The January Effect: Legality as a laxative for conscience

By Robert Meyer

When speaking of the January Effect, I'm not referring to the tendency for stocks to trend for the entire year, in the direction that January's trading has taken them in. I am speaking of a far more insidious cultural event.

The Roe v. Wade decision was simply another step downward into that murky abyss; a surreal dimension where whatever that is deemed legal automatically becomes ethical in the minds of those who seek justifications for their deeds and permissive attitudes. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan probably would have referred to this as "defining deviancy down." More than three decades ago, a popular rock group released an album entitled "What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits." Applying that concept to abortion, I would say that what were once vices are now civil rights. Today, all that anyone seems to care about, is their own celebration and actualization of personal autonomy. Only the wisest and greatest statesmen among us are more concerned about the fulfillment of their duties and obligations.

That's why abortion advocates see their cultural insurgency to keep abortions legal, fundamentally as a test for the advancement of women's autonomy. Yet in most cases, it is merely a barometer giving a stormy reading on issues such as promiscuity, personal sacrifice, selfishness and respect for the sanctity of life.

In a society where non-coerced choices are prized like rare gemstones, we have completely forgotten that greater liberty to choose translates into even greater prudence in stewardship and self-government. That is the message lost in translation. Recall an excerpt from a speech of John Adams: "...Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people; it is wholly inadequate for the government of any other." Freedom, like fire, is most beneficial when it is diligently applied to its proper function and parameters. Liberty was not meant to be the railway for a runaway locomotive of personal license and self-indulgence. At least not without creating the moral chaos and cultural dissonance that saturates modern society. More than anything, we see a generation of people who insist on the right to do as they wish, yet demand an exemption from any consequences resulting from their reckless behavior.

The pro-abortion groups and their confederates, who complain about legal threats to the future of Roe v. Wade, wind up asserting absurd conclusions reminiscent of situations depicted on the Twilight Zone. A recent Gannett News story reported that a group of protesters at a demonstration were shouting, "Bush and Alito will outlaw abortion and women will die." Even if that were true, would it be insignificant to point out that many more lives would be saved? We are seldom asked to consider whether the poor choices that resulted in conceiving an unwanted child, are really the factors most greatly contributing to such tragedy. Much of the rhetoric about "back alley abortions," had its genesis in the fabricated statistics of former abortionist turned Christian, Dr. Bernard Nathanson.

The greatest folly is that "pro-choice" is about the sanctity of choice. The "choice" is merely the lot cast in favor of allowing abortions on demand. Who has ever said, "I'm pro-choice, I choose life?" Are people who are willing to approve of the behaviors of others, which they deem wrong for themselves, merely being tolerant, or do they have little confidence in their source of authority for ethical obligation? One can talk about choice when it comes to disposing of the unborn, but weren't choices made which led to the conception of the unwanted child now developing? That sort of responsibility is scarcely found in a society where there is nothing but victims, and the perpetrators are "society," or the oppressive tendencies of men.

Roe v. Wade has never really been about a biological disagreement over when life actually begins. It has served as an ideological battlefield for the disgruntled to vent their hostilities. Repealing Roe would remand abortion back to state jurisdiction in compliance with the Tenth Amendment, where it resided before 1973.

In the past year we had medical "research" come out to suggest that the baby feels no pain when aborted before a certain stage in the pregnancy. People complain about science being tainted by those challenging evolutionary theories with Intelligent Design concepts, but can't see through this example, how science is hijacked to rescue a social perspective.

This battle will go on so long as people accept legality as a laxative for the conscience.

© Robert Meyer