The World Dobbs Could Make

I can’t forecast some of the changes we can expect in the first post-Roe decade. I can, though, list some fundamental things that will still apply. Some men with hearts full of passion, jealousy, and hate will pressure women to abort. Some pregnant women will take desperate measures if they feel it’s a case of do-or-die. It’s the same old story, as time goes by — to borrow from Casablanca.

This means that the need for compassionate help amid crisis pregnancies will remain. Some tiny humans will survive, but most who would have faced a death sentence will still face it, sometimes in New York, California, Illinois, and other abortion strongholds, sometimes in a lonely room where a desperate woman ingests a pill or potion. Life or death for unborn children will still depend on the willingness of their mothers to protect them.

Big media, as in the past, will be crucial, and street-level reporting will have more of an impact than suite-level pontificating. On May 20, the New York Times published a column by pro-life doctor Matthew Loftus that included his “position on the political question of abortion: It should be illegal under nearly all circumstances to kill a baby in the womb because doing so deprives a human being of the right we afford to any other human being.” The piece’s publication was remarkable to see in the pages of the abortion-advocating Times.

Furthermore, Loftus did not make exceptions for rape, incest, or genetic findings. He wrote, “As devastating as pregnancies created by incest or sexual assault are, and as challenging as genetic malformations can be, the circumstances of one’s conception are not used to justify ill treatment postnatally — so why would we discriminate prenatally? Rather, we assume that any disadvantage to a breathing child caused by poverty, violence or poor health are meant to be reckoned with by means of extra generosity and care.”

But Loftus did describe the decision he had to make one day as he served the poor in Africa. A pregnant woman in her 20s had lost about half of her blood by the time she arrived at his clinic. Loftus, another doctor, and the senior nurse on duty agreed on the necessity of aborting the child to save her life, and with the consent of the woman and her husband, the three went to work. He mourned the need, in this extreme instance, to save one life by ending another, and said only his faith in Christ allowed him to get through the night and continue to view his medical work “as part of a battle against brokenness in the physical health of my patients, a battle whose tide was turned when Jesus Christ rose from the dead.”

I tweeted that column and praised it. One reader responded by calling it “terrible” because Loftus took action rather than relying on “divine intervention” to save both mother and child. Then the reader sat in judgment, saying that although Loftus “talks about God, he does not believe in the God of the Bible who can and does do miracles. His guilty conscience is looking to justify his grisly deed so he felt compelled to write an opinion piece justifying himself before the world.”

This kind of attack shows that street-level pro-lifers will face hazards from the left and right. On the left, advocates “shout their abortions” or make specious claims about abortion history that are just not true. For example, National Public Radio’s Sacha Pfeiffer, host of “All Things Considered,” recently introduced a segment on abortion’s history, saying, “In colonial America, it was considered a fairly common practice, a private decision made by women and aided mostly by midwives.” That’s nonsense, and so are the claims that 19th-century pro-life laws were a doctors’ plot.

But on the right, some propose not using the medical and scientific tools God gives us. Others suggest throwing aborting mothers in jail, which is folly both ethically and practically. Micro and macro social pressures — from an overbearing boyfriend, to laws and economic imperatives that make having a family difficult — mean that many women will be victims. Practically, arresting women is a sure way to arrest the progress of pro-life ideas in the 21^st century.

American abortion history shows that social and economic pressures are intense: When abortion pressure grows, love is the only thing stronger. Punitive attempts backfire. Harsh measures don’t change hearts. Knowledge of fetal anatomy helps, and ultrasounds are great tools. Knowledge of the Bible helps, but many are resistant. Community pro-life sentiment is crucial not only in prevention but enforcement. Without it, district attorneys won’t prosecute, and juries won’t convict.

Laws mean little without enforcement, and this book shows that even when pro-life sentiment was higher than it is now and abortion was illegal, enforcement was spotty at best and often ignored. This doesn’t mean the law is irrelevant. Laws will not end abortion, but they can reduce the body count, similar to the way laws against drunk driving today cannot eliminate entirely the practice but nonetheless save lives.

The larger battle is for private and public opinion. The private view of a woman and her boyfriend or husband is more consequential than any law. Pro-life proponents can be most helpful by showing compassion — suffering with those in distress, to use the word’s literal meaning — toward the ultimate decision-makers concerning abortion.

Regarding public opinion, Abraham Lincoln said it best in an 1858 speech in Ottawa, Ill.:

In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.

Roe v. Wade poisoned children and poisoned American life. I hope the womb and the political arena will become less deadly places. Now that the Supreme Court is allowing a decrease on the supply side, I hope pro-lifers will expand pro-life efforts on the demand side by helping more mothers and fathers see what their unborn children look like even six weeks after conception, by showing compassion regarding material and spiritual needs, by stepping up and adopting children. I hope we will proceed, as Lincoln proposed at the conclusion of his second inaugural address, “With malice toward none, with charity for all.”