Babymaking
July 23, 2009
If you want to protect a woman’s right to choose, vote Republican.
It’s always been fascinating to hear progressive pundits and politicians declare that conservative Republicans have been plotting for years to overturn Roe v. Wade and send the abortion question back to the states, so that evangelical Christians and right-wing Catholics can pressure state legislatures into curtailing reproductive rights for pregnant women. In truth, the last thing conservative Republicans would want is to see Roe overturned.
Think about it: if a majority of states severely restricted or criminalized one’s ability to have an abortion for birth-control purposes, and “irresponsible” sexual activity did not decline among middle-class and lower-middle-class Americans, we would have a rather significant social problem on our hands, no?
If women were effectively compelled to bring their unborn children to term, and could not financially support those children, these women would presumably have to turn to government support to provide for their offspring. (Even if the fathers of some of these children tried to help out, government support would still be necessary if the parents of these children happened to be very low on the American economic scale.) What conservatives refer to as the “welfare state” would have to be dramatically expanded to accommodate these impoverished children.
Since when have conservatives ever been interested in expanding the “welfare state?” If there’s one thing conservatives hate besides past Communism and present-day radical Islam, it’s the “welfare state.” However, the “welfare state” would have to annex more territory in order to keep these children from dying, especially if the parents of these children could not obtain sufficient support from members of their extended family or their local places of worship.
It’s hard to imagine the average conservative going for this. It’s easier to imagine the average conservative accepting abortion on demand as a necessary evil.
Seize my conservative credentials if you wish, but I would have no problem paying higher federal and state income taxes if I knew the money would go to providing for impoverished children who would otherwise perish in the foul rooms of filthy clinics. What can I say? It’s the compassionate conservative in me.
It’s impossible to envision a critical mass of conservatives being willing to do the same.
For years, both the left and the right have perpetrated a fraud. According to the most vocal of progressives, conservative Republicans want to subjugate women by denying them control of their own bodies. According to the most verbose of conservatives, “lib’rul” Democrats believe that there can never be too many abortions: how many times has Rush Limbaugh told his millions of listeners that feminism is a de facto religion, with abortion being the sacrament thereof?
Let’s not deny that a number of folks on the left see an aborted fetus as the residue of a constitutional right. Let’s also not deny that a number of folks on the right see an aborted fetus as something that would have become just another bastard on welfare, sucking money from hard-working taxpayers and growing up to become another prisoner or layabout. Keeping Roe alive is, in truth, a bipartisan matter.
Just as one cannot trust the next Republican Congress to actually shrink the size and scope of the federal government, one also cannot trust the next Republican President to appoint pro-life Justices to the US Supreme Court. Yes, Sarah Palin has captured the imagination of faith-filled conservatives because she has demonstrated a personal commitment to life—but what if she does not, or cannot, demonstrate a political commitment to life in the White House? If President Palin has a Supreme Court vacancy, will she really be able to resist the whispers in her ear from advisors encouraging her to select a judge with a “moderate” reputation? Palin is, so we are told, the second coming of Ronald Reagan. Dare we forget that Reagan placed two pro-Roe Justices on the High Court?
It would be nice to see Roe overturned one day, and the question of abortion returned to the states so that this issue can be debated with civility, respect and tolerance for all views. However, it will never happen. Unfortunately for those of us who sincerely believe in the rights of the unborn, Roe is a “politically permanent” ruling in the vein of Marbury v. Madison and Miranda v. Arizona. Powerful interests on the left and the right believe in the validity and practicality of Roe; it fulfills the progressive desire to allow pregnant woman to have control of their reproductive destinies, and simultaneously satisfies the conservative need not to have too many supposed “undesirables” nursing at the government’s teat. From a pro-life perspective, Roe is execrable; however, the lion’s share of political power in America is held by those who see Roe as expedient.
