Last week I wrote on the horror of what just happened in New York, where the legislature passed a law on the dark anniversary of Roe v Wade that, amongst other things, achieved these three devastating political objectives of the abortion lobby:

1. Non-doctors, including nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and midwives, are now permitted to commit this seriously invasive and dangerous act of abortion on women.
2. Dismembering a full-term baby up to the point of birth is now fully legal provided that the mother declare her emotional health requires the baby’s life be terminated.
3. Legal protections (like basic medical care) for babies who survived an abortion attempt and are born alive were repealed.

Unsurprisingly, the supporters of legal abortion pushed back against my opposition to the law, arguing that it was necessary for a host of reasons.  One of the most peculiar defenses was this persistent characterization that people who are pro-life only want women forced to deliver babies but then don’t care at all what happens to the baby (or the mother) once he is born.

Obviously the preponderance of the evidence proves the opposite.  The overwhelming number of free crisis pregnancy clinics that are supported entirely not from government funds, but from the generosity of pro-life Americans.  Still, besides that commonly ignored reality, the argument that the economic and social concerns for a born child somehow outweigh that child’s right to live is bizarre and rather macabre.

Perhaps introducing a parallel moral issue would help illustrate that.

In the post-Civil War, Reconstruction era of American history there was a huge question of what should be done with former slaves who had no education, no income, no marketable skills, no land, no home, and no hope to secure any of those things.  While the 13^th Amendment had freed them from slavery, they were anything but free from those economic and social challenges.

Would anyone in their proper mind think it was an appropriate argument for a person then to say: “These people wanting to abolish slavery aren’t going to want to pay for the healthcare and education of all those slaves they are freeing.  So we have to keep slavery legal.”  Obviously not.

That’s why, even though all those economic and social challenges of having children are real and legitimate, they do not (nor should they) justify the perpetuation of an immoral act like killing the children in the womb.  Surely even the most ardent supporter of abortion rights would agree with this, no? 

None of us should suggest that by ending abortion we wouldn’t experience a number of social concerns that we have address.  But can’t people of goodwill also agree that those concerns do not themselves justify the act of abortion?