The JFA training seminar was great.

Last Saturday, fellow SPL rep Ellen and I attended a Justice For All (JFA) training seminar; the seminar was sponsored by the Right To Life of Central California and lead by pro-life advocate Josh Brahm. 

(If you aren’t familiar with Josh’s work I suggest you check him out. He has a very thoughtful, relational approach to the abortion debate, and from what I’ve seen his approach is quite effective. Josh is a Christian, but much of his work is secular in nature, and I’ve been repeatedly impressed with his efforts to be religiously inclusive. More on that in tomorrow’s blog post.)

My one grainy pic of Josh presenting.

As JFA states in some of their training materials, their goal is to “train thousands to make abortion unthinkable for millions, ONE person at a time.” The idea is to equip pro-lifers to have meaningful conversations about abortion by giving them more effective dialoguing tools. For example, in any given abortion conversation, JFA strongly emphasizes asking the other person questions and listening attentively to his or her response. Try to understand the perspectives of the people you’re talking to. It seems like this advice should go without saying, but how many abortion arguments have you witnessed that were more about trying to “win” the conversation? How often do you see the two sides talk right past each other?

JFA also encourages trainees to find common ground with the people they’re talking to (“What do you think of late-term abortion? What do you think of sex-selective abortion? Do you think abortion should be used as birth control?”).  Build a rapport and help create an open, useful conversation.

I am all for these approaches. Understanding and relating to other people makes it easier for us to have a dialogue instead of a debate. Dialogues are more effective for changing hearts and minds. Plus, I think—as a baseline behavior—we should treat people kindly.

Some people think it’s inappropriate to even be friends with those who disagree with us on abortion. I don’t see how that’s helpful, either in the abortion debate or in our personal lives. Being friends with those who disagree gives both sides an opportunity to understand one another better, to learn about other perspectives, and to influence each other. We want abortion to be unthinkable for everyone…not just for the people who already agree with us. Beyond that, I already have close friends and family who are pro-choice. They know I’m pro-life. We care about each other, and we have good relationships. I’m not going to sacrifice those relationships because we don’t agree on what I consider a complex and highly emotional issue.

And if abortion is an emotional topic in general, abortion in cases of rape is all the more so. That’s why I was glad to find JFA had an entire training section dedicated specifically to how we talk to people concerned about abortion in cases of rape. The section focused on how to relate to people, not how to win arguments. 

That emphasis is so refreshing. I’ve been extremely frustrated at times with the way I’ve seen some pro-lifers handle the abortion-in-cases-of-rape issue. In my experience, it seems like most people—within and outside the abortion debate—don’t internalize how horrible rape is or how difficult the social, psychological, and emotional circumstances can be for a rape survivor. Not so with JFA. JFA’s message, as I understand it, is essentially, “Now more than ever, listen to this person. Seek to understand where they’re coming from and how they feel. Have compassion for what others have gone through.” Compassion is an admirable quality in general, but, given my way, it would be a required quality for someone to discuss abortion in cases of rape. And I’ve heard JFA mentors go so far as to say (paraphrasing), “If you don’t feel genuine concern and compassion for survivors of rape, we don’t want you representing us on campus.” Good. Exactly. Thank you.

Similarly, the seminar had a training section to address talking with post-abortive people. During that part, a post-abortive woman told us her story: the circumstances of her unplanned pregnancy, the factors leading to her abortion, her emotional turmoil afterward, and her eventual healing process. I wrote recently about my emotional detachment from certain aspects of the abortion debate, but sitting in-person listening to this woman tell of her own heartbreak, what she went through leading up to the abortion and went through after, and what her preborn child meant and means to her—there was no way to be emotionally detached. It was very sad and very touching. After her story, the seminar again encouraged gentility and empathy over a more argumentative style. We still have points to make, thought experiments to explore, and reasons to give for being pro-life, but the manner of our approach is nearly as important as the substance of our perspective.

But the JFA seminar focused on substance as well. During the training, Josh and other JFA speakers talked about the biological humanity of the unborn, the Equal Rights Argument, and different types of bodily rights arguments.  Even though I’ve heard of or talked about a lot of this before, I was glad to see JFA focus on these ideas during the training. These are high-quality arguments. They’re simple without being simplistic, and they take the pro-choice perspective seriously (as opposed to strawmanning what pro-choicers are saying, or addressing the simpler pro-choice arguments and ignoring the complicated ones).

One of the slides from the Equal Rights Argument presentation.
Click here to read more about it.

I especially appreciate how JFA takes the time to explain and address different bodily rights issues. In my experience, most pro-lifers don’t seem to take bodily rights arguments seriously. But I see pro-choicers use bodily rights arguments more and more frequently, and some of these arguments can be very compelling. We pro-lifers need to take the bodily rights issue seriously, both for the sake of the abortion debate and because bodily rights are important rights independent of the abortion debate. So it’s satisfying to see JFA emphasize bodily rights arguments. During the training, JFA speakers provided several great analogies to help trainees understand and express the pro-life perspective on bodily rights and abortion.

Overall I got a lot out of the seminar. I so admire JFA’s relational approach and the substance of their arguments. I expect the more pro-lifers we have making better arguments in kinder ways, the more hearts and minds we’ll sway.

Tomorrow I’ll post about what the seminar was like more specifically from the perspective of a non-Christian.

Respect in death, but not in life

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard about the big scandal in Marion County, Oregon (Salem): for years, it's been revealed, the bodies of aborted and miscarried babies from British Columbia have made up some of the fuel in their waste-to-energy plant. In plain English: dead human bodies were incinerated to heat Salem-area homes.

I think all compassionate people (whether pro-life or pro-choice) can agree that families who lose a child to miscarriage should have full control over what happens to the remains, and that they probably wouldn't have chosen this. British Columbia clinics obviously need to change their policy on that. So this article will focus solely on the issue of the aborted remains.

Local officials expressed disgust and immediately took action to end the incineration of any fetal remains at the plant.

Now, I completely understand why Oregon Right to Life made this an issue. And I guess I'm glad that there was a swift response. But allow me to express an unpopular opinion: this is just NIMBYism.

All this does is prevent people from being reminded of abortion, and feeling squeamish, every time they flip on a light switch. It does absolutely nothing to prevent the death of a single unborn child in British Columbia. It does absolutely nothing to prevent the death of a single unborn child in Oregon—which happens to be the only state in the U.S. with no pro-life laws, not even informed consent. And in case you were wondering, yes, there's an abortion center in Salem.

Evidently, there is more outrage over the disrespect of aborted fetal remains than outrage over what caused their deaths in the first place. I'm reminded of the abortion worker who was upset with pro-lifers "disrespecting" the dead with abortion victim photography: "In my clinic, we wash off the tissue and examine it. It is treated respectfully..."

But why should the dead receive more respect than the living?

We saw this same question come up in the Marlise Munoz tragedy. To recap, Munoz was pregnant when she suffered a sudden blood clot, which left her brain-dead, but her child remained alive. Her husband wanted to remove her from life support, saying that's what she would have wanted. Pro-lifers sought to give the child a chance. Pro-choicers argued that what Marlise would have wanted should take precedence, even though she was dead and therefore had absolutely no interest in the outcome. (Sadly, the court adopted the pro-choice view.)

I do not approve when pro-lifers refer to abortion advocates as "pro-death." It makes me cringe, because it's unnecessarily divisive, overwrought, and easily dismissed. But we're dealing here with a philosophy that is, for lack of a better term, pro-the-dead, while neglecting the living.

You know what would really be respectful of the unborn? Not killing them, for starters. You might also try not treating parenthood as incompatible with higher education, not telling young people that childbirth will "ruin your life," and working with pro-lifers to ensure that mothers have the resources they need so that abortion isn't their only option.

If you're not disgusted by these more pressing problems, why bother wringing your hands over aborted children being burned for energy?

Two must-see documentaries expose the abortion industry

[Today's guest post by Chris Rostenberg is part of our paid blogging program.]

“Meet the Abortion Providers” and “Abortion the Inside Story” are companion documentaries that must be seen by anyone who wants to understand the issue of prenatal homicide. The films feature women and men who used to work in the abortion industry, but who have turned around and to defend life and women from abortion killing. Although the documentaries were produced in the late 80s and early 90s, they remain highly relevant in the post-Gosnell era.

[Part 2, Part 3]

 

[Part 2, Part 3, Part 4]

If you can't watch the videos now, here are some highlights:

Joy Davis, who directed six abortion clinics in Alabama and Mississippi but later became a pro-life activist, said that her boss, Dr. Tommy Tucker, was so greedy that he fired his anesthesiologist, the registered nurses and the lab technician.  He trained Joy Davis to act as an abortionist.  “I never spent the first day in medical school.  I really know nothing about medicine, other than what I had seen other doctors do, but I started doing abortions.”  Ms. Davis, who was only trained as an ultrasound technician, explained that staff had watched the doctors put women under anesthesia.  “We started putting patients asleep ourselves, and we had no idea what we were doing.”

Helen Pendley explained that it was she, not the abortionist, who prescribed the drugs, called in the medications, and was the one on call when a woman started hemorrhaging.  She also handled post-abortion calls from women who told her that they were  experiencing physical or emotional problems; the women were curtly told that their problems must have been preexisting and were not  the abortion center’s responsibility.

“I cannot tell you one thing that happens in an abortion clinic that is not a lie,” says Carol Everett, who had an abortion and was an administrator of five abortion facilities.  Nita Whitten, who also worked in a Dallas abortion center says, “It’s a lie when they tell you that they’re doing it to help the woman, ‘cause they’re not … We were doing it to get her money.” She explained that it was common to bring $15,000 a day to the bank. 

Norma McCorvey, the woman who challenged Texas’ pro-life law using the pseudonym “Jane Roe” in Roe vs. Wade, is also a former abortion worker who became pro-life.  Now she admits:  “It was just a racket…  [The abortionist] was just doing it for the money.  He didn’t care about the women.”

Dina Madsen, a former abortion worker from Sacramento, explained that many of the clinic workers had had several abortions and had no confidence at all in the abortionists they worked with, but had no trouble falsely reassuring their prospective clients. “How stupid can you get?”  Deborah Henry, a Michigan abortion counselor, explained that she and her coworkers lied about the pain women experience while undergoing abortions, and provided no information whatsoever about the development of the preborn child. 

One former abortionist testified that the ultrasound machine is always hidden from the pregnant mother, so she won’t see the image of her child and change her mind (and so the abortionist won’t lose a sale).  But how can a woman make an informed choice about abortion when information is deliberately hidden from her?

The pro-life movement has led the way in combating these abortion industry abuses.  But it is an uphill battle against an aggressive, well-funded opposition.  Don’t be fooled: abortion facility regulations are incredibly necessary.  No one makes the case for them better than abortion workers themselves.

So-called "freedom of choice" in Mexico City

[Today's guest post is a press release from the Mexican pro-life organization TAD, which has been translated into English. This week marks the anniversary of legal abortion in Mexico City.]

The Mexican state has neglected its duties toward mothers. Without support from her family, her partner, or her government, abortion would seem to be the only "choice" for many women in Mexico City.

The figures are alarming. In 2009, the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI) reported 153,237 births in Mexico City, while El Colegio de México and the Guttmacher Institute stated that 122,455 abortions took place during the same period. That's 12 abortions for every 15 births.

"Pregnant and lacking support, women seek options that might help them face maternity. But after an excruciating bureaucratic ordeal of misinformation, lengthy processes, and endless obstacles—emblematic of a State that does not consider pregnant women as a relevant peopulation—many mothers make desperate decisions which later on they regret”, said Ingrid Tapia, lawyer and specialist at TAD (THINK • ACTION • DEVELOPMENT).

According to Tapia, the abortion program created by Mexico City’s government and maintained for the past seven years has emphasized abortion advocacy, rather than meeting women's real needs. The local government has failed to propose or implement programs to aid expectant women and their gestating children.

“Seven years ago, the local government claimed that the legalization of abortion would drastically reduce clandestine practices, and thus reduce maternal mortality. But clearly, maternal mortality is still a problem—and clandestine abortions haven't been eliminated either, so no one knows for certain how many abortions take place and under what conditions," concludes Tapia.

Mexico has many social welfare issues to address. But supposed "quick fixes" like the failed abortion policy only make matters worse. Expectant women in Mexico continue to face discrimination, abandonment, and violence. We must demand better from our country.

Throwback Thursday :-)

We're jumping on the throwback Thursday bandwagon! Today's feature is a video we put together way back in 2010:

When did DNA become controversial?!

Earlier this week, pollsters released the results of a AP/GfK survey on scientific knowledge. Just over 1,000 American adults were presented with various scientific statements and asked to state how confident they were that the statement was correct: extremely confident, very confident, somewhat confident, not too confident, or not at all confident. Most news outlets that covered the story focused on the large percentage of Americans rejecting climate change, evolution, and the Big Bang—and while I do find those numbers disheartening, they've been reported frequently, and I've become somewhat desensitized to them.

This, however, floored me:

"Inside our cells, there is a complex genetic code that helps determine who we are."

Extremely confident: 38%
Very confident: 30%
Somewhat confident: 22%
Not too confident: 8%
Not at all confident: 1% 

Nearly one in ten Americans either don't understand what "genetic code" means, or are not confident about the existence of DNA. And another 22% have their doubts. Only 38% answered "extremely confident," which, frankly, is the only acceptable answer.

This has huge implications for pro-life education. "Life begins at conception" is meaningless if people don't accept that a "genetic code that helps determine who we are" is also present at conception. Without DNA, all you have is generic life, a clump of cells that might become an individual some day. DNA is what stays constant throughout our lives, from fertilization, giving us unique identities.

And that's just abortion. What about other life issues? How do DNA doubters perceive people who have been released from death row due to exonerating DNA evidence? Do they understand the basics of adult versus embryonic stem cell research?

I usually try to end blog posts on a high note, but there's not much of a silver lining here. Yippie, about two-thirds of Americans got it right. It should be 100%.

Join the "You are not alone" post-abortion campaign

Abortion Changes You is an online safe space for post-abortive parents to share their stories and begin the healing process. Unlike many other
post-abortion programs, it does not insist (or even suggest) that a conversion to Christianity and/or the forgiveness of Jesus are required.

Through May 31st, Abortion Changes You is running a campaign called "You are not alone." The concept is very simple. Go to urxalone.com and sign the open letter to people who are struggling with a past abortion. The message is short and sweet: "If you are hurting, I want you to know that I care. You are not alone." Their goal is to get 5,000 signatures. 

This is not a petition. It is a direct message to someone who may be experiencing the darkest moment in his or her life. Think back to the worst day of your life; now imagine finding a message from 5,000 complete strangers, tailored to your exact situation, giving you love and encouragement. Pretty awesome, right?

The Secular Pro-Life facebook page alone has over 5,500 fans, so this goal is very doable. Please, take two seconds to sign your name at urxalone.com. And then spread the word!

Don't let the oligarchy get you down

Last week, the media exploded with the news that the United States is not a democracy, but an oligarchy:

Oligarchy is a form of government in which power is vested in a dominant class and a small group exercises control over the general population. 

A new study from Princeton and Northwestern Universities concluded that the U.S. government represents not the interests of the majority of citizens but those of the rich and powerful. 

"Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" analyzed extensive data, comparing nearly 1,800 U.S. policies enacted between 1981 and 2002 with the expressed preferences of average and affluent Americans as well as special interest groups. 

The resulting data empirically verifies that U.S. policies are determined by the economic elite.

This should not come as a shock to anyone who is involved in the pro-life movement.

The American public overall is opposed to abortion on demand; whether they call themselves "pro-life" or "pro-choice," a majority do not want abortion to be legal except in the "hard cases" (e.g. rape and incest), and of the remainder, most support limits on later-term abortions. The problem is that low-income Americans lean pro-life while the well-off tend to support abortion. For instance, in a January 2013 Gallup poll, 58% of those with an annual income of $75,000 or more identified as "pro-choice." Among those who earned less than $30,000 a year, only 41% identified as "pro-choice"—a whopping 17-point gap.

The 1973 Supreme Court

This leads, unsurprisingly, to abortion groups having a fundraising advantage over right-to-life groups. Abortion groups also enjoy the patronage of billionaires like Warren Buffett and Susan Pritzker. And of course, they command a majority of
a particularly elite group of nine.

But I don't think the oligarchy report (or at least, the media's reporting on it) captures the full picture. When the United States was founded, the vote was restricted to certain white males over the age of 21. It has never been a pure democracy. Put into that historical context, we are moving in the right direction; this study just serves as a reminder that we aren't all the way there yet.

And the pro-life movement is moving in the right direction too. Abortion levels in the United States are at record lows, pro-abortion think tanks are panicked by our progress at the state level, and just last week, the representatives of the people of Colorado rejected abortion-on-demand legislation.

So don't let the oligarchy get you down. Wealthy elites are powerful, but they are not omnipotent. By banding together, we can win.

P.S.—If you're a young pro-lifer in college, thinking about majors, consider business. The revolution needs funding!

What would ever change your mind?

[Today's post is by guest blogger Kara B.]

No too long ago, renowned Planet of the Apes cosplayer and animatronics enthusiast Ken Ham catalyzed the most massive synchronized facepalm when he answered a simple question asked by an audience member: “What, if anything, would ever change your mind?”  His answer, of course, was along the lines of “Nothing. No one is ever going to convince me that the word of god is untrue.”  Somehow, I suppose, he thought this was an intellectually honest answer. Ham even seemed to feel Bill Nye’s response (“We would just need one piece of evidence”) bolstered Ham’s position. 

See full quotes here.

Whether the topic is science, philosophy, politics, or math, there’s value in stepping back, loosening your hold on even your most closely guarded values, and pondering this question: “What would it take to change my mind?” Rather than simply taking a defensive position, you can actively define and set limits to the extent of your beliefs, while remaining open to the possibility that you might very well learn something.

Of course, the abortion debate is not primarily a question of science, but of values.  When we’re debating the humanity of the fetus, science can help, but if we are debating the personhood of the fetus, Bill Nye’s answer of “evidence,” won’t suffice.  Instead of more scientific facts, we require a change in philosophy. What would change your mind about your philosophical views on abortion? I think it’s alright if we offer answers to this thought experiment that may be highly improbable.  As long as the scenarios that would change your mind are possible, you have logically worked out your limitations and left your ideological opposites room to convince you.

I’m going to outline the results of my own experience with this thought experiment, but, before I do, I’m going to qualify my experiences with some background information.  Nearly all of my in-person friends hold some type of pro-choice position.  This has exposed me to a number of arguments and scenarios I’ve had to judge my own arguments against.  Since the arguments have come from friends, they haven’t been filled with vitriol; instead they've helped me determine where I agree with them, where I don’t, and what that means for my thought experiment.  Whether you’re pro-life or pro-choice, I recommend you talk your views over with some friends who disagree with you 100%, to help you if you get stuck.

There was a point in my life when I nearly did change my mind.  In high school I argued against abortion on secular grounds, but a few years later I spent a year abroad in Japan, and that shut me up. At the time, Japanese abortion laws were being revisited by the Diet (Japanese congress).  In light of the fact that Japan was, and still is, facing a huge crisis in having an aging population with a shrinking birthrate, the Diet was looking to restrict access even further.  Essentially, the Diet was hoping to use restricted abortion access as a way to increase the birthrate, thereby giving credence to the argument I hear these days, that abortion restrictions are designed to turn women into broodmares. 

I had never considered this perspective before.  I saw the destruction of the unborn as a very individual crime with a very individual victim.  I had never considered abortion politically.  I had never considered the idea that a restriction on abortion was intended specifically to force women into a particular lifestyle, and I wasn’t sure how that worked out logically in my mind.  Was potential tyranny of the state enough to override the rights of an individual to life?

It took me many years to process this information, although eventually I came to the conclusion that no, it was not.  The fear of turning women into broodmares is a separate question from that of abortion.  Besides, during the Japanese baby boom of the 1960s extended access to abortion was similarly used as a tool to manage women’s fertility, because at the time there were too many children for the social system to handle.  What needs to change in the present is the Japanese attitude towards women, not the Japanese policy towards increasing abortion access.

So, without any further procrastinating, here are five (perhaps improbable, but possible) ways in which I would change my mind.  They aren’t meant to be exclusive.  Perhaps there are other arguments there and I just have yet to find them:

1) I would need to find religion:

I’m an atheist.  As far as I know, this is the only life I will ever get to live and, as far as I know, the same is true of you, and of everyone.  I place a high value on the right to life specifically because there are no other rights without that first one.  Abortion is unique in that it revokes the right to life without serious consideration by third parties to reduce bias in the decision.  Revoking the right to life when the person in question has done nothing wrong, with the perpetrator receiving no legal or military consequences, is also unique to abortion.

However, people with religion have it differently.  I suppose if I were a true Buddhist, a true believer in reincarnation, I would be not only pro-choice, but I’d argue for abortion on demand.  After all, if the mother thought she couldn’t offer a decent life to the child, it would make sense to send that child on to its next life, where it might have the opportunity to have a good one.  If I were just your run-of-the-mill Christian, I might rationalize that though the opportunity to live might be lost, that child would be in heaven as an innocent.

2)  I would have to have a different understanding on what it is that makes up “me” and my consciousness:

This follows closely with the above reason, just in more secular terms.  As far as I know, the sum of me is a combination of brain chemicals and outside stimuli.  I don’t know why it is “me” who is experiencing what is going on in my brain, but I suspect that when that brain is done, whatever it is that is “me” will be done experiencing.  If I am wrong on that (and I don’t think I am, but anyway…), if there are some other levels of consciousness, then I might still not agree with abortion, but I might be more permissive with the idea of other women getting them, since their children would still go on to experience other things, instead of being robbed of the only consciousness they might ever know.  Of course, that kind of takes away part of the moral outrage I’d have about murder in general, which brings me to my next point…

3) Convince me that murder isn’t a big deal:

While I do think morality is subjective, I’m not a moral relativist (i.e. a person who accepts the morality of other groups and cultures because it is the morality they have).  My moral code may have been developed in the context of a western, American lifestyle, but I think it is a pretty good one. One of the core values included is that, generally, it is not okay to kill someone, and when it is, it is because of extenuating circumstances whereby that person is posing a direct threat to someone else.  Some cultures think it is okay to kill a woman because she was raped.  I’m not okay with that, and I wouldn’t be okay with that even if I did think sex was wrong.   A rape victim hasn’t done anything wrong, and she is paying for the actions of both another individual and a larger family or society that doesn’t know how to deal with her in their cultural and socio-economic context. I think this description also fits the aborted unborn.  However, if you can turn me into a moral relativist remove this concept of universal human rights, and convince me that murder is okay when the surrounding culture and society deem it okay, I’m pro-choice.

4)  If we lived in a certain dystopia:

Has anyone here watched the rebooted series of Battlestar Gallactica?  No?  There is one episode about a place called “The Farm,” in which my favorite character, Starbuck, is kidnapped by the Cylons and sent to a place where women are hooked up to machines to breed (Cylons want babies!)  That’s a pretty horrifying scenario.  If women were in fact being inseminated and forced to breed, and the only way to even fight back from this very desperate scenario was to prevent their oppressors from getting what they wanted and repeating the cycle, I would say abortion would be fully justified.  I would mourn the dead, but at that point, humanity is pretty much dead.

Similarly, if we as a species were less like Homo sapiens and more like Pacific salmon, I would have a different opinion on abortion.  If the only way to reproduce was to have the parent or parents die, I wouldn’t begrudge a parent making the decision to stop reproduction in its tracks.

5) Evidence against our current understanding of biology:

Lately we’ve heard some pro-choicers say that, due to the Great and Powerful Oz Bodily Autonomy Argument (GAPBAA), the fact that the unborn are human beings doesn’t matter.  I disagree.  If the unborn were not human beings, we wouldn’t be discussing whether bodily autonomy is sufficient to override their rights to life. 

I’m not terribly interested in legalistic personhood at this point.  Personhood has historically followed what the society at the time has felt about which human beings are persons.  This means that certain groups (including women themselves) have been seen as persons, non-persons, 1/3 persons, etc.   I am far more interested in knowing if the unborn are unique, self-automating human beings or not. 

Along those lines, I’m more interested in biological humanity than “personhood.” In that case I can’t see when a human being begins if not as a zygote. Convince me that I am in error on this point, provide me positive evidence that human beings begins at some later point, and you will have yourself a pro-choicer up until that later point.


Ok, kids, your turn.  Whether you’re pro-life or pro-choice, what would it take to change your mind? If you are undecided, what arguments would convince you one way or another?

The threat of illegal abortions doesn't justify legal abortions

[Today's guest post by Todd Pettigrew is part of our paid blogging program. This post contains profanity.]

The soon-to-close abortion center.
Image via Google Maps

Here in Eastern Canada, where I live, the abortion debate has been reignited by news that the Morgentaler Clinic, a private abortion clinic in the province of New Brunswick, will close this summer. When that happens, women in the province who want an abortion will have to go to a publicly-funded hospital which will perform the procedure only if it is deemed medically necessary by physicians.

The firestorm ignited by this announcement is blazing on a number of fronts, partly because the unusually nebulous rules around abortion in Canada mean that the reality of abortions vary widely from one area to another. The procedure has been legal in Canada since the late 1980s when the Supreme Court struck down the existing abortion law and no new law was passed to replace it (the late physician Henry Morgentaler who was at the centre of that decision also established the clinic now about to close). All regulation of abortion is done through the health care system, but since health care is run by the provinces, the relative ease of accessing abortion varies widely.

To be sure, the New Brunswick case raises difficult questions. In the absence of an abortion law, is it really right for provinces to control abortion through the indirect means of health-care funding? On the other hand, other non-medically-necessary procedures are not covered by provincial health plans (the New Brunswick government lists over thirty on its website). It is not immediately obvious that the public should pay to end a pregnancy when it won’t pay for eyeglasses or an artificial leg.

In any case, New Brunswick pro-choice advocates, it seems, see all abortions as medically necessary, and have condemned what they take to be unjustly restricting access to a perfectly legal procedure. Here is where the arguments begin to generate more emotional force than logical sense.

If abortions are not legal and easily accessed, the argument goes, women will undoubtedly seek unsafe, illegal abortions with disastrous consequences. In other words, if a woman is going to have abortions anyway, we might as well allow it and fund it. For some, this argument is so compelling that they become incensed that anyone could disagree. As one blogger recently wrote in the context of the closure of the Morgentaler clinic:

Do you honestly believe that women just won’t have abortions? Are you seriously buying into some kind of anti-choice fantasy where a woman gets to the halfway mark in her pregnancy and suddenly falls in love with the idea of being a mother and then her boyfriend shows up on their doorstep and asks her to get married and it’s all roses and white picket fences from there on? For fucking real?

This kind of rhetoric is typical of pro-choice arguments in two ways: first, it attacks the pro-life position as hopelessly naïve; second, it presents an easy way out for anyone who might be uncertain about the ethics of terminating a pregancy. It doesn’t matter whether abortion is right or wrong, a confused person might theorize, because making it illegal won’t stop it anyway.

Phew.

But any argument that lets you out of hard ethical questions is probably a bad one. And this argument is very bad.

When a society holds that a particular course of action is wrong because it unjustifiably violates the rights of others, it must make such an action illegal. Thus, for instance, assault is illegal, as is theft, and any number of other violations of other human beings’ rights. This principle is usually so obvious that we hardly give it a moment’s thought. You can’t just hit people for no reason. Or take their stuff.

But the illegality of assault and theft doesn’t, in fact, stop those crimes from occurring. They happen anyway, although they are illegal. And we don’t argue that because people continue to commit such crimes, we should just make them legal and not worry about the morality involved. No one calls for publicly-funded assault centers where angry and violent people can beat up victims in a controlled setting. Anyone who argued for such a thing would be rightly viewed as crazy. And if they responded by saying that “assaults are going to happen anyway,” we would instantly recognize that the point has been missed.

Consider how absurd it would sound if we borrowed our feminist blogger’s rhetoric but applied it to, say, a proposed measure to reduce theft:

Do you honestly believe that people won’t ever steal things? Are you seriously buying into some kind of ownership fantasy where a desperate person is about to break into a house and suddenly realizes that he has no right to take things that don’t belong to him, and then he and his buddies go off to volunteer at a food bank? For fucking real? 

No, not for real. Nobody seriously believes that the Criminal Code of Canada will prevent people from stealing. But that doesn’t make it right. And that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be illegal. And that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t punish people who steal things.

Those who favour legal abortions must show that an abortion is not a violation of the rights of an unborn child. Or, that such a violation of rights is justified. Or that an unborn child has no rights (and is, in a sense, not a child at all). I haven’t been convinced by any such arguments, but at least they are to the point.

Abortion supporters must not, however, be allowed to bully opponents by simply denouncing them as out of touch with reality. And they must not be allowed to get away with the chopped logic that tells us laws are only worth having if no one is likely to break them.