Susan Sarandom on Hillary Clinton and Life from The Guardian

.

The G2 interview

Susan Sarandon: ‘I thought Hillary was very dangerous. If she'd won, we'd be at war’

Once the bete noire of the right, now the actor finds herself even more hated by the left for refusing to support Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump. She talks about Hollywood sexism, female empowerment and playing Bette Davis

by Emma Brockes

Susan Sarandon at 71 is bright-eyed and airy, and perhaps shyer than she can publicly seem. When I walk into the room – a private members’ club in downtown New York, where she sits with a small dog at her feet – she doesn’t say hello or make eye-contact, giving what I suspect is a false impression of rudeness. It may also be that she is uncertain of her reception. For a long time Sarandon was despised by the right, her protests against the Vietnam war and US aggression in Nicaragua and Iraq making her the kind of target that, for progressives, is an affirmation of sorts. Her latest unpopularity, by contrast, comes exclusively from the left and is much tougher on Sarandon. “I’m not attacked from the right at all,” she will tell me. Instead, she is accused of not checking her white privilege, of throwing away her vote on a third-party candidate (the Green party nominee, Jill Stein) during the US presidential election, and of recklessly espousing a political cause that let Trump in through the backdoor. Liberals in the US, it seems, can summon more hatred for Sarandon right now than they can for Paul Ryan.

Most infuriating of all, to her critics, is that she won’t admit her error. Sarandon’s very physiognomy suggests defiance; she looks indignant even at rest. She also looks a lot like Bette Davis, so much so that Davis herself, in her dotage, approached Sarandon to play her. That project never happened, but in the new eight-part Ryan Murphy series Feud: Bette and Joan, about the battle for Hollywood supremacy between Davis and Joan Crawford, Sarandon gets her chance. The two leads are terrific: Jessica Lange, by turns monstrous and pathetic as Crawford; Sarandon steelier, smarter, less obviously vulnerable. She sees a lot of similarities between herself and Davis. “We’re both east coast,” she says. “I didn’t consider myself a star; I was a character actor from the very beginning and not really sold as pretty, which is probably what’s allowed me to survive as long as I have. I have this broader phase.”

Sarandon as Bette Davis and Jessica Lange as Joan Crawford in Feud: Bette and Joan. Photograph: FX

Sarandon is working well beyond the age at which women in Hollywood’s golden era could expect to carry on – “besides playing witches and bitches,” she says. The interesting thing about Feud is that it tells an unavoidably feminist story about two women who would have abhorred that particular term. A few years ago, Sarandon herself said: “I think of myself as a humanist because I think it’s less alienating to people who think of feminism as being a load of strident bitches.”

“And then suddenly it became OK to say feminist,” she says now. “That’s been very recent. There was a period when that wasn’t really happening. So now there’s been an opportunity to include men as allies. And I have to say, I remember going to the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment] march where there were 100,000 women and we were going around talking to senators for this vote and I got on the elevator, and the women were like: ‘We’re going to show them what the fuck we want.’ And I kept saying: ‘Calm down, that’s not the way we’re going to get things done.’”

You thought it was counterproductive to be that angry? “It was counterproductive, clearly. But that image of the shrill woman became the definition of a feminist for a long time. And women had a right to be angry, and to feel empowered. But that was just one glimpse of a fairly emotional and strident definition, and there was a period when young women didn’t want that label.”

And now? “It’s come back, and it’s gotten warped, especially with the election, where if you’re a woman you have to support Hillary Clinton.”

Now, of course, no one in Sarandon’s industry would get caught dead having a flaky opinion on sexism in Hollywood. Still, the actor is cautious. One gets the feeling that the Harvey Weinstein business simply isn’t very interesting to Sarandon, that there are other causes – the Keystone pipeline, fracking, oil and gas money in politics – that she considers more urgent. She is no apologist for the Weinsteins of this world, but she can, at times, sound positively libertarian about where the responsibilities of the women involved lie.

Sarandon listens to Bernie Sanders campaigning in Iowa, Jan 2016. Photograph: Chris Carlson/AP

“There are a lot of people who did say no,” she says. “I think the big question here is that if Harvey Weinstein exposed himself to you when you were on a yacht in Cannes and you told everybody – this is Angie Everhart’s story – and everyone said: ‘Well, that’s just Harvey’ and it wasn’t a big deal – those are the people who are perpetuating it, too. Now, I’m sure there’s a lot of men who were much smoother at seducing than-” she bursts out laughing – “James Toback and Harvey Weinstein, who a lot of women felt very flattered to be sleeping with, even if they didn’t get the job. There’s just a culture, starting in the 60s and 70s, where there was a certain amount of liberation that made it possible for those things to happen without even seeing yourself as a victim.”

One of the questions currently being asked is whether what Sarandon describes – the inability of many women even to conceptualise themselves as victims – is a function of “liberation” or internalised misogynistic denial. For Sarandon’s part, nothing post-Weinstein has made her reassess her own past. “Certainly, I experienced both having people come on to me and being told that I wasn’t interesting enough to get a part, or sexual enough, once they found out I was married,” she says. She also admits she was lucky; that, unlike many of the women coming forward today, Sarandon’s resolve was never put to the test. “In my case, I just said no, in many clumsy, stupid ways, but the people didn’t push on. They didn’t show up in my room. They didn’t corner me, or batter me, or get on top of me. It was an invitation: ‘Yeah, why don’t you spend the night now that you’re here in the middle of nowhere on location?’ And I said: ‘No, I gotta get back to my room.’ But I didn’t feel super offended, because it wasn’t a thing that became super difficult.”

There were other hard things. “I remember another really famous actress saying to me: ‘Well, don’t have children because that’ll really change the parts that you’ll be available for. And you won’t work past 40 anyway.’ And a lot of that has changed. And a lot of women are assessing how they feel; were they victimised or did they feel that it was their own choice?”

There is no question, she believes, that there are more choices today and that this is slowly correcting the imbalance of power. “More and more women are able to greenlight their own projects. My last few films have had women directors – they’re not the big blockbusters, but I’m not sure those big blockbusters are very interesting to direct. But there is definitely more power in the hands of women than there was – the Reese Witherspoons, who are getting books, putting together projects, telling women’s stories. I think that’s where the difference is. The culture itself is ... it’s a tricky thing because you are selling yourself using sex, and your looks, for the most part. And I think that when you have these men in positions of power, they assume that [sex] goes along with it. And until you get women to have an economic power base – I mean, look at Brit Marling’s article [in the Atlantic], where she talks about being able to walk out of an uncomfortable situation with Harvey even though she hated herself for going in the first place, because she knew she could write and produce and direct. So when people see themselves as having their own power base, it becomes imaginable that you could turn somebody down and still survive.”

With Geena Davis in Thelma And Louise, 1991. Photograph: c.MGM/Everett/REX

It is often overlooked that in 2001, Sarandon supported Hillary Clinton’s run for the Senate. There are photos of them posing chummily together, grinning. Then Clinton voted for the war in Iraq and it all went downhill. During the last election, Sarandon supported Bernie Sanders, then wouldn’t support Clinton after she won the nomination, and now all the moderates hate her, to the extent, she says, that she had to change her phone number because people she identifies as Hillary trolls sent her threatening messages. “I got from Hillary people ‘I hope your crotch is grabbed’, ‘I hope you’re raped’. Misogynistic attacks. Recently, I said ‘I stand with Dreamers’ [children brought illegally to the US, whose path to legal citizenship – an Obama-era provision – Trump has threatened to revoke] and that started another wave.”

Wait, from the right?

“No, from the left! ‘How dare you! You who are responsible for this!’”

I ask if she’s aware that Katha Pollitt recently called her an idiot in the New York Review of Books and she looks momentarily taken aback. “I’m flattered,” she says. These people are furious with you, I say.

“Well, that’s why we’re going to lose again if we depend on the DNC [the Democratic National Committee]. Because the amount of denial ... I mean it’s very flattering to think that I, on my own, cost the election. That my little voice was the deciding factor.”

Is it upsetting to be attacked?

“It’s upsetting to me more from the point of view of thinking they haven’t learned. I don’t need to be vindicated.”

But it’s upsetting that they’re still feeding the same misinformation to people. When Obama got the nomination, 25% of [Hillary’s] people didn’t vote for him. 

Only 12% of Bernie’s people didn’t vote for her.”

But she didn’t advocate voting for Hillary! Come on.

“Hmm?”

Didn’t she advocate voting for Jill Stein?

“I didn’t advocate people voting for anything. I said get your information, I’m going to vote for change, because I was hoping that Stein was going to get whatever percentage she needed – but I knew she wasn’t going to make the difference in the election.”

Sarandon with Cher and Michelle Pfeiffer in The Witches of Eastwick, 1987. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/WARNER BROS

Does she have any sympathy with the critique that casting a protest vote is the luxury of those insulated from the effects of a Trump presidency? “It wasn’t a protest vote. Following Bernie wasn’t a protest.” Voting for Jill Stein was, by any definition, a protest vote. “Well, I knew that New York was going to go [for Hillary]. It was probably the easiest place to vote for Stein. Bringing attention to working-class issues is not a luxury. People are really hurting; that’s how this guy got in. What we should be discussing is not the election, but how we got to the point where Trump was the answer.” (We should also, she says, inching towards the space where the extreme right meets the left, be discussing how “you can’t judge by the mainstream media what’s going on in the country. How did we lose all our journalists and media?”)

Has she lost friends over all this? “No. My friends have a right to their opinions. It’s disappointing but that’s their business. It’s like in the lead-up to Vietnam, and then later they say: ‘You were right.’ Or strangely, some of my gay friends were like: ‘Oh, I just feel bad for [Clinton]. And I said: ‘She’s not authentic. She’s been terrible to gay people for the longest time. She’s an opportunist.’ And then I’m like: ‘OK, let’s not talk about it any more.’”

Still, I think while there was vast political error on both sides, the inability of Sarandon and her ilk to embrace the lesser of two evils permitted the greater of the two evils to rise. And yet I like Sarandon. It takes real courage to go against the mob. Her inconsistencies are a little wild, but in the age of social-media enforced conformity, I have never met anyone so uninterested in toeing the line.

Did she really say that Hillary was more dangerous than Trump?

“Not exactly, but I don’t mind that quote,” she says. “I did think she was very, very dangerous. We would still be fracking, we would be at war [if she was president]. It wouldn’t be much smoother. Look what happened under Obama that we didn’t notice.”

It seems absurd to argue that healthcare, childcare, taxation for the non-rich wouldn’t be better now under President Clinton, and that’s before we get to the threat of deportation hanging over millions of immigrants. “She would’ve done it the way Obama did it,” says Sarandon, “which was sneakily. He deported more people than have been deported now. How he got the Nobel peace prize I don’t know. I think it was very important to have a black family in the White House and I think some of the stuff he did was good. He tried really hard about healthcare. But he didn’t go all the way because of big pharma.”

It’s tempting to read some of Sarandon’s fervour as a reaction against her own family’s Republicanism – during the Bush years, her now 94-year old-mother was interviewed by Bill O’Reilly, and encouraged to speculate on where she went wrong with her daughter. (Sarandon’s mother would probably have voted for Trump, she says, but “I don’t think she got out to vote.” She smiles. “We didn’t facilitate that.”)

All of which makes the actor’s position on feminism more puzzling. Sarandon is close to her three children – Eva Amurri, whom she had with the Italian film-maker Franco Amurri, and Miles and Jack, her two sons with her former partner of 23 years, Tim Robbins, with whom she is reportedly on good terms. It was her daughter, Eva, who as a teenager didn’t like the word feminism, says Sarandon, because “it seemed redundant to have to say you were a feminist”.

But it wasn’t.

“No, but she grew up in a house where she had a mother who earned her own money and was powerful and she’s in a progressive city, with other progressive kids – she wasn’t even exposed to the more Republican part of Manhattan. So she was in a progressive bubble. I think the secret is maybe now we have to just say no one is going to fix it for you. It’s up to you to fix it. You have the strength. You shouldn’t turn to be validated by anyone, male or female. You carry your power within you, and if you surround yourself with people who respect you, that will happen, be they male or female.” It is a strange statement from someone who believes that structural inequality requires political solutions. Earlier, she makes the point that Clinton’s refusal to back the $15 minimum wage, “tells you she’s not a feminist, when 50% of the households in America are headed by women.” Clinton espoused a $12 minimum wage, with scope to raise it to $15 in metropolitan centres, but that’s not the point. The point is self-validation doesn’t pay the rent.)

After the interview, we leave the club and walk towards the subway. “What was her name?” she says. “In the magazine?”

“Katha Pollitt,” I say. We part at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Sarandon disappears up the street, dog under one arm, hat pulled low, assistant at her elbow. “Will I get a load more hatred when this article comes out?” she shouts, looking back over her shoulder.

“Probably,” I say. I have a hunch she can take it.

Feud: Bette and Joan starts on BBC Two on Saturday 16 December at 9pm. The full series will be available on BBC iPlayer from 10.45pm that evening. 

• This article was amended on 27 November 2017. Jill Stein was the Green party presidential nominee, not an independent.

Since you’re here …

… we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to ask for your help. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be your perspective, too.

I appreciate there not being a paywall: it is more democratic for the media to be available for all and not a commodity to be purchased by a few. I’m happy to make a contribution so others with less means still have access to information.Thomasine F-R.

If everyone who reads our reporting, who likes it, helps fund it, our future would be much more secure. For as little as $1, you can support the Guardian – and it only takes a minute. Thank you.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/nov/26/susan-sarandon-i-thought-hillary-was-very-dangerous-if-shed-won-wed-be-at-war

Obamaville March 8 - A Full Moon and Sun Spot Attack

.

Maybe God doesn't like our national debate

I'm one of those people who is always looking for signs to point the way to one's destiny.  It may not be a big sign either, like pulling the magical sword Excalibur from a stone the way young Arthur did to become the Once and Future King Arthur.

At an early age I also learned to balance my passions of hope with skepticism to protect myself from too much disappointment. Mark Twain was my foundation with his wit and wisdom like "everyone's entitled to their own silly opinions."

So I now describe myself as a "cautious optimist" when it comes to human evolution, and an outright pessimist when it comes to human motivation.  It just seems we have pretty much lost our foundation for values and principles.

What used to be good is now judged to be obsolete.  What used to be immoral is now the new status quo.  Movies that used to be R rated for restricted and were banished to the theaters are now on cable television daily.

In today's world pornography, which used to be banned from the public, is now downloaded through the Internet into your very home with no moral compass or consequence.

When I grew up there were only two publicly available places you could find pictures of naked women, either National Geographic Magazine or the old man's Playboy if you could find where he hid it.  In fact National Geographic was about 100 years ahead of the education system in teaching sex education to kids.

All the old crooked siding salesmen, window salesmen, used car salesmen, vacuum salesmen and encyclopedia salesmen have now evolved into direct marketing by phone, Internet spam, and Internet fraud and thanks to modern technology the crooks can operate about 1000 times faster.

Anyway, you get the message.  There just might be some truth to the speculation that the loss of morality could lead to the End Times when the Creator decides to terminate the human experiment, maybe again (think Noah's Ark), and hits the erase button on Plant Earth.

Well according to the Bible what really makes the Creator upset is when people refuse to acknowledge the work of Jesus or make sacrilegious statements about Jesus.  Those people can get erased in a big hurry.

Lately in the dark world of politics a lot has been made of some pretty incendiary moral issues like abortion, contraception, gay marriages, sexual promiscuity, and the like and a lot of heated statements have been made by both sides of the issues.

After some of the things I've heard, I can't imagine the Creator can't be more than a little upset that the creation on Earth might be getting out of hand again.  But being the Supreme Being, it is hard for the Omnipotent One to annihilate all life forms just to teach a few lost souls a lesson.

No, there has to be something a little less dramatic than Noah's flood to teach a lesson to all those humans who strayed from the path.  In the infinite wisdom of the Creator he also surmised that it really wasn't most people indulging in the moral corruption of mankind but a handful of soulless radicals strategically placed.

Like in politics.  Like in sports.  Like in religion.  Like in hospitals.  Like in the banks and Wall Street.  Like in our face every day and night on the television.

So what was needed was a small sign to make a big impression on those few indulged in the moral destruction of mankind.  Remember, most people are followers, not leaders.  The enemies of morality are those deciding how mankind can be manipulated, and then they go out and do it.  They view their job as leading the masses through deception or any  means necessary into the dark.

So I watch the debates, the vitriol language, the personal and bitter attacks, and the endless opinions and analysis from the politicians and news media, and I say this might be a good time for a little Divine intervention to shut up the blabbering fools and silence the wolves.

If I were the Creator seeking a small sign to get the right people's attention, something so powerful you can't miss it but so targeted only the worst of the moral thieves would be hurt, I think I've got the answer.

SOLAR FLARES ON THE SURFACE OF THE SUN.

With the Sun an average of 93 million miles from Earth, it is visible through satellites but can't fry the earth if a little exhibition of power takes place.  So I set off some rather big solar explosions and aim them at the Earth.

When aimed directly at Earth, X-class solar flares can endanger astronauts and satellites in orbit, interfere with satellite communications and damage power grids on Earth. They can also amplify the Earth's display of northern and southern lights, also known as auroras.

Of course here in America, the land of plenty and then some, these huge clouds of charged particles — called coronal mass ejections, or CMEs - erupting from the solar flares, can have a much more interesting impact than most places.

Here we are psychologically addicted to multiple forms of electro magnetic toys like cells phones, GPS tracking systems, notebooks, video phones, wireless signals, credit cards, ATM cards and all the other things we have to distract us, please us, entertain us, manage our money and tell us where to go.

My little miracle, firing off a few big solar flares, can disrupt those technology toys that weren't even in existence 100 years ago.  When some of the people of earth suddenly can't use their cell phone, or text, or find their way to the nearest pizza joint, or realize their car won't start or tell them where to go, that will get attention.

So 36 hours ago a couple of x class solar eruptions exploded on the Sun.  Yesterday the government finally decided to warn us of the potential electro magnetic impact of the solar flares on earth, and all of the above were mentioned as possibilities.

We will know today.  But we also know that a series of bigger and bigger solar flares or storms are taking place every month and will continue to build until the end of 2013.  At some point the electrical devices will fail and the electrical grid could even collapse.

You don't think this act of God could have anything to do with the assault on God, religious freedom and moral proclivity taking place do you?

Maybe the Hopi, the Mayan and the Bible writers had a little more inspired insight than we may want to think!

.

Solving Social Issues - The Most Tragic of all Issues - Abortion in USA

.

Abortion Policy - Where Choice can end Life

Abortion is perhaps the most complex of all social issues.  A way to accommodate both sides of the Pro-Life and Pro-Choice movements must be found that does not make our young girls and women victims between factions.

The Facts

54,559,615

Total abortions since 1973

Based on numbers reported by the Guttmacher Institute 1973-2008,

with estimates of 1,212,400 for 2009-2011. GI estimates a possible

3% under reporting rate, which is factored into the total.

Race                Abortions                  Population

White             19.6 million              211.4 million

Hispanic        13.6 million                46.8 million

Black              16.4 million                38.1 million

Other races     4.9 million                  3.7 million

Total               54.5 million              310.0 million

Just the sheer volume of abortions are staggering.  In the USA 55.4 million since 1973, worldwide 1.7 billion.  Those are millions and billions of incidents.  Yet there are also disturbing trends in those statistics that represent real lives.

Most abortions are from unwanted pregnancy, as if that would not be obvious.  However, abortion was never intended to be just another form of contraceptive.  Yet analysis now shows that as many as half of all women receiving abortions have had a previous abortion.  Are abortions so readily available that women are using the abortion to exploit sexual promiscuity at the government expense?  What does this say about the value of life in America? 

Annually the number of abortions has ranged from about 1.6 million to 1.2 million since 1990.  Only four cities in the United States have a higher population than the annual abortions, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston.

Since the automobile was invented and records started in 1900, one hundred and eleven years ago, there have been 3.5 million killed in America.  Since 1973 there have been 15 times as many abortions as auto deaths since 1900.

There have been almost as many abortions in the US as the total number of people living in Great Britain, France or Italy, men, women and children combined.

Compared to Worst Health Disasters in History

Between 1348 and 1350 the Black Death or bubonic plague is estimated to have killed 30–60 percent of Europe's population, more than 50 million people, reducing the world population from an estimated 450 million to between 350 and 375 million in the 14th century. 

The Great Influenza, 1918 - 1919, also known as the Spanish Flu, the Great Influenza was most likely the deadliest plague in history. The extremely virulent influenza virus killed an estimated 50 million or more people in the space of just six months.  The world’s population at the time was just 1.8 billion.

For comparison, the total abortions in America equaled the total world deaths from either of the two worst disease outbreaks in history, the Black Death and Spanish Influenza.

Worldwide abortion deaths of 1.7 billion are more than three times the total world population in 1350, and nearly equal to the entire world population in 1919, the years of the health disasters.

The debate over Abortion - Choice or Life or both

By all public opinion measures Abortion is the most volatile and controversial of all social issues in America.  The Pro-Choice (Pro-Abortion) movement defends the right of women to control their body while the Pro-Life movement defends the right of the unborn human life.

Roe versus Wade in 1973 set the standard for federal law on abortion yet it is often wrongly credited with also legalizing abortion at any time during the nine months of pregnancy.  In fact it was limited to the question of personal rights versus legitimate government rights.

Specifically what is the government's legitimate interest in protecting the rights of the embryo or fetus?  Since an embryo or fetus do not have rights themselves then what determines when they are human persons?

In 1973 medical science and forensics was far from the level of sophistication of today in being able to determine the moment life begins and when the fetus acquires human rights.

Four decades have passed since the landmark ruling.

During that time Pro-Life and Pro-Choice movements have become rich and powerful and abortion continues to be one of the most decisive issues of the day.  The special interests in the abortion debate are every bit as powerful and demanding as any from the financial or other sectors.

Yet there is something different about abortion than most social issues.  It is the only one in which there is a living entity as the victim and thus it elevates the issue to a real matter of life or death depending on your definition.

Now I don't know of anyone in the Pro-Choice or Pro-Life movements who would say any baby can be aborted.  The dispute is over when they are a human person, which allows a fetus to not be considered a human.  I don't think anyone wants to be seen as a baby killer.

When Does Human Life Begin?

The problem is determining the moment life begins, at least in the eyes of the courts.  That is what Roe versus Wade did nearly 40 years ago.  Science has now proven otherwise.

Advocates claimed abortion was needed in three cases, rape or incest, a threat to the health of the baby, or a threat to the health of the mother. History has proven them wrong. Multiple studies performed with the advantage of actual statistics show only 1% of all abortions resulted from rape or incest, just 2% resulted because of the health of the baby, and 2% resulted from the threat to the health of the mother. In other words the three major causes for passing Roe versus Wade actually represented no more than 5% of the total abortions performed.

Based on the claims in the debate over Roe versus Wade we should not even have a law since so few abortions performed meet the primary needs used to justify the law. However, there is another reason to reconsider the language of the law besides 50 million deaths and no justification for the law, that is what the law did do in the first place.

Roe versus Wade was a ruling by the Supreme Court that centrally held that a mother may abort her pregnancy for any reason, up until the "point at which the fetus becomes ‘viable'". The Court defined viable as being potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid. In 1973 viability usually occurred at about seven months (28 weeks) but might occur earlier, even at 24 weeks. Medical breakthroughs since the ruling and prenatal advances have demonstrated that the ability of the fetus to live outside the mother's womb can come at a much earlier time.

In fact in recent years the youngest baby in history was delivered in Florida at 21 weeks and 6 days, survived and has now gone home to live a normal life.  She is living proof that Roe versus Wade is scientifically wrong, a baby can survive at 21 weeks, not 28 weeks.

Clearly the language of the law is flawed, so what should it be? Here is the test for all pro abortion groups who claim they really aren't advocating taking lives.   If you are sincere in wanting to protect human lives while pursuing an abortion option, then you should have no problem accepting the newest scientific evidence of when life begins.

Scientific Proof of Life versus Death

 There is one medical test widely accepted and upheld by the courts to establish that a human is legally alive or dead.  All 50 states have used this test for over 30 years.

The Uniform Determination of Death Act, promulgated in 1980 and supported by the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, has served as a model statute for the adoption of state legislation that defines death. The act asserts: “An individual, who has sustained either irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brainstem, is dead. A determination of death must be made in accordance with accepted medical standards.”

Since brain activity is the legal measure for the cessation of life, then it must also be the legally accepted measure of the beginning of life. A fetus becomes a living baby when brain activity can be first measured. According to established science with the use of an electroencephalogram, or EEG, activity in the brain can be detected as early as six weeks gestational age (6). Whether brain activity begins at this time or started earlier but becomes detectable at this time is uncertain; it is known that neural connections begin forming as soon as neurons begin forming, as early as 14 days gestation.

A Constitutional lawyer like President Obama should embrace scientific advances that have proven when brain activity is detected, at six weeks, and since the courts accept brain activity as a reliable measure of life or death, then life can be scientifically proven at six weeks.

As science improves, the brain wave activity will consistently be detected some time between 14 days and six weeks.  All hospitals are equipped with EEG machines and they could be adapted to complete these tests for pregnant women.

Roe versus Wade Needs a Scientific Overhaul

Roe versus Wade, adopted nearly four decades ago, is medically and scientifically obsolete in the determination that life begins at 28 weeks. Responsible members of Congress and the White House should advocate, in the interest of scientific accuracy, a change in the law to reflect the latest scientific advances. With nearly 55 million abortions already performed, do we really want to keep terminating the lives of babies we know are living beings?

Abortion is not a matter of pro choice when the baby being aborted is a living, human being in the eyes of science. Pro Life and Pro Choice advocates should join in seeking this correction of a flawed law and the Obama Administration and Congress should make it the law of the land.

Implementing the New Scientific Findings

In the end this could be the easiest huge policy change regarding a volatile social issue in history.  It would not appear to require any action by Congress or the President.  Since the courts have recognized The Uniform Determination of Death Act as the national standard for scientifically proving death over life, then the same standard and same tests, can determine when the fetus becomes a "human" life or person, when life begins according to science and the courts.

Most governors or state attorney generals could find a way to incorporate the missing language from Roe versus Wade, the lack of a court tested determination of the difference between life and death, through executive order or the many remedies used in the judicial process.

Another option to clarify this issue would be for a legislature to amend whatever their determination of death law to use it as a determination of life or death.  There are many avenues open to those who really want to end the debate and protect those children who are not protected under the current flawed laws.

Get your governor or state attorney general to act and act now and this debate can be brought to a close.  We will have a scientific determination of when life begins and ends, and we will stop using abortion as just another form birth control to terminate unwanted pregnancies.


Most of all, we will all agree on life.
.