And anyone who has a miscarriage in Georgia — around a quarter of all known pregnancies — will be subject to criminal investigation:
A woman who miscarries because of her own conduct — say, using drugs while pregnant — would be liable for second-degree murder, punishable by 10 to 30 years’ imprisonment. Prosecutors may interrogate women who miscarry to determine whether they can be held responsible; if they find evidence of culpability, they may charge, detain, and try these women for the death of their fetuses.
Drug-use by a pregnant person who miscarries is only the tip of the iceberg here. Drinking alcohol, smoking, not exercising, exercising too much, working through a pregnancy, financial stress due to not working through a pregnancy — any of those could, at the discretion of Georgia police and prosecutors, become grounds for criminal prosecution.
The grieving process for many people who lose a wanted pregnancy involves coping with the tormenting anxiety of “What if somehow this is my fault? What if I had done something different? Could I have prevented this?” That anxiety and torment and grief will now be compounded in an American state by the meddling of armed men with guns who are now empowered, by law, to interrogate these grieving people, and to treat such natural fears as grounds for criminal suspicion and criminal intent.
This law is sick and cruel and unjust. And so is everyone who supports it.
• “What Are [White] Evangelicals Afraid Of?” John Fea on white evangelicals’ anti-immigrant views.
That’s too charitable and too abstract to describe what is really being measured and demonstrated and witnessed here. “Anti-immigrant” views makes this sound like a mere matter of policy disagreement. What we’re contending with here is not that. It is, as Fea says, fear — fear manifested as hate and a willingness, or an eagerness, to do harm. What pollsters are finding is that roughly two thirds of white evangelicals in America are about half an inch away from marching with Tiki torches and chanting “You will not replace us.”
• “Norman Geisler retiring from Southern Evangelical Seminary over health issues”
The Charlotte, North Carolina-based Seminary sent out a press release on Monday announcing the 86-year-old Geisler’s retirement, explaining that it was “due to health reasons.”
SES President Richard Land, who also serves as executive editor of The Christian Post, said in the press release that Geisler was “the pre-eminent Christian apologist of the past half-century.”
“If they ever construct a Christian apologists’ Mount Rushmore, they would unquestionably start with Dr. Geisler’s visage. He has truly been one of God’s great gifts to His church,” stated Land.
I have one of Geisler’s books at hand right here on this desk. It’s the 1975 updated edition of his Ethics: Alternatives and Issues — “A groovy relic of the forbidden evangelical past.”
I’ve posted excerpts from this book several times (see here, here, here, etc.) because it explains the pro-choice argument that “pre-eminent Christian apologists” and all other leading white evangelicals taught and believed in 1975, well after Roe v. Wade.
Murder is a man-initiated activity of taking an actual human life. Artificial abortion is a humanly initiated process which results in the taking of a potential human life. Such abortion is not murder, because the embryo is not fully human — it is an undeveloped person.
In 1975, this is what Geisler and Land and Billy Graham all believed. In 1985, they believed the opposite — declaring that abortion is murder. The reasons for this reversal have still not been articulated. The fact of the reversal has scarcely been acknowledged.
Here’s the thing: Geisler was right in 1975. Today, white evangelicals are not permitted to be right about that.
• Here’s something I only learned recently: Maria McKee sings two songs on a 1996 album by the Maranatha! Praise Band. That album was titled “Come As You Are” because the Nirvana song by that name came out four years earlier and that’s about what the lag time was back then between pop-culture events and derivative white evangelical subculture attempts to exploit them.
McKee provides subdued backup vocals on the song “Cover Me” and offers a lovely rendition of “At Your Feet.” It’s all quite pleasant and if you like ’90s “worship music” then you’ll probably like this. (But you shouldn’t like ’90s “worship” music. It’s bad for you.)
The oh-so Maranatha! (exclamation point original) videos linked there are far, far better in audio quality than the shaky, grainy video below, from a 1993 London gig, in which Maria rips through the MC5 classic “Sister Anne” (source of this post’s title) and then her own “You Gotta Sin to Get Saved.” But I still prefer this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ-9BFyYdBE
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