There was no other group in America that celebrated Russia and FBI director James Comey’s hard work to get Trump in the White House than evangelical Christians serving the needs of the Vatican. Oh, it’s true corporations, Wall Street, Israel, and the military-industrial complex owe a lifelong debt of gratitude to Trump’s foreign facilitators and the alt-right contingent in the FBI for putting a rubber stamp in the White House, but the religious right really celebrated they finally gained control of the government the Dominionists have lusted after for a couple of decades.
While many pundits are rightly accusing Trump of using acts of war to distract Americans from his and his administration’s treasonous collusion with Russia, they are missing the religious right using Trump’s various scandals as a distraction from their well-laid plans to transform America into a theocracy; not that any form of media or Democratic politician would ever admit it.
The latest patently religious edict nearing fruition is, as usual, targeting a woman’s right to control her own biological functions and a doctor’s right to practice medicine protecting a woman’s health, life and Constitutional right to self-determination. In Montana this week, the Vatican-directed personhood movement succeeded in getting a piece of religious legislation passed that makes physicians guilty of homicide if they perform an abortion; even if it is for the singular purpose of saving the woman’s life.
Now, although there is an unwritten statute strictly forbidding ever saying anything untoward about the evangelical fanatics now running this declining nation, there is no law against citing the Christian bible to prove that the Catholic and evangelical “pro-life” personhood movement is an “abomination” before their god.
This column regularly cites the “immutable utterance” of the bible’s god almighty defining exactly when life begins, but it is worth beating that horse again. Genesis 2:7 says there is no living being until a fetus breathes air under its own power. That deity’s utterance is not this Zen-Atheist’s opinion; it is the alleged unerring word of the Judeo-Christian god of the bible.
In fact, in the very next book of the “Old Testament,” that same god said that if two men are fighting and accidentally cause a woman to abort or miscarry, the woman’s husband can impose a monetary fine on the culprit. However, if the woman is harmed, no matter how minor her injuries, the culprit “must” suffer the Old Testament’s “eye for an eye, life for a life, bruise for a bruise etc.” The whole point is that even the Jewish and Christian god almighty regarded the health and life of the woman, not the fetus, worth whatever the deity deemed necessary in physical damage; the fetus, however, was valued in whatever few shekels the husband could get out of the combatant.
Montana’s religious Republicans disagree with the Christian bible’s unerring god and wholeheartedly embrace the Vatican’s “Humanae Vitae” dogmata prohibiting sexual activity not intended to produce the next generation of Catholic donors and adherents.
Their newest religious edict, S.B. 282, is based on evangelical Republicans’ definition of fetal viability and prevents abortions past 24 weeks, even in cases of a medical emergency that threatens the life of the woman.
The religious Republicans claim that according to S.B. 282 that if someone, likely a Baptist nurse, evangelical Republican, or Vatican bishop thinks a fetus stands a 50 percent chance of survival out of the womb, the woman will undergo a C-section by force of the religious Republican law (S.B. 282), or be subjected to evangelically-forced, induced labor. And just to make sure medical professional caring for the living woman adheres to the religious edict on pain of biblical edict; any physician who does serve the needs of the “living” woman will face a charge of homicide.
For the record, “homicide” is defined by law as “the killing of a living person.” As noted above, even the god of the Christian bible says a fetus is not a living person; it is a fetus or an embryo. If Catholics and evangelical personhood activists had their way, a single-celled zygote, a lowly single-cell male gamete (sperm), or a female gamete (ovum), fertilized or not, would be legally considered “a living person” with constitutional rights superseding those of the really “living” woman.
The religious extremist sponsoring the Montana personhood bill, Theresa Manzella (RR), is a religious zealot Senator Ted Cruz endorsed because she is a “real Christian conservative.” Manzella had the temerity to say out loud that she was pushing the Vatican’s religious edict under the guise of Republican legislation because:
“It is the policy of the state to preserve and protect the lives all human beings and to provide protection for human life.”
As ThinkProgress’ Maureen Shaw right noted:
“Manzella and her [evangelical] conservative colleagues are leveraging S.B. 282 to advocate for (questionably) viable fetuses at the expense of (undeniably viable) pregnant women.” As Ms. Shaw said, nearly all women who have later term abortions do so out of medical necessity to preserve their own life or health, not frivolity.
“Discounting this reality oversimplifies the complexities of such a situation and infantilizes people by confiscating their bodily autonomy. What’s more, forcing a patient to undergo a major surgical procedure like a C-section out of political [Catholic] ideology — not medical necessity — is dangerous and unethical.” (author bold)
One Montana Democrat, Representative Virginia Court failed to address the Republican intent to legislate a Vatican-inspired religious edict, but she did state the obvious:
“I don’t think the legislature should stand in the way of a doctor’s ability to decide what is best for his patient. This is the right of a woman and her doctor, in the privacy of the doctor’s office. These decisions should be made between the two of them with open, careful, honest, truthful consults. Not by the body of the Legislature.”
One adds that in a nation with a 228 year-old secular Constitution prohibiting legislation establishing any religion, it is a decision that cannot be not made by an absurdly bastardized interpretation of the Christian faith; which is precisely what each and every so-called pro-life, personhood legislation is based on. But no-one is willing to admit that prescient point because telling the truth about the push to make America a Catholic theocracy is strictly verboten.
The theocratic edict is heading to Governor Steve Bullock’s (D) desk and it is unknown if he will sign or veto the bill. He has “previously gone on record” defending a women’s right to choose, but that is no guarantee of anything as Democrats learned when North Carolina’s newly elected Democratic Governor, Roy Cooper, betrayed his campaign promise and signed a “renamed” HB2 bathroom law. Keeping that betrayal in mind, Montana’s Democratic Governor Bullock promised on the campaign trail that:
“As governor, I will defend a women’s right to choice. I think these are complicated and difficult decisions, but they shouldn’t be made by the government [Vatican]. They should be made by women and their doctors.”
These religious edicts, and that’s all they ever are, are not about protecting life and the evangelical Republicans ramming their bastardized version of Christianity are becoming bold enough to say it out loud in defense of the Vatican’s, and now evangelical Republicans’, intent to control women.
In Iowa just a week ago, another evangelical Republican said out loud during a lower chamber debate that her religious edict eliminating a woman’s autonomy “Wasn’t written for [sic] the intent to protect or govern, on the side of the woman. It was written to save babies’ [fetus’] lives.”
Americans who continue to ignore the real and present danger of a Republican-imposed theocracy are playing a very dangerous game. Remember, the same kinds of religious legislation being proposed in evangelically-controlled Republican states are waiting in the wings of the House of Representatives and Senate and a bonafide theocrat is currently the vice president appointed by Trump to dictate domestic policy.
Women in Montana can only hope that Governor Bullock does not betray them like Governor Roy Cooper betrayed the LGBTQ community in North Carolina. If he does break his campaign pledge, women will lose their right to control their own bodies and physicians will be forced to abandon their mandate to do no harm to their patients or face homicide charges; something even the savage god of the bible never imagined.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
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