Boxing Snapshot

You're there for hours. It's hot. You're trying to find some small wedge of space to set up two chairs and tape your fighter's hands and try and calm him down and build him up at the same time. While dozens of other fighters and their trainers are all around you trying to do the same. You wait. You warm up. You wait some more. Trying to find that fine edge between warmed up and ready to fight and too anxious. Trying to do the same with four other fighters. Figuring out which of the thirty bouts is in the ring, how many more until one of your guys are up. Getting him gloved up. Finally, one of your kids is called to the ring. He's anxious...no matter if it's his first fight or his whatever number. Bell. Fight. End of the round, in the ring, once again trying to both calm down amd build up. Keep instruction short, to the point. My mantra to my fighters is "relaxed and strong"...that is the zone you're trying to hit. Fight ends. More tension waiting for the decision, assuring your fighter they fought hard and well and its all good no matter what, that judges are impossible to predict. Decision. Win. Loss. On to the next fighter, while trying to deal physically and emotionally with the one who just fought. Four hours. Five hours. Hot. Loud. Crowded. End. Tired beyond words.

And it's glorious. Crammed into the New Shiloh Baptist Church rec hall, our kids (when I say kids,that means younger than me!) fought their hearts out. We won a few,dropped a couple. No matter. I am so proud of each of them and honored they put their trust in me (even if they don't always listen!). Very happy that lots of our other kids showed up to support their mates. As always, the camaraderie of fighters, especially two who just spent the last 20 minutes trying to hurt each other, is something you have to experience. There are huge things you learn about yourself and others in fighting. Important things.

Abortion is a theological issue. It shouldn't be a legal one.

 Obviously, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 decision Roe v. Wade today. The net effect is to outlaw the right to a legal abortion in roughly half the United States. In my opinion, this is another step in what seems a determined march toward theocracy in this country. 

You may believe that human life begins at conception. You certainly have every right to believe so. But that belief is fundamentally theological and has no place in the legal system of a society predicated on the rule of law and the preservation of individual rights. 

Stop for a moment. Does the law apply in any other regard to something that has not been born alive? Does it count in the census and, therefore, determine in large degree the extent of our representation in our government? Is the male whose sperm caused the conception legally bound to pay child support? Do the people who participated in the act leading to conception have the ability to claim it as a dependent? The answer to all of these, of course, is "no". Because attempting to treat "the unborn" as a legal entity in all respects is virtually impossible from a logical and analytical perspective. And that is all the law should concern itself with. 

So, why is it different for abortion? Because human life is "sacred"? "Divine"? Believe that if you will (and I will defend to the death your right to do so) but also recognize and admit that these are theological concepts and, as such, have no business being imposed on those who do not share them. I do not recognize the sacred and the divine, I recognize that a person becomes an entity under the law when they are born alive and THAT is the only entity that has rights worth protecting. To do otherwise is to invite chaos and the shifting of the rule of law to the vagaries of whatever theology the majority ascribe to at the moment. 

Do I have the right, in consultation with my doctor, to have a kidney removed? Suppose now that the cells in that kidney could be used to clone another human. Now do I have that right? Yes? No? Suppose it were the law that the government could force you to have an abortion? Surely wrong, you say. But why? Because it's a "life"? But we've just established that the law does not, indeed cannot, treat it as a life in virtually any other way. So they should be able to tell you to get rid of it. You know why they can't? Because the woman, the actual living person, has the right not to undergo a forced medical procedure.  

I do not begrudge you your faith. It is all that many people have. But the law is something else. It's why clerics and judges are separate. Or at least should be.