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.

[Consort]

Whatever their views would be, if any.

[Cathryn Crawford]

Do you have any ideas what they might be?

[tpaine]

[sarcasm & shameless plagiarism]


I confronted a pro-life fundamentalist friend w/ just this logic, and you might be surprised to hear that he has taken the step -
- (which I had never heard anyone express but which I had always posited as the inescapable fulfillment of arbitrarily picking a date that "humanness" begins) -
- of advocating the sequestering of all women, immediatly after sex.

His position that life beings at fertilization, and that the state must protect all human life from that instant on makes perfect sense.

Thus, once it is established that the egg is fertilised, the mother must be under state control to insure that the baby is protected.

Then, when there is a child born, if the parents do not want the child, and nobody else is willing to care for the child, then the parents should have to pay the state for the child's proper upbringing. Such are the wages of fornication.


I've always said this was the inescapable conclusion of abortion logic, but I've never heard anyone actually advocate it. Yeah statist fundamentalism

[sarcasm]

[Consort]

No. But like I said, I think something is missing. Maybe not.

[Cathryn Crawford]

Then, when there is a child born, if the parents do not want the child, and nobody else is willing to care for the child, then the parents should have to pay the state for the child's proper upbringing. Such are the wages of fornication.

By all means, let's raise a generation of screwed up kids. That's what happens when the government gets involved. Believe me. I speak from experience.

[Cathryn Crawford]

Okay - that seemed like a meaningless exchange!

What do you think about the premise of the piece?

[tpaine]

Sounds like a real 'plan' to me..

Gotta love the concept of morning after sex cops..

[Cathryn Crawford]

morning-after sex cops.

The government's trying.

[Proud2BAmerican]

Well, that was a noble effort, but your version isn't analogous to mine. For one thing, the government doesn't protect assign bodyguards for individuals outside the womb to protect them from every chance of injury (which is what your piece is suggesting the government do for individuals who are inside the womb).

Abortion is the pre-meditated murder of an individual within the womb. The government, through its powers, protects individuals from murderers, and so this should extend to individuals within the womb. Therefore, as it is illegal to murder an individual OUTSIDE the womb, it should be the same INSIDE the womb as well, because of the inalienable rights guaranteed to us via the Constitution, from our Creator. (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness)

When you arbitrarily choose a date where "personhood" begins to exist, it simply becomes a matter of pushing it back and back. Say it's 3 months. Well, why not 3 months and 1 day. Say it's within the womb. Well, what about when it's halfway out of the womb. All the way out of the womb. Up until the child's 18th birthday?

Obviously, infanticide is just another "arbirtary" date chosen for conferring personhood on an individual who becomes a person at conception.

[Proud2BAmerican]

Ultimately the argument boils down to the definition of when a human being becomes a human being. Two choices: conception, or an arbitrary date during the birth cycle. The latter obviously logically ultimately reduces to infanticide.

Citing the health risks of abortion isn't all that persuasive: abortion increases risk of breast cancer? Well, let's study ways of performing abortions w/ a corresponding medication that will control the hormonal changes that increase the risk. Abortion increases chance of infertility? Well, let's study ways to improve the abortion procedure so that women's bodies can be unharmed. Citing health risks can be met w/ the counter-argument of, basically, "Let's build a better mouse trap."

[Proud2BAmerican]

that what we are talking about is an actual human life - distinct and seperate from it's life-support system.

If depending on life support means a person isn't a person anymore, then we can do whatever we want w/ the elderly and infirm. Not to mention newborns that can't take care of themselves.

[tpaine]

Yes, obviously.

[Consort]

Yes, the "holier than thou" morality approach seems to have worked against the pro-lifers, making enemies of potential allies, But we have to be careful about who we partner with. The religious aspect should be downplayed as is done by the other side and it has worked for them, so far. They politicized the concept of life and the Republicans fell for it and countered it with theology. Something is still missing.

[Cathryn Crawford]

Something is still missing.

I agree. But, what?

[Proud2BAmerican]

Exactly the point I made in my post -- my sister and her husband are one of those couples who desperately wanted to adopt a baby, and fianlly miraculously were able to.

[Consort]

I don't know. The concepts of rightness, conscience, and reason? The absence of shame and stigma?

[Cathryn Crawford]

The absence of shame and stigma? Attached to what, exactly? Pregnancy?

[Consort]

Out of wedlock pregnancies; pregnancy as a welfare ploy; abortion on demand....

[Psalm 73]

If depending on life support means a person isn't a person anymore, then we can do whatever we want w/ the elderly and infirm. Not to mention newborns that can't take care of themselves.

I am quite vocal about being pro-life from conception, so I think perhaps you mis-construed my point, which was in response to this from Miss Crawford:

"But how is stating that going to change the mind of someone who disagrees that a baby is a baby?"

Well, if you're trying to argue from a point of logic only - then lay out all of the scientific evidence (medical, genetic, biological) that proves, from a purely logical point, that what we are talking about is an actual human life - distinct and separate from it's life-support system.
Yes, just like black people in the 1800's and Jews in the 1930's - real human beings.
And this is NOT an emotional argument - it is pure logic, cold hard science.

My point was to lay out the cold, hard, impersonal science aspect that would prove that a baby is, indeed, a baby.
To argue with that is to deny "two-plus-two-equals-four", which is when one throws in the towel because any further argument is only a waste of one's breath.

I, myself, have much more respect for The Word than for "cold, hard science", because one is eternal and the other changes with the seasons. But for someone who thinks the Bible is a fairy tale, the science is irrefutable. Pro-lifers can, and probably should, argue from both world-views.

[patton]

There is a whack-job Professor in NJ that has published exactly that position.