Michael New makes several sound points against the idea that pro-lifers should vote for Hillary Clinton even though (or maybe because) she supports legal abortion. One additional point: A legal regime that treats unborn human beings as non-persons whose killing is a matter of official indifference is unjust, and it is unjust even if the incidence of abortion is low and falling. To support that regime is itself unjust. Even if you hope that nobody will exercise the right to abortion, affirming that right necessarily means willing the exclusion of some human beings from the legal protections you favor for yourself and others you deem more valuable than unborn human beings. It follows that it is never right (assuming, of course, the soundness of these pro-life premises) to support a candidate because she favors legal and subsidized abortion, and extremely rarely right to support a candidate even though she favors it. I have read a lot of “pro-life cases” for pro-choice candidates over the years, and they almost always ignore the injustice of legal abortion—which is to say that they reach pro-choice conclusions by the simple expedient of ditching crucial pro-life premises.
The Pro-Life Case for Being Pro-Life↧