![\"March_for_Life,_Washington,_D_C__(2013)\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/480\/2015\/01\/March_for_Life_Washington_D_C__2013.jpg\")
<\/a>This week began with Sanctity of Life Sunday,\u00a0a day declared by President Reagan and observed by thousands\u00a0of pro-life Americans across\u00a0economic,\u00a0religious, and political lines. It ends now with\u00a0a seething feeling of betrayal towards congressional Republicans, freshly elected,\u00a0who\u00a0refused to put a bill outlawing abortion after twenty weeks of pregnancy\u00a0on the floor for debate. As has been pointed out, most Americans, include a massive percentage of female voters, favor the law. Even granting President Obama\u2019s threat to veto the bill if it reached him, the Republicans committed a grievous political error; Mollie Hemingway is right to call it a \u201cdebacle<\/a>,\u201d and David Harsanyi\u2019s accusation of \u201ccowardly retreat<\/a>\u201d rings true.<\/p>\n As much of a devastating political embarrassment as it is, the GOP\u2019s capitulation goes deeper. It is a failure of conscience and a further signal that \u201cconservative\u201d is now a species of Republican, not vice versa. A miss this wide on abortion is cause\u00a0not just for political clean-up\u00a0but soul searching. The value of unborn life lies at the very core of conservative ideals and the basic definition of a just and free society.<\/p>\n For this reason, many pro-life conservatives have called themselves \u201cSingle issue voters.\u201d They are often ridiculed as na\u00efve, irresponsible and ideologically shallow\u2013and that\u2019s often from their fellow conservatives. \u201cSingle issue voter\u201d is for some a signal that a person is unwilling to think maturely about the civic interplay between ideas and leaders. But this is an unnecessary assumption. When it comes to abortion, single-issue voters aren\u2019t immature, they are consistently convictional.<\/p>\n The engine of abortion is a conviction about the non-personhood of the unborn. Though pro-choice is often eager to avoid personhood debates (and who can blame them, given modern prenatal technology\u2019s humiliations of most of their arguments?), questions about \u201creproductive health\u201d and \u201cevery child a wanted child\u201d are actually just corollaries of fetal non-personhood, not actual cases for abortion. \u00a0The only logical, legal, and moral philosophical foundation for abortion is the decision that the thing being terminated is not equal in nature or value to those deciding its fate. \u201cWhat about rape and incest\u201d is merely an end-around to get to the conclusion (\u201cI shouldn\u2019t have to be punished with this\u201d) without going through the premise (\u201cIt\u2019s not worth as much as me\u201d).<\/p>\n The human personhood of the unborn is not a question isolated to one plot of social policy. If\u00a0we\u00a0get personhood wrong for the unborn, who else is reaping the whirlwind? A mouth-shutting 92%<\/a> of all children diagnosed with Down syndrome are killed in the womb. Putting celebrities in front of TV cameras for inspirational \u201cMake-a-Wish\u201d specials\u00a0does not a culture that values the mentally handicapped make.<\/p>\n What about adults? Last year Brittany Maynard was made a celebrity by media outlets for \u201ccourageously\u201d killing herself rather than fight terminal cancer. Even if you believe that individuals should retain a legal right to end their life at their choosing, the celebratory atmosphere around Maynard\u2019s death was deeply disturbing. Ezekiel Emanuel wrote<\/a> in The Atlantic<\/em> about the terrible things that await senior citizens who live too long. I read Emanuel\u2019s article a couple days after helping my fianc\u00e9 and her family move her grandmother into assisted living;\u00a0after being\u00a0floored by Emanuel\u2019s naked utilitarianism, I thanked God that I have grandparents who have survived well past the time for \u201cadventures.\u201d<\/p>\n Would we celebrate Brittany Maynard\u2019s suicide, or bemoan the perpetuity of the aged, if we didn\u2019t have the legacy of Roe v Wade throbbing in our national consciousness? Perhaps not. But the tide seems to be turning: Polling indicates that national support for the outlawing of abortion \u201cin all circumstances\u201d is higher now than it has ever been since 1973. Pop culture seems to be tiring of abortion; hit films such as Juno<\/em> and Knocked Up<\/em> feature sympathetic\u00a0lead characters that are encouraged to abort but choose life (\u201cObvious Child,\u201d a pro-abortion propaganda comedy<\/a>,\u00a0stunk up\u00a0the box office last summer despite effusive critical praise). There\u2019s good reason to believe that pro-life is winning<\/a>.<\/p>\n If it is, that\u2019s all the more reason to double down in making the case for life. If the inalienable right to life doesn\u2019t matter for millions of helpless people, then rights of\u00a0liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not ideals but punchlines. The parallel drawn by President Reagan himself between abortion and slavery has never been more obvious. Pro-choice advocates sound positively antebellum when they insist that abortion is valuable since it keeps children from harsh poverty (John C. Calhoun argued for American\u00a0slavery on that exact basis). It has never been more urgent in our country\u2019s history to insist, through rhetoric and law, that life and justice transcend economics, and that legitimate prosperity is never achieved at the expense of people\u2019s lives and consciences.<\/p>\n Abortion is the great civil rights challenge of our generation.\u00a0\u00a0Its rallying cry remains the simple placard worn by those disenfranchised marchers, \u00a0\u201cI AM a Man.\u201d For the single issue voter, the civil rights movement is not over, it has simply not been permitted to march beyond a certain point. And as long as its values remain sequestered short of the protection of society\u2019s most vulnerable and most voiceless, any American pretensions to liberty are transparent at best. If the GOP cannot be trusted with the greatest issue of liberty we have today, so be it, but life must and will march on.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week began with Sanctity of Life Sunday,\u00a0a day declared by President Reagan and observed by thousands\u00a0of pro-life Americans across\u00a0economic,\u00a0religious, and political lines. It ends now with\u00a0a seething feeling of betrayal towards congressional Republicans, freshly elected,\u00a0who\u00a0refused to put a bill outlawing abortion after twenty weeks of pregnancy\u00a0on the floor for debate. As has been pointed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2058,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13,253],"tags":[11845,345,346,298,339,156,297],"class_list":["post-1912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics","category-politics","category-religion","tag-abortion","tag-brittney-maynard","tag-civil-rights","tag-democrats","tag-president-obama","tag-pro-life","tag-republicans"],"yoast_head":"\n