Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Losing ground. . .

Abortion is for our time the same kind of moral test as civil rights were to many generations before.  It is not simply about abortion and when it is or is not legal but about the value we assign to life.  Given that criteria, the results of the election have not seen us advance but rather lose ground.  It is clear from the actions of states that the populace has decided abortion must be preserved in some form -- something on which both conservative and liberal, Republican and Democrat seem to agree.  For now, there are still states in which abortion is illegal: Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia.  Missouri, joined Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, and Kansas in passing pro-abortion ballot initiatives.  Voters seemed to believe that Trump was not the threat Harris claimed to their “fundamental right” to abort their children.  According to the exit polls, 47% of those who believe abortion should be legal “in most cases” still voted for Trump.  Again, this is not simply about abortion but about the esteem in which we hold life from its natural beginning to its natural end.

Furthermore, the IVF talk, be it political banter or not, has added to the idea that life is not sacred but the technology we use to control it is.  I fear that the cause for life has not been advanced by this election or by the ballot choices so far but rather we have lost ground.  It seems that both sides of the political spectrum have decided that life is a commodity rather than a treasure to be preserved and protected.  While most pundits agree that a Trump administration is far more Christian friendly than a Harris administration would be, the reality is that this does not necessarily apply over all to the important issues relating to the cause of life.  The differences are degrees and not in substance.  Perhaps that reflects the fact that the populace is still wary of any kind of bans on the freedom to make reproductive choice (at least one outside the decision to have sexual intercourse) and even more fearful of limitations of the rights of the parents to do what they think they need to do in order to conceive when they do want a child.  In addition, they seem instinctively libertarian when it comes to putting down hard and fast rules about the preservation of life for the physically and mentally fragile, the aged, and those who decide for themselves that the time has come to die.

For all the hype, Trump seems to manifest no deep or profound religious convictions outside the mainstream of American experience.  Neither in his nor Harris' campaigns were there any explicitly religious themes used to rally a particular segment of the religious landscape and, indeed, a conscious decision made to advocate for some leeway for abortion and out and out support for IVF despite the public warnings of Roman Catholics, to name just one group.  Unlike in other campaigns, religiously prominent figures played no significant role in this campaign on either side.  This election witnessed the the fewest overt references to religion in American history and those which were noted were innuendo from the shrill voices of the liberal left more than from the candidates themselves.  This is a warning sign that religious causes such as the sacredness of life no longer warrant the deference of the candidate in pursuing that religious clientele.  In other words, those voters belonging to churches with strong pro-life stands are not necessarily mirroring the position of their church bodies as they enter the polling booth.  While some might chalk this up to pragmatism, I fear that the afterglow of Dobbs has left us blind to the fact that we have not done a good job of reasoning and persuading the people that life is sacred and that assaults on all sides of the cause, as well as abortion, are the beachheads on which the future wars will be fought and not within the hallowed halls of the courts.

1 comment:

Carl Vehse said...

Rather than President Trump being badmouthed because abortion wasn't eliminated immediately on Inauguration Day, one should consider at least small successes that came from actions President Trump took on Inauguration Day.

For example, on Inauguration Day Trump signed an Executive Order ending birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens born in the United States. And what pro-life miracle came from that??

The next day, the leftist, radical pro-abortion New York Times switches its position and admits that the preborn are not just a clump of (disposable if unwanted) cells, but really "unborn children," whose pregnant mothers wonder whether they will be U.S. citizens (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/21/us/birthright-citizen-children-migrant.html).