Let’s begin with a principle, and with a life.
The principle—at the center of the thinking of Jesus and Hillel
and Mohammad and Confucius, of Plato and Homer, at the heart of the
Declaration of Independence—expressed here as Article 1 of the 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “All human beings are born free
and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and
conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of
brotherhood.” And we might add sisterhood.
And the life: Here is a woman living in the “global south.” She
is forty-two years old, mother of six children, three of whom are
still alive, and grandmother of eight. She subsists on $1 a day,
sleeps in a shelter without electricity or plumbing, arises each
morning to begin again the never-ending search for clean water, food,
and fuel. She is single and illiterate, and she has never seen a
doctor. She has recently developed a tumor in her neck that gives her
persistent pain.
How should we think of this woman in light of this principle? What should we do?
Bill Ayers 
Love the sinner, hate the sin. Where is/are the father(s)? Procreation needs to be given thought beyond that given by a troupe of Bonnanos in the zoo. When looking at sex, too many compare humans to animals – we just gotta do it, she gotta have it, etc. Governments are not the fathers of these many children conceived from the absence of the abilty to control the immediate satisfaction.
In light of the principle you pose, the answer is not to create another women’s studies chair; it is to love her, her children; yet, teach control and consequences. Fourteen offspring is as socially unresponsible as Al Gore flying around in his private jet and the Edwards’ palace.
We should think of this woman as evidence of an inhumane inconsistency between theory and action… as a woman who is owed something.
In good conscience, we can not ignore her suffering and we want to alleviate it. Yet… she still suffers.
Her pregnancies were no doubt unplanned/unintended because, on a $1 a day it isn’t likely that she has access to birth control, or education on what to do with it.
The contrast between the way “they” live and the way “we” live is sharp and stinging.
We must either change our rhetoric, or change the world.
Give her half your salary.
Mr. Cristos,
Your simple answer is noted.
Could you go ahead and solve global warming now since you’re on such a roll? How about the Iraq war?
Birth control is free – cross your damn legs.
This is a great example of how our “culture of life,” as John Paul II and George H W Bush used to call it, thinks of life as survival. clearly our problem is to think of life as capable of politics beyond mere survival. In other words, we need to start by asking her how she wants the world to be.
It also might be important to remember that the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights was, unfortunately, never a binding document.
Can the Declaration become more equitable by adding “sisterhood” or should we rethink our tendency to use family metaphors for radical democracy?
Thanks for always reminding us what real “change” might be, Bill.
To give a serious question a serious answer: Jesus would give the woman what he had, taking her to a hospital for care, and staying by her side. He would encourage His followers to aid — indeed, He, being God, would -tell- his followers to do the same.
What he would NOT do is use the government to coerce the unwilling through taxation.
WWJD sounds like a great principle on it’s face, unfortunately, we are not J. The real question is “What would Jesus have me do?”. In the case of lepers, he would have them drop to their knees and pray to God, then He would say “Go and sin no more.” We also know that “If you have broken a law, then you have broken the law.”
Theology from Billy “the bomber” makes as much sense as calculus from PeeWee Herman.
Yeah Billy, here is how you deal with her. Give her a task of building a nail bomb with some defective materiels. Just like with Oughton, problem solved, eh? You’re a friggin’ lowlife.
Nelson Mandela was a bomber