Trevin Wax thinks so. Wax finds five reasons to believe that we have reached a tipping point on the abortion issue:
The pro-life cause is winning. In state legislatures, in the media, and in grassroots efforts to reduce the number of abortions, pro-life activists have put abortion rights advocates on defense. The pro-life movement certainly has hurdles to overcome before the United States can become a place where all human life is legally protected. Yet the eventual outcome is certain. Here are five reasons I believe we have reached a tipping point in favor of the pro-life cause.
May 18th, 2011 | 1:04 pm
If you want to look at a movement that is winning, look at the gay-rights movement. In the early 1970s, secular liberal doctors classified homosexuality as a mental disorder. The religious Right of the time thought homosexual sex should be criminalized, and indeed in the 1950s homosexual behavior was criminalized (read about Alan Turing). Even go back to the year 1990, and imagine military leaders asking to get rid of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”, or homosexual marriage being legal. That’s what winning looks like.
Now let’s see what losing look like. Almost 40 years after abortion was made legal by the supreme court, for all the dog and pony shows put on by Republicans, women still have the freedom to have abortions. What evidence is there for the anti-abortion side winning? Trevin Wax sites a couple of Law and Order episodes, a quote from a 16 year old singing sensation, and an ad put up in New York City that taken down. And as far as they’re being a lot of anti-abortion sentiment among Catholics, the majority of Catholics (54%) voted for Obama. 96% of blacks voted for Obama. Do they not know Obama is pro-choice?
May 18th, 2011 | 1:25 pm
Jeremy brings up a point I was thinking; do we advance on one moral front only to retreat on another? It seems that way at times. We pushed racism to the margins in the 1960s, but at the same time decided that abortion was acceptable (even laudable). Now, perhaps, we’re getting ready to reject abortion, but at the same time are more & more accepting of the “homosexual lifestyle”.
May 18th, 2011 | 3:16 pm
I’d like to believe he’s right, but some of the reasons he gives seem pretty flimsy to me. And I think it’s hard to tell when you’re on a tipping point, because well… maybe I can make my point by brining up an article linked to from here a few weeks ago:
http://www.reformation21.org/articles/the-price-of-everything.php
As for the actual reason Trevin Wax gives: I think better ultrasound machines will help, and I’m glad my generation is more pro-life than previous ones. But… if pro-life storylines make better TV shows, then maybe that is the only reason that writers are writing more of them. If more people are adopting the pro-life label, does that mean more people are pro-life, or more people are using the label? I’ve run into plenty of people who say they are “personally pro-life, but… [pro-choice position].”
May 18th, 2011 | 4:22 pm
Jeremy, don’t confuse “haven’t won yet” with “losing”. By your way of looking at things, you’d have said slavery was winning during the 1850s, as it threatened to sweep across the West, yet, in a few short years even the Confederate legislature was considering abolishing slavery in a desperate effort to enlist blacks in the army.
Abortion (like other forms of murder) will likely never be completely eliminated, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be made illegal again. Several states have effectively lowered the age of legal abortion to the first trimester. According to one poll 72% of Americans–including many who self identify as “pro-choice”–now believe it’s murder to abort after the first trimester.
The science is against the abortionists, and I’ve noticed a shift in what they’re willing to try and defend. Some who, in the 80s supported it at any term in the pregnancy now only say it’s permissible in the brief span during which the child is a blastocyst, far before the end of the first trimester.
Now let’s look at your “winning” scenario. Even though I oppose gay marriage, I consider it a moral victory that people are no longer beaten or killed for identifying themselves as gay.
I don’t approve of the next behavior I’m going to talk about, but mention it because it seems to argue to the contrary of your “winning”. Teens in two schools where I’ve taught regularly say “that’s gay” about things they dislike or don’t approve of–vernacular that is surely common among their generation (why else would a PSA be made speaking out against it?). That’s “winning”? My generation didn’t talk that way in high school.
Is it winning that Missouri joined several other states in adding a ban against gay marriage to the state Constitution by a vote of 72% in favor? Is it winning that the most liberal president of all time (Obama) publicly stated he wouldn’t approve of repealing the Defense of Marriage Act during the first days of his presidency, and only felt he could change course in 2011?
Jury’s still out on gay marriage in American politics. Ultimately it will lose–evolution itself is it’s enemy–even if there are gains and legalization.
May 18th, 2011 | 5:07 pm
Unless there is some kind of grand compromise, which I do not expect is possible, why would anyone suppose that if abortion is somehow criminalized again, the pro-choice side will not fight just as hard to legalize it again as the pro-lifers fought to criminalize it? Unless something totally unexpected happens, abortion will be up to the states to regulate. Abortion was legal in some states prior to Roe, and it can be expected it will be legal in many states if Roe is overturned. Also, there was no abortion pill before Roe. If abortionists are going to be punished but women who procure abortions are not, what will happen to a woman who obtains and uses the abortion pill? Will the pill be put in jail?
May 18th, 2011 | 5:27 pm
Artiban,
I don’t know when you were a student, but use of “gay” as a derogatory term is not new (at least, it was popular at my middle school in the mid 90s); nor does it imply a whole heck of a lot about what the person using it believes. It just means that they need a smack upside the head.
May 18th, 2011 | 8:55 pm
@Artaban
“Ultimately it will lose–evolution itself is it’s enemy–even if there are gains and legalization.”
That’s a fascinating argument that I’ve always wondered about. You take a lesbian 100 years ago. She would probably get married and have kids, as most women did. Born today, women have a lot more options, and it’s likely she wouldn’t get married to a man or have kids.
However, we are not sure that homosexuality is genetic, although we know that it’s something innate and not chosen. Also, there is the option of surrogacy, which may become more popular in generations to come. Surrogacy would allow gays to propagate their genes without heterosexual sex.
However, there is a way natural evolution could greatly reduce abortion rates. With only people who want kids having them, nature might select women who have a great desire to have children. Abortion might just phase itself out.
May 18th, 2011 | 10:10 pm
We are still seeing the effects of slavery 150 years after the civil war in the way our country deals with race. It still is with us, we haven’t necessarily “won” that issue. Likewise, induced abortion effects will still be with us 150 years from now. This is not an issue like simply changing speed limit, much damage has been done and will continue. The induced abortion rate is still high. Fear peddlers will still get women to have abortions. Our country now is below replacement level. The future holds an aging population, with elderly women approaching death neurotic and grieving their abortions, neighborhoods devoid of children, empty schools, the tax base flipped on its head–we will say what the hell did we do? This is not the way a country survives. I am certain we will “win”, but I hope not merely because the devil bites his own tail.
May 19th, 2011 | 7:42 am
Jeremy, the idea behind civil rights is that truth wins out in the end. That means a civil rights movement is not over until everyone – or at least the solid majority – agrees what truth is.
It takes a long time.
look at the gay-rights movement. In the early 1970s, secular liberal doctors classified homosexuality as a mental disorder.
That did a lot to discredit psychology, though. It’s widely known that the reason for the change was not related to scientific opinion, but to political pressure.
However, the issue of science overriding democratic governance by using its status as “expert” to “diagnose” what behavior is and is not acceptable is a separate issue – one that does not appear to be anywhere near a ‘head’.
As far as the gay rights issue, I wouldn’t say it has won. There are several issues involved, and none of them appear to me to be all that near resolution.
The idea of sexual liberation in general had a strong surge – but that appears to have peaked, and now we as a society are looking (in some cases for the first time) at the costs of sexual liberation, as opposed to just the pleasures and “rights” of the individual. So “gay marriage” has got to weather that – I think we will end up recognizing and accepting gay couples as couples (last I heard, we already were about “there”), but gay marriage entails much more than that.
Angry IVF children are already asking questions like, “What made them think they had the right to do this to me?” – add this to Octomom, Jon & Kate, Balloon Boy, and legislation in a growing number of states and countries recognizing adoptees as having a right to their biological identity – all of this is the start of what I believe will be a new civil rights movement: the rights of children. People are asking questions like where the line is between adoption vs. exploitation. There is the recognition that adoption can be exploitation.
And people are starting to “feel” the lack of what has been called “social values” – the values that knit a society together and keep things functioning well. People raised on individualistic values tend to take society for granted – they think it just happens or something – but as institutions fail, we increasingly realize how much trust is the glue that holds societies together, and that’s a problem for both abortion rights and for gay marriage – abortion rights because it’s all about making exceptions in the idea that all of us are equal before the law, and gay marriage is based on lies and fraud.
So if I am correct, and society follows its period of expanding individually with a period of consolidating, restoring integrity, and replacing “cohesion”, then I don’t think that will be a good thing for individualistic “rights” that are based on selfish people hurting children for selfish reasons.
May 19th, 2011 | 8:25 am
Artaban –
Is evolution the enemy of sickle-cell anemia?
May 19th, 2011 | 9:06 am
The changes that can take place in public opinion, and over a very short period of time, should never be underestimated.
In 1891, duelling was a sufficiently serious problem in the German and Austro-Hungarian armies to call for a denunciation by Leo XIII. Today, Patoralis Officii strikes us as merely quaint, but, as late as 1906, Chancellor von Bulow declared that “the army cannot tolerate in its ranks an officer who is not ready, should need arise, to defend his honour with arms.”
Yet, after 1918, the practice was unheard of; anyone sending a challenge would have been laughed to scorn.
May 19th, 2011 | 10:29 am
[...] Joe Carter at First Things] AKPC_IDS += "29985,"; Share [...]
May 19th, 2011 | 10:44 am
@Michael PS: A bit off topic, I know, but I’ll note that the US’s Uniform Code of Military Justice still contains provisions against dueling—it was last revised in the 1950′s. The constitution of Mississippi—promulgated in 1890—banned dueling (actually, it disenfranchised duelists, seconds, and anyone who actually delivered a challenge) until 1978.
For anyone interested in the history of dueling, Barbara Holland’s Gentleman’s Blood is a good, fairly short, and witty resource.
May 19th, 2011 | 1:33 pm
The ultimate purpose of the sexual revolution was to sever the connections between sex and marriage and children, so that personal gratification could be established as the primary purpose of sex. Abortion is the ultimate guarantor of that revolution. It is the means by which women are enabled to behave as men behave, and free themselves from the ‘tyranny of biology.’ In the absense of abortion, the burdens of the sexual revolution will lean heavy upon women, and they will start to assert the old constraints. So long as the sexual revolution remains established in the culture, abortion will remain sacrosanct.
People are fiddling with the limits of when an abortion may be performed. What they are not doing is challenging the central logic of abortion itself. They have not suddenly decided that an unborn child has intrinsic human worth from conception. They are not repudiating the idea that an unborn child acquires human worth only after some period of development. This is an objective good in that it reduces the number of abortions being performed, but it does not constitute ‘victory.’ It means we are becomeing more sophisticated and nuanced and selective in the destruction of our own chidlren.
carl
May 19th, 2011 | 6:22 pm
I wish I believed your points, but you left out one really big one: more and more abortions take place without anyone ever knowing about it. Plan-B, morning after, emergency “contraception”, or whatever you want to call it permits abortion to be chemically engineered and never recorded.
May 19th, 2011 | 7:19 pm
I think Mr. Wax overstates the case for the pro-life advance, and cites some questionable items by way of support.
And yet I think there is a sense that the cause of life has been making some slow, incremental advance. Just looking at public surveys, political discourse, and abortion rates, it seems likely that support for abortion peaked around 1990 – about when the baby boom generation was really coming into its own as the mature driving demographic force in the country. Since then, reservations about abortion have been creeping back up, as manifested in lower abortion rates, higher public self-identification as pro-life, and an increasing raft of abortion restriction legislation (enacted and proposed) in many states.
Why so? Ultrasounds definitely play a big role. So does medical technology, as it pushes back the threshold of viability. The fact that pro-life families are more likely to reproduce themselves. And what we see in the media, as in films like Juno may be a reaction to that rather than a cause. Perhaps the country is not quite ready to ban abortion outright, but in most states it seems quite willing to restrict it a great deal more than is currently the case.
May 20th, 2011 | 8:23 am
In addition to Plan B, it should also be noted that the ordinary birth control pill can stop a fertilised egg from implanting. This is technically a form of abortion. Oral contraceptives have been used by 80% of women in the USA at some point in their lives. With better education on how to use the pill, it’s probably likely that they are never having to have abortions. However, if you believe a fertilised egg is a person, then the abortion rate is substantially higher than it is being reported.
May 20th, 2011 | 10:42 am
Gregory K. Laughlin and Jeremy,
First, Plan B and the pill both work primarily by preventing ovulation. They also seem to work against fertilization if ovulation has already occurred. There is no definitive proof that Plan B (or, I believe, the pill) prevents implantation.
Here’s the pertinent statement from the packaging:
Wikipedia tells us:
May 20th, 2011 | 11:07 pm
David Nickol,
I suggest you look for the evidence in the publications of the Catholic Medical Asso. or NCBC. The various committees and federations have been trying to change the definition of pregnancy for just this reason–they know about the pre-implantation effects. The Wikipedia excerpt if a great example of the misuses of the the language–the Federation has carefully not said that EC acts to prevent implantation, it says it acts [sometimes] “prior to the earliest time of implantation”. Is this in contrast to the “latest” time of implantation or something? What is being implanted, a watermelon seed? Simply put, if a pregnancy test is positive before implantation, does the Federation, ACOG, AMA, or some other collection of 3 button suits tell the woman she is not pregnant?
Likewise, the packaging insert was written by Orwell. If pregnancy starts at implantation, then of course you can’t call it an abortifacient. But in the same paragraph it says EC acts sometimes by inhibiting implantation. This changes the gestational time of Homo sapiens. A paradigm shift, ahoy! Will women shout “Honey, I’m pregnant!” or Honey, I’m implanted!”
If the mechanism of action worked at the time of placental attachment instead, would the definition of pregnancy change again? Who is on that committee?
May 21st, 2011 | 12:22 pm
Is this in contrast to the “latest” time of implantation or something?
TWX,
The answer to your first question is yes. Implantation is the process during which the developing embryo burrows into the wall of the uterus, and that takes about 48 hours to complete successfully. (About half of the time, it fails.) So it makes perfect sense to say “prior to the earliest time of implantation.”
But in the same paragraph it says EC acts sometimes by inhibiting implantation.
No, actually it says, “In addition, it may inhibit implantation (by altering the endometrium).” This is not a statement that some of the time, Plan B works by inhibiting implantation. It is a statement that one of the mechanisms by which the drug works may be (not is) by inhibiting implantation. It means that inhibiting implantation also may not be one of the mechanisms by which the drug works. Nobody is really sure.
Simply put, if a pregnancy test is positive before implantation, does the Federation, ACOG, AMA, or some other collection of 3 button suits tell the woman she is not pregnant?
Pregnancy tests are negative if an egg has been fertilized but has not implanted. The pregnancy tests used today measure a hormone in the woman’s body that is present only if implantation has taken place. So when a woman undergoes a “pregnancy” test, it is really an implantation test. This is one reason why it makes sense to consider pregnancy as beginning with implantation. It is easily measured. Another reason is that if you consider a woman pregnant at the time of conception, there is up to an 80% chance (estimates vary) that she will lose the “baby.” Most early embryos do not successfully implant. Why would one want to confirm fertilization when 80% of the time there will be no implantation and no possibility of a baby developing?
The fact is that if you consider successful fertilization to be the beginning of a new human person, the majority of “people” do not live more than a week or ten days.
May 22nd, 2011 | 3:05 pm
beta-Human chorionic gonadotropin can be measured in the urine or serum. The fertilized egg starts emiting this before implantation and the positive results depend on the sensitivity of the test (serum being more sensitive). Pregnancy tests are not an implantation test, it is just that the levels of hCG are higher at implantation than before. As you describe, implantation is an event, a description of a location, along the continuum of life. If your 80% estimates are true (it is commonly accepted to be 50% but Hilger’s research has found that not to be so high, plus you have to separate out the IVF cases from natural pregnancies), that doesn’t change the status of personhood. If 80% of the so-called persons on the slave ships died en route, then why abolish slavery?
Some women want to confirm pregnancy early on so steps can be taken not to lose the baby. Such as progesterone suppositories, hCG injections, etc. Again, Hilgers has over 25 years of research on this.
The ACOG and friends will fight tooth and nail over the semantics of implantation, because the stakes are so high for the contraception crowd; those pesky conscience clauses and all that. The line is drawn at implantation, more than other events on the continuum, because of the mechanism of a pharmaceutical. It is an issue of language, not science. Whether or not fertilization creates a person is a matter of philosophy. Whether or not fertilization creates a new biological creature is a matter of science. Implantation is an event, like birth, like puberty, like menopause. It is as absurd to take any one of those events and declare a new threshhold for personhood.
May 22nd, 2011 | 5:28 pm
TWX,
I will try to answer in more detail later, but hCG can only be detected in a women’s blood after implantation. The hCG has to have a way to make it into the blood, and it can’t get there before the early embryo has implanted and connected directly with the mother’s circulatory system.
I never said that because an embryo does not implant, it is not a person. What I did say is that if it is a person, most people die in their first few days of life. There is a theological question as to why the majority of people conceived would never be born. It does not mean that an early embryo is not a person, although some would argue that it would not make sense for God to design the human reproductive system so that most persons who were conceived died within a few days. For Christians, this means they can never be baptized. For some Christians, who believe explicit recognition of Jesus as one’s personal savior is necessary for salvation, it means most people conceived go to hell. For Catholics, it means the fate of most persons is totally unknown, since the Church has no explanation to what happens to those who die before birth.
May 27th, 2011 | 12:59 am
HCG is still there, it depends on the sensitivity of the test. Regardless if it is hCG or Kool Aid or corn syrup that is tested, the measure of a chemical is not a valid litmus for personhood or the definition of the begining of pregnancy.
Years ago, and in some modern dictatorships, toddlers and babies had extremely high mortality rates. It is, in fact, an old question; CS Lewis at least touched on this when he wrote that God takes children because of love, and that if we are lucky enough to make it past childhood, God surely must want us to do something.
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