The Pro-Life Movement's Problem With Morality

The Washington Dispatch ^ | June 6, 2003 | Cathryn Crawford

[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.

[Cathryn Crawford]

Exactly!

[Clint N. Suhks]

Ok dear, what points have I not addressed?

[stands2reason]

so-called partial birth abortion

Nice semantics....wrong fourm.

[tpaine]

See #263.

[Lazamataz]

Cool. So now we have our cover story down....

[Tribune7]

I would think the first step is getting rid of Roe. All that requires is a respect for the Constitution. You can even believe that abortion should be legal.

I'll work with you and save the fight for the state legislature -- where it belongs.

[netmilsmom]

>>Fortunately I was raised by a father that taught me that if I had sex I "would" get pregnant. I learned to make my choice before it concerned a doctor or back alley.<<

My long lost sister!!!!
My father told me the same thing.

[Cathryn Crawford]

Very good! You are an example of what I was trying to say.

You left your morality out of it all together. By reading that, I would have no idea if you were a man, woman, Christian, Muslim, hedonist, or homosexual.

[Cathryn Crawford]

Well...

That wasn't exactly what I meant...;-)

[Ohioan]

You make some excellent points. My effort to teach the movement tactics may be explored at:

The Abortion Debate.

We are both, probably, wasting our time, however. I fear that too many on our side simply seek a feel good sense of their own moral superiority, to want to actually approach the issue tactically, as opposed to emotionally. (Maybe that is being unkind, but some of them sure do not understand the art of persuading the not already committed.)

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

[Lazamataz]

Hyperboly becomes you.

You spelled hyperbole wrong. Its correct spelling is Hiperbowlee.

[Lazamataz]

:o)

[Clint N. Suhks]

I can quote the Bible with the best of them, Clint.

Quoteing is one thing but if you get the interpretaion wrong it's useless. So you think gcruse was OK to accuse Christians of wanting cancer for thaose who have abortions?

[Sparta]

Thanks for this article. This is the first one of yours I've read. You nailed it. We have to rationally debate abortion and secure as many allies as we can to defeat the pro-aborts. Right now, the perception is the pro-aborts debate the issue logically and us pro-lifers are trying to shove our morality in society's collective face.

[ggekko]

There are two questions raised by your original post both of which need to be addressed when discussing this issue. One issue involves the strategy of political action in a Democracy such as ours. The other question involves how any legal system can consistently maintain legitimacy in a Democracy.

That Evangelical Christian leaders many times approach certain hot-button politcal with reference to a moral framework that may needlessly alienate potential politcal allies hardly need be restated. This is changing as their approach has become much more sophisticated commensurate with their increased experience in the political arena. As evidence of this increased sophistication I would cite the recently passed partial-birth abortion ban which forced radical abortion advocates to defend this grisly procedure on the floor of the Senate. The number of Democratic votes for this bill is indicative of how well radical abortion rights advocates were politcally isolated in this case.

The broader question still remains as to whether is possible to construct a legal framework entirely divorced from a transcendent moral reference point. I contend that it is not possible to constuct such a legal framework, or at least one that maintains its legitimacy. Notable examples of attempts to construct such secular legal systems can be seen in the former Soviet Union and in France. Contrary to popular perception in the US, the USSR was an intensely legalistic society. The psychiatric gulags where a number of politcal disidents were imprisoned were created with scrupulous and exhasutive legality by the Russian Duma. The French legal system with its endless and minute regulations is on the verge of implosion. Legal reform efforts in France have been stymied by the pervasive cultural relativism of French society. No one can agree in France as to what direction such legal reforms should take.

The US legal is moving toward the French model as the impact of decades of the inculcation Legal Positivism has occurred in US law schools. All law is an attempt to encode a particluar moral framework. As our legal system has splipped into a relativistic framework based on Legal Positivism it also has begun to lose legitimacy in a similar way as happened in France and Russia.

[Clint N. Suhks]

Sorry! Please forgive me.

[Cathryn Crawford]

Using your logic, debate on the issue is pointless. NRL is pointless. Lobbying is pointless. You sound like those people who tell their kids, "You're going to have sex anyway, so here's some condoms!"

You could start with that one, dear.

[Cathryn Crawford]

I started to point it out, but I didn't want to be the grammar police. That's so irritating. :-)

[MHGinTN]

We fought a war to free slaves.. tpaine Oh really? You have a somewhat simplistic perspective on history to be so much a self-proclaimed Constitutional expert!

[netmilsmom]

>>The only so-called partial birth abortion that I am aware of personally involved a fetus with the brain developed outside the skull and enlarged. Of course non-viable at anytime. A C-section to remove it intact would have made it harder for this person to try again.<<

My sister had a child that had a neurotubal defect that meant his brain and skull did not develop. She had a C at seven months (he lived an hour and a half). She had two more children. How could a c-section harm her chances of having another baby??