Pro-Choice to Save the Planet? I Don't Think So...

In my time as a pro-lifer, I've heard a number of arguments from the crowd who is ostensibly in favor of a woman's "right to choose." These so-called pro-choicers have an array of arguments, from saving the woman from the trauma of rape (apparently, two victims are better than one) to claiming that the pre-born child isn't human (what is it then?). However, there is one argument which seems to be used more frequently each time that I participate in a protest/demonstration/memorial for life. I call this argument the "Save the Planet" argument. It essentially states that we are running out of natural resources, and that we need to keep the population in check; apparently, abortion (and its sidekick, contraception) is the only way that we can do this.

In the past, I would usually make three counter-arguments. The first is that abstinence accomplishes the same thing (fewer births); my efforts here only really garnered me the label of being "anti-choice." Second, I would mention that the birthrate in many western countries (especially in Europe) are rapidly approaching or have already approached rates that would cause a decline in the native populations, thus causing immigrant populations to overrun these nations and their cultures; for this I would often be shouted down as a bigot (for wanting these cultures to survive) or told that this only proves that abortion and contraception work nicely for controlling the population. My third argument would point to the unknown and overabundant natural resource of humanity: our ingenuity; this argument was often successful but would usually effectively derail the debate by going off on a tangent.

However, there is a fourth argument against the "Save the Planet" justification of abortions. This last argument is so obvious that it tends to be overlooked: simply put, the "Save the Planet" argument discredits anyone who calls himself[1] pro-choice. The rhetoric used by the pro-choice has always been that getting an abortion should be the woman's "choice" because it is her body. But the "Save the Planet" argument only works if the woman "chooses" an abortion: if she keeps the child, then she is contributing to overpopulation.

If overpopulation is a problem, then there's simply no way around this. In order to remedy the problem, we must drastically reduce the number of children born, and we must do so now. This means that women can't "choose" to carry their unborn children to term, but wait! The logical conclusion is that women must either cease to get pregnant or they must have an abortion if they do get pregnant and their "child-quota" has been met. Such is the case in countries like China and India, which have mandated maximum child quotas with severe governmental penalties attached for families choosing to exceed those quotas.

It is therefore obvious that the "Save the Planet" argument cannot be considered "pro-choice," because its logical end is that more children should not be born, and thus that pregnant women should have abortions. Whereas there are a variety of pro-life choices (from adoption to choosing to the mother's choice to raise the child), there is only one option available to "Save the Planet": abortion.

That this argument is growing in popularity does not help the cause for people who claim to be pro-"choice." Furthermore, the fact that there has been no widespread attempt by pro-choicers to disavow this argument and disown those who use it is perhaps more incriminating to the pro-choice cause. This pervasiveness shows just how many pro-choicers really are pro-abortion only. As I mentioned earlier, this line of reasoning can only lead to one place: a program of forced abortions. Given that the original defense of legalizing abortions in America (one which is still used today) is an appeal to a woman’s right to “privacy,” and to “have control over her own body,” it would seem a bit odd that this is the path down which a large part of the pro-“choice” abortion industry and its apologists are headed.

Thus, on the one side are the pro-lifers, who offer a variety of choices to pregnant women, from adoption to parenthood. These defenders of the innocent unborn receive as thanks the vitriol and hatred of the abortion industry, including, of course, charges that they are anti-choice and that they infringe upon women’s rights, most notably the rights to privacy. On the opposing side are the abortion-lobbyists, many of whom are self-styled pro-choicers who would prefer to offer women two choices: abortion by consent or by force; privacy, and choice, indeed.

To anyone who knows anything about the historical roots of the so-called pro-choice lobby, this should come as no surprise. Margaret Sanger, a founder of Planned Parenthood (the nation's largest abortion provider), would certainly approve of this direction. She once stated that "The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it [2];" she also proposed that "No woman shall have the legal right to bear a child… without a permit for parenthood," and "The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind [3]." So much for choice.


[1] Oddly enough, in my experience this argument is most often used by men, though women are increasingly beginning to use it. This would also seem to lend some credit to the idea that too many "pro-choicers," particularly men, are arguing for economic reasons, and not for women's rights.

[2] Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922.

[3] Margaret Sanger, quoted in Charles Valenza. "Was Margaret Sanger a Racist?" Family Planning Perspectives, January-February 1985, page 44.

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If you found this post helpful, some related posts may be found here:
The Shame of Silence: Men and Abortion
Abortion and So-Called "Lebensunwertes Lebes" (Catholic America Today)
Speaking Up, If Painfully
Pro-Life Motives
Social Services and Blood Money
Righteous Fear of the Lord and the Pro-Life Movement
How to Lose the Culture War
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Righteous Fear of the Lord and the Pro-life Movement

All of us involved in the pro-life movement have at some point or other heard the charge that the movement is an entirely Christian one. Certainly, in America (and around the world) the pro-life movement is dominated by Christians, having begun with the Catholics and then later joined by various protestant denominations and organizations. However, I’ve argued before that the pro-life movement is not only a Christian movement, and there are people of all (or no) religious persuasions who have joined the pro-life cause.

Still, it is difficult-to-impossible to deny the strong influence of the Christian religions on the pro-life movement. The overwhelming majority of pro-lifers are most certainly Christians, yet though there is a certain religious element to our involvement in the pro-life movement, it would come as a surprise to most people to learn what that element truly is. Christians, like most other people, recognize abortion for what it is: the intentional killing of an innocent human being. This is no great revelation to anybody, namely that we are pro-life precisely because we believe that killing innocent humans is wrong.

Historically, abortion and infanticide have been with us for a long time, and Christians, as well as their predecessors the Jews, have always been opposed to such acts. We know, at least, that the Greeks had a form of infanticide known as “infant exposure” and that elixirs and potions were sometimes consumed by women for the purpose of killing their unborn children. We also know that such acts were rare amongst the Israelites, amongst whom barrenness was a form of shame for women.

Still, by the time of the Roman Empire, abortions were often obtained by prostitutes and unwed women. The practice was also opposed by the Catholic Church at this early time, hence the Didache, circa AD 70-80, “The second commandment of the teaching: You shall not murder… You shall not use potions. You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child.” The Epistle of St. Barnabas, written during the same time period, confirms this teaching of the early Church: “Thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born.”

It is not the justification of our cause but rather the drive behind it which makes so many Christians pro-life and so many others not. In other words, our religion isn’t what is telling us that abortion is wrong: we already know that it is. Professor J. Budziszewski points to what he refers to as “guilty knowledge” as evidence of this. Noting that a pro-abortion counselor was quoted by a pro-abortion journalist as say “I am not confident even now, with abortion so widely used, that women feel it’s OK to want an abortion without feeling guilty. They say, ‘Am I some sort of monster that I feel all right about this?’” Budziszewski then notes that this statement is revealing: “Plainly, if a woman has guilty feelings for not having guilty feelings, she must have guilty knowledge.” In other words, even many of the women who are obtaining abortions for themselves realize ultimately that abortion is wrong. This is confirmed by numerous surveys, in which the vast majority of women report feelings of regret, guilt, and depression; as well as higher rates of alcohol and drug abuse, eating disorders, and a variety of other conditions.

We know that abortion is wrong, and we don’t need religion to tell us this. Thus, while Christianity may affirm that abortion is indeed wrong, its real contribution to the pro-life movement is its insistence that we carry this knowledge to its right conclusion and oppose abortion. Knowledge is much like faith in that it often does us little if any good if not acted upon. Hence St. James the Just in his epistle: “What shall it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but hath not works? Shall faith be able to save him?”

Unlike members of many other religions, particularly those which are forms of atheism, we believe that if we do not oppose even the greatest of atrocities, there will literally be hell to pay. As one of my favorite philosophers, Russell Kirk, noted, “What raises up heroes and martyrs is the fear of God…. A God-intoxicated man, knowing that divine love and divine wrath are but two different aspects of a unity, is sustained against the worst this world can do to him; while the goodnatured unambitious man, lacking religion, fearing no ultimate judgment, denying that he is made for eternity, has in him no iron to maintain order and justice and freedom.” We are sustained in our fight by the knowledge that were we to not do so, we would be committing the sin of omission and may thus be judged for it.

Given the bileful and often even violent resistance which we encounter as our reward for affirming the right to life, it is no wonder that so few people are willing to take a stand on this issue. It is only by our support from each other and ultimately our strength derived from a just fear of God that we are able to continue in this, even in spite of setbacks such as those recently faced at the polls in the latest round of elections. It would therefore do us all well to remember the words of that wise sage, Dr. Kirk: “Meek before Jehovah, Moses had no fear of the Pharoah; but… [those who were] much at ease in the presence of Zion, [they] were timid in the presence of a traffic policeman. Although convinced that God is too indulgent to punish much of anything, they were given to trembling before Caesar. Christian love is the willingness to sacrifice oneself….”

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If you found this post helpful, some related posts may be found here:
Abortion and So-Called "Lebensunwertes Lebes" (Catholic America Today)
My Reflections on Nancy Keenan's Speech
Some Thoughts on Abortion: Some Rights are Greater than Others
Abortion Rationalizations and Motives
My Thoughts on the CLFL Roe v Wade Day Booth
On Being Pro-Life
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Why Pro-Life and Pro-Family Go Together

Though social conservatism encompasses many causes, two general traits seem to be most prominent. The first is the sanctity of life cause, centered first around opposition to abortion and now branching out to meet the culture of death on more and more fronts, from euthanasia and doctor assisted suicide to embryonic stem cell research and cloning. The second general cause of social conservatives is the pro-family cause, once associated with protecting the longevity and indissolvability of marriage and now most often its sanctity. Most people associate these two causes with each other, but often for the wrong reasons; the two causes do tend to be supported by the same people, but they are more closely related than one would be lead to believe.

Pro-lifers have always held the view that abortion is intrinsically wrong because of what it is: the intentional killing of an innocent human being. On this point they have in fact been somewhat successful-- today, the majority of Americans do hold the view that abortion takes a human life, and that it is in fact wrong. This is shown by data from polls, and it is validated by the abortion clinics' increasingly popular practice of holding "funeral vigils" for their "patients." However, in spite of acknowledging that abortion is in fact murder, many Americans still support keeping it at least somewhat legal: the majority opinion in the US is that Roe v. Wade should not be overturned.

This should come as a bit of a shock: it means that some people believe that abortions should be legal even though they believe that those abortions are murder. Given that few people believe that murder in general ought to be legal, this view that abortion must be permitted needs to be reconciled with itself: what is so special about abortion that makes it an "ok" form of murder? The answer may be found in the 1992 Supreme Court case Casey v. Planned Parenthood. In the ruling for this case, the court stated that Roe v. Wade had been decided incorrectly, and it all but said that abortion was in fact murder. However, it upheld the "right" to abortion by noting that

"To eliminate the issue of reliance [on abortion] that easily, however, one would need to limit cognizable reliance to specific instances of sexual activity. But to do this would be simply to refuse to face the fact that for two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail. The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives."

In other words, abortion is tolerated as a matter of convenience. Once referred to as the proverbial “bundle of joy,” a child instead becomes a choice and thus an inconvenience, a burden, to its parents. This has become so ingrained in our society that people are now less understanding of the young newly-wed couple who wish to have children right away than of the pair of thirty-somethings who are still happily childless. Abortion itself is now little more than another contraceptive, albeit one which merely works to kill an already conceived child rather than merely preventing conception.

Abortion itself, and for that matter contraception in general, has been around for a very long time. One method of contraception now referred to as “pulling out” is even mentioned in the Bible (Genesis, no less), and references to contraception and methods of abortion (and even infanticide) abound throughout history. However, it is only more recently that both have become so widespread in America (and in the West in general). Contraception is used by more couples than not, and according to Planned Parenthood’s Guttmacher Institute, approximately one in five pregnancies in America end in abortion.

The high abortion rates, low pregnancy rates, and widespread use of contraceptives all point to the same conclusion. People’s attitude towards sex is distorted: it is recreational though not procreational. No longer is it viewed as a unity between two people giving of themselves. Whereas sex was once a means to the end of a more complete unity between two people, each giving of his or her self to the other to complete the other in a sacred bond, it is now the end to which the other person has becomes the means. Thus, each partner now views the other as an end and uses that means to the end of pleasure. The sacredness of the action is lost as it becomes a mere sport, even at times a spectator sport in the form of pornography.

When the sensual aspect of intercourse is emphasized, its unitive aspect is lost. This is simple fact: if each partner is seeking their own pleasure above all else, they can only be using the other person to obtain that pleasure. In other words, each is too busy taking from the other to give of himself or herself in return. Thus is lost the unitive aspect of sex, and with it must go its parts, including its procreative purpose. The irony of this is that without the unitive aspect (and thus the procreative purpose), the sensual aspect (and thus the pleasurable purpose) of sex is severely weakened. This is obvious by the number of people who get “bored” of sex or of sex with the same person. These people first look for newer and “better” ways of enjoying sex with the same partner, then move to trying it with a different partner, and finally with multiple partners.

Unfortunately, this distortion of the meaning of sex has entered into marital relationships, too. Many married couple, especially young married couples, are using contraception to prevent conception, and (more tragically) some are using abortion (the last contraceptive measure) during those instances when the contraceptives fail. Thus, the procreative purpose of sex is being divorced from the pleasurable purpose; one can’t help but to think that the unitive aspect is therefore being separated from the sensual aspect. The results of this separation are manifest in the nation’s high divorce rate, as marriage becomes an arrangement for mutual benefit and pleasure rather than a sacred bond between two people, for better or worse.

Due to this view, children become an optional accessory for marriages, perhaps a blessing if they’re wanted, but almost certainly a burden when they’re not. That children are by no means seen as an end to marriage is obvious; that they are often the first casualty in a divorce is clear enough. Society therefore has a view of marriages which is a mere shell of its true self. It is for convenience and pleasure, a means to the happiness of the two spouses. When it ceases to fulfill this end, it must be dissolved, no longer serving any purpose, just as when the sex ceases to be satisfactory the old partner may be discarded and a new one sought.

It is at this point that of same-sex marriages enter onto the scene. If sex and marriage really are only about the pleasure and the benefits, what reason is there to deny these to people on the mere basis of sexual orientation? The answer is that there is none. Certainly, some people can fall back on the Judeo-Christian tradition and call on the Bible for support. Unfortunately, such a retreat is little more than hypocrisy if marriage has already been stripped of its meaning in this context. If marriage is to have the meaning given by modern society, then there is indeed no good reason to deny it to same-sex couples while granting it to heterosexuals.

There is, however, an alternative option. This is to take the traditional or Judeo-Christian view of marriage, and thus also of sex. This view ordains marriage as a sacred bond between two people, joined together by covenant until death. A part of this view is that sex is about more than just sensual pleasure: it has a unitive, spiritual aspect. Both partners give of themselves to complete the other, and a part of this giving is the openness to the creation of life. Sex therefore has a procreative purpose, and marriage must then have a function as the foundation of a family, meant as the base from which to raise children.

Thus, opposition to homosexual marriages must inherently mean also openness to life, that is, it must have a pro-life worldview. When procreation is divorced from intercourse, unification too quickly follows, and then much of the basis for marriage is eventually lost as well. Conversely, a pro-life stance must also be rooted in a pro-family, pro-marriage worldview. Abortion will never be stopped until it ceases to be viewed as another form of contraception, a convenient “failsafe”; as long as sex is viewed as a means to pleasure, contraception (including abortion) will always be used to prevent the inconvenience of pregnancy and children.

Practicing My Draw

They're been a rash of likely related robberies in my neighboorhood lately. Management has left two warning notices about burglaries that have ccured in the nieghborhood lately-- several in the last couple of weeks. The police have several suspects, but nobody has been caught yet. As if this isn't bad enough, the report is that these people are getting bolder; and given the time of day during which these robberies have happened, they aren't being cutious about it. My roommate has even heard reports that the robbers don't bother with picking locks or going about the job in secrecy. Apparently, doors are kicked in, the robbers take what they want and don't care if anybody is home or not; if a person is unfortunate enough to be home when the robbery happens, he (or she) is then mugged.

Needless to say, this has all of us feeling a little bit nervous. My roommate answers the door with a gun when he's not expecting callers, and I have beenpracticing my draw. I hope it doesn't come to that, but having a sidearm certainly gives me a little more security. Luckily, Texas doesn't have particularly strict gun laws (unfortunately, they don't recognize Oregon's CC permit), so my roommate and I are able to be aforded at least that small security. However, I have to wonder about people in similar situations in those states like California which have strict gun laws.

I hope and pray that the criminals are caught before they do too much more harm or damage, and I also hope that my house is spared. That being said, it's a comfort knowing that I have the ability to defend myself.