Iowa abortion law a good faith effort to strike proper balance

On July 12, this paper ran a long front page article, “Abortion ban likely — Iowa lawmakers aim to pass limits”

The article tells us that the bill prohibits abortions only after the baby’s heartbeat is detected. “Fetal heartbeat” is defined by the law as “cardiac activity — the steady and rhythmic contraction of the fetal (baby’s) heart within the gestational sac.”

Because abortions still can be performed before that heartbeat is detected, there clearly is no outright “ban;” just “limits.”

The law is also no “ban,” because abortions can be performed after a rape, if the rape victim reported the rape within 45 days, and after incest reported within 140 days of the offense.

The law also allows abortions where the woman experiences a “medical emergency.” “Medical emergency” is defined as “a situation where the abortion is performed to preserve the life of the pregnant woman whose life is endangered, or when the pregnancy creates a serious risk of substantial, irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.”

Some, who favor greater access to abortions take issue with that definition, arguing that a baby’s heartbeat can truly only be heard somewhere between 17 and 20 weeks; what is heard before that are only “electrical impulses.”

One doctor, who seemingly argues in support of abortion without any limitations, is quoted in the article as saying, “abortion is health care.” “Reproductive freedom is necessary for a healthy and functional community.” The legislation “forces women into lifelong obligations which impact her education, career, family and community.”

But how is abortion “health care for the baby?” Or is the baby unworthy of consideration? Where in that doctor’s remarks do we see any attempt at balancing the mother’s health care interests against the baby’s rights to life and health care?

Many Americans have a sincere religious belief that life begins at the moment of conception. Others believe a woman has an absolute right to abort/kill the child in her womb at any time.

What is clear, however, is that not all Iowans share the same religious or absolutist beliefs.

The people of Iowa can quibble about whether these limits imposed by their legislature are too restrictive or not sufficiently restrictive. But they can adjust or abolish the limits at any time in the future. In overturning Roe vs. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court in its Dobbs' decision, admitted its prior error, and returned the issue to the people of the several states to decide the issue for themselves through their elected state representatives.

I favor the Dobbs decision overturning Roe for two reasons:

1. Roe amended our U.S. Constitution in an unconstitutional way. The Constitution itself specifies the procedures by which it can be amended. Nowhere does it provide that five, six, seven, eight or nine judges have that power.

2. I agree with Thomas Jefferson about the source of our fundamental rights: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

The passage of time, and the advances of science show the wisdom of Jefferson’s words. We now know that every human being possesses both the DNA of his mother and of his father. Indeed, it is that DNA which makes every embryo/fetus/baby a human being; indeed, a distinct human being from the moment of conception.

Therefore, if Jefferson is correct when he states that “all men” (meaning “all men, women and children”) have an “unalienable right to life” (and I think he was), then the baby in the womb, being a human being, has an unalienable right to life.

In saying that, I do not mean to imply the life of the embryo/fetus/baby can never be taken. But if taken, it can be taken only for the most serious of reasons —reasons akin to self-defense. In this legislation, for example, the legislature has impliedly determined that rape and incest do not end when penetration ends, but continue on, until the child conceived in rape/incest is aborted. Similarly, notwithstanding the fetus’ right to life, the legislature has determined that the child’s life can be balanced against the mother’s right to act in defense of her own life.

The words of the Declaration of Independence are germane here because it is undeniable that the embryo/fetus/baby is as human as you or I are. It is just younger and more helpless.

If our law doesn’t have as its highest value the protection of human life at all stages, what should its highest value be? Why did Lincoln regard slavery as a moral wrong? Why do we condemn Hitler’s “final solution” for the Jews, gypsies and the mentally disabled? Why do many oppose the death penalty for even those guilty of the most brutal murders? Is a baby’s life worth less?

Is the legislation perfect? Time will tell. But at least under the Dobbs’ decision, the representatives of the people of Iowa appear to have made a good faith effort to strike a reasonable balance between the unborn baby’s right to life, and the mother’s life, health and right to be free from criminally forced pregnancies.

First Published in the Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus on July 23, 2023. 

Copyright 2023, John Donald O'Shea

The remedy for hate-speech is counter-speech

Two op eds ago, I wrote that the First and Second Amendments to the U.S. Constitution might be amended in ways which I believed would appeal only to fools — to readers who were “constitutionally clueless” as to the meaning and importance of the First and Second Amendments in their lives and in the lives of the American people. The “simple” amendments that I "proposed," if adopted, would have gutted our First and Second Amendments and ushered in totalitarian government.


Now I ask a few more questions:

1. Can there really be “freedom of speech” if the government can define what constitutes “disinformation?”

2. Is there “free speech” if the government can make the dissemination of “disinformation” a criminal offense?

3. If the government can imprison you for up to five years if you happen to say something that the government labels “disinformation?”

4. Do you really have a “right to keep and bear arms” if the government can impose any limitation on that right that the government deems “reasonable?”


In 1777, one year after he wrote our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson penned the “Virginia Statute for Religious Liberty.” Jefferson deemed his statute, which became Virginia law in 1778, to be his second most important writing. As you read these few quotes from Jefferson, note Jefferson believed our “rights” were “God-given;” not gifts from any government.

“Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain, by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint …

“that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments … are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do.”

Jefferson saw with clear eyes the historical tendency of governments to ordain that only their beliefs were true and infallible.

“Legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible, … have assumed dominion over the faith of others, (and have set) up their own opinions … as the only true and infallible, and … endeavor(ed) to impose them on others … over the greatest part of the world and through all time"

Jefferson understood, that allowing the government to shut down out thought that it disagreed with inevitably destroyed all freedom of speech and religious liberty.

“To suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion, and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles, on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy …

“It at once destroys all religious liberty.”

Jefferson understood the tendency of the magistrate to “approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own.”

Jefferson, however, realized that some speech must be restrained:

“It is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order.”

 So, what was Jefferson’s remedy for disinformaton? Misinformation?

“Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.

“She is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition [she is] disarmed of her natural weapons: free argument and debate.

“Errors cease to be dangerous when it (truth) is permitted freely to contradict them.”

These principles and those enunciated in the Declaration of Independence are the principles under which Madison, Jefferson’s right-hand man, drafted our Bill of Rights.

When it comes to determining which speech shall be permitted and which tenants of faith are true and can be practiced as a person’s free exercise of religion, our Constitution vest that determination solely in the individual; not in any branch of government.

Over the nearly 200 years of our republic, the Supreme Court has narrowly defined a few classes of speech that have historically been deemed beyond the protection of the First Amendment: obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement, fighting words, speech integral to criminal conduct, and speech that creates a clear and present danger.

Lying, disinformation, misinformation, hate-speech, bullying speech, however, have never been proscribed; their remedy, as noted by Jefferson, lies in counter-speech.

Similarly, the remedy for using or possessing guns in a criminal fashion, is prison. It is not to punish or confiscate from the law-abiding individual.

After our Constitution was drafted, it is said that a woman asked Benjamin Franklin what sort of government the convention had created? He is said to have answered, “A republic — if you can keep it.”

Jefferson’s notion that our fundamental rights are God-given made America the exception among nations. The men who built America on his premise gave us a great gift. The English people fought a 700-year battle with the successors of William the Conqueror to force recognition of those God-given rights. Americans who would cede their rights are fools. Those who would permit the government to nibble away at them aren’t much better. Rights ceded to government are rarely regained.

First Published in the Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus on July 16, 2023. 

Copyright 2023, John Donald O'Shea

The right of parents to educate their children is constitutional

A great debate is raging in the United States. At issue is who controls the education of children in grades K-12? The federal government? The state? Local school boards? The teachers and their unions? Or the parents?

Can teachers and/or school boards withhold from parents, information as to what is being taught in the schools relative to sex and gender orientation?

Over the last century, the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken on the issue of the rights of parents to raise and educate their children. And also, when the state, its welfare agencies, and its teachers may interfere with those parental rights. Just two examples:

In November of 1922, the voters of Oregon, by “initiative” approved a Compulsory Education Act, the manifest purpose of which was “to compel general attendance at public schools by normal children, between 8 and 16, who have not completed the eighth grade.”

The Society of Sisters was an Oregon Catholic Religious Corporation organized in 1880, with power to care for orphans, educate and instruct the youth, establish and maintain academies or schools.

In its primary schools, its students were taught the subjects usually pursued in Oregon public schools during the first eight years. Additionally, systematic religious instruction and moral training, according to the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church, was also regularly provided.

The Society sued, alleging, among other things, Oregon’s Compulsory Education Act conflicted with the right of parents to choose schools where their children will receive appropriate mental and religious training.

In ruling for the Society of Sisters — and the parents who chose to educate their children with the Sisters — the court said, 

“No question is raised concerning the power of the state reasonably to regulate all schools, to inspect, supervise and examine them, their teachers and pupils; to require that all children of proper age attend some school, that teachers shall be of good moral character and patriotic disposition, that certain studies plainly essential to good citizenship must be taught, and that nothing be taught which is manifestly inimical to the public welfare.”

The court, however, noted, 

“The inevitable practical result of enforcing the Act under consideration would be destruction of appellees' primary schools — and perhaps all other private primary schools for normal children within the state of Oregon.

“These parties are engaged in a kind of undertaking not inherently harmful, but long regarded as useful and meritorious. Certainly, there is nothing in the present records to indicate that they have failed to discharge their obligations to patrons, students or the state.

“Under the doctrine of Meyer vs. Nebraska, we think it entirely plain that the Act of 1922 unreasonably interferes with the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control.

“As often heretofore pointed out, rights guaranteed by the Constitution may not be abridged by legislation which has no reasonable relation to some purpose within the competency of the state.

“The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

But can the state ever deprive the parent of the right to raise or educate his child? Of course. But not without a judicial finding of parental “unfitness.”

In Staley vs. Illinois, the Supreme Court set out the rule:

“(This) Court has frequently emphasized the importance of the family.

“The rights to conceive and to raise one's children have been deemed "essential … "basic civil rights of man," … and "rights far more precious ... than property rights" [Citations omitted].

"It is cardinal with us that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state can neither supply nor hinder."

The court then concluded, saying,

“All Illinois parents are constitutionally entitled to a hearing on their fitness before their children are removed from their custody.

When Stanley is read in conjunction with Pierce, I think the following rules clearly emerge:


1. “The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose, excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only.

2. The rights to conceive and to raise one's children have been deemed “essential” and “basic civil rights of man.”

3. The 14th Amendment guarantees the “liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control.”

4. “All parents are constitutionally entitled to a hearing on their fitness before their children are removed from their custody — or before they lose the right to control their child’s education.

Bottom line: Parental rights are constitutionally protected. School boards, administrators and teachers who trample parental rights, under color of law, open themselves to be sued under statutes designed to protect 14th Amendment rights.

First Published in the Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus on July 9, 2023. 

Copyright 2023, John Donald O'Shea

Are men and women Catholics really "all one in Christ?"

On Saturday, June 24, 2023, an article appeared in the Dispatch-Argus, captioned, High-profile nun inspires hope for Catholic women.

“(Pope) Francis … has already done more than any modern pope to promote women by changing church laws to allow them to read scriptures (on the altar) and serve on the altar as eucharistic ministers, even while reaffirming that they cannot be ordained as priests. He has changed the Vatican’s founding constitution to allow women to head Vatican offices, and (has) made several high-profile female appointments, none more symbolically significant than that of (Sister Nathalie) Becquart’s.  

“As undersecretary in the synod of bishops, Becquart was de facto granted the right to vote at the upcoming October synod.

“In April, the Vatican announced that 70 non-bishops would vote alongside (the bishops) in October, and that half of them were expected to be women.”

So, as a male and a life-long Catholic, how do I feel about the pope changing the church’s constitution? I can only sincerely applaud. The pope’s work seems entirely consistent to me with Paul’s dictum in Galatians 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

We are all aware, of course, of other seemingly contrary dicta attributed to Paul, such as 1 Corinthians 14:33–35: " Women should remain silent in the churches; they are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church."

So how can the two passages be reconciled? Modern scholars have taken at least three tacks.

1. Some argue that Corinthians 14:33-35 is a “post-Pauline interpolation.” 2. Others argue that the passage must not be read out of context, but that it must be read in conjunction with verse 36 that immediately follows: "What! Did the word of God originate with you, or are you the only ones it has reached?" 3. While a third group, argues that the passage is utterly inconsistent with how St. Paul treated the women who were his co-workers: especially, Priscilla, Phoebe, and Junia. Paul honors Phoebe with the title, “deacon,” and Junia as a “prominent apostle.”

If it was truly “disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church," how could they have functioned as “deacon” or “prominent apostle” in the churches Paul founded?

And then, of course, Luke 8, 1-3 tell us that certain Jewish women were among Jesus' earliest followers. They included Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Susanna, who accompanied Jesus throughout his ministry, and supported him out of their private funds.

As a Catholic, I’ve watch numerous women serve as lectors and eucharistic ministers, and I have no doubts whatsoever that they read scriptures and distribute the eucharist every bit as well as any of the men.

But as I have grown old, I have attended more and more funeral services in various Protestant churches, and in the Jewish Synagogues. In the process, I have watched a fair number of women ministers/rabbis conduct the services. In almost every such service that I have attended, I think the women ministers/rabbis have conducted warmer, more-feeling services than their male counterparts. From the work I have seen the women ministers/rabbis do, I have no doubts whatsoever that mature Catholic women could do a fine job as priests.

I realize that all twelve of Christ’s original apostles were men. I am certain that the Protestant denominations realize the same thing. Somehow, they have come to the conclusion, before Rome, that “there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Recognizing the equality of women within the church also seems to me consistent with “loving one’s neighbor as one’s self.” Treating women as second-class Catholics doesn’t.

Christ chose 12 Jewish men to be his apostles. Does that mean that only Jewish men can be Catholic priests?

Pope Francis is bucking nearly 2000 years of church tradition. But he clearly sees that without a sufficient number of priests, that while Satan may not be able to prevail against the church, the church hamstrings itself.

If the church is short of priests, there clearly are two great pools from which it can draw: married men, and women.

A friend of mine, a Catholic priest, has told me that “there is no good reason for the church not to ordain married men, who are Catholics in good standing, who have successfully raised their families.” He points out that three synoptic gospels say that Peter had a mother-in-law. Peter, therefore, was either married, or had been.

Early in the history of the church someone made a rule that women could not be priests. If, however, earlier popes or churchmen had power to tighten the rules to bar women from the priesthood, Pope Francis has power to loosen them. Matthew 18:18.

If a mature Catholic woman, like Sister Nathalie Becquart, can function effectively as undersecretary to a synod of Catholic bishops, there is scant likelihood that she couldn’t effectively serve as a priest.

My priest friend also reminds me that “Rome tends to move at a glacial pace.” Pope Francis, perhaps sensing his own mortality, seems to be moving a good bit faster. Good!

First Published in the Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus on July 2, 2023. 

Copyright 2023, John Donald O'Shea