I have wanted to write about this for some time, but never ... what? ... never gotten around to it? Maybe I was afraid of the topic. But, now, here it is.
People who support the right of a woman to have an abortion and people who think abortion should be illegal have not thought the issue through. Maybe I haven't. But, here's my thinking as of now.
I am morally opposed to abortions generally, but opposed to making them illegal.
A criminal law ought to be based on logic or be an attempt to protect the values of a society.
So, the first question is, can a law making abortions illegal be supported by logic?
Any logical argument must be based on a self-evident truth. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men (and women) are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. That among these are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Thomas Jefferson wrote those words in our declaration of independence and I believe them to be true.
Unfortunately, Mr. Jefferson didn't say which one of those unalienable rights was self-evidently the most important.
The argument over whether abortion should be illegal is, logically, an argument over which of these unalienable rights is most important. Is the right to life most important? If so, then those who want to make abortion illegal ought to prevail. Is the right to liberty most important? If so, then those who want a woman to have the right to do what she wants with her own body, even if it involves the death of someone else, ought to prevail.
I believe the right to life is most important. More important than the right to liberty. But, unfortunately, I can't make a logical argument that it should be. It is a feeling, an emotion. But, laws cannot be based on feelings or emotions. They have to be based on logic.
Even those who agree with me that life is a more important right than liberty are conflicted on the subject. "Give me liberty or give me death," said one of our founding fathers. One of our states has a slogan: "Live Free or Die." We routinely ask our soldiers to kill and to die for our liberty. Even many who claim that they hold life as a more important right that liberty support the death penalty.
So, the other question is, can a law making abortion illegal be supported as an attempt to protect the values of our society.
All the polls on the subject put us, as a society, nearly evenly divided on the issue of abortion. Some polls show us to slightly favor a woman's right to an abortion, others show us slightly against abortions. Part of the difference depends on how one words the questions that are asked.
With every other law of which I can think, if that law is based on protecting our values, we, as a society, are overwhelmingly in favor of the law. Take murder, as an example. There are a few - a very few - people who don't think murder is wrong. But, overwhelmingly, we agree, as a society, that murder is wrong. The same for hitting people, or stealing things, or abusing one's children. Some people think they're okay, but overwhelmingly we think, as a society, that they are wrong. So, we make laws making them illegal.
But, abortion - whether it is wrong or right - is not something on which we are overwhelmingly, as a society, in agreement. We are very divided on the issue. We might wish that we weren't so divided. Those who support a woman's right to an abortion probably want everyone to agree with them. Those who believe that abortion is the moral equivalent of murder probably want everyone to agree with them. But, as a society, we are not in agreement. I don't think that a society should base a law on its right to protect the values of the society when the society is fundamentally divided on the issue.
So, a law making abortions illegal must be made on the basis of logic. I can't make a logical argument that abortions should be illegal. I can make what I perceive to be a very strong emotional argument that they ought to be illegal, but I can't make a logical argument.
Which leaves me believing that those who think the issue is easy, that it is black and white, that it is cut and dried, are wrong. It is emotional. But, we can't make laws based on emotions when we, as a society, are not in agreement on those emotions.
So, I am personally against abortions, but I don't think that we, as a society, ought to make a law against them.
