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Over the past weeks, I have received many questions on abortion and the current US debate. Below are a few recent thoughts that I have found helpful.
History
If you desire historical understanding regarding this current moment, I recommend John Davidson:
To the left, abortion is sacred. More than any other political issue or policy preference, it encapsulates a worldview that insists on limitless personal autonomy and recognizes no unchosen obligations. It declares that some people deserve absolutely no protection under the law. In that sense, it transcends politics. It is a kind of creed, an inversion of our founding creed: all men are not created equal.
That should sound familiar, because this is not the first time such a creed has been adopted by a vast swath of the country. There is no polite way to say it (and the left hates it when you point it out), but the historical antecedent to the modern fervor for abortion is the antebellum south’s fervor for chattel slavery. Like the abortion regime, the southern slave regime also had a rigid worldview at odds with the Constitution and natural law. It, too, was willing to destroy the country rather than relinquish its worldview and way of life. – John Daniel Davidson, “The Constitutional Crisis That Roe v. Wade Set In Motion Is Now Upon Us” The Federalist May 4, 2022
Language
For linguistic analysis, Ericka Andersen is spot on:
“The idea that we’re gonna make a judgment that is going to say that no one can make the judgment to choose to abort a child based on a decision by the Supreme Court I think goes way overboard.” Those words were spoken by President Joe Biden on Tuesday.
Cue another crisis call for the POTUS communications team. Calling an unborn baby a “child” is strictly off-limits for pro-abortion advocates. To linguistically humanize a fetus makes it impossible to deny the reality of abortion: the purposeful termination of a child’s life.
Whoopi Goldberg also slipped. In an angry rift against the draft opinion on The View, she said abortion should be a decision made between a woman and her doctor and her “child.” …She quickly moved past the comment, perhaps recognizing her faux pas, but the camera was rolling. The logical inconsistencies required to uphold pro-abortion views are hard to reconcile and impossible to miss. – Ericka Andersen, “Accidentally Admitting that Abortion Kills a Child” World Opinion May 5, 2022
Ethics
Finally, the current ethical framework is captured by Ellie Reynolds:
Any sinful culture — as all are between Eden and glory — might allow or excuse the killing of an innocent child. But the times such an act has been celebrated have historically been tied to religious rituals in which a child was sacrificed to a supposed deity. In our post-religious culture, that sacrifice is laid on the idol of self.
…Selfishness isn’t unique to our moment, but it does manifest today in a particularly straightforward way. If we believe the highest telos of our existence is self-discovery, our lives cease to serve any higher purpose than ourselves. It makes sense, then, that our culture would glorify abortion because, by that paradigm, killing an inconvenient baby is a means to self-empowerment. If eugenicist abortionists pushed to kill off babies for the “good” of society a century ago, now they purport to do so for the “good” of the individual woman.
It’s why abortion activists can, in complete seriousness, advocate for the murder of a full-term child. It doesn’t matter to them that the baby is a living being — if he or she conflicts with a woman’s self-love, that baby doesn’t deserve to live. It’s perfectly consistent with our culture’s increasingly popular perception of having children as a fulfillment of their parents’ wants instead of a responsibility to cherish that requires sacrifice and self-denial.
…If self-gratification is our highest good, then any act (up to and including the murder of a child) becomes good if done in its pursuit. If we are our own arbiters of truth, then moral reality ceases to become an inhibition, and life itself ceases to become an inherent good. If limiting the licentious indulgence of our own desires is “oppression” and therefore the greatest sin, then the anti-abortion crowd becomes the bad guys.
Until we confront the self-idolatry of our culture, many people will truly believe abortion is not just a “necessary evil” but a self-empowering good. Merely convincing them that abortion takes the precious life of a baby does nothing to shatter that paradigm, if they value their own imagined “empowerment” more than that life. The message their mania requires is that something true, good, and infinitely worthy could exist that is greater than themselves. – Ellie Reynolds, “Why Today’s Left Is Willing To Admit Abortion Kills A Child And Still Support It,” The Federalist, May 10, 2022
God bless,
Wayne