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Reducing Abortions
How are evangelicals thinking about the abortion debate in light of the election?
It's part of a broad conversation about the sanctity of life. Iraq is a sanctity-of-life issue. Darfur is a sanctity-of-life issue. And this is a sanctity-of-life issue. … It's not one of my main message points when I'm on the road, but it often comes up in a question-and-answer session. The crowds that are there are pro-life and pro-choice. And when I bring up the idea of abortion reduction, of finding common ground by moving to higher ground, most people say, "Yes, we could get behind that." They're asking, "Why don't political leaders suggest that? Why doesn't anybody speak for that? Why don't we hear that from the other side?"
Large pro-choice groups like Planned Parenthood and NARAL both focus on reducing and preventing the number of unplanned pregnancies. But abortion reduction says something else—it could mean reducing through prevention, or through tighter restrictions. What do you mean by the wording?
Everybody tends to agree that preventing unwanted pregnancies is a good thing. I'm saying, let's take it to the next step and say that abortion reduction is a good thing too. It's about providing options—not taking away a woman's right to choose, but making things like adoption easier. It's like the movie 'Juno,' where you give a woman a chance to make a different kind of choice. There she chose to bring a child to term and put it up for adoption. … By making adoption easier, you're not taking away her right to choose.
Abortion reduction can also take a number of different forms in terms of education. One person might think of it as abstinence education, while another might see it as teaching teenagers about condoms and birth control. Are these details that you think you could see consensus on?
If we as a society say we want to commit to abortion reduction, or even just prevent unwanted pregnancies, everyone agrees with that. How do you do that? You might see a Planned Parenthood focusing much more on unwanted pregnancy prevention. Down the street you might see a pregnancy crisis center, which is talking about other options like adoption. I think both of those can be part of the solution … abstinence is one element; education about birth control is another. How do you balance them? That's the conversation we need to talk out.
© 2008
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Member Comments
Posted By: glimps @ 09/19/2008 12:32:52 AM
Comment: Willis makes some good points... However, this two sided issue is a pro-chioice situation bottom line.
Birth-contol & sex education & ppl taking resonsibility is the big issue....
Posted By: BCSutton @ 08/06/2008 8:51:03 PM
Comment: Jim Wallis makes some excellent points and has proposed a sane foundation for the beginning of a new cooperative effort in reducing abortions. He misses just one tiny detail - abortions are big business. Planned Parenthood posted in its 2007 fiscal year end report that it brought in more than $1 billion performing nearly 290,000 abortions.
Since Planned Parenthood performs one-fourth of all abortions in the U.S., one could extrapolate that the entire abortion industry took in $4 billion in revenue last year. That doesn't count the tens of millions of dollars raised by pro-choice organizations to fund their efforts, their candidates and their lobbyists - dollars that are raised by continually raising the spector of women losing "control of their own bodies" and their "right to choose". If both sides came together to reduce the number of abortions, the pro-choice side would lose the element of life threatening urgency in their fundraising - and they would erode the more than $4 billion they make every year in their main line of business.
Unless Mr. Wallis can figure out a way to replace $4 billion in annual revenue through adoption fees, I think he will be hard pressed to get much cooperation from the abortion industry and its many lobbying arms.
Posted By: loriw @ 07/17/2008 2:28:35 PM
Comment: VERY,VERY WELL STATED! The fathers of these babies are too easily let off the hook!!!!! Men need to step up and act responsibly and women must hold them accountable!