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State-by-state abortion decisions would be step in right direction

After 50 years of furor, there is little new that can be said about legalized abortion, and few minds likely to be changed. But it is worth noting just what the current moment, with its possible impending overturn of Roe v. Wade, does and doesn’t portend, from a (spoiler alert) pro-life perspective. And there are lessons worth taking into account from the other great controversy in U.S. history that mirrors the abortion debate in so many ways — the 19th century battle over slavery.

First, despite sky-is-falling rhetoric from the president, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and others, the overturn of Roe won’t be the first step in a rolling-back of other rights, ranging from civil rights to marriage equality, that have been created or buttressed by modern court decisions. The leaked Supreme Court draft makes it clear that the justices see those rights as protected by due process and equal protection principles, in a way that abortion is not. Not only are we not going that far, the justices are saying; we’re not even on the same road.

The difference is that other human life involved. As with slavery, the exercise of one person’s “right” (to an abortion, or to own a slave) comes at a horrendous cost to another, in a way that other personal, human, or civil rights do not. Slave owners — and many non-slave-owning Americans — saw the abolitionists as trouble-making meddlers, and said, in effect, “Don’t like slavery? Don’t own one.” But that logic repels, then and now. Of the many issues that beset us today, abortion is different. Which is why, after 50 years as “settled law,” about half of Americans (depending on how the question is asked) still feel uncomfortable with an atrocity masquerading as a right.

Secondly, despite fretting from both sides, those exceptions — for rape, incest, health of the mother, fetal viability, and so on — in many states won’t end up going away. Logic may argue against them: if abortion is murder, a murder with some good side effects is still wrong. But in a democracy, on an issue where divisions are sharp and deep, illogical and even immoral compromises are how issues get handled and life goes on. The framers of the Constitution couldn’t end slavery, but they at least managed to set a date when the legal slave trade could be — and eventually was — ended. There are few laws in our history as morally offensive as the draconian Fugitive Slave Law, a key part of the Compromise of 1850. But the Compromise as a whole kept the Union together for another 10 years, with the result that when the final crisis came, the nation was being led by Abraham Lincoln, not Millard Fillmore.

Negotiation and compromise are a big part of what we pay our elected state legislators and other officials to do; they’re not as good at it as they used to be, but it’s still their job. Expect many a messy, hard-fought compromise measure to come out of the state-by-state battles that follow the end of Roe. As columnist Jonah Goldberg put it, the only way out is through. From a pro-life perspective, when we live in a society where we cannot save every life, better to save as many as we can.

Thirdly, in a period when many abortions will become illegal, at least in some states, a new burden falls on all of us to support mothers and babies. Abortion has been a wrong, but easy, out, for individuals and society. Without it, there will be more children and mothers in dire need of help, whether it involves health and education, adoption, or other measures. (The much-reviled Texas abortion law has usually-overlooked provisions dedicated to this aspect.) If old, Great Society-style welfare measures didn’t achieve their noble goals, we need new approaches, not stony indifference to the plight of others. We don’t want to repeat the failure of the post-Civil War period, where the north’s short attention span left the freed slaves to endure the injustice of the Jim Crow era.

Finally, the current moment is just a small step on a long journey. Abortion, like other great evils, will eventually be left behind by the advance of history. Western civilization ended slavery — twice — but it took centuries both times. In the early Middle Ages, the gradual deepening of Christian values led to the elimination of the slavery on which the Roman Empire had been based. After slavery, shamefully, crept back into the West in the aftermath of the Age of Discovery, it was the slow application of the principles of the Enlightenment, often spearheaded again by dedicated Christians, that finally led to abolition. In the modern era, I think the advance of medical science will continue pushing back the threshold of fetal viability, while making it ever clearer that the fetus is a human being, and reminding us that human lives matter.

Abortion will not end quickly, whether by a 5-4 court decision, or by a sweeping party-line vote in Congress. But the conflict and compromise of messy state-by-state political battles, in a post-Roe era, will be a step in the right direction.

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Joseph Kimpflen is a retired federal government employee. He lives in Tupper Lake.

Sources

1. “Abortion…,” Adirondack Daily Enterprise, May 13, 2022, page A8.1

2. Edward Whelan, “Outstanding Draft Majority Opinion…,” National Review Online, May 3, 2022.

3. “In abortion fight…,” Adirondack Daily Enterprise, May 7-8, 2022, page A1.

4. “It’s not easy to predict…,” Adirondack Daily Enterprise, May 14, 2022, page A4.

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