Two of the front-runners in the race to become the next Republican president have a big problem, one that has been covered extensively by the media: They have a record of being pro-choice.
Mitt Romney, who will likely be the Republican nominee in my opinion, has an almost tailored-to-the-voter record on the controversial issue, recently having changed his views to become a not-tried-but-true pro-lifer.
Rudy Giuliani, the popstar of the Republican race, still holds a pro-choice position. In the first debate, he nonchalantly answered that it would be “okay” if the Supreme Court either overturned or left the protection of choice in place. In the second, he said the government needs to stay out of personal lives.
The problem with this debate is that it is often characterized as having two standard positions: pro-choice and pro-life (or anti-choice and anti-life, depending on whom you listen to). And the problem faced by many of these politicians reveals how this pigeon-holing of human beings into “left” and “right” categories glosses over the difficulty that the abortion problem really poses.
For the most part, it simply makes people angry. Maybe there are existing ways to begin thinking of this issue, as our politicians should – not as a right-wing versus left-wing issue, but as a complicated issue.
America, as well as other western states, is a liberal society. The average American, in terms of political theory, is a diehard liberal (in the traditional sense). Most look to the recent Republican revolutions and the increasing power of the religious right as a reason to refute this claim. Nonetheless, our constitution remains relatively unchanged (although sometimes skirted), and our history cannot be rewritten. Sipping deeply from the latte of John Locke and our founding fathers, if you will, even the most red-blooded, arch-conservative, Reagan-worshipping American is likely a liberal, by believing that taxes should be kept low and that the government should be kept small, and by being skeptical of the monarchical or fascisitic state.
The only way you can really avoid the liberal label, while educated in the tradition of the United States, is if you believe that the government is fundamentally good and should be allowed to reign unchecked over both your money and your personal life. But for those out there who believe in free market capitalism, who are devoutly committed to a personal religion or who don’t think government is the best answer for every societal ill, their answer to most political debates is, of course, a liberal one, in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith.
And so, being the so-called leader of the free world, we have the privilege of being able to look to our liberal tradition to guide our way. The best course of action for those who believe abortion is immoral is, therefore, to keep it legal. Obviously, the abortion issue raises some doubt about a moral problem, and when in doubt, our history suggests, liberalize the issue and make the people free. If we believe in the American tradition, we must agree that freedom almost always yields the right results anyway. For those of us who think that the existence of America and its freedoms have been a massive mistake, by all means, criminalize whatever you want – especially when the debate is predicated on personal choice.
But if abortion remains legal, it allows the society to have a critical debate (which we’re now having), regarding the morality or the immorality of abortion, while keeping certain self-determining principles intact. This gives the pro-life position the opportunity to end abortion. If abortion is made illegal, the debate ends, as it no longer matters whether or not an individual should choose to have one; it is simply not allowed. The debate becomes how to prosecute the offenders of the law, because the law will assuredly be broken. If it really is an unimpeachable truth of morality that abortion is wrong, a free and open debate should result. I think this is probably what the constitution intended, by allowing broad protections for life and liberty.
Abortions that happen now may, in the future, be realized as tragedies of American history. But this realization will take place if and only if they are allowed to happen by choice. This seems unfortunate from the pro-life perspective, but it’s the only available means to actually have it established by the society that abortion is morally wrong.
Pro-choice Republicans seeking to be President have nothing to worry about. Their pro-choice record demonstrates nothing more than the solidity of their faith in the belief that abortion is wrong. They believe it is wrong so much that they would allow the debate over its morality to continue to what they see as its inevitable conclusion: that abortion is wrong. In this way, the decision in Roe v. Wade was the best thing that ever happened to the pro-life cause.
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