Tuesday night was a hard one for pro-lifers. Voters sided with abortion rights through ballot measures in states as diverse in partisanship as Kentucky, Michigan, and Vermont. The judicial victory this past summer in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has turned to a string of electoral defeats from Kansas in August to various parts of the country on Tuesday. Clearly, even a significant number of Republican voters do not wish to protect unborn children in the womb fully.
Those who support the unborn’s right to life would do well to look to President Abraham Lincoln, who offers us needed counsel. In the 1850s, Lincoln fought what seemed an uphill battle against slavery. The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed long-standing rules prohibiting slavery in large parts of the American territories. The Dred Scott v. Sandford decision claimed slavery and racism as fundamental to the American founding, setting the stage for the nationalization of the institution.
Lincoln knew and articulated the importance of persuasion and prudence in combating this rising tide of injustice. He noted that, regarding racial attitudes, “A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded.” We don’t face universal opposition to abortion, thankfully, instead seeing a variety of views related to whether, when, and why abortion should be limited. That spectrum, though, does include those offering broad and stiff opposition to protecting unborn babies.
Lincoln’s answer lay not in giving up on justice or on the democratic process. Instead, he engaged in persuasion. This persuasion never denied that slavery was evil. But it also refused to define all slavery supporters as evil, either. And it sought to work according to all the constitutional means available, but no more. Lincoln believed it possible to compromise without surrendering, to move toward a righteous goal without in that act fully achieving it. This is our course. This is what we must do here and now.
Lincoln also offers us needed assurance. In an 1864 letter to Albert Hodges, the sitting president wrote, “I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.”
Many Americans would say this about abortion. Many are — like in Lincoln’s sentiment against slavery — naturally pro-life. As Lincoln said, “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.” That noble instrument thundered across the Atlantic Ocean the principle that all men are created equal and that such equality began, by necessity, with the unalienable right to life. It thunders now, across time and space, that this right extends to all humans from the moment of conception.
Like Lincoln on slavery, I would say that if abortion is not wrong, nothing is wrong. If destroying defenseless children in the womb is morally justified, then might makes right. Ending the existence of an unborn baby horrifyingly proclaims we are not made in the image of God. If we deny the unalienable rights of the most vulnerable among us, our claims to justice fall as a house of cards.
My earliest political memory came in the 1992 presidential election. My father explained his vote by quoting then-Vice President Dan Quayle, that “abortion stops a beating heart.” That proposition founded my political beliefs. Subsequent time, study, and experience added to those beliefs. But that starting point remained and remains ever my anchor.
Tuesday night hurt. But let us not lose heart. Let our courage not fail us nor our desire for justice fall into dormancy. We must renew and even reform our efforts, seeking the wisdom to achieve victory as much as circumstances permit. We must recognize the challenge before us and meet it for the sake of those for whom we fight. As Lincoln sought a new birth of freedom for America, may we pursue, and achieve, a new birth of life.
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Adam Carrington is an associate professor of politics at Hillsdale College.
