In the UK, Tory MP Nadine Dorries is making headlines in this article from the New Statesman.
Anti-abortionists are feeling emboldened and they have adopted a new tactic. In both the United States and Britain, campaigning groups no longer implicitly state that they are against abortion, but claim instead that they are offering women “real choices”.
[…]
Her intention is to introduce “fully informed consent” for women seeking abortion, she says, rather than to campaign for a return to illegality. “There are 1,300 couples in this country wanting to adopt, but women are rarely told of that option. They feel railroaded into a cattle-market process and end up in clinic with 60 or so other women every day who are not treated with particular kindness.”
It’s a lengthy read with many issues crowding in for their share of the soapbox, but the general idea is that the pro-life movement worldwide is leaning toward a PWPL style mission. A world without abortion. By choice.
Maybe it’s the realization that laws aren’t enough, or that laws aren’t always enforced, or maybe it’s that this kind of mission does offer real choice (or maybe it’s that PWPL is highly popular and extremely influential). Pregnant, need help? Need housing? Need money? Need support? Need adoption advice? A large and ever growing network of organizations and volunteers are getting those bases covered. And if there is one thing that pro-abortion feminists (because not ALL feminists are in fact pro-abortion) hate, it’s other people offering women choices.
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While I understand the sentiment that one would want everyone to be anti-abortion by choice, rather than law, I wonder how that statement would go down during the era of slavery? Everyone to be anti-slavery, by choice not by law.
It presupposes that all people have well-informed consciences and will act out of high motives all the time. But the truth about humans is that we don’t.
Which is why making abortion illegal is necessary, just as ruling against slavery was necessary.
In the meantime, while waiting for that to happen, we should be trying to educate people as to the disaster that abortion brings to the lives of the children and women who are affected most directly by it.
But changing law is always necessary. Every society requires just laws. Without them, we fall prey to our baser natures. Just knowing the numbers of abortions pre and post the change of law in Canada makes one realise that the law is indeed necessary.
Laws against slavery had to be voted by politicians, the same way laws against (or restricting) abortion have to be voted by today’s politicians. And these politicians will not vote for something like that unless they get the unmistakable impression that that’s what their constituents want. (Or unless they are uncommonly brave souls; not holding my breath for that one…) So. Getting people to the point where they wouldn’t need laws because they’d convinced themselves that abortion is wrong is exactly what is needed to outlaw abortion.
Some states seem to be getting to the point where restrictions on abortion are deemed popular enough to be passed. See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/us/politics/22abortion.html?_r=1&emc=eta1.
I think that the American Civil War is quite instructive about getting popular opinion on side before passing laws.
Julie, I found an interesting article from Missouri that seems to be putting the restrict abortion and reach out to abortion-minded women “method” into practice effectively.
“Missouri has been in the forefront of crafting and passing legislation to not only restrict abortion, but to also make it easier for women to carry their unborn babies to term,” said Deacon Lee, pointing out that the state legislature has every year since 1996 appropriated funding for alternatives to abortion services ranging from half a million dollars to $2 million annually. “The decreasing number of abortions shows that these laws work, but we must be even more creative.” (source: http://stlouisreview.com/article/2011-01-19/remembering-roe-38 )
One of the very big obstacles we have in Canada is the fact that we cannot engage our politicians to raise certain issues. Unlike the US, where the primaries result in new issues being brought forth to be debated and possibly voted on in Congress, that just doesn’t happen in Canada.
Aside from the few MPs like Rod Bruinooge who will step out and put forward a private member’s bill, or Maurice Vellacott who also speaks out, we don’t have many politicians who will do anything besides vote the party line.
I think our system prevents much of the free debate that we should be having.