Republicans and Abortion

by Francis J. Beckwith

Editor's Note: This commentary is in response to an article by Eileen Padberg called "Gender Gap, Republicans, and Abortion" that appeared in the Los Angeles Times Orange County Edition on Sunday, July 9, 2000.  This article can be read by visiting http://www.latimes.com/.

 It is always awkward to find oneself in disagreement with a clear and well-written essay. This is where I find myself in respect to Eileen Padberg's July 9 column in which she is critical of the Republican Party's stance on the scope of the human community. My hope is that the following comments will lead to greater understanding and dialogue.

First, the G.O.P. platform plank that she so strongly opposes does not say what she claims it says. She says that the platform "in essence, says that 'life begins at conception and, therefore, a decision to abort a fetus is murder.'" Those words do not appear in the text of either the 1992 or 1996 platform, even though she puts those words in quotation marks. What is typically and incorrectly referred to by the media as the "abortion plank" is the section of the platform which calls for a constitutional amendment to protect all human life regardless of venue or level of maturity.

The 1992 plank reads: "We believe the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed. We therefore affirm our support for a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children." The 1996 plank provides a slightly different reading. Both years' planks reside in a section, "Individual Rights," that deals with issues of race relations, bigotry, the civil rights of women, and the rights of the handicapped. This section calls for extending our nation's moral progress toward the elimination of unjust discrimination to those who are the most vulnerable in the human family, the unborn.

Second, what follows from this is not that "the fetus has more rights than" the "wives, sisters, and daughters" of Republicans, as Ms. Padberg states, but rather, that all human persons, including wives, sisters (born and unborn), and daughters (born and unborn), retain their dignity and rights a s long as they exist, from the moment they come into being.

Ironically, by excluding the unborn from the human community, Ms. Padberg diminishes, and puts in peril, the very rights she jealously, and correctly, guards. For once Ms Padberg asserts that it is legally obligatory for our government to exclude certain small, vulnerable, defenseless, and dependent human beings from protection for no other reason than because someone considers their destruction vital to that person's well-being, then it is difficult to know on what moral grounds Ms. Padberg could oppose a totalitarian state or government policy that allows for the exploitation and destruction of wives, sisters, and daughters by powerful people who believe they will live better lives by engaging in such atrocities against these women.
In one place Ms. Padberg seems on the verge of understanding this logic: "We must protect the right for women to make choices about their bodies, for all women, no matter where they live, how old they are or how much money they have." If Ms. Padberg had only taken the principles that undergird this sentiment and extended them, by her imagination, a bit further, she would have discovered a silent group of females, no different in nature than her, who are also entitled to the protection of these principles. For they are being denied the shelter of our Constitution merely because of where they live (they live in wombs), how old they are (they are quite young), and how much money they have (they are naked and penniless), reasons Ms. Padberg correctly judges as irrelevant.

The debate over the human life amendment plank in the Republican Platform is not really about banning abortion. It is about who and what we are. After all, imagine if the plank had said this: The Republican Party affirms a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy if and only if it does not result in the death of her unborn child. Disagreement over such a plank would not be over the morality or legality of abortion; it would be over the question of whether the unborn are members of the human community. Thus, those who oppose the plank, such as Ms Padberg, have the obligation to show why it is mistaken. To do so they must do more than merely reassert without reasons their well- known allegiance to the mantra of "choice." They should, with patience and caring, explain to those of us who support the plank the error of our ways, instructing us carefully and coherently as to why the moral community of persons should exclude small, vulnerable, dependent, and defenseless human beings from its membership solely because someone believes it is in her interest to destroy them.

This is why George W. Bush should articulate his party's platform in a way that expresses its vision of human inclusiveness, a vision that has been at the heart of the GOP's fundamental principles since the time of Lincoln. May I suggest the following:
"The Republican Party has believed, since the time of Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, that every human being, regardless of size, level of development, race, gender, or place of residence, is a member of the human community. None should be excluded. Thus, our view of humanity is inclusive, indeed wide open, to all, especially those who are small, vulnerable, dependent and defenseless. Although I know that some people disagree, it is not clear to me, once one understands what is at stake, how anyone can resist the moral power of this inclusive vision." CBHD