Indian Time - A Voice from the Eastern Door

By Doug George-Kanentiio.

The US is now being consumed by a powerful anti-life movement, one which cloaks itself as “pro-life” even as it qualifies the natural rights of women and the environment.

The extremists have control of the US Supreme Court which defies logic and the will of the great majority of the American people when it eliminated the ability of women to control their bodies by undermining the option of abortion, then followed that decision by gutting the power of the federal government to regulate pollutants, then concluded by restricting the authority of Indigenous nations to enforce their laws on non-citizens who commit crimes on native lands.

Within the customs and common laws of the Haudenosaunee women have the absolute right to determine all matters involving the creation and termination of life. They are the givers of life and if a woman elected not to carry an embryo that was her decision. No man could intrude and order her to do other than her will. There are many plants which are used for both control and others to initiate abortion. This knowledge was known to all. Should a woman consider termination she could seek the counsel of her female relatives, elders and spiritual counsellors but it was her decision to make unimpeded by males or any government entity.

In the US those opposed to this natural law and demand the intrusion of their respective states into the reproductive process are the same ones who also decry laws which regulate firearms or are enacted to control the destruction of the environment.

They will never agree with the aboriginal rules in which the natural world has its own rights and that all species of life have legal standing which must be accorded equal status with those of human beings. They live in this condition of contradiction: if the extremists believe that embryos have the inherent right to life than those unborn, must have the ability and resources to live. This means ecological and social conditions which enable them to have adequate food, shelter, safety and access to clean air, water and soil.

The unborn’s rights to life become the duties of the society-nations in which they are to live. It is illogical to claim life begins at conception yet deny the embryo-fetus and its mother health care, nutrition and the means to thrive. It is illogical to willfully contaminate the water that newborn will need to drink or poison the food it needs to eat. It is illogical to remove laws which are meant to slow or reverse the mad rush towards complete climatic chaos which will bring about great harm to the new born, this while the extremists claim they are “pro-life”.

The extremists are not bound by logic or reason. They don’t seem to understand that in nature a being may elect to abort if they sense there is a danger in giving birth caused by a change in the environment, which in turn results in stress and mortal risks to the mother. As the planet is entering a time of crisis some species, including humans, may refrain from giving birth until they are assured the new born will be safe and given a reasonable chance at survival.

We may now witness those risks are growing whether as historic heat waves across the world or the massive destruction caused by winds and storms which convert the warmer ocean waters into raw, brutal energy.

The US is handcuffed by these contradictions. It has no answer to the growing factionalism which prevents collective action. Its citizens cannot summon the will to respond to a US Supreme Court which disregards its own rules by denying equal rights, the rights to privacy and treaty law in a blatant intrusion into the political process. Four of its justices violated their oaths of office by lying to Congress on the abortion issue. They did so without fear of consequence and are confident that six individuals can exercise such power as to give the state governments authority to intrude into the lives of millions of citizens, gut the Constitution as it relates to treaties and push the US further into climatic crisis.

The extremists care little about the rights of the new born. They remove programs designed to give food to infants and weaken gun laws when the leading cause of death for children is now firearms. They will reduce money for education and medical care but fatten the budgets of police and prisons. Their elders may languish in ill funded nursing homes, as the military takes ever more of their resources.

This cannot be sustained. The growing gap between the extremists and the advocates for freedom and the environment will cause further political and social strive. Alienation and hostility will continue to rise until national paralysis comes about and large-scale violence erupts on a level not seen since the Civil War. As if any war is civil.

As if any social issue in the US is now civil.

It may never be if the rights of women under natural law are stripped away.