Paying for abortions: prochoicers junk principles.

The mask is off. The "prochoice" movement (with the blessing and backing of the Clinton administration) is fighting to have national health care include coverage for abortion. In other words, the abortion folks want to compel anti-abortion folks to participate in what the latter consider to be unwarranted homicide. Now all but the willfully blind can see what the abortion movement is: not prochoice but pro-abortion.

Up till now the rhetoric of the abortion rights people has utilized two main arguments: the personal freedom argument and the pluralism argument.

According to the personal freedom argument, the autonomy of the individual is a fundamental value. Neither society nor government has the least right to interfere with a woman when, in the sacred forum of her conscience, she is making the decision to abort or not to abort.

According to the pluralism argument, the cultural diversity of the United States means that no culture-group has the right to impose its values on any other culture group. If Catholics or Southern Baptists, for instance, are opposed to abortion, fine; let them abstain. But they have no business prohibiting abortion to those whose cultural values tell them abortion is morally permissible.

These arguments have a nice American ring to them. After all, breathes there an American with soul so dead who never to himself hath said, "This is my own, my native land--the land of the free and the home of the diverse"? When the abortion movement came on the national stage dressed in the garments of autonomy and pluralism, it was hard to resist. It was like being wrapped in the American flag.

But now the abortion movement seems to have forgotten all its fine words about freedom and pluralism as it urges Congress to compel all Americans to pay for the feticidal preferences of a few culture groups.

Is personal freedom an ultimate value? Well then, suppose your conscience tells you that it is wrong to contribute to an insurance plan that pays for abortion. Suppose it tells you that such contributions make you a partner in homicide. What then? If society protects a woman's freedom to kill the unborn life growing in her, shouldn't it protect your freedom not to be a killer? Is there any personal freedom more basic than the freedom not to dirty your hands unless you choose to?

If the abortion movement truly believed in freedom and choice, it would move heaven and earth to see to it that our choice not to pay for abortion would be respected. But of course it does not believe in freedom; it believes in abortion. Today it looks us right in the eye and says, "Remember when we told you that all we wanted was to be left alone; that we wouldn't tell you what to do and you shouldn't tell us what to do either? Well, we were just kidding. The real plan is this: you not only have to permit our abortions, you have to pay for them too. Live with it."

And pluralism? Is respect for cultural differences still a good thing? If so, those who have defended abortion rights in the name of cultural pluralism should be the first to defend the right of those culture groups opposed to abortion not to have to pay for it. The abortion pluralists have told us that Catholics and Southern Baptists have no right to impose their values on others. Well then, neither do pro-abortion culture groups have a right to impose their values on Catholics and Southern Baptists.

But of course the abortion leaders no more believe in pluralism than they believe in freedom. So long as it was helpful to use the rhetoric of pluralism and freedom, they were happy to do so. But as soon as they saw an opportunity to force all Americans to pay for abortion, they quickly embraced that opportunity, casually contradicting the principles they had up till now so strenuously professed.

How can the abortion movement so easily disregard its hitherto fundamental principles? Is it a simple case of inattention? Or hypocrisy? Perhaps. But I suspect the answer is to be found rather in the lack of intellectual integrity that has always characterized the abortion party: a lack of integrity shown in its persistent refusal to discuss the cardinal question regarding abortion, namely, whether the fetus is or is not a human person. People who lack intellectual integrity are incapable of holding intellectual principles. They know how to profess principles for public consumption, yes; but professing principles is one thing, truly holding them is something else. Such people can never rise to the level of conviction; the highest (or rather the lowest) they can reach is the level of propaganda.

Do I mean to say this about everyone who is (if you'll pardon the expression) prochoice? No, for among the rank and file there are many good-hearted dupes who truly believe that the abortion cause is the cause of freedom and pluralism. Now that the leadership has thrown off the mask, however, these folks will be able to remain faithful followers only by consuming larger and larger amounts of self-deception pills.

The thought occurs to me that earlier in the twentieth century there were one or two parties in the world that exhibited the following characteristics: they were utterly devoid of intellectual integrity; they were masters of propaganda; they had a great talent for switching principles at a moment's notice; and they practiced the fine art of mass homicide.

Dear me, I wonder why that bitter comparison popped into my head. After all, everyone realizes there is no resemblance between those earlier tyrannies and the genteel leadership of our late twentieth-century American abortion movement.