Robert George's Response to Points of Agreement

Robert George offers the following response to my earlier post:

I'm writing in reply to your Mirror of Justice posting on points of agreement between pro-life Democrats and what you characterize as "the republican party line." I agree that identifying points of agreement between pro-lifers in the two parties would be helpful and constructive. Thanks for initiating the discussion.

May I raise a question or two and make some proposals for revising the three possible points of agreement you suggested?

Regarding point one, I do not think it captures the key point of agreement to describe abortion as a "moral tragedy for all the people directly involved and for society as a whole." The problem is that this leaves out of the description the grave injustice of directly killing an unborn child, as well as the sin against fundamental equality involved in denying to embryonic and fetal members of the human family elementary legal protections afforded to everyone else. Many self-identified "pro-choice" people regard abortion as a tragedy-even a "moral" tragedy. Their difference with "pro-life" people is that they do not regard the deliberate taking of fetal life, or the failure to protect the developing child against the abortionist's lethal assault, as an injustice-a violation of the child's right to life. Therefore, I think a proper formulation of this point of agreement between pro-life democrats and republicans would focus on the thing that defines them as pro-life (and distinguishes them from those who are not), namely, the belief that deliberate feticide and its legal permission are profoundly unjust.

On point two, much depends on what you mean by "principal" in the claim that most pro-life people agree that the criminal law is "too blunt" to be the "principal" instrument for the regulation of abortion. Is the suggestion that most pro-lifers oppose criminal prohibitions of abortion? If so, I'm sure this is incorrect. My Princeton colleague Russell Nieli has carefully studied polling on abortion going back to Roe v. Wade. Of course, the results of individual polls come out differently depending on how the survey questions are framed, but he reported in a lecture here that a stable consensus exists in the United States that most abortions should be illegal. I don't recall the exact estimates he reported, but it was something along the lines of 55-60% of Americans believe that 80-90% of abortions that actually occur ought to be prohibited by law. Of course, the percentages would be still higher if the samples were restricted to self-identified pro-life citizens, rather than to the adult population as a whole. (Majorities exist for legal abortion in the "hard cases," but these account for only a fraction of the abortions in the United States.. It also seems to be the case that many Americans have an exaggerated impression of the frequency of medical indications for abortion. They think that abortion is medically "necessary" far more often than it is.)

On point three, I agree that most pro-lifers think that legally prohibiting abortion is only part of what needs to be done. Sound policies would not merely declare abortions to be illegal; they would effectively deter illegal ("underground") abortions. Such policies would rely on vigorous law enforcement against illegal abortionists and at the same time seek to depress the demand for their services by providing support and alternatives for expecting mothers whose circumstances might drive them to contemplate abortion as a solution to problems that pregnancy presents for them. Pro-life Democrats emphasize the need to bring care and compassion to mother and child alike, and this is a point on which Republicans (including the vast number who, like myself, are former Democrats who shifted their allegiance primarily because of the Democratic Party's decision to embrace the cause of legal abortion) can enthusaistically agree.