Wednesday 24 October 2012

America Has No Pro-Life Party


More than 39 years after Roe v. Wade, the pro-life movement has reached a nadir. Despite the fact that over half the country self-identifies as “pro-life,” little tangible progress has been made in the fight against abortion. This is due to both the pro-life movement’s failure to be a consistent defender of human dignity across a broader range of issues and to its increasingly close association with the Republican Party.

The GOP is often described as America’s pro-life political party. In reality, however, the GOP isn’t pro-life. At best, it’s merely anti-abortion. At worst, it’s simply misogynistic. Regardless, the Republican Party’s concern for human dignity ends the moment someone is actually born. After that, it’s the coldness and cruelty of Ayn Rand and social Darwinism, all the way down.

This difference goes to the heart of the crisis facing the pro-life movement. Opposing abortion, by itself, does not make someone pro-life — the two are not synonymous. One cannot be authentically pro-life and remain indifferent to the fate of the poor or to other social, economic and environmental justice concerns.

This makes it (or more properly, ought to make it) difficult to be both pro-life and a supporter of the modern Republican Party.

First and foremost, Republican fiscal and economic policies would probably make abortion more prevalent by exacerbating its root causes. The GOP’s desire to take a chainsaw to the social contract and reduce the deficit by eviscerating programs that serve the most vulnerable and powerless members of society — like WIC, a favorite target of Congressman Paul Ryan’s — would put additional pressure on women already facing difficult choices. The GOP agenda would make motherhood tantamount to a life sentence in endemic poverty, with little support, for far too many women.

In addition, over the past two years Congressional Republicans have worked relentlessly to weaken or eliminate important environmental and public health protections- subordinating human lives to corporate profits.

6 comments:

  1. When Chicago’s former Cardinal Joseph Bernardin tried to promote a broader definition of what it means to be pro-life he was criticized for “downplaying abortion.” But years of single-issue campaigning have resulted in no important victories for the American pro-life movement.

    Mr. Stafford also makes a great point regarding misogyny. When pro-lifers do not take a broad, all-encompassing approach to life issues, it is easy to characterize them as simply being obsessed with controlling women as opposed to protecting human life. It may not be right, but perception counts for a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  2. James from Durham25 October 2012 at 09:07

    Despite believing that abortion is morally wrong, I am deeply uncomfortable with the idea of the state making it illegal. However, unlike most "pro-lifers", your position is at least coherent and decent.
    This in the week that we have a republican candidate saying that it's God's will if a woman is raped and becomes pregnant. What kind of perverted religion is that?

    ReplyDelete
  3. John, although some things are equally so, I can think of nothing more misogynistic than the view that the preborn child is simultaneously insentient and a part of the woman’s body. Is it the whole of a woman’s body that is insentient, or only the parts most directly connected with reproduction?

    James, you will meet people who have been in that position and who will tell you that. If rape, as such, has to be a ground for legal abortion, then does that mean that there has to have been a prior conviction for that very specific offence before the abortion can be carried out?

    If not, then are we supposed to accept, and to enact into law, the principle that any heterosexual act is rape, either by definition, or at the very least if the woman happens to say that it was? It has to be one or the other. Which is it, and why?

    ReplyDelete
  4. James from Durham26 October 2012 at 09:12

    None of your proposed options are remotely reasonable. Which tends to confirm my position that the state should not make abortion illegal (aside from a resaonable time limit). The consequences are either impractical or outrageous.

    There is no easy or comfortable answer to this, except of course for those who think aborion is just fine and dandy.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Mr. Lindsay,

    You are right, and there is the other fact that, when we take sex selective abortions into account, it is likely that more female children have been aborted than male children. I just think that the language used by some pro-lifers in the U.S. tends to turn people off. We need more people like you.

    ReplyDelete