Reducing the Need for Abortion

So, what are we to make of the Reducing the Need for Abortion and Supporting Parents Act ?

Rick Garnett writes :

They are asking pro-lifers to agree that it is “compromise” to accept the roll-back of the gains they have secured . . . . Many of us who are pro-life are being asked to accept a legal—indeed, a constitutional—regime in which citizens are disabled from meaningfully regulating (as opposed to financially disincentivizing) abortion, a regime whose premises are that unborn children are not in fact morally entitled to the protection of the laws and that those who think otherwise are required by the norms of good citizenship to cease trying to persuade, and a policy landscape in which public funds are being used not only to subsidize pro-abortion-rights activity . . . but abortions themselves.

To have doubts about the attractiveness of this faux-compromise is not to be a “radical” or a misguided “prophet.”

So, why should pro-lifers insist on real compromise if the proposed faux-compromise still reduces the number of abortions? Garnett answers:

First, overall, all things considered, the policy agenda of the current Administration and congressional majority cannot plausibly be regarded as one that will reduce abortions. Dramatic increases in the subsidization of an activity, combined with calls for the removal of all restrictions on that activity, are not well designed for reducing that activity.

Next, the concern of pro-lifers is, but is not only, with the number of deaths (if it were, then calls for a 25 mph speed limit would have to be regarded as “pro life” moves). It is with a distorted constitutional and jurisprudential framework that excludes entirely from the protection of the law an entire class of human beings and that disrespects democracy by removing from the political arena (i.e., the arena of “dialogue” and “compromise”) a question about the role of the law in expressing and protecting human dignity.

The American Catholic site adds :

The bill has been endorsed by all the main pro-choice groups, and is opposed by the “militant” National Right to Life Committee . . . . I suppose it’s possible that America’s abortionists are such a virtuous lot that they would endorse legislation they think would harm them financially. That’s, um, possible. On the other hand, when industry groups endorse legislation, it’s usually because they think it will help them, not put them out of business. And given that many of these abortion providers are the very people who would be getting the money doled out by the Act, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why the National Abortion Federation might see the bill in a positive light . . . .

Given that recent financial difficulties have already forced Planned Parenthood to lay off 20% of its staff, it’s hardly implausible that the money could help the ailing abortion industry stay afloat.