Pope Solomon and the Babies

Some will remember wringing their hands over divisions among pro-lifers 20 years ago. Well, today a new generation is wringing its hands over the same divisions.

You'll find them spelled out in two opinion columns on Page 9.

Why spotlight the too-often rancorous dispute within the pro-life ranks? Two reasons.

First, this isn't a petty division over an inconsequential matter. It's over the basic question that the pro-life movement exists to answer: how best to end abortion in the Untied States.

Second, we think we have an answer.

One side says the best way to end abortion is to find the legal victories, short of a full ban, that can limit abortion right away. Eat away at abortion laws bit by bit, until they're gone. It's the “camel's nose under the tent” theory. Let the camel edge his nose into the tent, and he'll soon be standing in the middle of it. As this strategy has it, any little law that saves lives is a law worth enacting — as long as it doesn't preclude even better laws in the future.

The other side counters that in an area of grave moral confusion like abortion, such a strategy will only make a bad situation worse. If, say, 5-year-old children were being shot, we would be horrified by a legislative strategy that spent its energy saying: You can only shoot your 5-year-old if you have the permission of the grandmother (as with parental notification laws). So why do we accept a “camel's nose” strategy against abortion? Unless we treat abortion as killing that must be stopped, period, we send the signal that it isn't so bad, after all.

The question is complicated, the stakes are high and the emotions on both sides are intense. One longs for a Solomon to step in and give the answer that resolves the situation.

Providentially, one has.

In his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), Pope John Paul II acknowledges the problem of passing smaller laws while living under the regime of a big, permissive pro-abortion law:

“A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on. Such cases are not infrequent.”

His way of resolving it is this:

“[W]hen it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects” (No. 73).

This statement doesn't let either side off the hook.

The Holy Father says that, with politicians, we can pursue a strategy of passing laws limiting abortion while allowing it to remain legal. But he also says that we can't fully endorse politicians who aren't publicly known to be 100% opposed to abortion.

This challenges some of us to admit the justice of an incremental strategy. It challenges others of us to examine our own pro-life consciences — and to carefully consider how we evaluate candidates.

That said, we can admire both of the organizations on the page opposite this.

A hundred years from now, abortion will be mostly a guilty memory in the human consciousness — a right-to-kill legal standard like ours can't last. When history books are written, organizations like these will be regarded as the heroes of our time.

The trick is to hasten that day's arrival.