The
Lady in blue jeans and graying hair sounded a bit
discouraged when she was interviewed at this year's March for Life in Little
Rock. For it now has been 25 years and 30 million abortions since Roe
v. Wade, the Dred Scott decision of our times. "It seems
to me our cause is getting weaker and weaker," the lady sighed. "Things
seem to be getting worse."
And nothing harms the cause of life like violence directed at abortion clinics
- - like the explosion in Birmingham this week. For such attacks repel conscience,
and conscience is the field on which this struggle must ultimately be waged.
"Things seem to be getting worse." Much of the same could have
been said by any fervent opponent of slavery in the 1850s, the decade of
the Fugitive Slave Act, Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott....Slavery was
spreading with the blessings of the leading politician of the time, Stephen
A. Douglas, and the trend seemed invincible. John Brown's raid, and his
murderous violence, only strengthened slavery's grip on the South. Yet beyond
all these outward signs, the tide was shifting. A new birth of freedom was
being readied, a new respect for the dignity of human life.
The tide is shifting even now. The New York Times, which has been
no friend in this long, long struggle, has taken notice. Prominently. There
was the story on its front page just the other day: "Public Still Backs
Abortion, But Wants Limits, Poll Says/A Notable Shift From General Acceptance."
The second, smaller headline - - the deck, it's called in the tradewas where
the news, the change, was: "A Notable Shift."
The Times was even growing aware, at last, of the most apt historical
analogy in this two-decade debate over abortion. "At base," its
story reported, "the country remains irreconcilably riven over what
many consider the most divisive issue since slavery...."
By attempting to take abortion out of the political realm once and for all,
by handing down a definitive decision that would end all debate, the majority
in Roe v. Wade made the same mistake Roger Taney did when he cobbled
together Dred Scott: The justices overlooked the conscience of the
American people.
Conscience can sleep for years, for decades, but once awakened, once growing
in awareness and undeniable conviction, there is no fighting it. Because
conscience is a power that, unlike a court decision or a congressional statute,
does not depend on the force of law but the still small voice inside each
of us. And after a time that voice may prove inescapable.
Not even the folks who are still for abortion are, as many will tell you,
really for abortion. Any more than those who were unprepared to oppose slavery
were actually for slavery. For few of its defenders ever tried to paint
slavery as a positive good. Rather, they explained, it was a lesser evil,
a decision they were prepared to leave to others, much as they personally
might not like the idea. Like abortion today.
But conscience will sleep only so long, and a sea change may be taking place
in American opinion. In the public mind, the exceptions long used to prove
the need for abortions - - rape, incest, the life of the mother - - no longer
can be stretched as easily to cover the millions of abortions performed
with the blessings of Roe v. Wade. Lesser reasons no longer justify
abortion in the public mind. To quote the story in the Times:
"In 1989, for example, when people were asked whether a pregnant woman
should be able to get a legal abortion if her pregnancy would force her
to interrupt her career, 37 percent said yes and 50 percent said no; in
1998, only 25 percent said yes and 70 percent said no. Similarly, in 1989,
49 percent thought an interrupted education was enough to justify a teenage
girl's abortion; that dropped to 42 percent this year...."
And as science allows us to see - - literally see - - just what it is we
are destroying in the womb, more and more Americans are repelled by abortion
on demand.
As knowledge increases and is disseminated, as sonograms are studied and
neonatology advances, it will become harder and harder to maintain this
country's open season on the fetus, or to deny that what is being destroyed
in an abortion is human - - with human rights. Just as it became more and
more difficult for defenders of slavery to think of slaves as chattel, as
things, as unpersons.
American opinion is still deeply divided, often confused and apathetic,
but it moves. It is moving now. And it is coalescing around some old truths
newly confirmed with every scientific advance and ethical awakening. More
and more, we can now see, hear, and identify with the most innocent and
vulnerable in our society - - the least of these. They cease to be things
and become developing persons with developing rights as law moves ever so
ponderously to where conscience has been so long.
If this country is deeply divided over abortion, to quote the Times,
"beneath that basic divide, public opinion has shifted notably away
from general acceptance of legal abortion...." State after state puts
new limits on abortion. The votes against partial-birth abortion in Congress
increases every time the issue is pressed, and the president's veto of such
a ban grows less and less sustainable.
But most important, those who know abortion to be wrong simply won't go
away, any more than the abortionists did in another century. They will continue
to march, lobby, protest, and pray. They will not be stilled, and they will
be heard - - if not now, later. If not this decade, the next. Their staying
power in the face of so much apathy, disdain and contempt over the years
remains remarkable. It is as if they had no choice but to take a stand,
as if they were driven by some inner imperative.
All of which is why Harry Blackmun no more settled this issue than Roger
Taney did the slavery question. Some questions will not be answered till
they are answered right. And if the general acceptance of abortion in this
society, the willful destruction of human life without conditions or limits,
as reflected by the millions and millions of abortions year after year...
if all that is not wrong, then nothing is.
So to the lady with graying hair at Sunday's march: Be strong and of good
courage. Those who believe in life have only begun to fight - - and they
have a powerful ally in the awakening hearts of their opponents.
This article first appeared in the Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette and is reprinted with the author's permission.