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The Pro-Life Movement's Problem With Morality
The Washington Dispatch ^ | June 6, 2003 | Cathryn Crawford

Posted on 06/06/2003 10:32:33 AM PDT by Cathryn Crawford

The Pro-Life Movement's Problem With Morality

Exclusive commentary by Cathryn Crawford

Jun 6, 2003

Making claim to being pro-life in America is like shouting, “I’m a conservative Christian Republican!” from your rooftop. This is partly due to the fact that a considerable number of conservative Christian Republicans are pro-life. It’s hardly true, however, to say that they are the only pro-life people in America. Surprisingly enough to some, there are many different divisions within the pro-life movement, including Democrats, gays, lesbians, feminists, and environmentalists. It is not a one-party or one-group or one-religion issue.

The pro-life movement doesn’t act like it, though. Consistently, over and over throughout the last 30 years, the pro-lifers have depended solely on moral arguments to win the debate of life over choice. You can believe that abortion is morally wrong, yes, and at the appropriate moment, appealing to the emotions can be effective, but too much time is spent on arguing about why abortion is wrong morally instead of why abortion is wrong logically. We have real people of all walks of life in America – Christians, yes, but also non-Christians, atheists, Muslims, agnostics, hedonists, narcissists - and it’s foolish and ineffective for the pro-life movement to only use the morality argument to people who don’t share their morals. It’s shortsighted and it’s also absolutely pointless.

It is relatively easy to convince a person who shares your morals of a point of view – you simply appeal to whatever brand of morality that binds the two of you together. However, when you are confronted with someone that you completely disagree with on every point, to what can you turn to find common ground? There is only one place to go, one thing that we all have in common – and that is our shared instinct to protect ourselves, our humanness.

It seems that the mainstream religious pro-life movement is not so clear when it comes to reasons not to have an abortion beyond the basic arguments that it’s a sin and you’ll go straight to hell. Too much time is spent on the consequences of abortion and not enough time is spent convincing people why they shouldn’t have one in the first place.

What about the increased risk of breast cancer in women who have abortions? Why don’t we hear more about that? What about the risk of complications later in life with other pregnancies? You have to research to even find something mentioned about any of this. The pro-life movement should be front and center, shouting the statistics to the world. Instead, they use Biblical quotes and morality to argue their point.

Don’t get me wrong; morality has its place. However, the average Joe who doesn’t really know much about the pro-life movement - and doesn’t really care too much for the obnoxious neighbor who’s always preaching at him to go to church and stop drinking - may not be too open to a religious sort of editorial written by a minister concerning abortion. He’d rather listen to those easy going pro-abortion people – they appeal more to the general moral apathy that he so often feels.

Tell him that his little girl has a high chance of suffering from a serious infection or a perforated uterus due to a botched abortion, however, and he’ll take a bit more notice. Tell him that he’s likely to suffer sexual side effects from the mental trauma of his own child being aborted and he’ll take even more notice. But these aren’t topics that are typically discussed by the local right-to-life chapters.

It isn’t that the religious right is wrong. However, it boils down to one question: Do they wish to be loudly moral or quietly winning?

It is so essential that the right-to-life movement in America galvanize behind the idea the logic, not morality, will be what wins the day in this fight, because sometimes, despite the rightness of the intentions, morality has to be left out of the game. Morality doesn’t bind everyone together. The only thing that does that is humanness and the logic of protecting ourselves; and that is what has to be appealed to if we are going to make a difference in the fight to lessen and eventually eliminate abortion.

Cathryn Crawford is a student from Texas. She can be reached at feedback@washingtondispatch.com.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; Extended News; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: abortion; feminism; humansacrifice; idolatry; prolife; ritualmurder
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To: Clint N. Suhks
>>Women...more than one? Bullogna! The so called back alley abortions happened in the 60's, Roe was 1973.<<

I thought the same thing!!!
And you are right about the timeline...


61 posted on 06/06/2003 11:17:22 AM PDT by netmilsmom (God Bless our President, those with him & our troops)
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To: patton
I get it!
62 posted on 06/06/2003 11:17:31 AM PDT by Cathryn Crawford (Save your breath. You'll need it to blow up your date.)
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To: Cathryn Crawford
So are you saying we should use only moral arguments?

No, I'm just pointing out that any link between breast cancer
and abortion is not a done deal.  A lot of conservatives get
happy and excited when they read things suggesting a link,
and are disappointed when it looks like abortion might not
cause cancer.
Don't you think it is kind of creepy to root for cancer?
63 posted on 06/06/2003 11:18:07 AM PDT by gcruse (Superstition is a mind in chains.)
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To: Ga Rob
Congratulations on your son. I'm glad you agree.
64 posted on 06/06/2003 11:18:23 AM PDT by Cathryn Crawford (Save your breath. You'll need it to blow up your date.)
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To: netmilsmom
I graduated from High School in 1973. I personally know of two women that I went to school, with that died because of an abortion that went wrong.

I have always been against abortion all my life. That basic concept is horrible to me. However, I have faced facts of life.

In 1973, I offered to marry a girl who became pregnant. We had always been good friends since we were in 9th grade. I was not the father, but she had few choices left and I offered to give the baby a legal name.

She chose to have an abortion in Canada.

Today, I still think that she made the wise choice.

65 posted on 06/06/2003 11:18:34 AM PDT by Hunble
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To: Cathryn Crawford
Big mistake to separate politics from morality. Big mistake to separate logic from morality as well. I understand what you are saying, but it is precisely the wrong direction. Liberty is not about imposing morality on others, but it cannot be separated from morality either; self government is a moral project or it is doomed.

Maybe I am quibbling about semantics, but hey, let me quibble.
66 posted on 06/06/2003 11:19:41 AM PDT by marron
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To: netmilsmom
200-250 works for me. That is surely more than the number of botched legal abortions today.
67 posted on 06/06/2003 11:19:51 AM PDT by gcruse (Superstition is a mind in chains.)
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To: gcruse
Oh, come on, Gary! That's not the point.

The point is that if you argue from a completely moral standpoint you will not change the minds of people who do not share your morality. You have got to appeal to their instinct to protect themselves; their logical humanness.
68 posted on 06/06/2003 11:20:26 AM PDT by Cathryn Crawford (Save your breath. You'll need it to blow up your date.)
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To: Cathryn Crawford
It isn’t that the religious right is wrong. However, it boils down to one question: Do they wish to be loudly moral or quietly winning?

Frankly, pro-life discussions, speeches, exposition of logic, etc. all helps the pro-life cause. But it's not the main thing we need to do to be "winning"--quietly or not. Frankly, as I look at the front lines, we're losing. It's the babies for the most part who are "manning" the front lines. So they continue to be slaughtered.

What's needed are not more logicians at the front line. It's people acting like abortion is murder. When people see by your actions & lifestyle that you're convinced that pre-born babies are your brothers and sisters, guess what? You've exposed them to pro-life activism & they may reconsider their position then.

69 posted on 06/06/2003 11:20:44 AM PDT by Colofornian
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To: colorado tanker
You've noticed how over-laden with utilitarian selfishness is the mantra 'a woman's right to choose'! ... The problem in discussing the obscene nature of that mantra, with a pro-abortion person, revolves around the irrational axioms held so tenaciously by the pro-abortionist. Add to that the fact that when you nail one premise as illogical or downright false, the opponent changes their basis for their argument, and the process continues (if you are skillful enough to keep them interested) until they end the discussion with 'well, reasonable people can disagree, so we will just have to agree to disagree'.

I assure you this is standard fare with these serial killer apologists, because I have made it my methodology to never appeal against abortion on demand from a religious perspective, yet I am constantly being accused of trying to force my religious beliefs upon those who don't agree with 'my religious beliefs'. To refute irrational or illogical premises requires more than a sound-byte response, yet the media is geared to such brevity and controls the overall outcome of the public debate by tacitly ridiculing reasoned syllogisms as 'too difficult for the average Joe to follow'.

70 posted on 06/06/2003 11:21:54 AM PDT by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote Life Support for others.)
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To: patton
(I wish we could all look at the evil of abortion with the pure, honest heart of a child.)

I have a book called Who Broke the Baby? which is an excellent deconstruction of pro-abort arguments from the late '70s. The author took her title from a question her child asked her. He came downstairs long after bedtime while she was working with some pro-life materials, saw a picture of an aborted fetus and asked, "Who broke the baby?" Not that he did not ask, "Who broke the fetus" or "Who broke the products of conception?"

71 posted on 06/06/2003 11:22:08 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback (It's a tagline. Move on.)
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To: kesg; Cathryn Crawford
"-- a false alternative. "

Not at all...maybe a little too hard for some people to chew gum and walk down the sidewalk too, but that doesn't change the fact that it can be done. I make the arguement to people all the time that abortion is wrong from a logical stand point without once bringing up my morals and values.
72 posted on 06/06/2003 11:23:37 AM PDT by Ga Rob ("Life's tough...it's even tougher when you're stupid"....The Duke)
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To: Cathryn Crawford
it boils down to one question: Do they wish to be loudly moral or quietly winning?

Loud? Exactly where on TV do you hear an ardent pro-life message?

73 posted on 06/06/2003 11:23:44 AM PDT by Teacher317
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To: Cathryn Crawford
Therefore, I will not change someone's mind by pounding into their heads the fact that I believe abortion is wrong.

Too many folks take all "exposition" and re-interpret as "pounding into their heads." There is a difference between exposing and imposing.

74 posted on 06/06/2003 11:24:24 AM PDT by Colofornian
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To: netmilsmom
“One of the most common arguments abortion advocates make in defense of legal abortion is that making abortion illegal will cause women to go to the "back alleys" and obtain unsafe abortions. They cite how thousands of women died as a result of unsafe abortions before abortion was legalized through the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League, admits his group lied about the number of women who died from illegal abortions when testifying before the Supreme Court in 1972. "We spoke of 5,000 - 10,000 deaths a year.... I confess that I knew the figures were totally false ... it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics?"

That claim of thousands of maternal deaths due to illegal abortion doesn't measure up when compared with other statistics. About 50,000 women of child-bearing age die each year -- from all causes combined. To suggest that 10,000 of these deaths were from illegal abortion would make that the cause of one out of every five deaths, or twenty percent. This would have made illegal abortion the leading cause of death among women in that age group.

75 posted on 06/06/2003 11:24:48 AM PDT by Clint N. Suhks
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To: Cathryn Crawford
That was my point, not yours. There may be no connection
between abortion and breast cancer.
I'm not disputing your thought that pragmatism
is needed in the argument, just that that particular
argument may not be true.
76 posted on 06/06/2003 11:25:29 AM PDT by gcruse (Superstition is a mind in chains.)
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To: netmilsmom
There is good deal of common sense in this post. Moral arguments are important but they do have limited political traction since Conservative Christians are not an electoral majority.

The "right to die" movement has completely lost political traction and momentum over the last several years after some significant referendum victories in the 1990s. This occurred because Euthansia opponents from the Pro-Life movement made a political alliance with disability advocates. Politics makes strange bedfellows, as they say, since these two groups are on opposite ends of the spectrum politically but it has worked well with regard to this issue.

Such alliances could also be used in the fight against abortion which has not been done effectively to date. To my mind, however, it remains an open question whether our dysfunctional legal system can continue to function based upon Oliver Wendell Holme's relativistic philosophy of Legal Positivism. The posted article is based upon the assumption that the abortion procedure will always have dangerous medical side-effects. If new technology made abortion absolutely safe, Would it then be ok?

The author does not address this question as her pragmatist framework precludes such a discusssion and shows the limitations of deracinated, secular pragmatism as a politcal philosophy. I would also suspect that she would have nothing substantive to say about embryonic cloning and other emerging issues in bio-ethics; pragmatism offers no guidance in these areas.
77 posted on 06/06/2003 11:26:31 AM PDT by ggekko
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To: Clint N. Suhks
Nice argument, but some of us are old enough and lived when abortions were illegal in America.

If you had the money, you sent the girl to Canada.

78 posted on 06/06/2003 11:26:53 AM PDT by Hunble
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To: gcruse
I'm just pointing out that any link between breast cancer and abortion is not a done deal. A lot of conservatives get happy and excited when they read things suggesting a link,

You are a liar and a fool!

79 posted on 06/06/2003 11:26:56 AM PDT by Clint N. Suhks
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To: patton
Was my post so obscure as to be funny?

No, it's just that I'm a total a-hole.

80 posted on 06/06/2003 11:27:36 AM PDT by Lazamataz (I've decided to cut back my tagline, one word at a)
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