Saturday, December 10, 2016

Can the pro-choice candidate be the pro-life vote?

But here the choice is between two candidates, one who supports choice restrictions, but also has supported workplace practices that punish women for remaining pregnant while working and carrying their pregnancies to term. You have another candidate who opposes choice restrictions but has strongly supported efforts that keep women from being punished in the workplace for carrying their pregnancies to term. If you don't want to see abortions taking place, which of these candidates do you vote for? I would argue that, in a case like this, it is actually more pro-life to vote pro-choice. Choice is awfully hard to restrict given the fact that it is underwritten by a Supreme Court decision of almost 44 years standing. You either have to change the Court and get it overturned (which three pro-life presidents tried to do and failed), and even there all you do is throw it back to the states. Are the states going to end up with laws restricting or eliminating abortion? I have serious doubts about that. I think if Roe were overturned it would save two fetuses in the state of Mississippi.  Or, do we work on creating legislation that supports women who want to carry their pregnancies to term but might be pressured by economic fears into aborting? 

I think the latter approach, combined with a strong emphasis on the fact that there the legal possibility of choice does NOT entail moral acceptability, is the best approach to take if you want to see as few abortions as possible. Oh, and you can pray to end abortion.

4 comments:

steve said...

Do gov't social programs actually lower the abortion rate?

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/05/there-is-no-pro-life-case-for-planned-parenthood/

T said...

Rachel Held Evans wrote a good article arguing why people of pro life beliefs can vote pro choice. Quite illuminating.

David Duffy said...

"Punish women" "choice restrictions" Sorry Victor, not buying into the premise of your misguided question.

B. Prokop said...

The only way to reduce the frequency of abortion is to evangelize people to not want them. All of the decades-long pro-life movement's effort to date to change the law or to elect "pro-life" candidates, has been a total waste of time.

This is a matter of the heart. Forget the law. Forget politics. This isn't even a political issue - or shouldn't be. Raise a generation that abhors abortion and the problem will go away.