{"id":22331,"date":"2012-10-18T15:10:37","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T19:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"\/news\/?p=22331"},"modified":"2012-10-19T10:28:41","modified_gmt":"2012-10-19T14:28:41","slug":"is-incrementalism-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/is-incrementalism-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Incrementalism Evil?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

\"\"<\/a>We all know by now that Mitt Romney isn\u2019t the perfect pro-life politician. A former pro-choicer<\/a> who still accepts rape and incest exceptions<\/a>, he leaves plenty of room for improvement.<\/p>\n

However, a few pro-lifers seem insistent on seeing Romney as not merely imperfect, but as their enemy. In response to the Romney comments I wrote about on Tuesday<\/a> on not having specific abortion legislation in his agenda, Personhood USA declares<\/a> that Romney \u201cseems unwilling to do anything to change\u201d America\u2019s \u201cliberal abortion laws\u201d and accuses the governor of \u201cturn[ing] his back on innocent babies.\u201d And Doug Phillips at Vision Forum condemns<\/a> Romney for \u201cendorsing the brutal murder of some babies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Phillips is referring to a new Romney ad<\/a> in which a former Obama supporter describes learning that Romney isn\u2019t as extreme as she\u2019s been led to believe:<\/p>\n

Turns out, Romney doesn\u2019t oppose contraception at all. In fact, he thinks abortion should be an option in cases of rape, incest, or to save a mother\u2019s life. This issue\u2019s important to me. But I\u2019m more concerned about the debt our children will be left with.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This, Phillips says, is tantamount to the \u201cSatanic lie\u201d of \u201cNazi arguments for the compassionate killings of the unwanted, the sick or the elderly\u201d:<\/p>\n

As a father and a Christian who reads the Bible and believes that the Sixth Commandment is non-negotiable, I find it incomprehensible that any honorable man would ask people to support him on national television because \u201cwe are all creatures of God\u201d, as Mitt Romney did in the second presidential debate, and yet simultaneously release television ads bragging about his support for the horrific murder of some children because they are particularly unwanted.<\/p>\n

And yet that is exactly what Mitt Romney is doing [\u2026] Evil.<\/p>\n

So whatever you do this November, please do not perpetuate the fraud that Mitt Romney is pro-life. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The ad is clearly trying to appeal to voters dissatisfied with Barack Obama\u2019s presidency but fearful of Romney\u2019s alleged extremism, but describing it as \u201cbragging\u201d about killing unwanted children is quite the stretch. The real issue is, once again, whether it\u2019s acceptable for politicians to support exceptions and appeal to voters who do.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, exceptions are clearly wrong in the abstract, for reasons we\u2019ve exhaustively written about and debated here at Live Action. All live human beings are equally valuable and equally deserving of protection, regardless of the circumstances surrounding their conception, and the right to life supersedes all lesser rights. And as a matter of political strategy, I\u2019ve long suspected that if more pro-life politicians were to go on offense rather than their usual defensive posture on the question – particularly by asking why innocent children should be punished for the crimes of their rapist fathers and putting<\/a> names<\/a> and<\/a> faces<\/a> to those pro-choicers condition people to think of as abstract choices or burdens – they\u2019d be pleasantly surprised to see how many people simple, honest compassion resonates with.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, we can\u2019t just ignore the fact that, despite majority opposition to elective abortion, only 20%<\/a> of the country is in the “no exceptions” category. As we\u2019ve discussed before<\/a>, incrementally pushing laws in the right direction without getting everything we want is often necessary in politics; here, I\u2019d like to put the question in historical context.<\/p>\n

America has only ever tolerated one other total dehumanization of her people of comparable severity to abortion: slavery. The Founding Fathers fully recognized<\/a> slavery\u2019s evil, yet they recognized that circumstances didn\u2019t allow for the outright elimination of an industry and cultural staple that had been widely embraced for generations by the very people whose support they needed to form a new country, so they adopted a course that was about as incremental as possible: in the Constitution, they provided for<\/a> the future prohibition on importing slaves into the United States and the greatly misunderstood Three-Fifths Compromise<\/a>, which limited the influence of slave states in Congress and incentivized emancipation, and, most importantly, they enshrined the principle of human equality in the Declaration of Independence<\/a>, a move Abraham Lincoln would later explain this way<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In fact they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere. The assertion that “all men are created equal” was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration, not for that, but for future use.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Speaking of Lincoln, while today we revere him as the Great Emancipator, we often forget how incrementally he put his principles into practice. His goal was to push America in a more humane direction, albeit within the range of what he thought people were ready to accept, with the hope that future generations could bring them the rest of the way. Before the Civil War, Lincoln spoke extensively, in public<\/a> and private<\/a> alike, of slavery\u2019s evil, yet his practical focus wasn\u2019t on complete abolition – far from it. His arguments<\/a> instead targeted the expansion<\/em> of slavery into territories and new states. He considered<\/a> enticing slaveholders to free their slaves voluntarily with monetary compensation.<\/p>\n

And in comments that seem far more alarming than the Romney ad in question, Lincoln pledged<\/a> to uphold fugitive slave laws, declared that he had \u201cno purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists,\u201d and even went out of his way<\/a> to reassure voters that he was not advocating \u201cthe social and political equality of the white and black races\u201d or \u201cmaking voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.\u201d It was only after the Civil War confirmed his worst fears about a half-slave nation tearing itself apart that Lincoln championed<\/a> total emancipation through the Thirteenth Amendment.<\/p>\n

Why? Because the prejudice he was fighting was so pervasive a reality that he had to pick his battles and seek the support of people who were only partially sympathetic to his cause – much like the predicament pro-lifers find ourselves in today, where despite the gains we\u2019ve made, scientific ignorance<\/a> and fear-mongering myths<\/a> still hold a tight grip over many of our fellow Americans.<\/p>\n

I am not equating Mitt Romney with Abraham Lincoln, nor do I presume to know how well a Romney administration would really champion the right to life. What I am suggesting, however, is that before pro-lifers declare pro-life politicians \u201cevil\u201d and \u201cSatanic\u201d for their strategic choices, they take a deep breath, look at the big picture, and recall that we\u2019ve been here before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve been here before. Absolutism didn’t work then, either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":22332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nIs Incrementalism Evil? - Live Action News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/is-incrementalism-evil\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is Incrementalism Evil? - Live Action News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We've been here before. Absolutism didn't work then, either.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/is-incrementalism-evil\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Live Action News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/liveaction\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-10-18T19:10:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-10-19T14:28:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Abraham-Lincoln-d.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"375\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Calvin Freiburger\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@liveaction\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@liveaction\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Calvin Freiburger\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/is-incrementalism-evil\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/is-incrementalism-evil\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Calvin Freiburger\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/6eb2bf94c8064b71953ba137bf413c4d\"},\"headline\":\"Is Incrementalism Evil?\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-10-18T19:10:37+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-10-19T14:28:41+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/is-incrementalism-evil\/\"},\"wordCount\":1189,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":[\"Politics\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/is-incrementalism-evil\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/is-incrementalism-evil\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/is-incrementalism-evil\/\",\"name\":\"Is Incrementalism Evil? 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