Abortion: Should pro-lifers compromise?

Should the pro-life movement develop a new strategy? asked Jacqueline L. Salmon in The Washington Post. For more than three decades, anti-abortion activists have tried and failed to get Roe v. Wade overturned. Now, with a pro-choice president headed to the White House and greater Democratic majorities coming into Congress, the goal of outlawing abortion seems more distant than ever. Some prominent pro-lifers, including Catholic law professor Douglas Kmiec and evangelical pastor Joel Hunter, say that since an outright ban is unrealistic, it’s time to compromise with opponents and find ways to reduce the number of abortions. “There’s got to be a way we can take some of these hot-button issues and cooperate, rather than simply keep fighting,” said Hunter, a board member of the National Association of Evangelicals. Since women living in poverty have by far the highest abortion rate, Hunter now talks of supporting liberal social programs, such as pre- and postnatal care and affordable child care, which could convince more pregnant women to give birth.

There’s only one problem, said Ed Kilgore at Beliefnet.com. Social programs to fight poverty, provide health care, and promote contraception “will not cut much ice with Right-to-Lifers” who compare the current rate of abortions to “the Holocaust.” Compromise is deadly, said Joseph Scheidler, director of the Pro-Life Action League, in USA Today. There is no evidence these social programs will lead to fewer abortions. Meanwhile, more than 1.2 million human beings are sacrificed to abortion each year. “You can’t compromise with evil. And abortion is intrinsically evil.”

We hate to soil moral purity with facts, said Patrick Whelan and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend in the Baltimore Sun, but social programs do affect the abortion rate. Under President Bill Clinton, who was pro-choice, the abortion rate fell about 50 percent faster than it did under the pro-life incumbent, George W. Bush. By contrast, all the energy pro-lifers have devoted to restrictions—such as the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act—has not stopped “even a single abortion.” No one is demanding that pro-lifers give up “their belief that abortion is murder,” said USA Today in an editorial. But four out of five Americans want abortion to remain legal in some or all circumstances, and after Colorado and South Dakota voters overwhelmingly rejected anti-abortion initiatives in this last election, the pro-life movement faces a simple choice: Settle for reducing the number of abortions or bury your heads in the sand.

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