What’s Wrong with the World

"By the way, is it just my imagination, or did it used to be that Catholic hospitals denied physician privileges to doctors who performed abortions elsewhere? That is certainly my impression."

In past discussions we've talked about how the same federal law that protects pro-life doctors from being compelled to perform an abortion also protects abortionists who perform abortions off-site.

These laws and compromises create the workplace climate that sees the abortionist as "a valued member of our team" and the pro-life stickler as the divisive figure undermining unity.

This comment might seem a little off-topic, but I don't think it is. David Frum has just written a fantastic CNN column about the politics of abortion. He followed it up with another substantive post at frumforum.com, answering an objection from a First Things writer that I'm sure people here will share.

I won't include the URLs, because I don't want this comment stuck in moderation purgatory. The title of the followup post at frumforum.com is "A Future for the Pro-Life Movement." It links to his CNN column, which should be read first.

Frum's column is important. It deserves wide attention and debate. There's plenty to be argued about, both from a normative and a descriptive approach (though I'm sure some on the pro-life side will just mock it). I don't know enough about American history to evaluate his main thesis.

Again, I do think this comment is on-topic for Lydia's post.

Our local churches are actually pretty good on the pro-life aspect-- which is why Swedish is even bothering to not perform abortions on site. Franciscan medical group is...ah... not exactly gungho for following all aspects of Catholic teaching-- the first doctor I had with Kaboodle asked me if I wanted to schedule a sterilization when he found out that this was my second child, and said he'd never heard of someone having "religious objections" to that because they were Catholic.

As I understand it, there are past lawsuits that established that any group that refuses to perform a medical service has to give a list of places that will perform it.

Frum's column is important. It deserves wide attention and debate. There's plenty to be argued about, both from a normative and a descriptive approach (though I'm sure some on the pro-life side will just mock it). I don't know enough about American history to evaluate his main thesis.

Frum is a typical pseudo-intellectual in his overwhelming need to complicate everything. Abortion is quite simple.

Is it a child or is it not? If it is, then it is murder. If it isn't, then it is a medical procedure no different than removing a tumor.

You can't have your cake and eat it too on this issue. It's purely binary with absolutely no shades of grey outside of extraordinary circumstances.

If you deny it's a child, then shut your [edited] mouth and don't criticize any woman for having as many abortions as she wants. If it's a child, then hang her for murder.

Kevin J., thanks for reminding me. Yes, I imagine those conscience provisions would have that effect.

However, see my update to the post. The Catholic non-profit should certainly reconsider its relationship on this basis.

Thanks for providing the link to that old discussion of ours, Kevin. I don't know if Catholic hospitals have been breaking that law or not, if it goes back as far as you were thinking it might. I'm quite sure that about fifteen years ago there were Catholic hospitals that denied abortionists hospital privileges even if they performed their abortions off-site. I'm pretty sure fifteen years is going unnecessarily far back, as well, and that such "discrimination" was carried out even more recently.

In any event, for the hospital to _set up_ a new abortion clinic on purpose as part of the package deal whereby it stops providing abortions on-site is just horrible. Even one of the pro-aborts said something like, "Providence [the Catholic non-profit] must have been looking the other way." I'll say.

Aaron, I've gotta say: David Frum has been downplaying abortion for a long time, and I very much doubt that his post is important. If he really considered abortion to be the killing of an innocent baby, he wouldn't have done and said a lot of the other things I _have_ read by him. I have plenty of important paint to watch dry, but if I should finish that and feel that my blood pressure needs to be raised, I'll be sure to look up that "important" Frum post. Meanwhile, I'm having trouble seeing how a _general_ discussion of the rights and wrongs of abortion is on-topic for this post.

If Frum is suggesting something specific regarding Catholic (or Catholic-affiliated) hospitals and access to facilities for killing one's child, perhaps you could summarize that point and relate it to the main post.

It would be pretty tempting to see if they can split the difference: Don't actually have abortions on-site but affiliate with a Planned Parenthood just down the street, where your doctors are encouraged to practice, to provide abortions. (To the women: "And you can keep your own doctor for the abortion!")

"What?! You brought a guy who won't pay back his loan to my house in a duffle bag and you want me to whack him? Sorry, can't do it it here. However, I have a safe house a few blocks down the road with all the tools we need. Here, let's take my car."

"What?! You brought a guy who won't pay back his loan to my house in a duffle bag and you want me to whack him? Sorry, can't do it it here. However, I have a safe house a few blocks down the road with all the tools we need. Here, let's take my car."

Much like the liberals who get their panties it a knot when the Israelis accidentally blow up a few Palestinian children while remaining staunchly pro-choice on the home front. Murder for me, not for thee I suppose.

Scott W., that's the sort of comment that momentarily makes me regret not having a "like" button on blog comments here. (I don't _really_ regret it, all things considered.) Love it.

Mike T., this comment of yours has got to be the dumbest pro-life remark I have ever read.

Lydia, I certainly don't want you or anyone else to read something that doesn't interest you. The articles are relevant to your general approach to the struggle, as reflected in your current post, not to the hospital issue specifically. I recommended that column and the followup post by Frum because they're literally some of the best columns I've ever read on the abortion conflict, and I thought they might interest others. Consider my suggestion withdrawn.

Mike T., this comment of yours has got to be the dumbest pro-life remark I have ever read.

I find that hard to believe since you actually think Frum has anything intelligent to say on the matter. Frum is a flaming idiot as far as Republicans go. He is positive, empirical evidence that the only major difference between many public intellectuals and a homeless guy shouting on a street corner is grasp of vocabulary and general elocution (as sanity varies little between them).

Lydia, I think this tells you everything you need to know about Frum (from Aaron's link):

It would mean the end of abortion’s signifier as a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern world. It would sever abortion from the larger debate over sexuality and spirituality

To even think this is possible is to show that one has absolutely no understanding of how abortion, sexuality and spirituality are interlinked.

Regarding your update, Lydia, I think it would be best that Swedish repent of its decision to build the PP clinic. Providence should tell Swedish what "out of respect for the affiliation" really means. It's likely that Swedish won't change its decision, but it should be given the chance to repent, before Providence severs the ties.

If it is as Nicole Brodeur suggests in her piece, that Providence knew about Swedish's partnering with PP and looked the other way, then I would wonder not whether Providence had recently sold its soul, but whether it had a soul in the first place. Did Providence have those principles that it putatively sold out?

Aaron, I will remember that you thought Frum's CNN piece was "fantastic".

I don't see why it would be impossible to have an "end of abortion’s signifier as a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern world," etc. Assume for the sake of argument that abortion is intrinsically, inseparably bound to sexuality and spirituality and (while we're assuming) also to "everything that is wrong with the modern world." Assume that's all true. Why is it impossible to sever the debate over abortion from the debate over sexuality and spirituality?

I can think of several reasons why you might want to do that. You might be mistaken about the metaphysics, as many people are, including probably most people who think that abortion is bad (including me, we're assuming). Or you might correctly understand the metaphysics, but see such a path as the best way to persuade people not to have abortions. You might want to build a coalition with people who believe abortion is bad but are mistaken in not seeing the metaphysical relation to other issues. I can understand why someone might argue that taking such a path would be a bad idea. But why is it impossible that such a path could be taken?

Why is it impossible to sever the debate over abortion from the debate over sexuality and spirituality?

Because it's the legalized slaughter-on-demand of a human being?

Humans have an amazing power to lie to themselves-- tribes say that those outside the tribe aren't "people," scaling up a long ways in cultural development; a lot of Nazis were not really bad folks, the old Japanese atrocities are so horrible that I can't read them (even though I cherish the time I was able to spend in modern Japan), the actions of Indian tribes against their prisoners were even worse, China and India dehumanize an entire sex in their culture....

Abortion and infanticide are only "impossible to sever" from sexuality and spirituality because people are already assuming the people they can't see are not really humans. Baseline assumptions matter. Scientifically, an embryonic or fetal human is a human organism; that means that IVF and abortion both involve treating a human being as a non-person. Good luck getting a pro-abort to honestly deal with that.

But why is it impossible that such a path could be taken?

Ask yourself this. Suppose race-based slavery were never ended. Do you think we could credibly talk about black citizenship and civil liberties while blacks (and possibly some other dark-skinned groups, but mainly blacks) were not only easily capable of being forced to serve as slaves, but a significant number of them were just that?

You mocked my position, but my position is far more rational than Frum's. Either it is a child or it isn't. The only secular, provable standard on "humanness" is any organism that in the course of its natural development will become an adult of species homo sapien or genus homo. Arguments about ensoulment or "what constitutes personhood" are nothing more than a philosophical attempt to redefine the obvious. In a basic, materialistic sense, any organism that meets the genetic definition of a full human at some stage of its development is a human.

That's why I say either acknowledge it's a human or stop pretending you have any right to tell a woman what to do with it.

I definitely think we don't need to go "webbing" into a discussion of all aspects of sexuality and spirituality to discuss the topic of killing an unborn child.

However, let's face it: The liberals are determined that this is about a "woman's right to choose" because it's about a woman's right to have consequence-free sex. That's their hang-up, and that's why the debate goes that direction.

But fine: We'll just keep the abortion issue about murdering children and leave out the more esoteric reaches of "sexuality and spirituality."

Somehow, I'm pretty darned sure that isn't remotely what Frum wants. Somehow. For one thing, yeah, that's going to have a _lot_ to do with what's wrong in the world. Especially countries where abortion is legal.

Aaron, the argument Frum makes in his follow-up post -- that pro-lifers could reduce the salience of the abortion issue and reduce the number of abortions -- is wearyingly unoriginal. Usually it's accompanied by comparisons to those enlightened Europeans, who manage to be pro-choice and have lower abortion rates than the US. (It usually goes unmentioned that many of those European countries, like France, actually have a more restrictive abortion regime than the US.)

I think Ross Douthat has the right response. (I'll try to avoid the swamps of moderation as well: Douthat addresses the topic in a blog post entitled "On Will Saletan's Abortion Compromise" with links to his previous writings on the subject.) Basically, Frum is probably right that there's a compromise short of banning abortion outright that would deflate the issue's salience and (possibly) reduce the number of abortions. But that compromise is only achievable if pro-lifers succeed in their main political goal of overturning Roe and Casey and returning the issue to the legislative process. Frum's follow-up is worded to imply that it's the pro-lifers who need to back down in order to avoid ripping the country apart, but it's just the opposite.

I (unlike most readers of this site, but like a plurality of Americans, I suspect) would be happy with situation in which abortion was banned in some states, virtually unrestricted in others, and subject to greater limitations than it is now in the rest of the country. Achieving that compromise in the current political climate requires me to be objectively on the side of the pro-lifers.

Okay, now that I got my post there, I'll try posting real links. Here's the column Douthat wrote on the subject, and here's the blog post I mentioned in my previous comment. See -- no mention of sexuality or spirituality!

To the liberal mind, it's _always_ the pro-lifers who have to back down. Which just means that the liberal mind is idiotic, ignoring obviously salient political-legal points such as the fact that abortion came into the national spotlight with Roe, a massive, aggressive, regime change move from the liberal side, which has continued in force ever since (reaffirmed by stare decisis in Casey) and to which liberals cling like a desperate drowning man.

Isn't Frum the new go-to conservative for liberals?

To the liberal mind, it's _always_ the pro-lifers who have to back down.

Not just pro-lifers-- an social conservatives. My husband is more libertarian (though he weighs the culture's interest as well in his figuring) and even he's getting annoyed how it's always SoCons who are supposed to "give."

A lot of the comment about Frum's articles discusses the morality of abortion, but that question is mostly irrelevant to Frum's CNN article. That's exactly the objection he was replying to in his follow-up!

There are two ways in which the focus on morality is irrelevant to the CNN article. The more obvious is that given people's beliefs about morality and the facts on which they base those beliefs, the true, objective morality is irrelevant to predictions about politics.

The second, more interesting, way morality is irrelevant is what Frum addressed in his follow-up. There's pretty widespread agreement that abortion is immoral - not murder, maybe not a sin, but immoral. The current debate, as Frum says, is over its legality and punishability. Those are very different questions from the question of morality.

The CNN article was descriptive. It compared two political movements and made tentative predictions based on that comparison. The normative aspect (as far as I recall) was there only implicitly, in the tone of the article. I don't think one's beliefs about abortion would affect one's evaluation of the argument. I think that even radical pro-life and radical pro-choice people could view the descriptive aspect similarly.

JT, that wasn' the part I meant was original. I'm familiar with the argument that European-style regulation is the best way to reduce abortion in America. I'm very skeptical of it, too.

The most original (as far as I know) aspect here is the main theme, Frum's extended analogy between the anti-abortion movement and the alcohol prohibition movement. I think that's a brilliant analogy. Looking at the similarities and differences can tell us a lot.

Bob, thank you for promising to remember me, that's so sweet!

Lydia writes,

To the liberal mind, it's _always_ the pro-lifers who have to back down. Which just means that the liberal mind is idiotic, ignoring obviously salient political-legal points such as the fact that abortion came into the national spotlight with Roe...

I assume the liberal mind here is Frum's. What you call backing down, he calls fighting more effectively. It's not obvious to me exactly how the history of Roe v. Wade is salient to Frum's argument. If anything, the suddenness of national attention with Roe v. Wade perhaps supports the argument of his CNN article.

The problem with Providence and Frum (and others who make claims to being pro-life) is the tin-ear they have about what is really at stake. It is not merely some moral rule like fibbing to your wife when she asks, "do I look fat in this?" It is not some minor moral transgression like stealing pens and paper clips from the company supply closet.

At heart are core principles such as those expressed in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

What is at stake here is human dignity. The abolitionists realized that when they saw that slavery was incompatible with the second enumerated right, the right to liberty. The art of the possible was recognized as the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, but to think that they saw slavery as an immutable institution would an incorrect assessment. The abolitionists did not see it so, and I doubt that many of them would have rested if it meant only a few thousand slaves were kept in the South. Would we be living up to the principle of liberty if a few men were kept as slaves?

I too recognize the art of the possible. Abortion is not an immutable institution. I'll accept most any compromise that moves us toward making abortion illegal. I'll not stop, and I'll not shut up until that is done (and I'm certain that many are in agreement with me).

Again, what is at stake here is human dignity. Abortion is incompatible with the first enumerated right to life in the DoI. We would not be living up to the principle of life if we allow that some innocent human beings may be killed.

That is the compromise that Frum offers. He appears to think that we should accept that it is okay to allow for the killing of some innocent human beings. This is the same thinking that must be going on at Swedish Medical -- Providence will accept the killing of some innocent human beings as long as Providence is not directly associated with the killing of those innocent human beings.

I can easily imagine a Frum-like creature living during the times of Jim Crow, and saying something to the effect, "well, guys, I know that the lynching of black folk is immoral, but there's not much we can do about it. We'll have to accept that reductions in lynchings is the best that we can hope for."

The principle at stake is this: it is immoral to kill innocent human beings. The compromise offered is this: turn a blind eye to the principle at stake.

There's pretty widespread agreement that abortion is immoral - not murder, maybe not a sin, but immoral.

My God, what a sentence.

Bob L.,
The principle at stake is pushing back as much evil as we can at every point along the journey to that evil's eradication. Doing all we can do might, at any given point in the journey, mean that in order to make improvement in one area, we must delay making improvement in another -- which is not the same as compromising. It is the same as doing the best that can be done at at any moment. We cannot do what we cannot do. But we must do what we can do. We won't know what cannot be done until we have tried to do it and found it impossible, at lest the moment.

There's pretty widespread agreement that abortion is immoral - not murder, maybe not a sin, but immoral. The current debate, as Frum says, is over its legality and punishability.

Yet the question remains of why it is immoral. The only way to address that is to say what the thing is that is being operated on. If it is a child, then immorality is obvious and forceful because it is a species of murder. If it isn't a child, then that raises a question of how it could possibly be immoral.

If it isn't a child, then it's just a thing. If it's just a thing, there is no legitimate state interest in regulating an abortion clinic beyond mandating it provide professional quality services in keeping with any medical clinic.

I readily admit that my temper is short with many people on this issue. That's because I have more respect for men like Dr. Tiller who will unapologetically cut up a viable 9 month old child in the womb with a devil-may-care attitude for a tidy profit than pro-lifers and pro-choicers who won't stop straddling the fence.

Regarding your update, Lydia, I think it would be best that Swedish repent of its decision to build the PP clinic. Providence should tell Swedish what "out of respect for the affiliation" really means. It's likely that Swedish won't change its decision, but it should be given the chance to repent, before Providence severs the ties.

Bob, I don't know quite what Swedish could do at this point if they have actually _contracted_ to build an abortion clinic. (That still blows my mind.) If there's some real contract in the works, then, were I in charge at Providence and if there were a legal way to sever the relationship, I'd tell Sweden they've cooked their own goose. Repentance is fine and all, but if you tie yourself up with legal obligations to do evil and then can't, or won't, back out of them (most contracts have some sort of way of severing them if one is willing to pay a penalty), consequences must follow.

But certainly, if Swedish is willing and able at this point to show _actual_ respect for the affiliation and call off the abortion clinic plans, things might be able to go forward between Swedish and Providence.

Aaron, if you can't see how the history of Roe v. Wade is relevant to calls for pro-lifers to compromise, you're not as intelligent as I think you are. Roe is still in force. Overturn it (all the way, en toto, with Casey and all the progeny), return the matter to the legislative process, and then we can _begin_ to talk strategy in the legislative arena. Until then, it's a cruel joke for anybody to be lecturing pro-lifers on what sort of legislation they should settle for.

The pro-life movement has for _decades_ (and with the blessing even of the Roman Catholic Church) been willing to support politicians who vote for legislation that is an _improvement_ in the situation, legally. But that has been moot except for funding issues, which have been the only issues left to the legislative process.

The legal tide, which has not budged significantly in the pro-life direction since Roe's diktat was handed down, is now moving in the other direction, with the very real possibility of hospitals being forced by government to allow abortions on-site and widespread public funding for all abortions.

It's simply silly at a time like this to be calling on pro-lifers to be willing to give a little.

Anybody who doesn't know that is asleep or dumb.

Aaron, you invited pro-lifers to consider the implications of Frum's argument for their strategy. But I think accepting the analogy mostly has normative implications for the pro-choicers. It's year 38 of Prohibition, and the pro-lifers are the ones trying to return the issue to the normal democratic process so that Utah and Oregon can go their separate ways. (Some things never change.)

As long as Roe and Casey are on the books, the debate over the legality of abortion isn't going away with the march of history. If anything, current college students are more pro-life -- in the sense of opposing legalized abortion -- than the generation that preceded them.

The abortion debate may lose its salience for _technological_ reasons, if contraceptive technology becomes much easier and effective. If that happens though, I think we'll view the pro-choicers as having been on the wrong side of history, much as we see societies that practiced infanticide today.

But clearly you think Frum's argument can help pro-lifers "fight[] more effectively." How?

By the way, I've carefully been avoiding the phrase "Roe and its progeny."

if contraceptive technology becomes much easier and effective. If that happens though, I think we'll view the pro-choicers as having been on the wrong side of history, much as we see societies that practiced infanticide today.

I predict that male pharmaceutical contraceptives will end the majority of the debate. No mentally balanced man ever wants to be in the position to hear that his child is being aborted, even if he's pro-choice. Most men would enthusiastically support such a pill if he could ensure that they become fathers when they want to be, not when their woman deigns to permit their children to live. It would be nearly the complete end of female power over matters of reproduction short of infanticide and choosing to just not have sex at all.

I didn't say that Frum's strategy enables pro-lifers to fight more effectively. I said that he apparently believes it does, where effectiveness is measured by the number of abortions.

To see how he thinks his strategy would be more effective, read his follow-up to the CNN article. He explains it better than I could. Personally, I'm still unconvinced, partly because what he's suggesting is very new and different (to me).

Lydia, of course I realize that the existence of Roe is crucial. It's a fact. What wasn't obvious to me was the importance of its history. And since you're using words like "willing to give a little," I'll repeat that that isn't what Frum is talking about. He's not saying give a little. He's saying, change your strategy so you can get more! He may be wrong about that, but that's what an intelligent debate should bring out. By the way, there's already been one article arguing against Frum's article. It was posted on frumforum.com.

Also, as a general reply to some of the comments, here's a guide for those rebutting the thesis of the CNN article by pointing to the specialness of abortion. What you have to show is that your statement, "Abortion is especially heinous because it's _______," could not have been said, mutatis mutandis, by an alcohol prohibitionist with equal fervor. Remember, Billy Sunday didn't say that a saloonkeeper was equivalent to a murderer; he preached in all seriousness that a saloonkeeper is worse than a murderer.

I expected some objection to my sentence, There's pretty widespread agreement that abortion is immoral - not murder, maybe not a sin, but immoral. I'd only correct it by putting another "maybe" in front of the "not murder." I actually thought that the objection would be to the "immoral," though.

Obviously it's a factual statement. I'm not saying the situation is good, only that that's how most people think now. When I say "immoral," I don't mean moral opposition to particular cases of abortion. Even if someone thinks her friend ought to get an abortion - and a majority might feel that way even for unexceptional cases - she still might think abortion is immoral, in the sense of morally undesirable. Most people probably think that lying is morally justifiable in a lot of cases, but they don't think that's a good thing, and they still believe that lying is wrong. Moreover, they probably think (if you asked them) that there's a moral obligation to avoid a social structure where widespread lying is promoted, either intentionally or unintentionally. Similarly with opinions on abortion. That's why I think Frum is absolutely correct that the morality of abortion is not what's really in dispute.

Remember, Billy Sunday didn't say that a saloonkeeper was equivalent to a murderer; he preached in all seriousness that a saloonkeeper is worse than a murderer.

Remember, if Billy Sunday meant that literally, he was mistaken. There's a truth of the matter.

Bad analogy. Bad command or file name. Go sit in the corner, analogy.

There's something about tearing arms and legs off of babies. I dunno. Maybe it's just me. But it seems to have more to do with murder (as in, y'know, actual murder) than selling the Demon Rum.

All right, Aaron. I finished watching my paint dry, was in a flamingly bad mood for other reasons anyway, and decided to go and read both Frum columns (which I have now done) and respond to his condescending, disgusting idiocy _briefly_ here, even though this is cooperating in going OT from the original post. This statement, put ever-so-helpfully in the mouths of the pro-lifers, in his second post, sums it up:

We’re not trying to change any laws. But we want you to take a look at these pictures of the child in the womb and decide for yourself that abortion is wrong.

To which I respond: David Frum can go to hell. Okay, actually, I hope he repents and doesn't go to hell. But as far as that recommendation, he can go pound sand.

Our goal is and must continue to be that unborn children, like *all other children* are protected in law. It is utterly revolting to suggest to pro-lifers that they should avowedly abandon this goal. To do so would be a betrayal of the truth of the matter.

Aaron, how foolish of you to question my use of the phrase "willing to give a little." Frum wants pro-lifers to *give away the whole farm*!

Anyone who said, "We're not trying to change any laws" would have to

1) Abandon the attempt to repeal Roe v. Wade,

2) If, by some utter miracle, Roe were repealed anyway, abandon any attempt even at the state level to get unborn children protected in law. They should never even try to get abortionists punished for killing unborn children.

This is angering.

Frum here just shows his buffoonery yet again. Why anyone listens to him is quite beyond me. But I'll say this much: The only reason anyone would think that these two pieces were anything other than fluffery and flummery is because that person *does not believe* that the unborn child killed by abortion is, in fact, an unborn child killed by abortion.

Which pretty much says it all.

Michael Bauman,

I'll suggest something better, which as a theologian, I'm sure you'll appreciate.

Jesus said (Matt 22:37-40),
"You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your soul,
and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."

I recognize the human being -- whether he or she is at the developmental stage of zygote, embryo, or fetus -- as my neighbor. In the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) and referring to the two great commandments, Jesus is clear in how expansive we should be in defining who is our neighbor.

Can we really walk past our maltreated neighbor and say, "well, I tried"? If we've internalized that love of neighbor, then pushing back against evil is not enough. Love of God, love of neighbor, demands more. If asked, "how far should love go?", I would respond, "my example is Christ on the Cross."

And of course, we're to love the abortion-minded mother, and the abortionist. They're our neighbor too. Mother Teresa spoke of how the West was spiritually impoverished. Abortion was sign of that spiritual poverty.

Speaking before President Clinton at the National Prayer Breakfast, Mother Teresa said,

Jesus gave even his life to love us, so the mother who is thinking of abortion should be helped to love–that is, to give until it hurts, her plans, her free time, to respect the life of a child, for the child is the greatest gift of God to the family, because it has been created to love and to be loved.

The father of that child, however, must also give until it hurts. By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problem. And by abortion, the father is taught that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into that world. So that father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion.

Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love one another but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.

Why push back against evil? Because we love. Love is stronger than a distaste for evil things. It's not hostility against an abstract evil such as abortion. It's a personal love of our fellow human beings, our neighbor.

Peace,
Bob

Lydia, for some reason you apparently don't see the point of the Billy Sunday analogy from the CNN article. Of course Billy Sunday was wrong, and of course there is truth to the matter. That's completely beside the point of describing and predicting the politics of abortion. The point is that the beliefs and perceptions exemplified by Sunday were held by a mass movement for decades, regardless of the truth of the matter, and then suddenly they changed, while the truth of the matter stayed constant.

On the "not trying to change any laws" strategy, I'll just repeat what I said before: I'm very skeptical of it.

As I've said before, I'm among the majority who do not believe that the "unborn child killed by abortion" is necessarily an unborn child, depending on its stage of development (one-day embryo: no). I strongly disagree with the door-slamming statement that "that says it all."

Lydia,

This is actually a very good rebuttal to Aaron and Frum:

http://socialpathology.blogspot.com/2011/10/cognitive-psychology-and-democracy.html

Intuitively, Aaron cannot bring himself to see a 1 day old embryo as a human child even though logic says it is because the essential nature of an embryo is that it is the first stage of a human being's material existence.

Logically, an argument from ensoulment or stage of development is dangerous because there is absolutely no proof of when ensoulment happens (indeed many Americans being quasi-atheists wouldn't even recognize an argument based on ensoulment) nor is the typical nervous system-based argument rational because a newborn is literally less self-aware than an adult small parrot (most have the intelligence and self-awareness of a typical 2-3 year old child) and even they have no legal rights.

What's just astonishing and angering here is that all the _positive_ aspects of this supposedly brilliant "strategy" are things the pro-life movement has been doing for decades already, apparently while Frum was hob-nobbing with his liberal pals, or asleep, or something. Showing pictures? Check. Using persuasion with women rather than laws against abortions? Check. (Perforce. That's all the legal system allows.) Helping women? Check. Positive images of the unborn and of people who have their children? Check. Trying to regulate the extremes of the abortion industry around the edges? Check. Trying to find common ground on things like, say, public funding of abortion? Check.

In other words, we're _doing all of that_. To the extent that it's such a great strategy, it's having all the effect it can have.

The only thing that remains of Frum's supposed "strategy" is preemptive surrender on _ever_ trying, even under hypothetically different legal circumstances down the line, to outlaw any abortions! That's plain dumb. And the condescending tone in which he talks as though the ball is in the pro-lifers' court and as though we have something to learn from him, when he appears completely clueless about what we're doing right now or even about where the aggression is presently coming from in this culture war, is absurd and angering.

What Frum doesn't seem to grasp is that abortion is only one of many issues in which the people are not getting any traction. His argument could, mutatis mutandi, be used for any number of popular issues being ignored from ending the foreign occupations, to fiscal accountability, to punishing companies like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America for their terribly corrupt manipulations of the law and treasury. In that respect, abortion is not special.

Abortion might get suppressed by more immediate concerns like fiscal policy that wrecks or imperils the well being of millions more Americans every quarter, but it'll resurface eventually. Pent up hostility usually does in politics. When the center can't hold anymore, it'll provide an opening for a well-organized minority to act boldly and ram through even more unpopular anti-abortion measures like escalating the outlawing from a low felony to capital punishment. Frum doesn't seem to realize that the golden rule of uncertain times is that a minority can easily, easily overpower a majority because the majority's cohesiveness is gone.

On present course, we're headed for another depression. That'll bring all of our chickens home to roost and none of us will like what results.

Bob L.
I agree with you about the necessity of loving God and neighbor. But how does that alter what I said? I said that we must do all we can to push back evil. I said that we cannot do what we cannot do. But the so-called "purist" position is something like an "all or nothing" option -- which strikes me as unwise because in a fallen world too often "nothing" rather than "all" is the result. How is getting nothing rather than something a better embodiment of loving God and neighbor? The view I defended gets all it can, even if "all it can" is not "all." That the two sides on this issue do what they do for the love of God and neighbor does not alter the issue in the least. Both sides, I suspect, want to do that. I'm quite happy to believe that's why you do what you do. It's why I do what I do. But that won't decide for us which position, the purist or the possiblist, is better.

I have a friend whom I don't hear from very often or see very often. Years ago when I first met him, it came out that he is pro-life, but it came out that he knew literally _nothing_ about what the pro-life movement is actually doing, despite having at one time worked for a pro-life organization. He went into a huge spiel to me about how pro-lifers need to be more concerned about women facing crisis pregnancies as if this were some _new idea_ of his. I was almost spluttering with astonishment. I asked him if he'd ever heard of Crisis Pregnancy Centers, if he knew anything about all the campaigns along exactly those lines that had been going full steam ahead for more than a decade already at that time. He knew nothing about them. He even said that there was no Crisis Pregnancy Center in his own city. Two minutes with Google turned up the falsehood of that. Later he drove across country and told me, very charmingly, that my position had been confirmed because along the highway he had seen one of the "Love Them Both" pro-life billboards. Of course, that's only one of zillions of similar messages pro-lifers have been sending.

I think some people literally live in a cultural bubble. One wonders what they read or whom they hang out with to get the weird ideas they do about who needs to get what lectures. This is what Frum makes me think of.

He knew nothing about them. He even said that there was no Crisis Pregnancy Center in his own city.

Many people don't know about the free clinics in there are that are set up to provide regular medical services to people who can't pay. They whine like petulant children about health care needs that are treatable by a charity within easy driving distance (cue the "rebuttal" that not everyone has a car). I know people who are even too proud to go to one because "that's for poor people." Ironically, it never seems to phase people that if you need Medicaid or Medicare your status among the poor is almost axiomatic, but I digress.

For what it's worth, I said to my wife this morning that if socialized health care of some kind were the price we'd have to pay to get an ironclad, irreversible constitutional agreement to completely outlaw all abortions except for severe medical conditions like ectopic pregnancies, I'd be fine with that compromise. Granted, it'd never happen because the conservative side would never have the stones to actually hold the left to their of the agreement (and many "conservatives" would prioritize a small percentage of their paycheck over the lives of millions of children).

Why is it assumed that my beliefs are based on bad intuition and not on bad logical reasoning? For what it's worth, I've thought about that question rationally, which of course doesn't mean correctly. I've read stories about acorns and oak trees. Based on my admittedly weak powers of natural reason, I reject your metaphysical conclusions that logic supposedly tells us.

And just to state it explicitly: An embryo is not a child, and it is immoral to abort embryos, and aborting embryos (unlike older fetuses) should be legal, and society has a moral obligation to try to reduce such abortions, but not to ban them. And I've thought about all that. And for those who believe that this position is not just mistaken but incoherent, or that it's trying to eat one's cake and have it too: If you're unable to understand or make any sense of it, first consider that as indicating a possible shortcoming in your own thinking, not necessarily in mine.

I reject your metaphysical conclusions that logic supposedly tells us.

The only rational standard of what constitutes a human life is derived from observation of our biology. As a matter of biological fact, an embryo is a human. In the course of its natural development, it will become a human adult provided nothing prevents that.

So far, I haven't see you actually show that that is wrong rather asserting some half-ass philosophical argument which the more philosophically inclined here (such as Lydia) could take apart and beat you with like a rented mule.

Michael Bauman,

In reply to me, you stated that pushing back evil was the principle at stake, and I'm stating that love of God and love of neighbor is better. It's not necessary for you to believe that I was correcting you beyond that.

I embrace both the purist and the possiblist positions. With respect to the abolition of slavery, I don't hold the Founding Fathers liable for failing to completely abolish slavery. They did what they could do. However, the seed was in place for the eventual abolishing of slavery.

So it's completely possible for me to agree to laws that ban partial birth abortion or in the future support a ban on abortions after viability (currently 22 weeks). I'm all for these sorts of compromise positions. We do what we can do.

But none of these compromise positions are a promise regarding my future actions. I will hold to the purist position regarding the final goal. It will remain the eventual banning of all abortions.

The sort of compromises offered by Frum (and by so many others in my past at least) are of the sort offered by the Duke of Norfolk in A Man for All Seasons, "Why can't you do as I did, and come with us, for fellowship?". These are the sort of compromises that require you to surrender your convictions. Compromises that require you to sell your soul are not really compromises at all. And it's with this that we're back on topic.

Peace,
Bob

Mike T., to be frank, I don't think you're bright enough to be worth arguing with. Another biological fact, if you like.

In any case, I'm sure that anything I or Lydia or anyone else here might say on that topic has been said before sometime over the past 2500 years. It's not like we're going to resolve the question in blog comments.

Mike T., to be frank, I don't think you're bright enough to be worth arguing with.

Aaaaand the shark is jumped.

Mike T., to be frank, I don't think you're bright enough to be worth arguing with. Another biological fact, if you like.

Oh lawdy, someone fetch the smellin salts because I feel faint from this heeuh insult to muh honah...

"it is immoral to abort embryos"

What, just any embryos? What about canine embryos?

An embryo is not a child, and it is immoral to abort embryos, and aborting embryos (unlike older fetuses) should be legal, and society has a moral obligation to try to reduce such abortions, but not to ban them. And I've thought about all that.

God, another one of those sentences. But I'm probably dull-witted, like Mike T.