Does Pro-life Now Mean Pro-libertinism?

By Selwyn Duke

&amp;amp;amp;lt;!–
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:&amp;amp;amp;quot;Cambria Math&amp;amp;amp;quot;;
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:roman;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1107304683 0 0 159 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:Calibri;
panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:swiss;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-unhide:no;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:&amp;amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;amp;quot;;
margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:10.0pt;
margin-left:0in;
line-height:115%;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:&amp;amp;amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;amp;amp;quot;,&amp;amp;amp;quot;serif&amp;amp;amp;quot;;
mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
color:purple;
mso-themecolor:followedhyperlink;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
mso-default-props:yes;
font-size:10.0pt;
mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
–&amp;amp;amp;gt;

At NationalPost.com,
journalist David Frum has a piece
in which he discusses what he perceives to be the transformation of the pro-life
movement. His thesis is that the
widespread acceptance of unwed motherhood – including by pro-lifers – has
eliminated the stigma attached to the state, thereby causing a quarter-century
decrease in the abortion rate.

Frum starts out talking about how
the applause for Sarah Palin’s pregnant, 17-year-old daughter at the Republican
Convention reflects this sea-change. Then,
contrasting today’s sexual mores and abortion rate with those of 27 years ago,
he writes:

. . . the pro-life movement has come to
terms with the sexual revolution. So long as unwed parenthood is considered
disgraceful, many unwed mothers will choose abortion to escape disgrace. And
so, step by step, the pro-life movement has evolved to an accepting — even
welcoming — attitude toward pregnancy outside marriage . . . .

. . . this approach seems to have worked. As
the stigma attached to unwed motherhood has diminished, the United States has
seen both a huge increase in the proportion of babies born out of wedlock – now
reaching almost 37% – and a striking decline in the incidence of abortions . .
. .

. . . In 1981, 29.3 abortions were carried
out for every 1,000 women of childbearing age in the United States. By 2005,
that rate had tumbled to 19.1 per 1,000 women.

It is certainly true that the
stigma once attached to unwed motherhood has gone the way of the dodo. As an example, Halle Berry joined other
libertine entertainers in having planned
unwed pregnancies. Then, with life
imitating artists, we heard about the 17 girls who allegedly made a “pregnancy
pact” at Gloucester High School. And
although such planning still isn’t the norm, I think most of us know an unmarried
female who is or has been “in the family way.”

I take issue with Frum,
however. His choice of data is
tendentious, and I don’t like the implication that the degrading of sexual
mores is an acceptable – or even effective over the long term – remedy to the
abortion problem. Most significantly, I
don’t accept the premise that we have only two choices: The de-stigmatization
of promiscuity or a high abortion rate (in fact, the former ensures the latter). There is a third option.

To many, Frum’s argument may seem
compelling. Women had fewer
out-of-wedlock babies and a higher rate of abortion in 1981, a time when the
stigma against having such children was greater. Today, however, without said stigma, we have
a higher unwed birthrate and lower abortion rate than in those more judgmental times. Open and shut case, right?

The problem is that Frum is not
studying history and building a theory based on it; rather, he is
cherry-picking a historical period that just so happens to support his
theory. As it happens, he must do this
because a more conscientious examination of the past would reveal his theory as
nonsense.

We might wonder why Frum would go
back 27 years for his starting point. It’s a rather odd number, after all; why not a round one such as 20, 30
or 50? Well, not surprisingly, 1981 just
so happens to be the year with the highest
abortion rate in American history. During earlier times, however, the rate was even lower than now. In 1972, for instance, the rate was 14 per 1000
women, significantly lower than today. But how could this be? How could
the rate have been so much lower during a time when the stigma against unwed
motherhood was far greater? Clearly,
there are other factors at work.

It’s important, however, to be
intellectually honest and acknowledge where Frum is right. He expresses an obvious truth of human nature
when saying that if you remove the stigma from a behavior, it becomes more
common. Yet also obvious is that the
stigma in question didn’t originate by viewing out-of-wedlock pregnancy as being
divorced from the activity that causes it. Were this the case, believing Christians would have to hold the Virgin
Mary in very low regard. No, the
stigma’s true target is fornication, and this is the problem: The solution Frum
speaks of so cavalierly is nothing more than the mitigation of one flaw with
another.

Many would label this the embrace
of the lesser of two evils, and as a pro-lifer I agree. Yet this still leaves us with one evil left,
and if some would say it’s an acceptable concession to the age, I profoundly
disagree. It is a point of view that
fails to recognize the gravity of the problem of widespread unwed motherhood.

When pondering this, we could dwell
on just the obvious. It’s now
well-established that children of single parents have higher rates of
criminality, drug use and alcoholism; suffer academically; and, generally,
exhibit a wide range of social ills to a far greater degree than those from
intact homes. Yet, did you ever ponder
what such a thing portends for the growth of government and loss of freedom?

The reality is that Bristol Palin
doesn’t fit the profile of the average single mother, in that she won’t have to
forge on singly. She is soon to be
married, and, also important, she has two relatively young parents of means who
are ready, willing and able to provide aid and support. The average pregnant single mother, however,
is much more likely to be left almost twisting in the wind . . . alone, with
child. Individually, this is often
tragic, but collectively, when the number of single mothers becomes great enough,
it is always so – for a civilization.

The obvious problem for a single
parent is that you cannot work to put bread on the table and care for children
simultaneously; thus, someone else must perform the role you cannot. Of course, aside from the Bristol Palins of
the world, there are rare cases such as mothers who are financially independent
and can stay at home or those who earn enough to pay for day care, but, again,
what of the rest? The answer is that,
sooner or later, the government will step into the breach; it will institute
social programs and fulfill the traditional father role by providing money or
the traditional mother role and provide day care. And the less the individuals fulfill their
roles – in other words, the greater the number of single mothers laboring
singly – the greater the government’s role will become.

Moreover, when there is a large population
of dysfunctional youths in society, there will be impetus for a trove of other
programs as well. You can start with
pre-kindergarten, after-school, nutritional, youth-intervention, drug and
anti-violence programs, but the sky is the limit. Virtually anything a good family would do, Hillary’s village will
do.

This is where my libertarian
friends will disagree, saying that adherence to the Constitution and proper
principles of governance could forestall such statism.

This is where I say, you
dream.

Correct principles are great, and
we should all try to live by them. But
no principle, no matter how valid, trumps the principles of human nature. And one of the latter was expressed well by
Edmund Burke when he said:

“It is written in the eternal constitution
that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

Like it or not, there is a direct
relationship between the morality of a people and the liberty they enjoy. Thus, as people become more collectively
irresponsible, there will be a drumbeat to have the government take
responsibility for them – and authority from them. This is especially true during the interim
period between healthy republic and dictatorship.

To understand this, realize that
the same thing causing children from broken homes to exhibit a greater degree
of social ills – their relative lack of virtue – also has other
consequences. One of them is that they
are also more likely to have a feeling of entitlement and expect largesse from
the government, and, therefore, support statist candidates. This is just common sense, but if you’re
still not convinced, consider this research reported
at the liberal web site The Democratic
Strategist:

. . . young people growing up in
‘non-traditional homes’ are more likely to support Democratic candidates – 67
percent of young people growing up in homes with divorced, separated or
unmarried parents voted for John Kerry in 2004, compared to only 49 percent of
young people in homes with married parents. Young people growing up with
divorced, separated or unmarried parents also have more progressive attitudes
on social issues, such as gay marriage: 66 percent of young adults who grow up
in non-traditional homes support gay marriage, compared to only 53 percent who
grow up in traditional homes [perhaps leftists have more incentive to destroy
the family than you thought].

So how do we minimize both abortion
and single motherhood? There is no easy
answer. But there is an answer: A thorough
return to traditional morality. Of
course, its critics may take a page out of Frum’s article and say it doesn’t
work, as they claim that a stigma will lead to abortion. Or they may say that preaching abstinence is
fruitless because kids will “have sex anyway.” And, in a way, they may be right – within
the context of today’s culture. And
that is the point.

G.K. Chesterton once said, “The
problem nowadays is that we have Christian values floating around detached from
one another . . . .” A wise traditionalist
understands there must be a healthy “ecosystem of values,” which exists in a
state of equilibrium because it contains values that balance each other out. Remove a value, and, just as when a species
is eliminated from a balanced food chain, the system may break down.

For instance, when the abortion
rate was far lower two generations ago, we had a strong stigma attached to
unwed pregnancy, but it was balanced by the widely accepted values stating that
abortion is murder and human life is sacred. Thus, this stigma should exist, but it should be attended by an even
greater stigma attached to abortion. And
when it isn’t accompanied by those complementary elements, it’s silly to complain
that traditional morality “doesn’t work.” It’s like having a match and oxygen but no wood and claiming that fire
doesn’t provide light. It cannot work
because, without certain integral constituent elements, “it” doesn’t
exist.

As for preaching the value of
chastity before marriage, there is the problem of inconsistency of
message. If a parent teaching rightly is
contradicted by his spouse and extended family, we’re not surprised when the
children don’t learn the lesson. Yet we
don’t apply this knowledge to our national family. At one time chastity was encouraged not just
by some churches and organizations, but by the whole culture. Today, though, preaching such virtue gets you
labeled a fringe prude, making you a voice in the wilderness of lust. Are we to expect the whispers of an
abstinence message rarely heard to inspire chastity in youth whose hearts and
minds and souls are continually bombarded with sexual messages from popular
culture? This is a bit like dousing a
conscientious fire-starter’s wood with water most of the day and then saying
his fire doesn’t provide light.

In all fairness to David Frum, he
may understand this. His argument might
simply be that we must deal with the world as it is, “come to terms” with the
sexual revolution, as it were. But a
poison pill doesn’t cease to be a poison pill because it becomes a passion, and
an answer doesn’t cease to be an answer because it’s viewed as an
anachronism. Sometimes, when the
question is one of putting the toothpaste back in the tube, the only real
answer is to put the toothpaste back in
the tube. It may not be easy, no,
but the first step is to recognize the ideal, not obscure it.

This is the third option. It’s also a third rail of modern social
commentary because, well, it just might spoil our fun. Of course, different groups reckon fun
differently. So it’s just a question of
what we want to be. Are we to be
civilized people whose fun is spoiled by barbarism, or barbarians whose fun is
spoiled by civilization?

Protected by Copyright

2 responses to “Does Pro-life Now Mean Pro-libertinism?”

Robert Berger

September 26, 2008

It would avoid a lot of problems if every one were sexually responsible and no one had sex before marriage.
However, this is a totally unrealistic goal. What you call “traditional values” before the alleged sexual revolution is a chimera. It never existed.
Sexual promiscuity has been around from the very beginning, and illegitimacy has been very common for many centuries. While SOME people have been chaste and still are, the image of the 1950s as a wholesome era when everything was so orderly and moral is an illusion.
I’m not saying that promiscuity is a good thing, but you can’t stop human nature. And the notion that pornography, sexually alluring advertisements and mildly bawdy television programs and films are to blame for our problems today is specious.
Pornography has existed for
at least 2,000 years, and young people have always felt their urges as acted on them.
Censorship today won’t make any one more virtuous.

LikeLike

Vivienne

September 26, 2008

A more appropriate title for this piece could be, “Does Pro-life Now Mean Pro-Socialism?”
With no family head to model positive virtues or to set boundaries, the Democratic Strategist stats will certainly increase. We only create a society more dependant on its government. Is this the new American Dream?
Unfortunately, the destruction of the traditional family has been a concerted effort – from individual (mis)behavior, to the media’s glamourizing an “anything goes” lifestyle, to the public education system pushing an anti-family agenda, to judges legislating the definition of marriage from the bench. The cultural warning signs are flashing red, everywhere!
One only has to look at the financial crisis to understand that no one entity destroys a society – some may have been unwitting but all were willing participants. As money was cheap, no one ever worried the sky would fall or that housing prices would decline. Individuals buying more house than they could afford – pulling out maximum equity, mortgage lenders eager to write a quick, no income no asset (unverified) loans, firms bundling up this risky paper and selling them to private equity firms, AIG insuring all this risk, and the feds keeping rates too low too long. Everybody participated in this perfect storm!
If we don’t confront America’s social crisis today – are we prepared for a government run cultural bailout as well?
Please keep up your advocating Mr. Duke, it is time to put the toothpaste back in the tube. The cap has been left off too many times.

LikeLike

recent posts

about