Abortion Extremism
by Robert George

Barack Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever to seek the office of President of the United States.  He is the most extreme pro-abortion member of the United States Senate.  Indeed, he is the most extreme pro-abortion legislator ever to serve in either house of the United States Congress.

Yet there are Catholics and Evangelicals--even self-identified pro-life Catholics and Evangelicals--who aggressively promote Obama's candidacy and even declare him the preferred candidate from the pro-life point of view.

What is going on here?

I have examined the arguments advanced by Obama's self-identified pro-life supporters, and they are spectacularly weak.  It is nearly unfathomable to me that those advancing them can honestly believe what they are saying.  But before proving my claims about Obama's abortion extremism, let me explain why I have described Obama as "pro-abortion" rather than "pro-choice."

According to the standard argument for the distinction between these labels, nobody is pro-abortion.  Everybody would prefer a world without abortions.  After all, what woman would deliberately get pregnant just to have an abortion?  But given the world as it is, sometimes women find themselves with unplanned pregnancies at times in their lives when having a baby would present significant problems for them.  So even if abortion is not medically required, it should be permitted, made as widely available as possible and, when necessary, paid for with taxpayers' money.

The defect in this argument can easily be brought into focus if we shift to the moral question that vexed an earlier generation of Americans: slavery.  Many people at the time of the American founding would have preferred a world without slavery but nonetheless opposed abolition.  Such people--Thomas Jefferson was one--reasoned that, given the world as it was, with slavery woven into the fabric of society just as it had often been throughout history, the economic consequences of abolition for society as a whole and for owners of plantations and other businesses that relied on slave labor would be dire.  Many people who argued in this way were not monsters but honest and sincere, albeit profoundly mistaken.  Some (though not Jefferson) showed their personal opposition to slavery by declining to own slaves themselves or freeing slaves whom they had purchased or inherited.  They certainly didn't think anyone should be forced to own slaves.  Still, they maintained that slavery should remain a legally permitted option and be given constitutional protection.