"You're not stopping abortions, you're just making abortion less safe." Well, let's talk about that, shall we? It's not safe for the baby, first of all. Secondly, the data shows plainly otherwise. I think a lot of left-of-center Christians would like to believe these comforting fictions about abortion, because they feel culturally alienated from right-of-center Christians, they dislike them acutely in many cases. I get that, I suppose. Let's obliquely refer to the ignorant, unfit elephant in the room. Ahem. Anyway, if what I propose to do does not include making abortion illegal at some point, I do not really want fewer abortions. I have to take my medicine at some point as a "bad" person denounced by popular talk show hosts as an extremist. Fine. If we go through a spike in "unsafe" abortions after it's made illegal, that's tragic, but unavoidable. Just because people work around a good law and hurt themselves or others doesn't mean a law is bad. Nothing immoral is "safe" or can be "regulated". We can have a prudential conversation about how much force and effort should be applied against an activity that is illegal and immoral, but that's a different conversation.
I think our political system encourages us to think of government sanctions like the 10 Commandments for governments: "Government shalt not..." and that bleeds over to our thinking about morality. Politics, however, is public morality by definition.
Most people think of themselves as remarkably self-possessed, unaffected by civil sanctions, or the lack thereof, but obviously that's not the case. Most people associate legality with moral licitness, and rightly so. Can something perfectly licit be made illegal? Of course. I still happily believe in legislating morality. No one involved in politics should pretend otherwise.
I think our political system encourages us to think of government sanctions like the 10 Commandments for governments: "Government shalt not..." and that bleeds over to our thinking about morality. Politics, however, is public morality by definition.
Most people think of themselves as remarkably self-possessed, unaffected by civil sanctions, or the lack thereof, but obviously that's not the case. Most people associate legality with moral licitness, and rightly so. Can something perfectly licit be made illegal? Of course. I still happily believe in legislating morality. No one involved in politics should pretend otherwise.
Comments
There are dozens of policy choices that would probably prevent more abortions than overturning Roe would. Providing income support for pregnant women and mothers; providing accessible healthcare; providing maternal leave; teaching men to take responsibility for our children; fighting human trafficking and prostitution; making sexual immorality and divorce less broadly acceptable in society; bringing parents home from wars to heal families; unequivocally denouncing men like Moore and Kavanaugh who have probably abused women. Each of the things I listed would help cut into the holocaust of abortions, but each would get significant political pushback from 'pro-life' voters. This makes us look like hypocrites. Besides, early term abortions cannot really be outlawed effectively because the medicines used are also used to treat natural miscarriages.
I don't want fewer abortions instead of none. I want fewer abortions on the way to none. I want none, but you can't get none just by passing prohibitions. "Pro-life for the whole life" is a cliche and in its worst uses seems to be trying to avoid saying straight out that abortion is evil. But how about "pro-life for mothers and babies"? A movement that doesn't seek to outlaw abortion isn't pro-life; a movement that only seeks to outlaw abortion is ignoring the bigger, and probably more important, picture of how wretched things must already be for a normal woman to consider abortion. And the latter movement is playing all too easily into the hands of adversaries who see abortion as a positive civil right at best, and who know what they're doing and are just evil, at worst.