For those of you who are just becoming familiar, The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice has recently made public a report on what they term "the medical right" which is essentially the scientific counterpart to the religious right. The purpose of the report is
to provide information on how the incorporation of religious views into secular policy and law is limiting medical services.The issue of the RCRC is that certain views, what they term fundamentalist biblical values, are having a real influence on the American people and the public square. People everywhere get that abortion and legislation that undermines or infringes upon parental discretion or the conscious of pharmacists is bad. So instead of letting the people hear and be persuaded by prolife groups, the RCRC is doing two things: undermining the credibility of prolifers who appeal to scientific truths, and promoting a secular agenda such that even if they could not undermine their science, they could silence them on the basis of their religious motivations.
The report goes on to assert that the views of the "medical right" contradict "accepted medical consensus" and that to the degree in which they have influence should be cause for concern, especially to those who "value scientific integrity."
Equally disturbing is the disregard of the principle of the separation of church and state in the drive to impose sectarian religious tenets on people of all faiths and beliefs. In sum, the Medical Right threatens basic democratic values by its determination to impose its theological views on a religiously pluralistic public.So who decides? This so-called "religious coalition" is foolish if they really believe secularism can speak for everyone and protect the rights of everyone. Secularism may not have it's own divinely inspired book (outside of the secular humanist journals) and a higher power (outside of each individual, that is) to which they appeal for truth, but secularism is, nevertheless, a worldview with it's own set of presuppositions and values. In this case, secularists such as those of the RCRC believe that preborn life is not life, or (to be slightly generous) they believe it's less valuable than older, more mature life.
Also interesting to me about this organization's views about religious perspectives is that they fall into the postmodern quagmire of nothing being true. For them, the highest value is inclusivism at the expense of truth and religious perspectives, including any that they hold including their perspective on secularism, are just their own personal values that cannot be true for everyone. So in a pluralistic, yet democratic society, who decides anything? The last I knew, "we the people" have something to say, so the only way to influence "we the people" against fundamentalist biblical values is to silence the medical right with the doctrine of secularism, slamming them up against the wall of separation - or so to speak.
