When Being Pro-Life Isn't Enough
posted by Protagonist | 8:43 PM 
This morning I visited a church which, after the pastor gave a very good sermon, featured a speech on abortion by Kelly Hollowell. Hollowell is a patent attorney, has a Ph.D in pharmacology and molecular biology, and is an adjunct professor of Bioethics. One smart cookie.
She's also very devout Christian and dead set against abortion. In a stirring, emotional speech, she discussed the facts of abortion which I've heard my whole adult life: One million of them per year in the U.S., originally advocated by Margaret Sanger as a means of eugenics, number-one cause of death in America, Roe v. Wade is universally considered undemocratic bad judicial activism, caused and promoted by welfare-statism and oversexualization of American culture, pure murder, pure evil, etc., etc. She asked for the congregation to be active civically in helping to end abortion, to write to our elected representatives and donate to anti-abortion causes, etc., etc. If I had heard this speech ten years ago, I would have completely identified with Ms. Hollowell 100%.
There's only one problem: If Ms. Hollowell got 100% of the policy changes she proposed, it wouldn't stop one abortion.
I agree the abortion is a sin, an abomination, cold-blooded murder committed for the most venal of reasons: feared,but rarely actual, losses of wealth, pleasure and prestige, or a suicidal notion that life isn't worth living. I've experienced with my wife a prematurely-ended pregnancy, and hearing about healthy babies conceived to abortion-minded mothers is like a punch in the stomach. A baby is a human living soul, with all the moral implications that term implies.
That being said, if a woman wants to have an abortion, she is going to have one. Abortion is not so much a debate about right as it is about power. A woman has absolute power over herself, physical and spiritually. If he doesn't want what's living in her to life, she has the absolute power to destroy it, be it her soul or her child's soul.
Even if the unborn child were to be protected legally, it would take an Orwellian level of surveillance of the mother to keep it alive and healthy, certainly not feasible for the 100,000s of poor souls who want to commit such a murder. Or if caught after-the-fact, what prison sentence could you give to the woman to punish and discourage abortions? Would it be worse than caring eighteen years for a child you don't love? Could you punish a million mothers a year like that?
Every woman--every human--is sovereign in their mind and will. This sovereignty carries over to their actions. In a coerced environment, actions may be prevented by "bargaining with" the mind and will by threats, punishments and disincentives. But there is no force known, or which would ever be morally acceptable, to make a mother have only good, loving thoughts towards their children. Despite how horrid the opposite concept may be. You can't make people do and think what they don't want to do and think. Throughout human history, some of our worse atrocities and tragicomic exercises in futility have been attempts to do just that.
The counter-argument, such as a smart cookie like Ms. Hollowell may make, is that banning abortion would make a marginal difference in stopping some abortions. "Many women," one would argue, "perhaps several 100,000s, are on the fence about having an abortion. If we made it illegal, it would prevent them from doing so, and save lives."
Suprisingly, that's incorrect. According to a 1968 study, before abortion was universally legal throughout the United States, there were an estimated 1.2 million illegal abortions per year1. In 2000, according to the Center for Disease Control, there were an estimated 850,293 legal abortions in the United States2. This is the case despite population growth and the increased sexualization of our culture. In other words, banning abortion does nothing to change the abortion rate! Legal prohibition against abortion has about the same effect as legal prohibition against alcohol. Furthermore, we can only assume it would be harder to re-cap the abortion genie; given the greater technology, information and drug-proliferation in pre-Roe days, "back-alley" abortions would be easier than ever.
(Of course, any abortion statistics published by activist organizations are always subject to question. If anybody can show facts or interpretations refuting these statistics, they're welcome to discuss or link them in the comment section. Like this one: We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching 100,000, but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1 million--Bernard Nathanson, M.D., NARAL co-founder)
But these studies show a glimmer of hope for anti-abortion activists. The abortion rate went down since Roe and pre-Roe. Why?
One argument is the eugenic one: that first-generation sluts are aborting their baby daughters, who consequentially don’t grow up to be second-generation sluts who would get an abortion. (A variation of this argument was proposed by Stephen Levitt in his bestselling book Freakonomics to explain falling crime rates in the mid-1990s). But this explanation wouldn't coincide with the general population rise.
A better explanation is that, even in discouraging abortion, free-market institutions do a better job than government. For thirty years, churches have preached on the moral consequences of abortion, while more secular activists have taught the public about the practical implications of sex and pregnancy. The consequence has been a new generation that is actually less sexually promiscuous. So congratulations pro-life activists, you’re doing a great job preventing abortion! Don’t ruin it by getting the law involved.
In short, I like the tune Ms. Hollowell is singing, but not the lyrics. If you don't believe in abortion, then don't get one and tell others not to get one. But don't delude yourself into thinking you can wave a magic pro-life juju stick and banish evil from the hearts of men. That will happen only when Jesus comes back and raises up all those dead souls from the grave.
1 Richard Schwarz, Septic Abortion (Philadelphia: JB Lippincott Co., 1968) and Tietze C, Henshaw SK. Induced Abortion: A World Review, 1986. New York: The Guttmacher Institute, 1986. Cited here and here.
2 CDC Statistics here
P.S. In my old blog, I proposed The Maternal Lien as a less intrusive and more realistic way to prevent abortion.
She's also very devout Christian and dead set against abortion. In a stirring, emotional speech, she discussed the facts of abortion which I've heard my whole adult life: One million of them per year in the U.S., originally advocated by Margaret Sanger as a means of eugenics, number-one cause of death in America, Roe v. Wade is universally considered undemocratic bad judicial activism, caused and promoted by welfare-statism and oversexualization of American culture, pure murder, pure evil, etc., etc. She asked for the congregation to be active civically in helping to end abortion, to write to our elected representatives and donate to anti-abortion causes, etc., etc. If I had heard this speech ten years ago, I would have completely identified with Ms. Hollowell 100%.
There's only one problem: If Ms. Hollowell got 100% of the policy changes she proposed, it wouldn't stop one abortion.
I agree the abortion is a sin, an abomination, cold-blooded murder committed for the most venal of reasons: feared,but rarely actual, losses of wealth, pleasure and prestige, or a suicidal notion that life isn't worth living. I've experienced with my wife a prematurely-ended pregnancy, and hearing about healthy babies conceived to abortion-minded mothers is like a punch in the stomach. A baby is a human living soul, with all the moral implications that term implies.
That being said, if a woman wants to have an abortion, she is going to have one. Abortion is not so much a debate about right as it is about power. A woman has absolute power over herself, physical and spiritually. If he doesn't want what's living in her to life, she has the absolute power to destroy it, be it her soul or her child's soul.
Even if the unborn child were to be protected legally, it would take an Orwellian level of surveillance of the mother to keep it alive and healthy, certainly not feasible for the 100,000s of poor souls who want to commit such a murder. Or if caught after-the-fact, what prison sentence could you give to the woman to punish and discourage abortions? Would it be worse than caring eighteen years for a child you don't love? Could you punish a million mothers a year like that?
Every woman--every human--is sovereign in their mind and will. This sovereignty carries over to their actions. In a coerced environment, actions may be prevented by "bargaining with" the mind and will by threats, punishments and disincentives. But there is no force known, or which would ever be morally acceptable, to make a mother have only good, loving thoughts towards their children. Despite how horrid the opposite concept may be. You can't make people do and think what they don't want to do and think. Throughout human history, some of our worse atrocities and tragicomic exercises in futility have been attempts to do just that.
The counter-argument, such as a smart cookie like Ms. Hollowell may make, is that banning abortion would make a marginal difference in stopping some abortions. "Many women," one would argue, "perhaps several 100,000s, are on the fence about having an abortion. If we made it illegal, it would prevent them from doing so, and save lives."
Suprisingly, that's incorrect. According to a 1968 study, before abortion was universally legal throughout the United States, there were an estimated 1.2 million illegal abortions per year1. In 2000, according to the Center for Disease Control, there were an estimated 850,293 legal abortions in the United States2. This is the case despite population growth and the increased sexualization of our culture. In other words, banning abortion does nothing to change the abortion rate! Legal prohibition against abortion has about the same effect as legal prohibition against alcohol. Furthermore, we can only assume it would be harder to re-cap the abortion genie; given the greater technology, information and drug-proliferation in pre-Roe days, "back-alley" abortions would be easier than ever.
(Of course, any abortion statistics published by activist organizations are always subject to question. If anybody can show facts or interpretations refuting these statistics, they're welcome to discuss or link them in the comment section. Like this one: We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching 100,000, but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1 million--Bernard Nathanson, M.D., NARAL co-founder)
But these studies show a glimmer of hope for anti-abortion activists. The abortion rate went down since Roe and pre-Roe. Why?
One argument is the eugenic one: that first-generation sluts are aborting their baby daughters, who consequentially don’t grow up to be second-generation sluts who would get an abortion. (A variation of this argument was proposed by Stephen Levitt in his bestselling book Freakonomics to explain falling crime rates in the mid-1990s). But this explanation wouldn't coincide with the general population rise.
A better explanation is that, even in discouraging abortion, free-market institutions do a better job than government. For thirty years, churches have preached on the moral consequences of abortion, while more secular activists have taught the public about the practical implications of sex and pregnancy. The consequence has been a new generation that is actually less sexually promiscuous. So congratulations pro-life activists, you’re doing a great job preventing abortion! Don’t ruin it by getting the law involved.
In short, I like the tune Ms. Hollowell is singing, but not the lyrics. If you don't believe in abortion, then don't get one and tell others not to get one. But don't delude yourself into thinking you can wave a magic pro-life juju stick and banish evil from the hearts of men. That will happen only when Jesus comes back and raises up all those dead souls from the grave.
1 Richard Schwarz, Septic Abortion (Philadelphia: JB Lippincott Co., 1968) and Tietze C, Henshaw SK. Induced Abortion: A World Review, 1986. New York: The Guttmacher Institute, 1986. Cited here and here.
2 CDC Statistics here
P.S. In my old blog, I proposed The Maternal Lien as a less intrusive and more realistic way to prevent abortion.
2 Comments:
Dear Mr. Protagonist--
You make the same fundamental and inexcusable error as the rest of the anti-choice crowd: It's not a baby, it's a fetus.
If you wish to be right, you must be correct. Shame on you.
Mikey
Well, Mikey, you need to brush up on your Latin. "Fetus" is the Latin word for the English "offspring" or "baby."
fe·tus n. pl. fe·tus·es
In humans, the unborn young from the end of the eighth week after conception to the moment of birth, as distinguished from the earlier embryo.
[Middle English, from Latin fetus, offspring]
So what makes a "fetus" a "baby?" The fact that a baby breathes air instead of amniotic fluid? How can it be X inside the womb and Y outside the womb?
So would my being born at 6 months and surviving make me any less of a "baby" then, instead of being born at the standard 9 months? Or would you consider me a fetus, since I wasn't full term?
The issue is not semantics or terminology, which allow people to rationalize or justify abortion. The crux of the matter is that what is in the womb is still a live human being regardless of what you call it.
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