Replies

My personal belief about abortion stemmed, in the beginning, from my moral beliefs. As I got older, however, (and older is a relative statement considering my age) I realized that not everyone will be convinced by my morality. Therefore, pragmatism has to play a role.

You will not convince people of an argument based solely on morality.

Good article CC. Thank you. You will not convince people of an argument based solely on morality.

Amen.

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.

You will not convince people of an argument based solely on morality

I disagree. The very argument that abortion should be even considered an option was first raised by questioning the morality of whether or not it was legal to kill an unborn child. Why should conservatives be forced to use methods not even used in reverse by liberals?