In a perfect world

I want to react to those who are saying that one must not ignore the moral aspect of the killing of a fetus by concentrating instead on the mother. I found the following article, for instance, in a blog entitled Vote Life, Canada:

The last few years have witnessed a stunning development in the pro-life movement, one worth considering. The problem: More and more pro-lifers refuse to discuss abortion. A new wave of pro-life leaders insist that victory will not be gained if the debate centers principally on the morality of killing the unborn....

This approach completely sabotages the pro-life position. Crisis pregnancy centers do not exist to handle pregnancy (hospitals and clinics do that). They handle crisis pregnancies, those that will likely end in abortion. They don’t exist for the woman, strictly speaking, but for the child whose life is in danger. Women should not have abortions precisely because abortion is a moral tragedy. If not, then why oppose it?

By contrast, this new tactic implicitly promotes the vice of selfishness instead of the virtue of sacrificial motherhood. Ideas have consequences, and this one may have, as Frank Beckwith observes, “the unfortunate consequence of increasing the number of people who think that unless their needs are pacified they are perfectly justified in performing homicide on the most vulnerable of our population” (Gregory Koukl).

Now with the greatest respect to Mr. Koukl, he is being highly selective in his view of what is moral and what isn't. There is no denying that abortion is a moral issue to people of the pro-life persuasion and that in a perfect world it wouldn't exist. But the factors that cause a pregnancy to be a crisis are equally moral issues: poverty, abusive husbands and boyfriends, hard-hearted employers, lack of an adequate social safety net, judgmental churches, to name but a few.

To suggest that by concentrating on moral issues that even most pro-choice advocates would support being addressed undermines the pro-life movement, or panders to selfishness, is myopic to say the least, if not obsessive.

What people like Koukl have to learn is that moral movements, like evangelistic efforts, need to start from common ground. To tell women that they are by definition immoral if they would consider, even for a moment, that abortion is a way out of their crisis will not win a large hearing. To tell them that immoral circumstances (like the abusive boyfriend or employer who won't keep on a pregnant employee) are standing in the way of keeping their babies without gratuitous suffering, and that we want to address these because abortion will never solve them, will be persuasive to many.

Now to the purists who say "We have to stick to our moral guns come Hell or high water," I say to you, don your asbestos underwear and life jackets. Decide what you want to accomplish in the long run--moral purity as you define it, or a drastic reduction in abortions.