Spoiling for a fight before a new Supreme Court next year (coincidentally during election season), Mississippi is apparently on the verge of outlawing all abortions except in the case of rape or endangerment of the mother.
Note the absence of the traditional exception for incest. Of course, if you accept the moral argument underlying the pro-life position (the fertilized ovum is a full and complete human being and therefore as entitled to life as an independent adult) then the only exception should be endangerment of the mother – it is not the unborn human’s fault that its father raped its mother, any more than it is that unborn human’s fault that there is a close genetic or family relationship between its parents. That is where the pro-life argument ends, after all – only when one life is threatened by another can it become morally permissible to take one.
Conversely, the pro-choice argument’s reductio ad absurdum is the moral condonation of post-partum infanticide. Both extremes are unpalatable.
The answer, of course, lies in the ability of the political process to reach a compromise. Oh, dear. Did I use the “c-word” with respect to abortion? That would mean that advocates for both positions will have to sit down, listen to each other in good faith, modify their original positions to at least partially accommodate the concerns of the other side, and otherwise act like grownups. Pro-lifers would have to accept that since abortions are going to take place anyway, they should at least be safe and not send people to jail for doing them. Pro-choicers are going to accept that after a certain point, the abortion starts to become a morally grave act indeed and that yes, the state really does have an interest in regulating and in some cases preventing it.
Fact is, Justice Blackmun kind of jumped the gun with his reasoning in Roe v. Wade. Perhaps Blackmun reached what would work out to a good political compromise, but he did not allow the political process to move forward to that position and instead figured what he thought would be the right balance himself. That doesn’t mean it was the wrong result (in a general sense) but it does mean that the result shouldn’t have come in the form of an absolute dictum from the Supreme Court.
Now I’ve done it – no one’s going to be happy with me.
