It is time for the Democratic Party to give in on an issue that is not at all necessary or good for it, and generate a constituency sea-change in the process. It can coopt the pro-life constituency by changing its platform to a pro-life platform and actually solving for the abortion problem.
Some, not all, GOP politicians are pro-life so that they may solve the problem of abortion, irresponsible parentage (deadbeat dads etc.), or unwanted parenthood. It seems they are pro-life so that they can forever obtain votes on the theory that they are the only pro-life ticket in the race or party of choice. They have a monopoly on pro-life and so do not really have to resolve the fuel-issues rationalizing the "need" for abortion and the arguments that it is necessary. Professor Mary Ann Glendon (author of Nation Under Lawyers and Divorce and Abortion in American Law) has written some intelligent prose about the gridlock on abortion among the factions who come to contest the matter at law.
People whose party membership or votes turn on the pro-life issue do not do so because they wish to "keep women down," but because they feel compelled to focus on protection of the most needy human life as a measure of what makes America good and unified on a bedrock value: respect and love of life. When adults' faculties are in good order, children unify and energize adults in family units, and on the larger scale. Their need causes the parents to pitch in and provide for their care. And yet we are in a generation that, for a number of reasons, relies on their parents to raise their children.
The GOP rationale that endless profit growth for investors and relatedly servile financial management warrants squeezing families into scramble mode to sustain accumstomed standards of living, actually drives a foundational cause of abortion: greed that generates irrational fear of loss of material standing (not irrational because loss isn't possible, but irrational because the ultimate results of financial loss versus personal integrity of families is not as horrible as creditors would like all debtors to believe). In any case, GOP personal finance and credit ding policies that create real or apparent false dichotomies and choices via financial and credit structuring fuel greed, fear and abortion. They disserve their own constituency, and indeed the entire nation, impliedly arguing that if the individual and family can't adapt to the new status quos, they fail the Darwin test -- tough luck. As such, it is time for Democrats, who traditionally push for human rights, civil rights and the general domestic welfare while treading more lightly abroad, to seize the issue and change the face of the country's ethic with a new political wing. The price: none, really.
Children wake us up to productivity, individually and as a nation. Dependently needy persons don't necessarily eat more or use more resources than less dependent people, however, they do give otherwise healthy persons more jobs to do in society, i.e. they create jobs. And such jobs are worthier of expenditure than many luxury-centric areas of investment. This is not an argument for preventing more dependent lives, nor for creating them, but rather, life-oriented solutions to dependency and efficient use of resources. Cultures of life require efficiency, and so acquire it. Cultures of disposable life waste much and produce less efficiently. It is enabled by a major delusion in our political parties that because one holds a position rhetorically, one is doing something to effect good progress for humankind.
Mostly, one cannot define the pro-life position as partisanship for partisanship's sake where it consists of people convinced that human life is at stake, and not only that, but our collective mental, emotional, ethical and moral relationship to human life. The issue goes to the notion of what it means to be a human being. That is why it is so important to so many other endeavors, such as whether many of the conflicts prosecuted in the people's name are in defense of human lives, or in defense of human luxury, i.e. trading others' lives (OPL = Other People's Lives) for one's own luxury, oil etc.. This is exactly what pro-lifers, for example, say that elective abortion is all about: dispatching with another's life so one may have a higher standard of living. Here is where the Democrats and pro-lifers should be agreeing and acting in consistency with each other as to all human life.
Here is a worthy premise: all of us are dependent on a level. No one is excluded. The moment that dependence is exposed, and one cannot go further without the mercy of another person, one feels what the neediest experience, albeit, perhaps with more awareness. It is the panic most primal that comes from the earliest developed brain stem area which seems likely to be able to cause a systemic response to threat or danger however or wherever detected. We aren't that different.
Many cities would go from bad to disastrous pretty quickly if food production or shipment to their grocers was interrupted for a month or two. Think of how dependent we are on farmers and truckers and the logisticians of the supply chain to keep us status quo fed, hydrated and living. Because we don't do all of those jobs, should be be considered less worthy of life? We must look to our interrelatedness and interdependence to understand how important we are to each other. Meditating on that for a moment puts partisanship in its proper, ignoble shadow of lesser humanity.
Moreover, racism and bigotry toward those with differences takes on perhaps one of the most anti-thetical passions against bedrock American freedoms and values, including pro-life. To hamstring another externally described group in some element of participatory access in the group survival effort, could constitute a slow-burn form of aborting an entire demographic. And so in some ways, both parties have their elements which are enablers of those in the others which they otherwise decry who unknowingly or knowingly do this.
For example, if some bluebloods in the GOP think it only natural that certain peoples (category X) should always rule and have more material wealth than other peoples (category Y), and this is a catalyst for permissive economic disparities over time, depression, and even self-destructive tendencies in both the ruling and oppressed groups. What good do the parties do which give both bluebloods and the oppressed fewer people in their lives to care for, and also fewer voters and representatives in the name of a "safety valve" in a world of scarcity?
However, pro-life philosophy is also important in terms of maintaining populations young enough to help carry on a way of life deemed good on the face of the earth. Here, I refer to the American way of life, which has been given bad press because of a few bad elements which could likely be overcome with some more unity and maturity in the electorate and the parties.
I look at our conduct in comparison with one of those survival stories we read about or view in a movie. If everyone doesn't pitch-in against the mountain, the wasteland or what have you, it multiplies the risk to everyone by several levels of severity. Other people's well-being motivates the most powerful efforts for the group by individuals that can be found.
Pro-lifers believe in their gut and reason in their heads that if something is human, and it is alive, this something is a someone, whether labelled a fetus or a baby, that is, a human life of the most dependent sort. As such, it isn't reasonable or intuitively good to define protected human life on the level of dependence or utility of a being. To do so would launch arguments of utility or dependence against the right to life of others deemed not useful.
They also believe, whether they articulate it or not, that human life should be given the benefit of the doubt. And interestingly, Christian oriented pro-lifers, if confronted with the words of Christ about forgiveness of the enemy (thief on the cross) and the loving of enemies, will often concede that Christ would prefer that these go to prison for life than be executed, because all souls need more time to repent, purify and change their souls to the extent possible for them before the ultimate death penalty which befalls all of us anyway.
And so here is where belief systems come together: there is already life and death naturally. How should we work together to manage life in the most humane way while we have life?
