Thought of the Day 03.24.10

A caller said something the other day which I know is true and is very troubling. I was explaining how pro-choice and pro-life people generally agree that abortion is bad and that an ideal world would have very few of them. In contrast, the truly pro-abortion people (who think abortion is good) are only 5-10% of the population.

Since the rest of us agree about common sense things like waiting periods, mandatory sonograms, counseling on alternatives, and viewing educational films showing the true nature of the procedure, it should be possible to use these measures to educate women into not wanting abortion. Ideally, this would also lead to them avoiding sex itself once they start to view abortion as morally unacceptable.

The caller asked why he doesn’t hear more pro-lifers talking about such common sense approaches. Sadly, the answer is that many pro-lifer commentators are all too satisfied stridently reconfirming the beliefs of their pro-life audiences instead of appealing effectively to pro-choicers. This means that the people most in need of hearing what we are saying are unlikely to ever hear us because of our unwillingness to create an environment in which they want to.