Pro-Lifers Are Not The Problem
James Joyner proposes that conservatives in the future will have to move away from anti-abortion politics to appeal to the rising generation:
The younger generation, then, have grown up with abortion as a simple fact of life and have no interest in changing that.
However, as Jim Antle notes in his article on the post-election scapegoating of social conservatives, Millennials or “Nexters” (as Pew insists on calling them) are no less pro-life than their elders. The youngest voters are just as split on abortion as the public as a whole: approximately a third favor no restrictions, a fifth want more restrictions in the context of legal abortion, and almost a third support a strict ban with the standard exceptions. There is a slim majority that favors stricter regulation of abortion of one degree or another, so this is one area in which the next generation is not noticeably drifting to the left. Another important thing to bear in mind is the even stronger pro-life sentiments of young evangelicals. Evangelicals by themselves continue to be a very large part of the Republican voting coalition, they are not the only pro-life conservatives, and the intensity of pro-life attitudes seems to be increasing, not waning, among evangelicals, which makes the suggestion that conservatives and the GOP should move away from a pro-life agenda seem unworkable.
9 Responses to “Pro-Lifers Are Not The Problem”
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If ant-abortion sentiment is unchanged for the young overall, but higher for young evangelicals, that means it’s lower for young non-evangelicals.
That suggests that abortion may become more important for motivating the Republican base, but even less useful for winning the center.
Are you arguing that the majority of people favor restrictions on first-trimester abortions?
As far as I can tell, permitting abortion in the first trimester is a mainstream and incredibly popular position. This also happens to be the point at which over 90% of abortions occur.
While parental notification laws and restrictions on second and third trimester abortions may be popular with a significant majority, I have never seen any evidence that a majority of the American electorate favors a ban on first trimester abortions. Which is to say most abortions.
And yet according to the pro-life movement, there is no moral difference between a third trimester abortion and using RU-486. According to their perspective, while one may be more heinous then other, both are still murder. I do believe a failure to make that kind of distinction is a huge turn off to the center and only appeals to a very small minority among the Republican base.
Let’s put it this way: pro lifers position on first trimester abortions is about as popular as feminist’s position on third trimester abortions.
What is the pro-life position on fertility awareness/natural family planning as birth control?
Time to bring back the whole “quickening” idea. The Church used to have a bit of common sense, before the Reformation and Counter Reformation killed it. Time to revive the whole idea of abortion in the first three months without all this sturm and drang.
Theological speculation about ensoulment or quickening had no effect on the prohibition against abortion at any stage, which goes back to the early Church.
The problem is pro-life extremism. Nothing, save a nationwide ban on all virtually all “non-essential” abortion procedures will satisfy the anti-abortion radicals who have hijacked the conservative movement and the Republican Party’s social agenda.
I think it’s worth noting that a fair number of young evangelicals are involved in those virginity groups like True Love Waits and similar groups, and it’s quite easy to be pro-life when you don’t have any sexual experience and don’t understand why the competing interests really are important. Some of those young pro-lifers turn into pro-choicers when they become more sexually active.
Further, even if we grant Larison’s point about the percentages being the same with the young, it’s also worth remembering that pro-lifers are on the short end of the stick in terms of the overall percentages. In other words, national candidates can win despite being pro-life, but not because of it. Over the long term, this may not be a sustainable situation– especially if anything ever actually happens to Roe.
Tomlin is not necessarily correct. The intensity of anti-abortion sentiment is increasing amongst young evangelicals, not the frequency. Pretty much all Evangelicals of any age are and have always been pro-life for obvious reasons.
To say that the problem is anti-abortion extremism is so detached from reality as to say the problem is anti-crime extremism. The media would like you to believe that Pro-Lifers are a bunch of Clinic bombing crypto-fascists. I don’t understand why an AmCon reader would oblige it.
The Church never ever had a cavalier attitude on abortion attributed to it by Mr. Boots.
Some morally flaccid Pro-Lifers turn Pro-Choice in order to accommodate to their surroundings once these surroundings become more urban and liberal. Most do not. Strong Pro-Life sentiment is much more numerous than strong Pro-Choice sentiment, which is the near exclusive domain of the Wymyn’s Studies crowd. Pro-Life seems like a liability because the media demonizes Pro-Life candidates, but this is not because their actual positions are politically weak.
The real problem in the Evangelical wing is a bizarre preoccupation with the War On Terror, End Times and Israel that skews their priorities and is probably intensified and propagated by interested parties. This bespeaks of a deeper problem still of a bunker mentality amongst Evangelicals that seems to hate thought, knowledge, and critical thinking. All of these problems manifest themselves in the Evangelicals continued loyalty to the Republican party and the loathsome Mr. Bush. (Although even some Evangelicals might be alerting themselves to the time of day on that score.) It would also help if Evangelicals would cease to continue their idolatry of America.
Why does ensoulment or the Church’s position on it even come into the question of whether abortion should be legal or not? That’s a theocratic use of government to enforce religious beliefs and strictures.
I think if people are honest, they will see that the “conservative movement” has been greatly debased and theocratized by pro-life, anti-choice position, which has become the lifeblood of the movement. Abortion really has nothing to do with political conservatism per se. It has everything to do with religious theocracy, however. And since the pro-life movement began after Roe v. Wade, the entire conservative movement has been co-opted by religious theocrats. At first this was limited to the abortion issue itself, but it has spread like a virus to include virtually aspect of the GOP platform. Goldwater and even Reagan were in many respects social liberals (in Reagan’s case, a Hollywood liberal), and they did nothing to actually reverse Roe or stem the tide of abortion, even if Reagan offered a few platitudes in that direction. But today’s “conservatism”, to the degree that it isn’t conservatism at all, has become what it is primarly because it has been co-opted by religious social reformers who wish to bring the Gospel to bear on every aspect of public life, and thus who like big government, as long as it is “Christian”, and who have contempt for every aspect of the original conservative program that can’t be used as a stepping stone to the theocritization of American life.
Now, personally I have no objection to religious people preaching religion and trying to persuade people to be more religious. In fact, I encourage it. But the pro-life movement has led to an approach that isn’t satisfied with persuading people to live a more religious life, it wants to use the power of government to encourage and even enforce its religious beliefs and powers, even to the point of putting people in jail for going against them. It’s not just the anti-abortion crowd, it’s also the “war on drugs” crowd, both of whom are largely motivated by religious ferver. Daniel recently said that he condemns much of the war on drugs for its invasion of privacy and its violation of the Constitution to persue an anti-drug agenda. Well, where do you think this comes from? It comes from religious fanatics who outlaw drug use largely for religious reasons, not dissimilar from the reasons given for Prohibition, which was also a religious crusade that co-opted government power to make up for its inability to persuade people not to drink.
All in all, the current mess of the Republican party is indeed the general result of its fixation upon the pro-life movement’s efforts to outlaw abortion, making that it’s primary motivator, rather conservatism itself. Confusing the pro-life movement with conservatism has been the death of conservatism, and has given rise to such amazing sights as Sarah Palin being placed on the national ticket. Why do you think there’s so much fervor for Palin in the new “base” of the GOP? It’s not because she’s a rural woodswoman, it’s because she’s a theocratic anti-abortion crusader. Daniel needs to look at the roots of the surface phenomena he condemns, and see that the roots of it lie in his own pro-life portfolio, to a very serious degree. Solving the GOP marginalizaiton problem has everything to do with the abortion issue, I just don’t see how at this point the GOP can possibly give up on it. In any case, it has nothing to do with conservatism itself, which will survive as a philosophy if not a governing political movement.