Missing Perspectives

By Seana Cranston J.D. | October 19, 2010

Last weekend, the conference “Open Hearts, Open Minds and Fair Minded Words” convened at Princeton University.  The ostensible goal of the conference was to foster dialogue between pro-life and pro-abortion factions, with the goal of finding common ground.

One of my colleagues is writing a Friday Fax that covers the conference, so I won’t delve into a lengthy description of the conference as a whole.  One of the notable problems with several of the conference panels, however, was the fact that important viewpoints went entirely missing from the debate.

One example of this occurred at the panel entitled “Providing Support for Continuing Pregnancy.”   The panel featured Sidney Callahan of the Hastings Center, Cristina Page, from the Spence Chapin Adoption Access Network, and David Gushee, of the McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University.  The written description of this particular panel states: “One way to reduce the need for abortion is to reduce economic as well as social barriers to continuing pregnancy and to parenting.  This panel will cover various efforts to make pregnancy continuation, child rearing and adoption more viable options in unintended pregnancy.”

Unfortunately, the consensus across all of the “Providing Support for Continuing Pregnancy” panelists—even among the two who stated they were pro-life—was that the solution to the problem of abortion is simply to allocate more tax dollars and federal funds toward government-sponsored charitable programs.  The consensus also seemed to be that yet another solution to the abortion problem is to throw more tax dollars and federal funds toward birth control pills and condoms.

David Gushee, for example, who otherwise spoke out strongly against abortion, said that one aspect of preventive healthcare should be free birth control for all.  He also said that conservative Christians are a contributor to the abortion culture, because of their refusal to talk about birth control with their kids.

All three of the panelists concurred that those pro-lifers who support lower taxes and less government intervention are to blame for the abortion problem.  One panelist condemned all of those “supposedly pro-life tax cutters,” stating they suffer from a “pro-life schizophrenia.”

Not one panelist acknowledged the fact that it is unjust to force citizens to financially subsidize behavior—such as the use of artificial birth control—to which they are morally opposed.  Also notably missing from the debate was any acknowledgment of the fact that there are various schools of economics which teach that these big-government programs advocated by the “Providing Support” panelists do not ultimately help advance the pro-life cause.  Economists such as Friedrich von Hayek, who won a Nobel Prize in 1974, teach that socialist economies that redistribute wealth—no matter how well-intentioned—are in reality unsustainable in the long run and ultimately lead to nation-wide rationing of healthcare and other services.  In a nutshell, there are many economists and social scientists who argue that the very government programs promoted by each of the “Providing Support” panelists ultimately end up worsening and even causing the very problems they are designed to solve.  Surely this is a perspective that should have at least been given a voice in the “Providing Support” panel, especially since the panel specifically focused upon economic issues.

A second example of a perspective missing from the two-day conference was the simple position that Roe v. Wade and Griswold v. Connecticut both violate the federalist structure clearly delineated by our Constitution, a structure which leaves police powers to the states.  At the concluding panel of the conference, one panelist did state that Roe was wrongly decided because it involved a matter that is supposed to be left to the states but then—without articulating his reasoning—also said that Griswold was correctly decided.  This doesn’t make much sense.

During this same concluding panel, another one of the panel participants railed about how she “didn’t care at what level the right to abortion is given—whether at the level of the UN, the national level, etc.”  All that mattered to her was that women “get their rights” to abortions.

I thought to myself as I heard her say this that her statement provides an excellent illustration of the wisdom of our Founding Fathers in setting up the structure of government that we have (or are supposed to have) in this country.  By setting up different “levels” of government, giving some powers specifically to the federal government, and leaving all others to the state and local levels, the Founders intended to set up a structure that would protect against the kind of tyranny that stems from people trying to ram their particular idea of rights down everyone else’s throats.

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