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Recommended
Alan
Keyes’
Faith
and Freedom Foundation PO Box 1310 Herndon, VA 20172 info@faithandfreedomfoundation.com
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Arguing abortion Posted: October 22, 1999 By
Alan Keyes It is often said that defenders of
the right to life harm their cause by passing an absolute moral judgment on
their opponents, thus implying that defenders of abortion are unqualifiedly
evil. We are accused of being close-minded and dogmatic, and of making
mutually respectful discussion impossible. We paint, it is said, with a brush
that is a bit too broad. We are told that within the Republican Party itself
there are many pro-choice people who consider themselves to be quite moral,
and who even agree that morality is the basis of the party, and that the
destruction of the family is at the heart of many of our national problems.
Pro-lifers are accused of unreasonably treating the pro-choice position of
such people as a sign that their more general moral convictions are not
sincere. We are told that this is counterproductive and uncharitable. I understand this sentiment. I
understand that many people assume that my own absolute rejection of the
abortion doctrine implies an absolute condemnation of those who defend it, or
even those who cannot find the will or understanding to stand with me to
oppose it. And I agree that it would be a mistake to conclude that all those
who accept abortion take equally immoral stances on every issue. But I
emphatically disagree that the solution is to cooperate in the effort to put
abortion on the back burner. Continuing to raise the issue is actually a sign
of our deep respect and concern not only for the unborn, but for those who
right now reject the pro-life position. There was once another group of
people who got an issue of fundamental moral importance wrong. They were
decent, good, moral people. They had tremendous moral insight, which I deeply
respect. They came to tremendous conclusions about human life and human
nature which led to the closest thing this earth has yet seen to perfect
political wisdom. They are called our Founders. But their wisdom does not entirely
negate the fact that a blighted and unjust institution was tolerated by their
actions. As with today's defenders of abortion, this acquiescence did not
make them entirely evil men and women. But neither does their great virtue
change the fact of that injustice ... or the fact that every human being
ultimately was responsible for struggling against it. Those who disagree with me on
abortion can be perfectly decent, moral human beings. I will respect their
moral conclusions just as I respect the moral conclusions of the Founders;
but I will fight the evil they tolerate, just as I would have fought the evil
tolerated by our Founders. If this ruffles some feathers,
you'll just have to excuse me, because the need to stand for American
principle on Declaration issues is the lesson I draw from the most important
events in American history, including the history of my own ancestors. I will
stand or fall with that lesson, because nothing in our public life is more
important than rejecting the principle that one human being -- whether it be
a mother or a slave-owner -- has the right to treat another human life as property.
As anyone who has insisted on
raising the issue of the right to life in the public arena knows, the
pressure to keep silent on the issue can be intense, particularly from
political allies who smell victory if we can just avoid certain uncomfortable
topics. This siren song is being heard again these days, as G. W. Bush
signals furiously that he will do whatever is necessary to avoid
"risking" defeat for the party by being "judgmental" of
his fellow citizens. Bush Republicans are fooling
themselves in their insistence that, if a few pro-life leaders would be
silent, the Republican Party would have clear sailing to victory. It is not a
few pro-life leaders who are keeping this issue on the table, any more than
it was Lincoln who kept the issue of slavery before the nation in the years
before the Civil War. Republicans yearning for comfortable victory can
struggle with the fact all they like, but it is the Declaration of
Independence that burdens this country with the abortion issue. The
Declaration is our burden to carry -- and we will carry it to glory, or to
perdition, but we cannot lay it down. I know that many Americans, many
Republicans, wish to do so. But they should look back at their own history, because
they are placing themselves in the tradition of those who avoided facing up
to the need for racial justice in this century, and of those who avoided the
need to fight the institution of slavery in the 19th century. The arguments for silence on abortion
have been heard before, in other times and on other issues. The issue, we are
told, is divisive. It will destroy the Union. It will be destructive of peace
and civil order. In reply to these arguments, the
same voice of conscience has sounded in every generation, telling us that we
will either believe in the principles of the Declaration, and reason
consistently from them, or we will not survive as a free people. This dilemma
was set before us by the Founders, when they penned their Declaration that human
beings self-evidently do not have the right to decide to abuse one another's
lives -- our Founders acknowledged in principle, even as they struggled with
their own practice, that the right to do so has been denied to us by God, our
Creator. And because the Declaration puts
this liberating truth before us as Americans, defenders of life have the
right to demand that those who insist on dropping the abortion issue confront
its words. For although abortion is called the "pro-choice" issue,
there is one choice that its defenders ultimately cannot make -- to ignore
the issue. They are either going to have to refute the argument against
abortion or accept its validity and join their fellow citizens in rejecting
abortion as we have rejected slavery and racial oppression. They cannot avoid this challenge,
because I, with many just and decent people in this country, will continue to
raise it. Even, or especially, at moments when political success or failure
at the polls is supposedly at stake, we will continue to make the argument
from principle. And we will make a better argument than the defenders of
abortion, because we have the self-evident truth of the principle of human
equality on our side. If our opponents disagree, they are welcome to join the
debate and make their case. We will go before the American people, who will
eventually decide the question in light of the Declaration principles that
still form the conscience of this people. So my goal is not to establish
that certain people are bad. It is to help retrieve all of us from the misery
to which a fundamental compromise of our deepest moral convictions will lead
us. The pro-life effort is a labor of love not just toward the unborn, but
even more profoundly toward those who are in the grip of the moral confusion
and, yes, evil, of the abortion doctrine. This is, finally, why we cannot
accept counsel of those who claim to oppose abortion in principle but urge
that the most effective course is to seek practical limits and reductions of
abortion short of prohibition. This view invites us to say to the American
people that we can turn our back on a challenge to our fundamental
Declaration principles, while we try to work at a practical level to reduce
an evil that we can't even call by its true name. This will not work, among
other reasons, because it is so clear that such proposals lack true
conviction. Our young people especially sense that tentative responses lack
the conviction of real moral confidence. They realize that if a thing is
truly judged bad, their elders will truly want it stopped, that it is only
things partially good that are long tolerated, and that if something is truly
harmful, we will seriously try to discourage it. In the end, the young people of America
-- all the people of America -- will draw the lessons our national actions
imply. And the lesson of silent toleration of abortion, even a frowning
toleration, is that it is consistent with human happiness to harden our
hearts against our offspring, to treat that offspring as a dehumanized
obstruction, and to remove it when it gets in our way. This is the lesson we
teach by anything short of a sustained effort to win the argument against
abortion, and end its legal practice. It is a lesson incompatible with
civilized life. Abortion is wrong in light of our
common principles as a people. Speaking out against abortion is thus
primarily the attempt to show its defenders that they embrace this practice
at the expense of things much dearer to their own hearts, and which they
cannot finally even consider abandoning. Opposing abortion by argument shows
precisely the respect and concern for our opponents that the ruffled-feather
crowd don't understand, for our argument relies on the presumption that all
of our fellow citizens remain resolved to seek justice, and to live with one
another in charity under God. Allowed to flourish, abortion finally will
undermine this deepest democratic confidence, and it is for this reason that
we must address it or confess that we do not intend to sustain self-government. http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=18688
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