Is There a Right Way to Legalize Abortion?

Abortion has been much in the news lately. Mexico has legalized it (sorry, decriminalized it); Portugal has legalized it; the US has banned at least one form of it.

It reminds me of an article I read years ago in The Economist. Speaking about abortion, the article was entitled, “The War that Never Ends”—as true then as now.

[PW] The basic content of the article was to demonstrate how, since the United States did not deal with abortion as Europe did, the issue continues to divide the country as bitterly as ever


Now, there are many issues presented in the “Special Report” to which one could raise a skeptical eyebrow. Not the least of which is it’s claim that the pro-life movement is “puritanical” in root; or that giving the name “partial-birth abortion” to describe a procedure of forcing open the cerebral cortex and extracting the brains of a fetus already 70% ex-utero is a mere “propoganda coup” of pro-lifers; or the allusions that Europeans as a whole are at ease with the pro-abortion positions adopted by their governments.

Central to the article’s initial development is the idea that had the United States chosen other means to legalize abortion than those actually taken, then the abortion polemic would have long since been settled.

Whereas in many European countries, the adoption of abortion policies (no pun intended) has been executed via legislation and referenda, which “allowed abortionist opponents to vent their objections and legislators to adjust the rules to local taste…[giving] legalization the legitimacy of majority support”, the American Supreme Court in its 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, sought to justify abortion on the basis that it fit under the constitutional right to privacy.

By making abortion into a moral issue (i.e. a fundamental right protected by the constitution) which was decided upon by nine Supreme Court justices, as opposed to a simple majority issue decided upon by the citizens themselves, The Economist states “[i]t would be hard to design a way…that could be better calculated to stir up controversy.”

The remainder of the “Special Report” goes on to describe (through an obvious pro-abortion perspective) the different consequences the abortion polemic has played in both America’s domestic and international politics. However, for as much analysis and statistics laid out, all three pages of the article, from the title to the end bullet do nothing but beg the question. By proposing a right and a wrong way to legalize abortion, The Economist overlooks the central issue of whether or not abortion should be legalized in any place by any means.

To say that there is a right way of doing something inherently evil (or of making it part of a country’s legislation so that others can do it “safely and legally”) is not only absurd, but also logically impossible.

Anyway you argue it, there will never be anything “right”, or a “best way” to go about the destruction of human life in its most vulnerable stages.