Since the Supreme Court just overturned Roe v Wade, I thought I'd share my thoughts on this era-defining decision and explain why I oppose this ruling despite being pro-life.
My stance on abortion has evolved and moderated over the years. I see and empathize with good arguments and good people on both sides. Unfortunately, arguments on both sides are seldom logically consistent across issues. Take the recent vaccine mandates for example. The conservatives who opposed them ("My body, my choice!") support the state's ability to restrict abortion for women. Conversely, liberals who supported the enforcement of vaccine mandates are now screaming, "Hands off my body!"
I'm becoming less concerned with where a person falls on the issues as I am with whether they are logically and morally consistent. I try to keep my own views consistent: I am moderately pro-life and was pro-vaccine mandates...until I no longer was. The common thread for this position is that I seek to protect life, even if it's not my own, and especially if it can't protect itself.
In the case of abortions, I see a fetus as a life. And my tendency is to protect that life. In the case of vaccinations, I believe they save lives, especially the lives of those who are vulnerable to disease. And my tendency is to protect those lives.
Are there exceptions? Sure. Once vaccines proved effective, were generally available and vaccination rates were high, I stopped supporting mandates. Those who wished to protect themselves could do so. The anti-vaxxers were now only putting their own lives at stake, not somebody else's.
Likewise with abortion, my thought is to protect vulnerable lives that cannot protect themselves. But in the exceptional cases of rape, incest, danger to the mother's life, severe diagnosable birth defects, etc. I support the choice to abort. Otherwise, I generally oppose it...with an asterisk.
I understand that there are good, legitimate and unique arguments in favor of abortion. I realize that in most cases where a woman seeks an abortion there are good reasons; that outlawing abortion is forcing women to carry and give birth to a baby against their will and despite all good reasons not to. In many cases, babies will be unwanted and poorly cared for. They'll often be born into very difficult socioeconomic circumstances, and force their mothers into very difficult circumstances from which they may never recover. A woman's entire life may be sacrificed by being forced to have a baby. In short, the position in favor of making abortion illegal is as serious as it gets, and the only valid reason I can imagine for doing so is to save a life.
That's where the rationale ends for most pro-lifers. But now a baby is born into the world. What's going to happen to that life that was so valuable and precious that it was worth denying its mother some very basic rights of self-determination? The prognosis is grim. In my younger pro-life life I held up adoption as the solution. There are about 135,000 adoptions in the United States each year, but only about half of those are American babies. There are nearly a half-million children in foster care in the United States, far outstripping adoptions.
In my younger life, I was a veritable inspector Javert, with legalist tendencies and a lack of empathy for all criminals. Unfortunately, these tough-on-crime views place me on the virtual jury for countless souls whom I fought to protect while they were in the womb, but whose post-womb circumstances predicted their criminality. That which was once sacred is now vile and deserving of prison. Throw the grown fetus away! After all, they CHOSE to commit those crimes. Never mind that they came from an uneducated single mother who didn't want them, who didn[t know how to care for them, from grinding poverty, hunger, familial instability, poor educational opportunities, desperation, need, powerlessness and on and on. Never mind that had I come from the circumstances that this person came from, the odds are almost overwhelming that I would have ended up in a courtroom alongside them. No, never mind. It was a choice, however forced and predictable.
First a few thoughts:
- How absolutely ironic that Trump, a man who was a pro-choice Democrat for most of his life and serial adulterer who almost certainly paid for multiple abortions over the course of his philandering life, is primarily responsible for the overturning of Roe. The three Anti-Roe justices that Trump appointed finally got it done.
- Ginsberg bears some responsibility here: She could have retired and allowed Obama to appoint a liberal justice. Instead, she rode her justiceship to the grave and Trump replaced her with a Roe opponent.
