Escorting for Jesus: Why Religious Fundamentalists Need to Crawl Back to Their Caves

By Leeann Bennett

In parts scholarly work, memoir, and polemic, Escorting for Jesus: Why Religious Fundamentalists Need to Crawl Back to Their Caves recounts the circus adventures of a volunteer escort at a family planning clinic. The inevitable collision among race, class, gender, religion, and philosophy issues inherent within this cultural c

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leeann Bennett
• Release date: Mar 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781087872278

Book preview

Escorting For Jesus

Escorting For Jesus

Why Religious Fundamentalists Need to Crawl Back to Their Caves

Leeann Bennett

Edited by

Red to Black Editing Company

Cover by

Kelsey Nipper

Escorting for Jesus*

Why Religious Fundamentalists

Need to Crawl Back

to Their Caves

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Leeann Bennett

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Copyright © 2020 by Leeann Bennett

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, 2020

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*Just to clarify, I am a clinic escort volunteer at a private family planning clinic. I do it to glorify Jesus. Not really. I actually thumb my nose at Jesus, but it sounds funny. Plus, I love the double entendre.

Contents

Preface

In the Beginning

Abortion, Abortion, Abortion! Arguments and Laws

Pregnancy 101

When Life Begins—One Woman’s Opinion

Oxymoronic Unborn Children

Learning to Escort

My First Anti-Abortion Protests

The Naming of Protesters

Close Encounters of the Worst Kind

Unspeakable Words

Conversing with the Enemy

Sinning for Jesus

Beat Me, Whip Me, Make Me Write Bad Checks

The Bible as the Word of God, or Not

Abortion in the Bible—Spoiler Alert: God Is Not Pro-Life

On Bodies

The Existence of God, or Not

Why Legal Abortion is Necessary

Growing Up Unwanted

Unwanted Pregnancies Should Be Aborted, or Mother Teresa Was a Stupid Cunt!

Reproductive Justice Is Social Justice

Smash the White Supremacist Patriarchy

Run, Heifer, Run!

The Last Word

Notes

Acknowledgments

This book is dedicated to all the brave people who work in the family planning business. The doctors, nurses, staff, security, and volunteers of all stripes—you put your lives on the line to help others. You are my heroes.

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This book is also dedicated to all people who have benefited in one way or another from abortion, to those of you who identify with some religious affiliation—or not—and believe that abortion is no one’s business but your own. It’s time for you all to stand up and speak out! Loud and proud, y’all. Loud and proud.

Preface

I moved back to the South primarily because I had fallen in love. Not with the South, mind you, but with a man I’d met. When I left the South nearly thirty years prior, I never would have guessed that I would ever come back. It’s not that I hate the South or Southern people. It’s the odious confluence of their fundamentalist religious beliefs with their conservative politics, which combine to make life in the South much more difficult than it needs to be, that galls me to no end. It’s nothing short of a toxic brew.

Southern states have some of the highest rates in the country of fundamentalist Christians. These states also rate higher for childhood incarceration, hunger and poverty, ¹ teen pregnancies, ² and maternal mortality, especially if the mothers are African American. ³ And let’s not forget the low levels of education. ⁴ The connection is glaringly apparent. It seems the greater the fundamentalism, the more people suffer. Looking around the world, this correlation is hard to dispute. It’s astonishing that voters and leaders in these places can be so obtuse or so uncaring. Why Southerners are so proud of this sort of heritage is an eternal source of mystery to me. But proud they are.

I have my own source of pride. I am proud to offer the proceeds from this book to the Arkansas Abortion Support Network (AASN), a 501(c)(3) organization involved in helping people access pregnancy-related health care services in Arkansas, a state hemorrhaging fundamentalist conservatism. I love AASN because they engage in direct action to help people who have become pregnant. They help financially by giving people money to access services. They help physically by protecting privacy and providing transportation. They help psychologically by offering sympathetic ears and shoulders. Ultimately, their goal is to support childcare and housing services for people as well. This is not an organization only interested in complaining for the cause—they address the cause head-on. They work in real time with real people to get immediate, tangible results.

This book references sources that have helped shape my views regarding reproductive justice, religion, and God, which (in this country at least) can hardly be separated. I am unabashedly, unequivocally, and unapologetically a feminist, atheist, and supporter of abortion rights and other forms of reproductive justice. If you are offended by such things, this book will probably upset you. Proceed at your peril.

Understand this: Being a feminist in no way makes me a man-hater, nor does being an atheist make me hate people of faith, nor does being pro-choice make me anti-family or anti-children or anti-personal responsibility. You may call me many things, and no doubt some of you will, but those epithets are entirely false.

While the term atheist may draw objections from people who generally think like I do, it’s the term I choose. An atheist is one who simply does not buy the existence of a supreme being who is concerned about everyone’s thoughts and behaviors on this or any other planet. Atheism is not a religion because a religion requires that one accept the opinion that a supernatural force exists. I don’t accept that, so I am an atheist.

I use the terms person, people, pregnant people, and people who may become pregnant instead of women, girls, and females a lot throughout the book. Not only do pregnancy-related healthcare issues affect cisgender females, ⁵ they also affect other-gendered people who suffer the indignities and discriminations described herein. This includes third gender, gender non-conforming, gender queer, gender variant, and trans men. Males, also, in all of their forms, are affected by pregnancy-related health care issues. Like their partners, they benefit financially, physically, and psychologically from access to reproductive healthcare. We are all influenced or touched by pregnancy-related health care issues. Someone you care about has very likely had an abortion. Reproductive rights are human rights.

There are, however, those inevitable instances when I have fallen back on gender-binary terms, especially when it comes to pronouns. Don’t be offended. I remain an ally and advocate for all genders. I consciously chose this route because it was the most straightforward way to distinguish between those people who are, will be, or have been able to become pregnant, and those who are unable. The distinction is important because anti-abortion laws are aimed exclusively at denying reproductive justice to the former people. It also helps cut down on confusion—at least my own.

I use the term reproductive justice rather than reproductive rights for a reason. Reproductive rights refer to moral or legal entitlements to have, to obtain, or to act in a certain way related to reproductivity. Reproductive justice, as defined in Radical Reproductive Justice, ⁶ refers to

a theoretical paradigm and model for activist organizing centering on three interconnected human rights: the right not to have children using safe birth control, abortion, or abstinence; the right to have children under the conditions we choose; and the right to parent the children we have in safe and healthy environments.

In general, people should have the right to determine what happens to their bodies and subsequently to their lives and to the lives of any children they may have. There’s really nothing radical in this call for justice. People mostly just want the resources available to live their lives and provide for the lives of children in ways that maximize everyone’s happiness and well-being. That seems universal. Even better, everybody stands to benefit from this. Fighting for rights that help all people realize full equality through control over these things is an issue of justice that, once realized, will benefit all of humanity.

Later in the book, I point out that the only way to turn around the ludicrous legislation preventing people who may become pregnant from reaching their potential as human beings on their own terms is to get more people into government positions who will combat the troglodytes now occupying those offices. Some have asked me to run for office. I can’t. Trust me. I’d be entirely too inclined to inflict physical damage upon said troglodytes. They know who they are.

A few people whom I’ve recruited to pre-read some of this work have asked me, You know that you sound so angry sometimes, right? Is that necessary?

Um, yes. And yes.

Happy reading!

—Leeann Bennett

PS: Please send hate mail to [e-mail].

In the Beginning

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.

― attributed (probably incorrectly) to Richard Feynman ¹

In the beginning, there was sex. And it was good. It was so good, in fact, that no one realized when a spermatozoan swimming slightly faster than its brethren crashed headlong into an egg, essentially giving birth to one of the most contentious issues in human history.

The result of this collision was a zygote. Was it human life? We can’t seem to agree on the answer to that question. In fact, for thousands of years, people didn’t even understand that engaging in behavior that we were biologically compelled to do could result in making more beings like ourselves. We just did it because Nature said so and because it felt good. And if it didn’t feel good, the smarter ones simply got new partners, as everyone should if they don’t enjoy the sex they’re having.

Life begins at conception, some say. Life begins when the fetus is viable outside the womb, others say. Still others claim that life does not begin until after the baby has been naturally born. And the truly crazy ones believe that life begins when God knows you before even forming you in the womb (ref. Jeremiah 1:5). ²

Religious fundamentalists ³ will say, It was the hand of God that caused this pregnancy. No, it really was just two people fornicating like weasels. No hand of God there. I suppose in less common cases, there can be a hand involved. Take in vitro fertilization (IVF), for example. IVF requires a hand—the very steady hand of a surgeon implanting a fertilized egg into a womb. No hand of God there either, despite those silly pictures of Jesus guiding the surgeon’s hand. And then there are turkey-baster babies, such as those preferred by some lesbian couples. In those cases, it’s the hand of the male friend who agreed to donate to the cause that helped create that fertilized egg. Or is Jesus guiding this guy’s masturbating hand as well? And then there is the hand of the person squeezing the turkey-baster-delivered jizz donation into the vagina. Is Jesus helping that hand too? Just asking.

Disclosure here: I am a person much more attuned to the natural than to the supernatural. I have been an atheist all of my adult life. Biblical and other religious texts and how they’re interpreted hold very little sway for me. If science, on the other hand, can fairly definitively prove when life begins, I will modify my point of view to reflect the evidence. Most atheists, by the way, are open-minded like that. Given credible evidence, they will change their understanding, unlike all too many fundamentalists, who, typically, in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary, will cling desperately to their false belief. Case in point: In 1633, the Catholic Church threatened to torture Galileo if he did not recant his claim that the Earth was not the center of the solar system. The same Catholic Church did not officially accept those findings until 1992! ⁴

Still, a strictly defined timeline for when life begins would likely have no effect on my views of abortion or reproductive justice. More on this later.

Lastly, and this is an important point, some may believe that I despise all religions and all religious people. Only partly true. I despise a lot of religious teachings. I have liked most of the religious people I have met. Many are kind, sincere, generous, intelligent, and thoughtful, and I respect them even when they fervently disagree with my point of view. I may not respect their beliefs, but I do respect their right to have those beliefs. It’s an important distinction. As long as they conduct themselves à la Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood—one of the best Christians I know of—I will be their eternal fan. But should they resort to douchebaggery, they may expect my hearty retort or even my outright ridicule. Having the right to believe what you wish does not mean that you get a pass on being criticized or even ridiculed if your beliefs are preposterous. Naturally, such stupid beliefs may bring out the militant atheist in me.

So, having laid out some of my obvious prejudices, I feel it’s important to reference some other writings that have been published regarding the morality of abortion, some better known than others. I would encourage anyone who wants to explore their own philosophy about this issue to read as much as they can, both for and against. The more differing points of view you consider, the better informed your own position will be.

Abortion, Abortion, Abortion! Arguments and Laws

If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.

― Carl Sandberg, The People, Yes

Perhaps the most famous article on this topic is Judith Jarvis Thomson’s A Defense of Abortion. ¹ Thomson, beginning with the supposition that life begins at conception, argues that an unwanted pregnancy is akin to waking up to discover that you are medically attached to an unconscious, famous violinist who suffers from a fatal kidney ailment. Their life is effectively dependent upon the use of your kidneys for the next nine months, something you have not agreed to. Thomson asks and argues against the question: under these circumstances, do you have any moral obligation to submit to this procedure? Legal precedent asserts your right to control what happens to your body. For example, you have the right not to give up a kidney to someone, even your close relative, even if you are the only person on the planet with compatible organs. From this argument, the pregnant person has the right to deny the use of the uterus to the developing embryo/fetus.

A refutation of that article is written by Brian D. Parks in The Natural-Artificial Distinction and Conjoined Twins. ² Parks makes the point that Thomson’s example is an artificial one requiring medical technology to pull off, whereas pregnancy is natural and will proceed on its own without intervention. He also compares pregnancy to the only other human phenomenon in which one body depends upon another for survival—conjoined twins—and concludes that you do not have the right to separate from your twin during a hypothetical nine-month period of time in which the twin would develop independence from you.

I believe that Parks makes a good point about the Thomson scenario being an artificial one. I also believe that he’s wrong not to recognize that conjoined twins also represent a failure of the body to function properly. In a sense, it is also an artificial scenario. Furthermore, he is wrong about the moral obligation of the twin to remain conjoined. I’m not saying that I would choose to let my twin die in such circumstances. Probably, I would find that abhorrent. Probably, I would have a closer relationship with my conjoined twin than with any other living being on Earth and so would know her perhaps as well as I know myself. That would make the choice a clear one of sacrificing an additional nine-month period so that my twin would successfully be separated from me and gain independence. But what if my twin were a total douchebag? What if my twin were a Hitler-ette and I knew it? Wouldn’t it be a better choice to spare the world this abomination? Let her die! Such a monster doesn’t deserve to live. This falls into the same category as that of any family member whose intervention could save the life of another family member. It may be callous and uncaring to refuse the help, but it is your right to do so. The reality, in most cases, is that conjoined twins usually don’t have a choice one way or the other. Parents and doctors are the ones making decisions about separation and accepting associated risks. Independence cannot be gained without surgical intervention, and surgical intervention is also an artificial scenario.

In Don Marquis’s article Why Abortion is Immoral, ³ he states his belief that life begins at conception. He then claims that a fetus has the right to be brought to term so as not to be deprived of some future. Killing a fetus is immoral, he says, because it would seem that it is the loss of the goods of one’s future, not the interference with the fulfillment of a strong desire to live, which accounts ultimately for the wrongness of killing. What he fails to address is the loss of the value of the future of the pregnant person who does not wish to be pregnant. Bringing a pregnancy to term profoundly affects one’s future, including the set of experiences, projects, activities, and such that Marquis refers to. Why does he only find value in the future of the fetus and apparently finds none in the future of the pregnant person? Her future will be seriously impacted by this pregnancy, perhaps to such a degree that she and the baby will be assigned to a life of abject suffering. This strikes me as not only irresponsible but inhumane and immoral, cruel beyond measure.

Marquis also betrays in his article what I feel is his underlying motivation for being anti-choice by raising the issue of how women need to take responsibility for accidental pregnancies. This is the price women pay sometimes when they have sex with men. Pregnancy as punishment for spreading her slutty legs. Hmm. And, of course, only women are the ones who are punished. Not men. Brilliant.

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong responded to Marquis’s argument in his article titled You Can’t Lose What You Ain’t Never Had. ⁴ Sinnott-Armstrong makes a distinction between a neutral loss and a moral loss. With a neutral loss, there is no moral right to the means of a future. With a moral loss, the loser has a moral right to the means necessary for that valuable future. Then he argues that a fetus needs the womb, blood, etc., of a pregnant person to grow. Since these belong to the pregnant person, no one can force her to give up her blood or any organ to save another. Ergo, the fetus has no moral right to the means necessary for a valuable future. So, we’re back to the legal precedent which states that no one is obligated for any reason to sacrifice their bodily fluids or parts to save the life of another.

Perhaps the best article I’ve run across is one that argues the issue from the point of view of virtue theory. This is Virtue Theory and Abortion by Rosalind Hursthouse. ⁵ The first half of the article clarifies issues pertinent to virtue theory itself, and the second half applies this theory to the abortion issue. Through