"Conservatives" and abortion

Can't remember exactly when I first heard of abortion, and was forced to think about what that is. It was probably in the late '60s, when I started to have an adult perspective on politics. It was probably when the governor of California, Ronald Reagan, signed the most permissive abortion law in the country.

At the time, legalizing abortion was considered a "conservative" position. "Conservatives" claimed to be defenders of our "rights" against Government interference. Ayn Rand and other "conservatives" taught that laws against abortion were a great intrusion of "statism" into personal decisions about sex and reproduction. (It's still the position of Ayn Rand's followers: http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5105.)

I'd been a teen-age Goldwater fan. But Reagan had been elected governor of California, and was the rising conservative figure. There was lots of national attention on what he did as Governor of California during those politically-turbulent times. That was probably the first time I ever heard of, and thought about, abortion.

At the time I was moving toward what I considered the logical conclusion of conservative principle: that government itself is the root of our problems. That made sense to me during those times of war and civil unrest, and I eventually became a convinced anarchist. (Reagan's thinking evidently moved in that direction too. He made anarchist principle an applause-line in his first inaugural, telling the country that "government is the problem.")

But I probably wasn't yet a thorough anarchist (or even the kind of half-anarchist we now call "libertarians") when I first thought about abortion. If I had been, I'd have had to view abortion as Government infringement on our "rights." But I didn't. I remember vividly my first thoughts about abortion. They remain my thoughts today: "That's killing a baby," and "That's WRONG."

I certainly wasn't the only one who looked at, or looks at, abortion that way. But it was not mainstream opinion, or even a mainstream "issue." When Ellen McCormack didn't get the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, she ran as a third-party pro-life candidate. I remember relatives thought I was crazy to vote for her, since they considered the REAL issue of that presidential campaign was whether or not to give the Canal Zone back to Panama. Abortion was not even on the politicians' radar that year, well after Roe v. Wade.

But soon enough political manipulators discovered abortion, an "issue" that would play well to Christians...whose votes they were courting for 1980. Roe v. Wade set the national stage for the "issue," and attacking that decision also gave the manipulators a chance to flog another of their favorite whipping-horses, "activist liberal judges."

What they conveniently forgot (or ignored) was that 6 of the 9 justices who decided Roe v. Wade were Republican appointees, and a "conservative" majority on the Court. In the 7-2 decision, the only dissenters were one "conservative" (the Nixon-appointee, Rehnquist) and one "liberal" (actually the famously independent Kennedy-appointee, White, who voted with "conservatives" any time he thought their position adhered to the Constitution).

The "activist court" which ruled abortion was a Constitutional right was a "conservative" Court. And another inconvenient fact that was lost (or covered-up) by the manipulators was that the early criticism of Roe v. Wade was by "liberal" legal scholars. They called it a "frightening" decision, erecting a "...super-protected right...not inferable from the language of the Constitution..." (see legal comments at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade).

In the run-up to the 1980 election, Reagan and other "conservative" hopefuls duly announced they were AGAINST abortion. It played well to Christian voters, as their handlers had hoped. It worked so well that the "neo-con" faction which idolizes Reagan still requires its candidates to appease the Christian electoral sub-demographic with "pro-life" rhetoric.

But as with Reagan, most of those candidates' pro-life pronouncements seem to be political posturing rather than an expression of heart-felt conviction. We all know politicians will reverse a life-long record on one side of an "issue" when it's to their advantage to take the other side, and there's been a lot of that on abortion. George Bush the First, for example, came out as "pro-life" when his long-held pro-abortion beliefs stood in the way of his being Reagan's successor.

Some honest pro-life people have run as "conservatives" because they believe that faction's lip-service to their beliefs. But most of the candidates "conservatives" have foisted on us (Bob Dole, George the First and Second, John McCain) have shown little real moral conviction that abortion is WRONG.

The best evidence is that "conservatives" have done little to reverse Roe v. Wade. They've held the presidency for 20 of the last 32 years, and controlled Congress several additional terms under Democratic presidents (most notably during Gingrich' "revolution" under the Clinton administration). The Supreme Court has been a "conservative" majority that entire time. Scriptural wisdom is that what men do shows what they truly believe. It's telling that "conservatives" claim to believe abortion is a great EVIL, and have had both opportunity and the political power to do something about it: and haven't.

The contrast with what "conservatives" have done against "Obamacare" (their partisan terminology) is instructive. The national health-care act was signed into law barely two years ago. In those two years, "conservatives" have assaulted the working of that law in every state, "opting out" of or reversing it to every extent possible. "Conservative" Congresspeople have attempted to nullify every provision of the law. "Conservatives" have challenged the law's constitutionality before several federal courts, and right now have their challenge on the Supreme Court docket. It seems reasonable to expect, if "conservatives" are truly outraged toward Roe v. Wade, they would have done at least as much to reverse it in the last 30 years as they've done to reverse "Obamacare" in two years.

But the underlying problem goes beyond two-faced politicians. Politics itself is "the art of compromise." Finding abortion WRONG is a moral judgement: and moral judgements deal with absolutes. With abortion as with slavery, politics is simply the wrong tool. The Christian worldview is even more stark in this regard: human politics is part of the evil "kingdom of this world," and cannot ultimately do righteousness.

It's a continuing problem for those who want to tout "conservatives" as the faction of righteousness. This week was a good example. Rick Santorum, the current "Christian conservative" rock-star of the Republican primaries, was criticized for his waffling views towards abortion.

Santorum's campaign hurried to affirm their candidate is pro-life, and always has been. But it's the usual political spin: what else would we expect from a candidate's handlers ? After his 1990 election to Congress, Santorum admitted in a magazine profile that he was actually "...basically pro-choice all my life, until I ran for Congress."

It seemed an unusually candid admission from a politician, but his campaign that year showed the typical "conservative" temporizing. He cautioned against trying to criminalize what many people consider a "right." His 1990 position-paper said he only opposed third-trimester and publicly-funded abortions. In another post-election interview, Santorum admitted that on abortion he'd tried to "dance around the issue, not really take a position on it." It's not the stance of moral conviction.

Mitt Romney too has been criticized for waffling on abortion. He had claimed to be "unequivocally pro-choice" in his unsuccessful run for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in the '90's: and only decided he was pro-life a couple years after being elected Massachusetts' governor in 2003. So his loyalists gleefully rubbed Santorum's nose in his own equivocations. But I doubt most of us, Romney and Santorum partisans excepted, consider that gotchas and oneupmanship prove a candidate's pro-life convictions.

What makes any person "pro-life" is a heart-felt moral conviction that abortion is WRONG. I'm pro-life because of that conviction. But politics doesn't deal in heart-felt moral convictions. Politics rewards its players' ambition and ability to manipulate the truth, not their righteousness.

Get down to it, what politicians desire above all else is political power. They will mouth whatever "position" furthers their ambitions, whether or not they believe it. That's why we see "conservative" politicians against "gay rights," until they're outed: or who champion "family values" while they molest teen boys.

We can't expect anything else from those whose hearts are set on the corrupt power of the world's kingdom, under the enemy's sway. But even the blind denizens of that realm know that what politicians SAY is no indication of what's in their hearts. In that, they are wiser than most Christians.

Our nation is sick-unto-death because Christians deceive themselves, and so choose to follow deceivers. We should be the country's moral compass, pointing toward righteousness. How can America not wander, lost, when the Church points our country to transparent political deceptions ? Our unbelieving fellow citizens are wise enough to distrust us, and despise the Church's "moral leadership." Well they should.

But even in their self-delusion, it may be that some "conservative Christians" still love Christ more than than their "conservatism." God is merciful: it may be that He will yet give some the grace to repent. Let those in whose hearts He has set love of Truth forsake the broken cisterns they drink from, and turn back from following their own blind way ! God is merciful: let us seek Him and repent !