Fighting for Life in our Laws
It’s been going around all the blogs and comboxes, not to mention actual conversations in everyday life.
What do we do now?
During the campaign, some Catholics who were calling themselves pro-life were saying that it’s time to give up the legal fight to reverse Roe v. Wade. “Abortion is legal and it’s here to stay,” they say. “Let’s commit ourselves to limiting the number of abortions through social programs to help women.” Which to them, of course, meant voting for Obama, in spite of the fact that he was the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever to run for President.
Some pro-choicers, both before and after mocking us so-called “social conservatives,” saying “why not give up? You are never going to win. Stay down on your red-state farms where you belong, and don’t try to bring religious issues into the political sphere. Abortion is legal, and it’s here to stay.”
What I say to all of these people is: you just don’t understand.
It’s true that changing the law is not as immediately vital as saving lives of babies through individual social actions, including sidewalk counseling, crisis pregnancy centers, pro-life education and other kinds of community action. And government social programs to help women are vitally important too. But statements like the above ignore the fundamental meaning of the law and why we should all be interested in what it says.
Why do we have laws against certain behavior? Not because we think outlawing something will completely stop it. If that were the case, we would have given up on our laws against murder and drunk driving, years ago, because in spite of all the laws, people still commit thousands of murders a year, and thousands of people drive drunk, killing still more innocent people.
No, we have laws because they signal what it is is what we believe in, what we strive to uphold, what we stand for and against as a society. They are statements that attempt to put up a wall between civilization and barbarity. Laws of course, give us the ability to punish offenders who want to destroy this civilization. Even more important, what is enshrined in law is enshrined in people’s hearts. It’s also enshrined in public policy. And what we have enshrined in our public policy now is horrendous. And it’s only going to become more so.
Declaring abortion legal in the United States in 1973 meant declaring that a certain class of human beings in our society are not really human, have no rights and are not protected under law. This is a fundamental evil that destroys human rights and dignity because it breaks the bonds of the human family and the social compact that binds us as a people. It is the same evil that is behind racism, genocide and the Holocaust.
Enshrining this evil in our hearts as a people is leading now and will lead in the future to more intolerable evils in public policy and in American life. As far back as the 70’s, doctors, ethicists and others who wanted to shape public policy began to advocate the right to kill defective children after birth, voluntary and even compulsory euthanasia, all based on the principle asserted in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton that the human right to life is not absolute. This is bearing poisonous fruit today in the assisted suicide movement, and a movement, still muted, but steadily growing, for compulsory euthanasia in some cases. The idea that other lives are not worthy of protection is now being enshrined in law.
This has to be stopped.
Look at Nazi Germany in the late 20’s and early 30’s before Hitler came to power, and you will see that the same things: euthanasia, and compulsory killing of the handicapped and the mentally ill were being advocated then. And look what happened. All it will take for us to follow suit in the U.S. is the right demagogue. (Let’s hope Obama is not the one).
This is why the fundamental right to life of all human beings must be solidly established in law.
As a historian, I don’t put much stock in the “abortion is here to stay” argument. The entire human mindset has been changed more than once in history. When Christianity came into the world in the Roman empire, abortion was very common and infanticide (in the form of the exposure of unwanted babies) was an established part of the Roman law and family structure. Christians were the only people to combat this evil through their assertion that all human beings are valuable because created by God. They created a revolution in society in favor of the protection of all human life, an understanding that over the course of centuries, became enshrined in law, which even if it wavered here and there in different ages, remained basically solid.
Now another revolution in mindset seems to have been taking place over the last 30-40 years, one that wants to enshrine human convenience and utilitarian ethics as the foundation of law and public policy, and is seeking to destroy the fundamental principles that protect human life and dignity. But the majority of the American people still seem to think otherwise, if the polls indicating that the majority of Americans still want restrictions on abortion. (Over 80% are opposed to partial-birth abortions). Only a small minority of pro-abortion people are at the controls in government now. Only time can tell whether this will be a fundamental mindset change or is just a mere glitch in our nation’s consciousness. From the viewpoint of centuries, a 30-40 year trend looks a little less awesome. I believe it can be stopped and reversed.
For the sake of our whole society, it must be reversed.
You can help out by fighting the Freedom of Choice Act, something that the pro-abortion crowd has been trying to get passed in Congress for twenty years. President Obama has promised to immediately sign it into law if it passes. With large Democratic majorities in House and Senate, it just may pass. This bill would enshrine abortion in law as a woman’s “fundamental right” and would remove all legal protection from the unborn. It would overturn the Partial-Birth Abortion ban. It would mandate tax-funded abortions, remove conscience clauses, forcing Catholic physicians and nurses to perform abortions, and more.
You can read an excellent article about FOCA here. And you can sign a petition and donate to the cause here.
Do it for unborn babies, for also for all of us and our future as a nation.