criminalization

Tanya, a contributor to our Comments page wrote in response to my post on criminalization. Her comment:

“Even though the criminalization of abortion is not, for you, an immediate goal, the question begs to be asked; is it not reasonable to have its criminalization as an eventual goal?

Let’s parallel this human rights issue (abortion) with another one from another era, when William Wilburforce first introduced a bill to criminalize the slave trade. He was ridiculed and success seemed far off. He was always up-front with his ultimate goal. Through creative and gradual measures, by more means than simply introducing his annual bill, his goal was eventually realized.

I understand that there is much to accomplish in the mentality and practices of Canadians before a legal ban on abortion would even be beneficial. However, I would hope that every person who speaks out for the right for the unborn would have as an ultimate goal that these tiny humans’ rights be held up as equal to our own.

The point is well taken. Arguing against criminalization from a fetal rights’ perspective offers no wiggle-room and I can be accused of taking the easy way out by avoiding the question altogether. Either the fetus is a human being and deserves the same protection from harm as other human beings, or fetuses are not human and have no claim to a protected right to life and integrity. The third option, well described on our Comments page by Dave, involves getting into philosophical contortions to justify killing some human non-persons in a discourse reminiscent of 19^th century slavery rhetoric. Our dismal historic track record in deciding who – or what – is human suggests that we should stop the circus act and recognize that determining humanity based on human-made criteria has embarrassed more than one civilization. Will our treatment of the unborn shame us in a few generations? I have no doubt about it, particularly in light the demographic decline of Western civilizations.

I do think criminalization is the ultimate goal. But I also think that it will happen naturally as mentalities change to recognize the humanity of the fetus. Our role as pro-lifers is not, in my view, to push for criminalization but to change mentalities. If mentalities change, criminalization will naturally follow. The same cannot be said about the reverse.

Hear Bill Clinton lash out at pro-life students:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XfmJeIJpns]

The sound is not great. I will spare you the joy of listening to bad audio several times. He says:

I gave you the answer. We disagree with you. You want to criminalize women and their doctors and we disagree. I reduced abortion. Tell the truth, tell the truth, if you were really pro-life, if you were really pro-life, you would want to put every doctor and every mother as an accessory to murder in prison…

Is that a fact?

As a pro-life advocate, I find the issue of criminalization anything but straightforward. On the one hand, I do not share concerns about imposing my morality on others since the purpose of criminal law is to impose a minimal morality on those who might not have it. When we live law-abiding lives and expect others to do the same, we impose our morality on others. When John Robin Sharpe tells us that child porn is a valid form of self-expression, we impose our morality on him by not putting up with it. On the flip side, the Supreme Court of Canada imposed their morality on me in Morgentaler and again in Tremblay v. Daigle.

When people say that they don’t want to impose their morality on others in the context of abortion, what they really mean is that they don’t want to do it in that particular context. This is problematic because it recognizes abortion as a legitimate choice in some cases thereby seriously undermining the pro-life position.

On the other hand, I also find myself at odds with calls for the criminalization of abortion. Not because I think that abortion is a legitimate choice but because I believe that in our present socio-cultural environment, criminalizing abortion would further victimize women. And I am not talking about clothes-hangers. Bear with me:

I believe that criminal law serves its most important purpose as instrument of social ordering not by its coercive force but by the general sense that the limits it imposes on free choice are legitimate and necessary. Unfortunately, abortion has been seen as a necessary and legitimate choice in Canadian society for many years.

As things stand now, abortion is not seen as an anti-social act from which society needs to protect itself. Even worse, right now Canadian society benefits from the (induced) infertility of its women. We all benefit from the strong economy fueled by the presence of women on the labor market. We all benefit by the consumer prices driven down, in part, by not paying the real cost of having mothers in the labor force. And we will not pay the real cost of having women in our labor force as long as our fiscal and social policies cast childrearing as a personal choice that women must assume.

In Canada – indeed, in most Western societies – women who get abortions do not behave in an anti-social manner. I will go even further and say that women who have no children or few children act as our stuff-hungry, profit-making, economically-growing, materialist society expects them to.

Pro-life reader, we have some work ahead of us before abortion could be made illegal. It is simply not enough to say abortion is wrong. Women need to be convinced that it is.

The ultimate goal

What Bill Clinton thinks about pro-lifers

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