The progressive party line holds that restricting abortion is a political loser. The empirical evidence doesn’t support that . . . if we conservatives frame the argument intelligently.
How? Ask the voters when the Constitutional right to life applies.
Ask when an unborn child becomes a person. The Fifth Amendment holds that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.
So. Who is a person?
We pro-lifers need to advocate for a position that is defensible both politically and morally. Let’s begin with the practical politics.
Pew Research Center found last May, just before Roe was overturned, that majority voter support for restriction kicks in somewhere between the 14th and 24th week:
"as pregnancy progresses, opposition to legal abortion grows and support for legal abortion declines. Americans are about twice as likely to say abortion should be legal at six weeks than to say it should be illegal at this stage of a pregnancy. . . . At 14 weeks, the share saying abortion should be legal declines to 34%, while 27% say illegal ….
"When asked about the legality of abortion at 24 weeks of pregnancy …, Americans are about twice as likely to say abortion should be illegal as to say it should be legal … (43% vs. 22%). . . ."
Gov. DeSantis, R-Fla., approved a six-week ban. This curries favor with many GOP base-voters but, if nominated, will cost him votes in the general election.
That’s the politics.
Pew Research describes almost 40% of the Republican primary voters as “Faith and Family” (23%) and "Committed Conservatives" (15%).
These trend restrictionist.
The aspirants for the GOP presidential nomination are cultivating these voters in hopes that Trump, the darling of the GOP "Populist Right" (23%) faction, stumbles.
Trump has taken the position of leaving it to the states, giving blue states the right to preserve abortion availability. Not really logical, but politics seldom is.
Mayor Francis Suarez and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., have opted for a 15-week limit (plus humane exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother). Fifteen weeks passes the litmus test of the institutional pro-life leaders such as the Susan B. Anthony list, while reaching to embrace the national consensus.
That’s the politics. What’s the ethics?
The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution provides that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.
The core question isn't "life vs. choice."
It's when the law holds an unborn child to be a person.
A carrot is a life, but no conservative objects to placing it in a soup. Meanwhile, progressives cheerfully oppose choice about many matters.
False dichotomy.
The question of "personhood" is an ethical (thus, religious) assessment. Not an empirical one.
This is a philosophical, not scientific, topic.
If a fetus is not a person, the right to abort is a mere medical procedure, thus morally viable.
If a fetus is a person, it is not ethically viable to take its life.
As I wrote at Newsmax at the end of Roe:
We all, pro-Roe and no-Roe, are all in for agency . . . so long as it is exercised morally. Agency without morality is nihilism.
Even my most enthusiastically progressive frenemies aren’t nihilists.
Progressives, bless their hearts, trending sentimental, are prone to fight for whales and trees.
Of course they would oppose a "right" to "choose" to kill a person, if a baby were so recognized. They’d fight passionately!
Calling themselves "pro-choice" obscures their existential stance: nonpersonhood of the unborn. An unborn baby, indisputably, is human.
Personhood is something more.
The real question? When does a human become a legal person?
Most religions have given thought to this. We, the governed-giving-consent, are not bound by law to our faiths. Yet the thoughts of the spiritual sages enrich our discernment.
In Roman Catholicism, personhood attaches at conception.
In Orthodox Judaism, per the Babylonian Talmud Yevamot 69b, the Sages conclude: "the embryo is considered to be mere water until the fortieth day."
Yet (except to protect the mother’s life) "the destruction of an unborn child is a grave offence, although not murder."
Protestant views vary. Evangelical Christians trend most protective of the life of the unborn. Meanwhile, for example, Lutherans (contra Martin Luther in his "Commentary on Genesis," Chapter 25, verses 1-4) hold that abortion should be permitted prior to the unborn’s viability.
Candidates? Shifting the question to one of when personhood legally attaches would give dignity to the electorate.
There is a powerful yearning among voters for our political leaders to seek and respect our views. Respect wins votes.
Wherever the electorate decides that legal personhood attaches on the conception-to-viability spectrum, demonstrating respect for the popular consensus on personhood is both an ethical and political winner.
Presidential aspirants?
Show the voters respect. Make 2024, in part, a plebiscite on the definition of personhood.
And go on to win.
Ralph Benko, co-author of "The Capitalist Manifesto" and chairman and co-founder of "The Capitalist League," is the founder of The Prosperity Caucus and is an original Kemp-era member of the Supply-Side revolution that propelled the Dow from 814 to its current heights and world GDP from $11T to $94T. Read Ralph Benko's reports — More Here.
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