"More confused than committed": Abortion and the death of logic

Anne Conlon, editor of The Human Life Review, talks with Kathryn Jean Lopez of NRO about the challenge of discussing and defending the pro-life position in today's post-Roe v. Wade world:

LOPEZ: Why are people "more confused than committed"?

CONLON: It's not just pain we've been suppressing for going on four decades, but common sense, and, for those old enough to remember it, logic. Most people tell pollsters they are against most abortions. Yet they still want it to be legal. This includes, in some polls, people who also say abortion is murder. This makes no sense — what other kind of "murder" would people be so blasé about? Then there are those who are against abortion but don't have a problem with physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. Or maybe they reject both abortion and euthanasia but support embryonic-stem-cell research and cloning. A lot of people, I think, are feeling their way to a position on these issues rather than thinking them through. And it doesn't help that our culture has substituted entertainment for imagination. It takes imagination — moral imagination — to see that so-called spare embryos created in petri dishes are our brothers and sisters. That they, too, being part of the human community, deserve our respect — and protection. The good news from recent polls is that young people are trending in a pro-life direction. But I don't think logic has as much to do with it as perhaps a growing awareness on their part of the missing — siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles who may have been aborted — and an inchoate sense that "there but for the grace of my mother, go I." They have also been taught that virtually any sort of discrimination is evil, and the unborn are indeed the tiniest and most helpless victims of discrimination.

But even if you think you're keeping your logical head while all around you are losing theirs, you can still feel confused by the affection you feel for people — like my obstetrician — who either think abortion's okay or don't bother to think much about it at all. I'm a committed pro-lifer. But the last thing I want to do is hurt someone during a conversation about abortion. I think the statistic now is that one in three women will have an abortion in her lifetime. When you add in all the people who may be complicit in that abortion — expectant fathers, parents, siblings, grandparents, friends — I suspect we could be talking about a majority of people in the country. I sometimes feel like Hamlet: "Should I say something or not?"

Read the entire interview on National Review Online.