I agree. From my experience on threads even referring to abortion, I don’t get the feeling that I could ever work on the same side as the pro-lifers because they are so absolutist.
It used to be the ‘quickening’ was considered the cut-off point and abortion has been with us since the beginning. Their real argument is with the potential mother, not with the laws, which as has been shown with anti-gun and anti-drug laws cannot be fully enforced. And what will we do? Start jailing women who took the morning after pill?
The other part I find hilarious is how many think the birth control pill is a tool of murder or how a pill that prevents fertilization or of the egg from taking to the lining is EQUIVALENT to lining babies up and shooting them.
They make the same mistake as the pro-abortion side. By putting their weight behind partial birth abortion, they probably drew others closer(philosophically) to a pro-life side.
I have, myself, gone from one extreme to another on this issue and that is likely because it is far more complex because there seem to be different benchmarks in a human life’s development. I do not and will never consider a recently fertilized egg to be on the same plane as a baby just born or a 10 year old or 40 year old man.
But by engaging in the name-calling and the rejection of secular pro-lifers, they ensure that the potential recent advantages they’ve gained in the debate are squandered.
I’ve personally seen far more people in the last 5-7 years give real thought to pro-life positions and demonstrate horror, sadness or some hesitation on the abortion issue than I saw in my younger years.
And some of us think that a Constitutional Republic which, at its inception, did not totally ban abortion or view it as the defining issue of their time, is more important than JUST solving this one problem.
Brazil banned abortions and they still have one million + a year. Fat good it does us to outlaw abortion if it doesn’t go away, other than give some the path to executing abortion doctors and women.
But yet it is as if the pro-lifers missed the whole meaning of the Reagan revolution and the many years since. They admit to state failure in most everything, and yet they have this religious faith in state power. You can almost see them, hands to ears saying, “I don’t want to hear it.” Which is very much like talking to leftist about state failure. They are in a belief zone and that is it. (Maybe that is why secular leftist states treat their political opponents much like religious zealots do.) These pro-lifers should, as I am sure many do, follow Jesus on another path and leave the glittering and echoing palaces of Caesar. p>