Conceptus

Rooting around a little more in some questions I raised recently, about death and afterlife and babies and the infirm, I realize I should have addressed this as well: it's estimated that more than a quarter of all conceptions end in spontaneous abortion. (For the excitable, that means they die and are expelled without any outside intervention.) The actual number is likely to be significantly higher, since many pregnancies occur and end without the woman even knowing. This makes god the most prolific abortionist of all time.

Which raises the question, preceded by a couple of givens according to those opposed to women's choice: Life, we are told, begins at conception. God, we are told, knows our whole life even before we're born. So, what of those blastocysts, those embryos, those concepti -- stillbirths, for that matter; anencephalics, too -- that die at god's hands, before even leaving the womb?

Based on the religious arguments against abortion, it would seem every combination of egg and sperm, at no matter what time after their joining, represents a fully-rightful human life. So what happens when they expire from godly causes? If they're god-loved humans with pre-planned lives, surely they go to heaven. But in what form? Are they, like my iMac, my Macbook, preloaded with iLife? And the software takes them to what point in their pre-known lives? If they become what they'd have been anyway had they not been aborted by god, what's the point of going through all this life on the home planet? Or would he actually keep them as they were, maybe wiggling in petrie dishes? I'd think not, but what do I know? Related question: since they'd never lived "outside," never had any relationships, with whom would these former clusters hang out? Obits are full of declarations of heavenly reunions; in fact, the certainty seems to be the main selling point for real estate on the streets of gold. Isn't this a problem?

And what's the difference between abortions by god and abortions by man? Surely he wouldn't hold the fetus responsible for the act of its mother? (Not that there's much evidence of godly fairness in the doling out of earthly misfortune, but still...) So what's all the fuss about abortion, such a tiny fraction of which are at the hand of man? It's all human life, right? If so, they must surely go to heaven, yes? If they don't, they're not humans in the religious sense, right? But we're told they are...

I'd think these are all questions that the anti-abortion crowd, who seem to be the main contingent of Republican leaders since November, forsaking all serious interest in the economy, education -- in short, in our future -- to subject women to their religious beliefs, ought to be able to answer. Expected to answer. Required. To be consistent. Because it's not just about their religious beliefs: if that were all it was, I'd be as silent on the subject as Mike Huckabee was on Bristol Palin's pregnancy as opposed to that of Natalie Portman's. (Ms Portman, of course, is a walking dog-whistle for the RWS™: Harvard educated, Hollywood employed, smart, liberal. Scientist. And, let's not overlook: Jewish.)

But the fact is, it's political. I fully understand why many people are against abortion; like nearly every other human being, I'd hope it would continue to become ever more rare. (I'd also hope that those who'd force women to have babies would be willing to fund programs that make unwanted pregnancy less likely, and programs that help feed and clothe and educate the kids born into hopelessness. Which will never happen.) Nor do I have a problem with churches demanding their members reject it; just as I have no problem with churches that refuse to sanction same-sex marriage.

But when a group does everything it can to force its religious beliefs on an entire nation, including those who believe otherwise, it's a different matter entirely. And the above questions, if tainted with a little sarcasm here and there, are completely serious: if you demand that our country subscribe to your religious beliefs, the least you should do is to answer them.

While making sense.

Dead Reckoning

There's been a lot death around here, lately. My dad, then my mom. A couple of college classmates. My aunt, last of her generation, has incurable cancer. Kids, young adults, and, always, people in the news. Looking for former patients, I read the obits. Babies and children are there, people who fought "bravely" (it's always bravely), now in the arms of their lord.

Reading such things, I wonder (I mean this seriously, not as my usual religious sarcasm): how do believers see this process playing out on the other side? When people go to their eternal reward, which version of them is it?

In her prime, my mom was a brilliant woman, active and engaged. At the end, there was little left of who she'd been, memories stripped away, cognition below even its very rudiments. It was who she was when she died, but nothing like who she'd been. So. Does life rewind on arrival in heaven? Does she get her memories back? If so, which ones, and to which point? When she was young and beautiful, a skier? But she'd lived only part of her life then, become only a suggestion of who she'd be. Maybe, then, about age forty five? Sixty? How does it work? Is it really her? Who doles out what, and why?

And what of kids? Babies. How can they grow up to be what they would have been, robbed of the experiences coming their way?

I'm serious. Do we all revert to some mean? If so, what was the point of life? If god wanted the two year old up there, will he give her memories, collect on arrival? He'd known them forever, after all. Do they get what was coming to them? Then why not let them have them on planet Earth? Or is it god's pleasure to have forever unformed souls around him? Why would that be? I have a hard time coming upon a religious philosophy that would address this satisfactorily. Maybe reincarnation works as a model; but if, as I infer Christians believe, it's somehow you that lives there, which you would it be, and how is it decided?

Surely it must have something to do with how you lived -- what are heaven and hell for, after all, if not reward for blind faith and punishment for your god-given failings? What is life, if not an incomprehensibly brief yet forever binding audition for eternity? But if the infirmities disappear, then so do the experiences that went with them; and if babies and children are plucked away before having much of a life at all, why bother with life? How does it figure in the equation? If heaven is perfection, surely I wouldn't be "living" with certain memories that I carry around with shame or sadness (Well, we know I won't be there at all, of course; the rules are pretty strict on that.) For old people, some things get erased, maybe; for kids, some are added perhaps? But then, who are these people flitting around up there? And how will you recognize them when you get there? As I'm trying to express, it doesn't make sense that they'd be the people they were when they exited the stage. I can't figure it out.

I'd love to be enlightened.