An email: I must respectfully disagree with you regarding your assertion that it would be “smarter” for social conservatives to push for a constitutional amendment making abortion a state matter rather than an amendment that would ban the practice outright. In a purely political sense, you are correct. But such a change in tactics would rob the pro-life movement of its moral authority. The pro-life position, after all, is that abortion is a form of murder. To merely say, “We are going to let each state decide if it will allow for legal infanticide or not,” is not a principled position. Homogamy (a nod to Derb) is a horrible, society-destroying thing, but it’s not murder.

My response: I know a lot of pro-lifers think as you do. And I can certainly see a political argument that the movement would inevitably find itself talking about the courts and federalism rather than about abortion–although I think that’s a mistake. But the unprincipled thing, I don’t see. We “let” each state decide how to punish most murders. Is that too “unprincipled”? Was the legal regime of 1880-1960 in America, where states prohibited abortion but the national government did not, unprincipled? Was it not pro-life? Is it “unprincipled” not to seek an international codification of pro-life policy?