#591 - Peace & Life: Case against Roe - December 10, 2021
Making the Case against Roe
Opinion writers are especially active now that the arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson were recently held. It’s foreseeable to have an upsurge again when the decision comes down. Here are some thoughts to respond to common points:
∞ Rape and incest cases - especially for under-age girls; see for example this recent New York Times article. Yet in that article, and commonly elsewhere, they’re instead making one of the strongest cases against easy abortion availability: more sexual abuse happens because of it. Men who feel entitled to female bodies know in advance it’s a handy cover-up. See How Abortion is Useful for Rape Culture and Abortion Facilitates Sex Abuse: Documentation.
∞ Do men have a say? They don’t experience what it’s like to be pregnant. But here’s the flip side: men who make so-called “pro-choice” remarks are actually the ones who need to take care. They must show they really mean choice, and not just that they feel entitled to women’s bodies, with abortion as part of their calculation. See What Do Men Have to Say on Abortion? Related to that question, see If Men Could Get Pregnant.
∞ When they argue that politicians don’t really believe they’re protecting human life, since they don’t support it on other issues, then of course that’s where the consistent life ethic excels. The CLE also makes a good case to compare the dynamics of abortion to war or the death penalty in various ways so that the analogy communicates (and also breaks stereotypes, one of our major obstacles). Sometimes it makes sense to also point out the converse: we need a Consistent Peace Ethic, since we have trouble convincing people on other peace and justice issues if we don’t also oppose killing babies.
∞ Our website, The Price of Roe, is designed to make the case that Roe has actually sabotaged all kinds of peace-and-justice goals. The price is all the change we missed.
∞ Reflecting on best practices for dialog: Tips on Dialogue, Two Practical Dialogue Tips for Changing More Minds about Abortion, and Dialog on Life Issues: Avoiding Some Obstacles to Communication.
∞ In some cases, we just have to realize that logic is beside the point, For example, Whoopi Goldberg recently had an outburst saying “How dare you?” to the point that a fetus has an interest in having a life, and an article in National Review pondered her logic. But she’s a post-abortive woman who can be expected to be defensive; see our post, Explaining Belligerency.
Our Latest Blog Post
Sarah Terzo discussed The Impact of Family Caps on Abortion.
Quotation of the Week
Michael Gerson, conservative columnist
The Washington Post, December 6, 2021
[Referring to actions discouraging vaccination]
For the “don’t tread on me” crowd, this is part of a consistent ethic of death . . . whatever view you take of the antiabortion movement, it is essentially communitarian, not libertarian. There is no rational way to advocate this viewpoint that does not involve the community of the born defending the interests of a voiceless, helpless group of nascent humans . . .
And it is hard to see how a GOP increasingly dedicated to needless death can carry an antiabortion message. The effective end of Roe would be an ideal point for responsible pro-lifers to assert their position on abortion as part of a broader culture of life, including the unborn and their mothers, the old and ill, people with intellectual disabilities and refugees fleeing oppression.