culture left them no other way to get an education and make a living.

Also, I am not sure whether the nuns are arguing this: "If war is sometimes OK, then abortion must be sometimes OK, too." If they are...that's unfortunate. Because (especially in this fifth year of the atrocious war in Iraq, in this time of social-program slashing that rips up women's and children's already tenuous safety nets) we need less violence. And more relief of the causes of violence.

More moving of both men and women towards the care for life that has been traditionally considered the province of the female, but really belongs to us all.

'Nuff said. For now. My head spins, my hands hurt.