How To End Abortion: It's Not the Strategies You've Seen

Over the last 250 years, American society has progressed in leaps and bounds. But we didn’t just leave behind the customs and technology of 1776. We progressed past the true freedom which defines our country.

We don’t have less permissive laws, or more challenging dictums for our behavior, but the opposite. Our laws and expectations have changed. They now fail to do what the Founders hoped most that they would: Guide a wild, courageous people to live in the freedom of moral virtue.

Today, personal autonomy, not true freedom, is the highest American value. Freedom to choose what is good is superseded by an overabundance of pleasure and possibility. Responsibility is left in the dust.

Our slavery to endless options and endless pleasure is summed up perfectly in the phrase “my body, my choice.”

What Causes Abortion?

At the same time, we are more inclined to think people are misguided or poorly formed, than truly morally bereft. The idea that we can end abortion solely via education, marketing, pregnancy center work, or by improving economic support for families is quickly gaining traction.

But the root cause of abortion is not economics, social factors, or coercion, all of which come into play post-conception.

The fundamental cause of abortion is moral failure, a different failure than the act of abortion itself.

This is what the “rape and incest” argument implies: There is a general moral consensus that if you became pregnant of your own volition (i.e., outside of a violent or unnatural act), your child is now your responsibility. This argument understands that actions have consequences, and each consequence has a moral implication.

To end abortion, we must create more moral people, but not in the way we usually think of: It is not enough to have people whose morals prevent them from aborting their child.

It must be that people are moral enough to avoid creating life for which they do not wish to take responsibility.

In other words, a people moral enough that they practice sexual ethics. We have been playing on the Sexual Revolution’s field, arguing that once people have created a child, it is wrong to kill it. But we cannot play on their field any longer; if we want to gain any traction, we need to go a step further and argue that people should not create an unwanted child at all.

Our laws’ failure to defend children comes directly from our moral failure, as the Founders understood: “In a Republic, however, each man must somehow be persuaded to submerge his personal wants into the greater good of the whole. This willingness of the individual to sacrifice his private interest for the good of the community -- such patriotism or love of country -- the eighteenth century termed public virtue.... The eighteenth century mind was thoroughly convinced that a popularly based government ‘cannot be supported without virtue’.”

Therefore in order to end the moral gap that causes unwanted pregnancies, we must create a moral people in two ways.

What the Founders Knew About Creating Moral People

The Founders, across the board, considered religion to be the most effective way to instill morals: “Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” (George Washington)

In the post-Christian modern day, however, people governed by morals are few and far between. Largely, we have lost the Biblical virtue of fear of God, and no longer consider the consequences of offending Him by sin. We now rely on law to dictate moral guidelines and legal consequences.

A study “reported by the Washington Examiner, by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that in the 13 states that enacted near-total abortion bans after Dobbs, people are simply having less risky sex. Over-the-counter condom purchases rose 5.4%, and gonorrhea infections, a clean proxy for unprotected sex, fell 21% compared to abortion-protection states. People responded to the loss of abortion-on-demand exactly the way we always said they would: by taking responsibility to avoid an unintended pregnancy in the first place.”

This data indicates something extremely obvious: Consequences make people think about their actions. While consequences used to come from religious morality, they can now be supplemented or replaced somewhat by moral legislation.

A better-formed people would not put themselves in a position where exterior forces would have them choose between a child’s life or death, but at least a people reluctant to suffer under the law will make better choices.

Where the Founders’ Vision Comes In

If we want to make lasting change, we must refer back to the founding principles of our society, and recreate the structures of good governance, supported by religion.

Because the Founders built a self-governed country, to be governed well can only come from good people. Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

If the laws (governance) are formed by immoral people, they will form an immoral republic. An immoral republic is an immoral civilization. This is no civilization at all, because immorality is the practice of human self-destruction. A civilization exists for the good of a people. An immoral civilization will destroy its people.

If the government fails to encourage morality in its citizens—as the Founders stated repeatedly—the country will crumble. It is thus in the purpose and the self-interest of the American government to create moral laws: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” (George Washington)

The Essence of Christianity Bleeds Through the Enlightenment

It is essential that we rebuild religion and morality in our country. The growing religious population, especially among young men, is a very good sign, but there are a few other ways to rebuild these values in America.

At the time of the Declaration of Independence, political philosophy was drawing on Enlightenment ideals to create the blueprint that would be used to found our nation. Thomas Jefferson said of the ideas which he drafted into the Declaration: “Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind.” The American mind was guided by Enlightenment rationality and values, but it was founded on Christian practice and principle.

French philosophers of the time hoped to create a society without explicit Christianity, but they largely built it on Christian principles and with Christian values: “Enlightenment deists unknowingly ‘borrowed many themes from the Jewish-Christian past: fraternity, equality, liberty, compassion for the most vulnerable, sensitivity to the category of cruel and inhuman treatment of human beings, the moral evil of slavery, and the rest.’ All the while the deists had faith that they had learned these things through reason alone.” (“The Personal God of George Washington,” Liberty & Order)

Their Christian principles bled into the fabric of American politics and society. Today, our Christian moral framework is repackaged under the mildest terms like “human rights” and ideas of kindness and “safety.” Without a religious framework, the goalposts, so to speak, are endlessly moving. But the shadow of Christian morals is still there, in the few things our society still holds to be evil, such as adultery or theft.

The moral goalposts often move the farthest through legislation. Once a law is passed, society widely accepts the practice. In other cases, law is simply used to advance evil, like in the recent case of California’s Attorney General suing to prevent advertisement of Abortion Pill Reversal. But our legislative system was built on Christian principles, which provide the guidance we need for reform: “Christianity is—historically and sociologically speaking—omnipresent in American culture, and that it’s provided both the vocabulary and the moral resources for some of the most important correctives to our political settlement when it’s gone adrift (abolitionism, religious liberty claims, early-20th century reformism, civil rights, the pro-life movement, etc.).” First Things. When things go entirely awry, the deep roots of Christianity provide the tools we need to change culture for the better.

Additionally, as mentioned with the data from pro-life states, outlawing abortion will help bring about the change in behavior, even before morality or religion change the public’s heart. We can look to the strategies that were used to end slavery, and in pairing them with a reseeding of religion, end abortion. By and large, though it seems unpopular to say when we emphasize individual conversion, we must ban abortion outright across the country.

Most of all, the educated and religious must step up to choose (and become) better leaders, who will help effect all of the changes that must be made on a governmental level.

James Madison said as much: “Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government, can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men; so that we do not depend upon their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.”

While the pro-life movement does not shy from arguing that we have a moral obligation to defend a child’s life, we must render the argument moot by reinstating pre-conception sexual morality. Argument and law are not necessary in a society that values marriage, family, and sexuality. The movement must recognize where our country is morally bereft, and call it out. We must rebuild the cultural zeitgeist with stories about family, duty, and respect for the dignity of the opposite sex. Through the efforts of religious citizens, who celebrate the goodness of life through their stories, culture, and moral practice, even the smallest Americans will enjoy their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.