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The Spectacle Blog
Using a recent flap involving Herman Cain as a jumping-off point, Ross Kaminsky has written a thoughtful piece for the main site on abortion and the Republican Party. Here are a few thoughts of my own.
First, since the GOP has taken a firm position against abortion, nearly all of its nominees would have allowed abortion to remain legal in cases of rape and incest, as well as when necessary to save the life of the mother. That was the position taken by George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, and John McCain. That is also the current position of Republican frontrunners Mitt Romney and, as best as we can tell, Herman Cain.
The one Republican nominee who did not favor a rape exception was Ronald Reagan, who did not suffer at the ballot box as a result. As governor of California, Reagan signed into law a bill that was supposed to legalize abortion in the “hard cases.” The result was broadly elective abortion. Reagan did not want to go down that road again. But every Republican nominee from Reagan to McCain was willing to accept rape exceptions if it was the only way to get pro-life legislation passed. Many hard-line pro-lifers who have lost the nomination, such as Alan Keyes, have said they would be willing to make the same political compromise.
Most organizations working to advance legal protection for unborn children recognize opposition to abortion with those three exceptions as pro-life. It is a pro-life position that has commanded majority support in some national polls, including among women.
Second, what makes abortion morally wrong? If abortion is morally wrong because, as Cain says, human life begins at conception and abortion takes an innocent human life, then that would seem to not just be a matter of moral preference but a legitimate object of public concern. If abortion is the taking of innocent human life, then it is a proper matter for government to either prohibit or regulate by requiring certain reasons to justify the taking of such lives, as the government does with your life or my life.
Third, the above position can be reconciled with libertarianism, properly understood. Minarchist libertarians believe government should prohibit force (including the forcible taking of human life), fraud, and theft. Libertarianism is about what one believes about the state. Whether a libertarian should be pro-life depends upon what one believes about the fetus, or at least how to balance fetal rights against the bodily integrity of the pregnant woman.
Finally, when a pro-life Republican loses an election it is often asserted that they lost because they were pro-life. When a pro-life Republican wins an election, there abortion position is often ignored. Polls have shown that single-issue abortion voters tend to be pro-life, sometimes by as much as a 2-1 margin, and that the pro-life position is frequently a net vote-getter even for losing Republican candidates. This has been especially true in presidential elections since at least 1988.
View all comments (23) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by W. James Antle, III
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/10/26/abortion-and-the-gop
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pro-life | 10.26.11 @ 4:21PM
Antle is right about the polls -- which show a pro-life position has helped GOP presidential candidates. See http://www.lifenews.com/2011/0.....advandage/
C Bowen | 10.26.11 @ 4:46PM
Of course its helps, particularly with urban Catholic swing voters. But once in office, witness Bushes, Reagan, and so on, Planned Parenthood funding ends up in every budget, and approved by so-called pro-life Congress critters. It's a scam.
I think the frustration with Cain, was the weasel words--his inability to articulate a coherent position (say, federalism), not really whether he was sufficiently pro-life or not--those people don't really care, witness Republicans.
Margie| 10.26.11 @ 7:16PM
You're such a liar. But I think everyone knows that by now anyway.
Typical Paul-bot liar.
C Bowen | 10.26.11 @ 7:26PM
How am I liar, One Who Was Afraid of Saddam?
Rick Santorum and George W. all approved budgets that funded Planned Parenthood and Ruling Class types call them pro-life.
Jack in Wi| 10.26.11 @ 11:34PM
Article 3 Section 2 of the Constitution says, in part." In all other cases before mentioned, the Surpreme Court shall have Apellate Juridiction both in Fact and Law with such Exceptions and such Regulations as Congress shall make." Ron Paul has introduced legislation to get this job done to strip the Federal courts of their Juridiction in the issue of Abortion, It would then be returned to the states and people to decide. Ron Paul is the most articulate pro-life advocate I have seen in over 30 years of pro-life activism. Herman Cain and all the rest would do nothing and are incoherent on the issue.
Clint| 10.26.11 @ 6:25PM
The following candidates refused to sign the pledge: Herman Cain, Gov. Jon Huntsman, Gov. Gary Johnson, Gov. Mitt Romney."
http://www.sba-list.org/2012pledge
Teflon93| 10.26.11 @ 4:21PM
People who no longer have the moral conscience to understand the profound injustice of abortion may find it easier to understand through the analogy to slavery.
It took centuries and a terrible civil war to widely recognize the profound injustice of slavery. Can you imagine a candidate embracing the notion of slavery in ANY circumstance? Of course not---we recognize that it always violates the right of the slave to be free.
Likewise, the fact that you have been the victim of a horrible crime doesn't give you the moral right to inflict the death penalty upon an innocent person, much less one who is your child.
Rape and incest are horrible, awful crimes for which the perpetrators deserve punishment. And yet we bridle even at putting rapists to death.
How then do we think it's just fine to kill the innocent child whose father was a rapist? On what basis do we presume they have no rights whatsoever? Why is denying them due process of law perfectly fine whereas we scrupulously ensure the rapist's rights are honored?
Even where the life of the mother is truly at risk---and this is an extremely tiny proportion of abortions even taking Guttmacher Institute claims at face value---1% of abortions---why does the mother's right to life AUTOMATICALLY supersede the child's? If the mother happened to be a serial killer would we still presume her life to be of more value than her child's to society?
The fact that we don't even ask such questions is the surest sign that we are living in a time where our descendants will deem us cruel and morally blind---as we do those of our slaveholding ancestors.
Scott| 10.26.11 @ 4:43PM
I assume you campaign as with the same vigor against the evils of the birth control pill, correct? Life begins at conception, right? Therefore, every woman taking birth control is potentially aborting lives every single month.
Darling Jee| 10.26.11 @ 5:10PM
The most basic concept of a birth control pill seems to have eluded your fertile imagination, Scott! :-)
C Bowen | 10.26.11 @ 6:22PM
Umm, no. The Pill alters the lining of the uterine wall so a fertilized egg will not attach. The so-called morning after pill, is just a high dosage birth control pill, after all.
It ends up being flushed down the toilet.
If one believes that life begins at conception, one cannot support the Pill.
Should we take an informal poll of "pro-lifers" on the pill (or partner) here?
Kingofthenet| 10.26.11 @ 5:40PM
I think you mean IUD
Teflon93| 10.27.11 @ 8:07AM
I am opposed to birth control, whether abortifacients like RU-486 or merely contraceptive. We practice Natural Family Planning.
The difference between contraception and abortion should be rather obvious---no act of murder is undertaken by preventing conception as life does not begin until the ovum is fertilized.
You apparently missed your biology class as well as ethics.
Kingofthenet| 10.26.11 @ 5:39PM
The GOP IS an Abortion, and messy as it is it looks like a Back Alley job!
Clint| 10.26.11 @ 6:24PM
Dr.Ron Paul Signed The Pro Life Abortion Pledge.
http://www.sba-list.org/2012pledge
galerouth| 10.26.11 @ 8:01PM
this is science:
fetus ( NOT A BABY, THEY ARE BORN...GOOGLE THE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT CHART) is a parasite because the classification of the biological relationship that is based on the behavior of one organism (the fetus) and how it relates to the woman's body:
as a zygote, it invaded the woman's uterus using its Trophoblast cells and hijacked her immune system by using Neurokinin B---so her body won't KILL it, and stole her nutrients to survive and causes her harm or potential DEATH!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I....._pregnancy
"it is also possible for a symbiotic relationship to exist between two organisms of the same species."
http://www.answers.com/topic/symbiosis---–Gale's Science of Everyday Things:
Symbiosis
"an animal or plant that lives in or on another (the host) from which it obtains nourishment. The host does not benefit from the association and is often harmed by it"
if a man can kill his tapeworm at anytime, so should a woman abort her unwanted human parasitic fetus at anytime, too.
RA| 10.27.11 @ 7:22AM
You are completely wrong. Through the study of genetics we know without a doubt that the "fetus " is a human being. This is fact, you can do with this fact whatever you choose.
Mick Lee| 10.27.11 @ 10:16AM
Zygote…fetus…baby. These classifications are descriptive—science is you will—although these concepts are also arbitrary human constructions. What is not science is what this writer tries to imply by them: an ambiguous process by which an organism passes through some demarcation into that mysterious category called “personhood”. This isn’t science. This is mysticism.
Questions “Personhood” or when an organism becomes a “human being” are planted axioms which are themselves anti-science. Their very premises are non-developmental. The writer and those who share his argument have it exactly backwards. It is not science to say that by fulfilling these “criteria” an organism becomes a human being. Instead, at each point in gestation, THAT IS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A HUMAN BEING. Pick any point during gestation. The characteristics of that point are what human beings are like in the human life cycle. You can quibble about fetus/baby; but it is irrelevant.
The writer also thinks as if conception and the subsequint attachment to the utertian lining (and—horrors—stealing her nutrients) as if a space alien invaded a woman’s body and was sucking out her life force.. This is what come of separating human intercourse from human procreation as if they were two discrete and unrelated interactions. One would think conceiving a child after intercourse was like contracting gonorrhea or syphilis.
To the contrary, conception is the natural consequence of human sexual intercourse. Yes, every encounter does not always result in a conception. On the other hand, it is simply astounding how the female body strives to conceive. Thousands of women through the ages can attest to becoming pregnant during those times during their mensal cycle or in their advanced age when they were supposedly “infertile”. In more recent human history, many thousands of women can testify to becoming pregnant even while using birth control faithfully.
Let’s not be silly. “We all know where babies come from.” Again, no space creature climbed up a woman’s vagina and took up residence in her womb. No foreign growth floats into her uterus and grapples like a pirate ship unto an unsuspecting cruise liner. From conception to the birth of the “organism”, that human being “in miniature” is a creation (or growth) FROM the woman’s body.
Perhaps because I am a conservative and not a libertarian, I fail to understand the fascination over whether the abolition of abortion with special exception can be defended as a libertarian positive. Instead, the focus should be entirely in a different direction.
There is no more public question than who were count as one of us and to whom we will extend our protections. Those pro-life have no interest in telling a woman how to live her life. The issue is justice for the unborn. There are things more important than self-determination. Integrity is often beyond one’s self-chosen personal code. Society…our country…is judged by how it treats the weakest among us. We have a duty…a trust…the speak up for these very weakest who literally have no voice.
galerouth| 10.26.11 @ 8:01PM
this is the law:
ABORTION IS A CIVIL AND CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT SUPPORTED BY THE RIGHTS TO PRIVACY, THE EQUAL PROTECTION CLAUSE OF 14TH AMENDMENT, AND THE 13TH AMENDMENT.
no human has a right to life or any due process rights by the 14th amendment to use another human's body or body parts AGAINST their will, civil and constitutional rights: that's why you are not force to donate your kidney---the human fetus is no exception; this is protected by the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.....ion_Clause
consensual sex =/= a legal, binding contract for an unwanted fetus to live.
M.McC| 10.26.11 @ 10:17PM
You are the Clint of the left. This is not a complement.
Mick Lee| 10.28.11 @ 8:16AM
Interesting! A kidney is the same as an unborn child. Nine guys in black robes (seven out of nine actually. Two dissenting) manufacture an abortion ruling based on a right not enumerated in the Constitution nor in English Common Law nor exists as such. A legal ruling no state argued in favor. A ruling the plaintiff did not argue for. All based on a lie one woman told about the circumstances of her pregnancy.
Privacy a right? I’ll try that with the IRS next time. We’ll see what they have to say about that.
Yup. As a Conservative, that’s good enough for me! Good riddance to this morality stuff. Now we Conservatives and Republicans can get back to the real business our dear party was cut out for: Bitchin’ about the unions and cursing the fact we can’t smoke in our favorite watering hole anymore.
Oh! We even have the special bonus getting to argue among our selves over legalizing weed.
Happy days are here again!
Clint| 10.26.11 @ 8:53PM
A Sanctity Of Life Bill would do two things: (1) It would define unborn babies as persons under the law. (2) Under the authority of Article. III. Section. 2. of the US Constitution, it would remove abortion from the jurisdiction of the court.
Jack in Wi| 10.26.11 @ 11:25PM
Ron Paul is the only candidate running who would use the constitutional power of Article 3 section 2 of the Constitution to take away the power of the Federal courts to regulate abortion Roe vs. Wade could be history in as little as 2 years and the power to regulate abortion would be back in the hands of the states and people. All the rest of the candidates are more of the same.
Tanta | 10.26.11 @ 10:51PM
I did not realize Minarchist libertarians believe government should prohibit force (including the forcible taking of human life). It puts Minarchist libertarians in a new light. Is there a Minarchist libertarian candidate in the run for election?