Does the victory for the pro-life cause really hinge on the outcome of this election?
If so, I’d place a good part of the blame on pro-lifers for putting most of their hopes in politicians, which is a good way to get screwed. Thankfully, pro-lifers needn’t panic even if adamant abortion rights advocate Barack Obama becomes president. Make no mistake: Obama isn’t intent on preserving the status quo on legalized abortion; he’s very intent on strengthening its legality. It’s not for nothing that many pro-lifers now place their trust in a campaign that has shown itself deceitful and untrustworthy these past couple weeks. Nevertheless, Obama’s election doesn’t call for panic, and as panic leads to rash behavior, it wouldn’t do much good anyway.
I say we shouldn’t panic, not because the things are going well for the pro-life cause and could suddenly go very badly, but because, despite some victories, things a pretty bad. A key objective of the pro-life movement – the permanent outlawing of abortion – will not be reached in the near future, perhaps for generations, regardless of who wins or whether Roe is overturned.
As long as an effective pro-choice movement operates in our society, any and all pro-life victories will be fleeting and embolden those who insist on abortions legality. Any pro-life legislation is at death's door as long as an effective number of Americans think or feel that abortion should be legal. McCain and Palin may be able to help prop up laws outlawing abortion, but they cannot keep them from crashing down in the fury of the pro-choice movement's reaction to those laws, especially if the movement’s numbers swell. You think the advocate for abortion rights play hardball now, wait until they’re on the offensive fighting in a post Roe v. Wade society. Returning decision-making on abortion to the States doesn’t prevent it from quickly being returned to the federal level.
The hopes of pro-lifers depend on their success at dispelling the pro-choice movement. That’s a long-term goal and one that will require a loving and persuasive outreach to those who defend abortion as a right, and a willingness to listen and learn from them as well. It is also a prerequisite for any lasting legal success. If we’re serious about erecting legal protections of the unborn, we have to be serious about responding to the pro-choice movement. They won’t go away just because we outlaw abortion. They cannot be defeated politically. We cannot win through politics alone, but there are alternatives to fighting.
So maybe instead of picketing Planned Parenthood, which has the ill effect of erecting obstacles to outreach, we should open an ear to their concerns and initiate discussions in which the mutual aim is to understand and persuade. Maybe instead of calling abortion rights advocates monsters, baby-killers, and cannibals, we should make an effort to understand our opponents as they understand themselves. Maybe instead of working tirelessly to defeat the pro-choice movement in endless political battles, we should also focus our energies on personal conversion and formation.
Whatever we do, we cannot place most of our hopes in any one place, not in making abortion illegal, not in fashioning an economically just society, not in the sorts of outreach I advocate here. The occurrence of abortion results from a variety of causes and conditions, and each has to be addressed. None can be forgotten or ignored, especially those that we have to address as prerequisite to others.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Don't Panic
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16 profound comments:
Kyle--
This is a very intelligent and thoughtful post.
Booyah. Well said. Abortion is a sympton of many other more deeply rooted problems. Family values are disintegrating, teen promiscuity is rampant and "normal," and parents aren't teaching their kids about the value of life. Poor mothers, and heaven forbid we should mention the undocumented mothers already in a desperate situation, find themselves without health care, and often without support. Until parents take seriously the formation of their children with solid values, and accept them with unconditional love regardless of their mistakes, outlawing abortions will not stop people from finding illegal and more dangerous ways of freeing themselves from what seems to them like a hopeless situation. And until we have realistic solutions to realistic problems in health care, how can we expect desperate women to make the correct choice of keeping their babies? In my opinion, it is we, the Church, the educators, and the parents who are failing to teach people about the value of life, and supporting them in real and concrete ways, even when they find themselves pregnant unexpectedly. Since when are our values based merely on what is illegal, anyway? Just because something is legal, doesn't make it okay. Sounds obvious, but it calls us to a higher moral standard, one in which our values are independent of the legislation,and our decisions based on a well-formed conscience, or maybe even the Catechism. It is not the legality or illegality of abortion that makes it right or wrong. In my opinion, it is wrong, independent of the law, and will continue to be a practice until "we the people" can recognize life for what it is.
it calls us to a higher moral standard, one in which our values are independent of the legislation,and our decisions based on a well-formed conscience
Exactly right. Well said.
Kyle
Our approach should be both/and - it's not an either/or solution.
"So maybe instead of picketing Planned Parenthood, which has the ill effect of erecting obstacles to outreach, we should open an ear to their concerns and initiate discussions in which the mutual aim is to understand and persuade. Maybe instead of calling abortion rights advocates monsters, baby-killers, and cannibals, we should make an effort to understand our opponents as they understand themselves. Maybe instead of working tirelessly to defeat the pro-choice movement in endless political battles, we should also focus our energies on personal conversion and formation."
This is a nice way of getting around the long term legal, and thus cultural consequences of an Obama presidency.
Pro-lifers, those who call for the law to protect the innocent, know that it's not just as simple as changing the law - that hearts have to be changed, too.
Overturning Roe would not be a fleeting victory. It would be a paradigm shift.
anon seems to downplay the pedagogical dimension of the law.
dangerous, that.
anon seems to downplay the pedagogical dimension of the law
Until Roe v. Wade, abortion was illegal, and had been illegal.
Where, then, was the "pedagogical dimension of the law?" Americans had been taught (by the law) nothing other than that abortion was a crime tantamount to murder, yet the majority of Americans came to favor choice. I don't see where your argument holds water.
Our approach should be both/and - it's not an either/or solution.
I agree and said as much in the last paragraph.
Overturning Roe would not be a fleeting victory. It would be a paradigm shift.
What will prevent a future Court or Congress from remaking abortion a federal issue? Roe may be overturned only to see, a few years later, a Freedom of Choice Act passed at the national level.
rodak,
"yet the majority of Americans came to favor choice."
This happened after the law changed, after Roe v. Wade.
Kyle,
We may see such legislation. But it won't necessarily succeed, and if it does, it won't necessarily be around for very long.
Laws are easily changed by Congress, and Congress is easily changed by elections.
The key difference being that, if Roe is overturned, we will actually be able to change the laws. Right now, abortion in the eyes of the law is a "fundamental right", something that is more or less not subject to legislation.
Obviously the battle for hearts and minds will never end, nor the battle for the law. But our situation can improve, and will improve if Roe is overturned.
I am not at all hopeful that abortion will be made illegal in any of the 50 states in our lifetimes. And indeed, at the risk of sounding like a pro-abortion apologist, I'm not sure that making it so should be the focus of the pro-life movement. Abortion has always been practiced in the United States (and everywhere else), and, at some points in our history as a nation, practiced widely; in fact, feminists' public outrage against this phenomenon was a key factor in the enactment of abortion laws in the 1880s.
But now, the genie is out of the bottle. Many, if not most, American women believe that the option to abortion is an undeniable civil and human right. If Roe v. Wade is overturned and abortion is made illegal in any of the 50 states by ballot referendum, its illegality will be immediately challenged in court, allowing abortion-on-demand to continue at least for a few more years in that state if not indefinitely. And/or, the closest states to maintain legal abortion will be flooded by women coming over state lines to procure abortions. And/or, grassroots networks of feminists and their friends will disseminate information on DIY abortions, as did the Janes in Chicago in the 1960s, and as some women in New York, fearing the overturning of Roe v. Wade, began doing in the years of the first Bush's administration (I knew a woman who was given an abortion by one of them).
I think that chasing after a political solution is a losing proposition. The overturing of Roe v. Wade would not end abortion, though it probably would decrease the number of abortions just because it would be much harder for women to get them. And then what? Our nation will be completely polarized. There will be enormous protests and the whipping up of emotions based on untruths, such as that women will be prosecuted and jailed for having abortions, women will die, etc. Not to mention that the Republican Party will become obsolete, having lost the main source of its grassroots support and the primary thing that differentiates it from the Democratic Party.
I don't have the answers, but I think that we have to pray and teach, show compassion for those souls misled into procuring and committing abortion, and try to create a culture of life rather than one of animosity -- a culture in which we show real love and support for the unfortunate and fallen, including those who are tempted to commit or who have committed abortion. But perhaps this is just as utopian as yearning for the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
This happened after the law changed, after Roe v. Wade.
So, I guess that you believe that the SCOTUS agreed to hear that case in a political vaccuum, eh?
Rodak is right -- the change in the law was hugely influenced by popular support. Of course, that support has become much more entrenched since Roe v. Wade, but it's simply untrue that the public didn't want abortion laws made more lenient in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Rodak,
No, obviously not. But compare the statistics for abortion before and after Roe.
The positive law has a profound influence on how we understand what is right and what is wrong.
Do we have any idea how many undisclosed abortions were procured prior to Roe or even the years following Roe? I think it's a safe assumption that abortions increased after Roe, but so far as I know we don't have a clear picture of the total number of abortions taking place illegally or what total effect Roe had on abortion rates.
Just to be clear, Zach, I do think Roe should be overturned and abortion outlawed ASAP. A fundamental reason for the State is to protect innocent life, and as Zippy (I think) points out, a State that promotes the destruction of innocent life negates its own reason for existence. My points are 1) that laws protecting the unborn aren't long for the world when a large percentage of the population believes, as Pentimento says, that abortion is a civil or human right; 2) that the pro-life movement has to address this perception in the population as a prerequisite for keeping pro-life laws on the books; and 3) the pro-life movement needs to reach out to members of the pro-choice movement in ways that are persuasive rather than polarizing.
While the discussion below is intelligent and thoughtful, I feel compelled to raise the tired - yet apt - comparison to slavery yet again. Because sometimes, something is so wrong that only immediate action can suffice.
After listening to a speech by Dr. Alveda King during the recent DNC in Denver, I was deeply convicted that the pro-life movement is indeed on the right track and is definitely in good company... a little digging into the past uncovers eerily similar political jargon, "polarizing" newspaper editorials, and free-flowing sentiment surrounding the civil rights movement of yesteryear...
Should the "issue" of equal rights have been handled with more tact and sympathy, or was it right to stand up and face evil head on?
Kyle,
"Do we have any idea how many undisclosed abortions were procured prior to Roe or even the years following Roe? I think it's a safe assumption that abortions increased after Roe, but so far as I know we don't have a clear picture of the total number of abortions taking place illegally or what total effect Roe had on abortion rates."
We do have a good idea about these things. I recommend Bernard Nathanson's book, The Hand of God, where he confesses that the statistics used in justifying legal abortion were fictitious.
Also, I agree with all three of your contentions. I think the pro-life movement has always tried to do these things. See Robert George's Embryo for a great example.
Because sometimes, something is so wrong that only immediate action can suffice.
Well, sure. The question is what that immediate action should include. A war was fought in the name of slavery. I don’t think that should be our action, either literally or, dare I say it, metaphorically through the “culture wars.”
Should the "issue" of equal rights have been handled with more tact and sympathy, or was it right to stand up and face evil head on?
Which kind of rhetoric was more persuasive—the polarizing or inspiring discourse? Which gave better testament—the peaceful witnesses or the violent protests?
Yes, abortion is evil, and the pro-life movement has its work cut out in convincing the populace that the unborn have a legitimate and unalienable claim to life and that abortion grossly and gravely violates that right. Based on my own observations, I think that some of the language that pro-lifers use is counter-productive to the cause, for it shuts down discussion and corrupts the witness to life.
As someone who was once on the other side of the culture wars, and as a woman who, having bought the lies, had an abortion, I have to agree with you, Kyle. The polarizing rhetoric and even the protests serve only to alienate the other side, when what is needed is to dissolve the boundaries that have created another side at all. The civil rights metaphor is an apt one: think of it in terms of Alveda King's uncle vs. Malcom X, and remember that "by any means necessary" was the cry of those who thought that Dr. King was making too much common cause with the "enemies" of civil rights. What would you have? The pro-life movement has already been tarred with the extremist brush because of the unfortunate actions of a few. Dr. King succeeded where separatism failed because he preached reconciliation and lived out the message of love for one's enemies. Though I've heard it spoken of, I've seen very little of that in the pro-life movement.
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