The past few weeks have seen unprecedented pro-life victories in multiple states. Most notably, Georgia outlawed abortion after six weeks and Alabama, as of Wednesday night, has prohibited the practice almost entirely. Ohio, Kentucky, and Mississippi have all taken significant steps to protect the unborn. But the law in Alabama is the most significant because it officially recognizes the unborn as human people. The fundamental goal of the pro-life movement is to establish and defend the personhood rights of humans in the womb. Alabama has done exactly that. For conservatives, this should be reason to leap for joy and throw a parade. Instead, many conservatives are expressing reservations about, and even opposition to, Alabama’s decision to pass a fully pro-life law.
I have heard that the law is “extreme,” that it might be politically unwise, that it will backfire. After 46 years of unmitigated slaughter and 60 million dead bodies piled on top of one another, still some conservatives are concerned that it might be too radical to outright ban the systematic execution of unborn humans. They worry that it “goes too far.” They say it might upset the moderates, it might not poll well in the rest of the country, it might make us look fanatical.
I find this attitude not only wrong but profoundly frustrating. First of all, Alabama has the right to pass whatever law it wants. Why should Alabamians care what a middle-of-the-road voter in New Jersey or California thinks about their laws? If Alabama doesn’t take the feelings of coastal moderates into consideration when deciding how to govern itself, that’s because Alabama is Alabama. It’s not New Jersey or California and it doesn’t need to pretend otherwise.
Second, there are perfectly clear and intelligent ways to explain why the bill doesn’t have rape exceptions. If you need a primer, click here. Rather than fretting about the misunderstandings and misconceptions of the ignorant masses, perhaps a better strategy is to alleviate those misunderstandings and misconceptions.
And besides, if we let this discussion center exclusively around rape, that means we have once again allowed the pro-abortion side to dictate terms. Rape accounts for less than one percent of all abortions. There is no reason why one percent of the abortions should occupy 100 percent of the conversation surrounding abortion. We can engage on the hard cases and explain our view, but then we need to steer the debate back to the 99 percent of abortions that have nothing to do with rape. The headline here isn’t: “Pro-lifers believe abortion is wrong in cases of rape.” Rather, the headline is: “Pro-aborts believe it’s perfectly acceptable to murder a consensually-conceived child because he’s inconvenient.”
Third, most importantly, our whole point is that unborn people are people. If that’s not your point — if you believe that unborn people are something other than people — then you’re not pro-life. All Alabama has done is take the pro-life position and codify it into law. They have given personhood rights to the unborn, which, again, is exactly what we’ve been arguing for since 1973. The law is only as “extreme” as the pro-life position, which itself only seems extreme in a culture of death. We should welcome the label of “extremist” when it’s thrown at us by death worshipers. Whatever they are, I want to be extremely not that. I want to be as far from that as logically possible.
We are finally making real strides. We are not just hanging around the perimeter of the issue anymore, arguing over minutia. We are getting, literally, to the heart of the matter. We are going directly at the abortion industry. This is the moment we’ve been working toward for 46 years. Now it’s here. If you don’t have the stomach for it, step aside. The rest of us have a battle to fight. And we’re fighting it no matter how uncomfortable it makes you feel.
