It is truly a
travesty that abortion has been
protected for 34 years by the
Supreme Court’s
Roe v. Wade decision.
Those who oppose the practice of
abortion and believe it to be
murder are correct to seek to
eventually overturn this ruling.
However, what is to be done in
the meantime? How can lives be
saved and future tragedies
prevented, even while abortion
remains protected by law? What
can the advocates of the right
to life do to diminish the
number of abortions without
breaking the law? A few
approaches whose full potential
have not yet been tapped into
deserve consideration.
As a consequence of
Roe v. Wade, an
abortion can legally be neither
had nor averted without the
consent of the woman who is
planning to have the abortion.
While this state of affairs
poses a tremendous obstacle to
pro-life advocates if a woman is
determined to have an
abortion, it also means that if
a pregnant woman
changes her mind and
decides not to abort her child,
then the abortion will not
happen. Thus, pro-life
advocates’ efforts need to focus
on convincing as many women as
possible to reject abortion as
an option.
How can this be
done? First, many of the
financial pressures of a
pregnant woman can be alleviated
by pro-life charitable
organizations.
Let us consider the following
hypothetical scenario. X, a
woman, is pregnant and
wishes to abort the child. She
is concerned about the expense
and inconvenience associated
with the pregnancy itself, as
well as the future costs of
bringing up the child.
Organization L is a hypothetical
pro-life charity. Since the law
protects her decision to abort,
the only recourse for
Organization L is to convince
her to carry through with her
pregnancy? Organization L can do
this by changing X’s
incentives and giving
her few
reasons to abort as a
possibility.
Consider the
following proposition that
Organization L can make to X.
“If you choose not to have an
abortion and carry through with
the pregnancy, we will pay all
of the expenses related to the
pregnancy, and we will
furthermore offer you an
additional sum of money to
compensate you for any kind of
‘psychological strain’ that the
pregnancy may incur. Then, when
the child is born, we will offer
it up for adoption to one of the
many families on our waiting
list. In this way, the child
will get an upbringing in a
loving home, and you will not
have any further financial
obligations. Indeed, we would
rather you made a slight
profit on this entire
agreement instead of terminating
a life.” Many women in X’s
position would agree to such a
proposal if it were an option to
them. As a result, if
any lives are saved
in this manner, this would be a
step in mitigating the harms of
abortion.
This idea is not
without precedent. Prior to the
abolition of slavery in Britain
and later in the United States,
many anti-slavery groups would
spend large sums of money to
purchase the freedom of those
held in bondage. They would
recognize that, while they could
not eradicate the institution of
slavery overnight, they could at
least preserve a sizable number
of people from its horrors. Some
of the more radical and less
prudent abolitionists – like
William Lloyd Garrison –
condemned these efforts as
bringing about material gain for
the slave-owners, but such
criticism was thoroughly
mistaken. After all, what is a
worse outcome: paying people to
desist from evil or permitting
those who are innocent and good
to perish?
The same reasoning holds in this
case. It is much better for some
women – even those who become
pregnant due to reckless
behavior and would wish to not
have the child in order to
engage in further reckless
behavior – to get some perhaps
undeserved funds than it is for
the innocent to die because
we do not wish
to “reward” those who are
considering an abortion.
Let us consider another way in
which our hypothetical
Organization L can effectively
reduce the number of abortions.
It may be possible for the
charity to contact women of
child-bearing age, preferably
before these women
become pregnant, and convince
the women to sign a pledge that,
if they ever become
pregnant and are considering an
abortion, they promise to first
meet with a representative of
Organization L and discuss their
options. If the law permits such
pledges to be legally binding,
then this will be an excellent
way to convince women to
voluntarily set
restraints on their “right” to
have an abortion. But even if
the pledge cannot be made
legally binding, it can still
work by relying on the woman to
act with integrity, follow her
conscience, and keep her word.
Most people do not break a
promise lightly, even if there
are no legal repercussions to
breaking it.
The sad truth is that many
abortions occur on a whim, with
a pregnant woman rushing to the
hospital to get her child killed
before she considers the full
implications of the action.
Given time to calmly reflect on
the matter and consider its
moral implications as well as
its practical consequences, she
might choose differently. This
is where a consultation pledge
like the one described above can
have a tremendous effect.
Presumably, Organization L will
be opposed to abortion in
principle, and its
representatives may be able to
change a woman’s mind through
the course of discussion. But
even in the
time it takes to
arrange and conduct a direct
meeting with another person, the
woman will have an additional
opportunity to think the matter
over and arrive at a decision
based on deliberate reflection,
not the impulse of the moment.
There are already about 2200
crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs)
in the United States which
specialize in persuading women
to carry through with
pregnancies instead of having
abortions. Organizations like
Care Net, Birthright
International, and Heartbeat
International sponsor these
centers and have had
considerable success in saving
lives. Crisis pregnancy centers
would be the ideal candidates
for offering women the option to
sign consultation pledges; women
who sign will thereby become
more likely to visit a CPC in
the event of a pregnancy.
Furthermore, the CPCs that do
not already do so could expand
their operations to include
providing monetary assistance to
women for whom a pregnancy would
pose a considerable financial
strain.
And, of course, any advocate of
the right to life would do well
to confront and challenge
individuals and organizations
that would
actively persuade a
woman to have an abortion. In
offering their tempting promises
of “liberation” and
“emancipation,” such anti-life
militants can often ruin many an
unsuspecting woman’s life – not
to mention having already ended
the lives of millions of
innocent children. To prevent
women from being taken in by
these charlatans with murderous
intentions, it is necessary to
engage the latter in active,
vigorous debate, so as to let as
many people as possible know
that there exist serious ethical
and practical objections to
abortion – to say the very
least.
In
the famous words of Edmund
Burke, “the only thing necessary
for the triumph of evil is for
enough good men to do nothing.”
If implemented, the approaches
discussed here can save lives
and diminish the horrendous
damage that abortion inflicts.
Pro-life advocates would do well
to engage in creative thinking
and to devise an increasingly
broad and sophisticated array of
approaches by which to minimize
the toll of this travesty.
Creative
Approaches to Fighting Abortion