GOP, pro-lifers need new, post-Roe message

If the U.S. Supreme Court junks Roe v. Wade, Republicans, conservatives, and other pro-lifers need a message to unbend those whom that decision will contort.

First, use secular arguments for why abortion is evil. "Every baby is touched by Jesus" frosts the 33% of U.S. adults who told Pew Research last December that "religion is not too/not at all important in their lives" and the 32% who "seldom/never" pray.

There are serious, non-religious reasons why abortions should be slashed, if not stopped. Here is how the Right can make this case without needlessly leaving believers behind:

• A woman should have the right to choose an abortion, if she secures the signed and notarized permission of the baby.

• Abortion is not a pedicure. Fetuses are human beings, or at least future human beings, not toenails.

• Every American is a former fetus β€” including you.

• Left to their own devices, fetuses become babies and grow into adults β€” just like your family, your friends, your loved ones, your neighbors, your colleagues, and you.

• Scientists say that unborn babies feel pain, starting somewhere between 12 and 24 weeks. In April 2021’s Anesthesia & Analgesia, obstetricians reported that during intrauterine surgeries, "direct fetal administration of opioid is still required to blunt the fetal stress response to invasive procedures." Abortion is a cruel, unusual, and excruciating death penalty, without due process. This typically involves fetal poisoning, dismemberment, and sometimes decapitation.

Second, non-abortifacient birth control pills should be sold over the counter.

Women currently need medical appointments and prescriptions to buy The Pill.

Nonsense!

If men can walk into Walgreens and buy condoms, women should be able to stroll into CVS and buy The Pill.

The best way to fight abortion is to prevent unwanted pregnancies. If sperm skirts ovum, there is no baby to kill.

Some religious conservatives fret that easier access to The Pill will inspire more pre-marital sex. So what? This would be a bargain price for easing or eliminating the slaughter of unborn American boys and girls, which is a far more grievous sin than sex before marriage. Life equals trade-offs, and this is among the worthiest conceivable.

Senator Ted Cruz (R – Texas) and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D – New York) have proposed legislation to accomplish this. (For real.) Other Democrats complain that selling The Pill over the counter would reduce doctors’ visits during which women could address unrelated health concerns. This is as illogical and – charitably – stupid as selling condoms solely via prescription so more men would see physicians and get tested for prostate cancer.

Women should seek medical attention at will. Meanwhile, The Pill should be as simple to buy as dental floss.

Third, reform adoption. It should be simplified, so would-be parents need not jet to South Korea, China, or Kazakhstan to adopt children, as my friends have done. Instead, the regulations, litigation, and prohibitive costs of adoption should be reduced dramatically so that expectant women who contemplate aborting their children will choose instead to offer them for adoption.

Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

The federal Child Welfare Information Gateway reports that private adoptions can cost between $20,000 and $45,000. This includes courtroom and legal bills, home-fitness studies, social workers, medical examinations, mounds of paperwork, and more. Separating would-be parents from potential child abusers is vital. But prudent cost-cutting and streamlining are worth pursuing.

Charities can nurture pregnant women in distress, help them with labor and delivery, unite their newborn babies with adoptive parents, and guide them, post-partum, to school, training, work, or elsewhere.

Americans generously would back such private efforts. Employers should be encouraged to offer time off and other benefits to those who adopt.

Local, state, and federal government – in that order – could assist, as necessary. Why not make domestic-adoption expenses fully tax-deductible?

Even before the Supreme Court issues its ruling, pro-lifers should begin discussing these matters, to avoid being tarred as sex-hating, misogynistic monsters who consider women mere baby factories.

(COMMENT, BELOW)