ELLIS: What Ireland’s Abortion Vote Taught Us About Democracy

Last week, Ireland gave the world an example of why democracy is not a priori better or a more moral system of government than any other. Generally, Americans are taught that “we the people” are infallible and inherently legitimate as a 51% majority. If the majority agrees on something, it must therefore be right. But the unpopular truth is that democracies—and constitutional republics even—only survive the test of legitimacy when that government system operates according to fundamental, objective moral truth.

Just because a majority will of the people determined abortion on demand should be legal last week does not change the objective truth that recreational killing of unborn children is inherently wrong and immoral. We cannot legitimize evil through a legal mechanism any more than we can legislate ourselves out of the Earth’s elliptical orbit. Humans simply do not have that control. Regardless of how many tyrants a given society has, no human, singular or collective, is unlimited in power. Reality shows us that self-evident truth.