What Anti-Abortion Advocates Know In Their Bones But Can’t Acknowledge In Their Minds

Not every pregnancy will result in a new human being. That’s life and we accept that. And because of that at an instinctual level we do not comprehend the death of a first trimester human being as the same thing as the death of a developed human being.

My position on abortion is simple: it’s a bad thing and it would be better if there were fewer of them. I have no problem with pro-lifers railing against planned parenthood or slamming Marxist pseudo-feminists for lying about or trivializing abortion. (Hence I don’t blink when running these posts at NRB.)  While the life of a zygote is not the same as the life of a fully developed child it still has value. We should do what we can to discourage abortion, promote sexual responsibility (both abstinence and contraception.) But here’s the nature of the law: just because something is bad or morally wrong it does not mean that it necessarily should be illegal. Conservatives know that government is an inefficient, impractical tool for remaking the world and every time you pass a law you get unexpected consequences that can produce scenarios just as bad if not worse than what you had initially.

This whole argument, though, is rather beside the fact. We can certainly have this discussion and it can be fun and intellectually engaging. But at the end of the day it’s not going to matter that much because abortion is low on our list of political priorities — or at least it should be.

Here’s the question for all anti-abortion activists: is this issue the most important of the day? As in, can you vote for a candidate who does not share your view if they are right on other more consequential issues? Because I can answer unequivocally that I won’t have a second thought when it comes to pulling the lever for a candidate who wants to criminalize abortion but who will properly fight the war against Islamic Nazism.

But I’m not so sure about my debating partners. If the presidential nomination came down to pro-choice hawk Rudy Giuliani and pro-life foreign policy crackpot Ron Paul who would you support? If abortion is truly murder and the reality of the past 40 years is a “Holocaust” then it seems like one would have to consider this issue a more serious threat than Radical Islam. But perhaps I’m wrong about how those logical wheels should turn for my colleagues…

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