Life, Abortion, and Balance

Some of you may not like hearing this from me, but I have a problem with abortion.  I just can’t be convinced that a fetus with a heartbeat isn’t alive, so abortion seems like killing something. I didn’t say “murdering,” that is a legal term; I said “killing.” All that said, I remain in favor of reasonable freedom of choice for women when it comes to abortion. It’s a question of balance.

“Thou shall not kill” is one of the Ten Commandments, and most of us would find ourselves in trouble if we violated it. That seems simple enough. But when it comes to the law, nothing is simple. There are exceptions. You CAN kill someone else if they pose a direct and immediate threat to your own life.

When it comes to abortion, many states that restrict it also have exceptions, allowing it in cases of rape or incest. But here comes Texas, essentially banning abortion outright, with no exceptions.

Those who want to end abortion entirely claim to be motivated by the sacredness of life. But do you think maybe those states whose legislators are most opposed to abortion also happen to have higher proportions of their states’ population on death row in prison?  So why is life sacred at one end and not the other?

Ideological purity doesn’t work in the real world. The function of law is to strike a balance among competing interests. In the broadest sense, Roe v. Wade has offered this balance between a woman’s right to decide what happens to what’s growing within her and society’s need to regulate. It has worked for about 50 years, but those days may now be numbered.

The Supreme Court majority seems to have made its position pretty clear, by declining to keep the Texas law from taking effect. Expanding the court, however, isn’t the solution to resolving its ideological imbalance. Both parties could use the tactic whenever the numbers were not in their favor. There are really only two paths open to those who want to preserve a woman’s right to abortion. Neither is easy.

One is to codify the provisions of Roe into federal law, which would have to get through both houses of Congress. Good luck with that! The other is to use the 2022 election to replace the legislators who insist on a total abortion ban. If the right-to-choose side really reflects a majority in this country, as is often stated, the voters will have to demonstrate that next year at the ballot box.