“Be a socialist or I’ll kill the kid.” That’s a line I regularly used about Senator Ted Kennedy, way back. I was brash. But I was trying to characterize (and perhaps caricature) his rhetoric on abortion. You could tell he was not keen to defend abortion. So he would say that people had to support this, that, or the other government program in order to oppose abortion. Otherwise, they would lack credibility. Otherwise, they would be hypocrites, or worse. “Oh, they want them to be born, but they won’t help them after they are born!”
I am hearing some of that rhetoric now. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it’s blatant. In logic, however, abortion has nothing to do with government programs: at the federal, state, or any other level. Either unborn life has a right to life or it doesn’t. Either unborn life is, in fact, life or it isn’t. That is the heart of the matter. Free-marketeers can oppose abortion or support it (support abortion rights, let’s say). Socialists can oppose or support. Same with everyone in between.
If people want to debate abortion, great. If they want to debate social-welfare programs — or civil society or what have you — great. But I doubt anyone thinks — sincerely thinks — “You know, abortion is the wrongful taking of innocent life, and it’s probably a stain upon our nation, but some of my fellow citizens won’t support the programs I favor, so what the hell.”
I often quote Gene Genovese — on a number of things, yes, but I’m talking about abortion now. I did so recently: in a piece I wrote called “Coming to Grips with Abortion.” (It is a personal account of doing just that: coming to grips with, forming a view on, abortion.) Gene’s wife Betsey — Elizabeth Fox-Genovese — was a historian, like Gene himself, and the founder of the Women’s Studies department at Emory. In a memoir, Gene wrote, “She gagged on abortion for a simple reason: She knew, as everyone knows, that an abortion kills a baby.”
Don’t you think it’s true? Or near true? That everyone knows, somewhere within himself? Let not the issue be obfuscated — including in the Kennedy way. Because he didn’t want to address abortion, he addressed government programs. Which was very effective — a good dodge. But a dodge nonetheless.