The Tragedy in Texas

Just a few nights ago, Texas passed legislation banning abortions after twenty weeks, as well as enforcing greater health restrictions on abortion facilities. Much of this was done in response to the horrible work of Kevin Gosnell. As a result, pro-lifers cheered on the victory, while pro-abortion activists believed the bill to be anti-women and destructive.

In one way it is an important victory. The legislation will serve as a model for other states on how to restrict late-term abortions. While not fully ascribing to the pro-life ethic (because an abortion is always wrong, whether before or after twenty weeks), it provides a step on the path to ultimately making abortion unnecessary in the United States today.

However, this victory is overshadowed by all the anger that was seen from miles away. Last week, I discussed the challenge of the anger we faced in the chant “Hail Satan,” thrown at faith-based pro-lifers all the way from Austin. Right to the last vote, the images that we saw of the angry pro-abortion crowds (unless, of course, we ignored their presence) should have shown us the deep tragedy that was occurring in Texas. A bill that could have provided a compromise and common ground for pro-lifers and pro-choicers instead became a cause for division and anger.

The abortion bill in Texas, we must remember, is an abortion bill. Why pro-lifers didn’t view it as a grumbling compromise confuses me: it still allows for abortion before twenty weeks! This bill is not pro-life only because it protects babies after 20 weeks, but it is pro-women by keeping them away from dangerous abortion procedures – dangerous procedures that haven’t become any less dangerous than previous to Roe V. Wade (to the chagrin of the coat-hanger brandishing crowd). Instead of cooperation and compromise between the two factions in the abortion fight, aligning to the truth of what actually was happening in Texas, we saw the spread of two lies.

Firstly, Pro-lifers acted as if the bill was fully pro-life. In our rejoicing in even the smallest of restriction, we forget the bill’s endorsement of abortion before twenty weeks. It also provides Planned Parenthood a narrow but potentially exploitable advantage. According to the legislation, the bill requires abortion to only be done in surgical centers. While, at the moment, this would close many abortion centers in the state, let’s suppose that Planned Parenthood did invest the federal money it receives into upgrading its centers, and let’s say that it did ascribe to Texas standards: suddenly, abortions in these newer and cleaner surgical centers gives off a false impression that abortion is now safer than ever. Our pro-life opposition to all abortion suddenly becomes a further uphill battle. We may lessen the lives slaughtered right now – an immediate good – but, by not recognizing that we have made a compromise and not a victory, we will harm our overall ethic and momentum.

The second lie, propagated by the bill’s opposition, states that the bill is completely anti-women. Pro-lifers know this is wrong: all the news over Gosnell, as well as other late-term abortion victims, points solidly to the fact that this bill was actually meant to help women steer clear from abortion procedures in situations that would be at high-risk to their health. Some on the pro-abortion side might argue that this is untrue since any abortion procured in that late of a stage must be for a health reason. To that I would object that any health aliment should be destroyed by some sort of positive treatment and that the more toxic chemicals and procedures we give someone, I believe, is worse (i.e., instead of trying to just kill said disease, you now also try to kill the child as well; this involves a higher risk to the woman’s overall health). Some may disagree, but all should recognize that the very motivation of this bill was pro-women. Though I believe pro-lifers undeniably care for mothers, there aren’t that many instances were we can point to cases where women died from abortion and then try to legislate against those specific cases, thus trying to make the pro-women case clear as day. This bill did just that, but the bill’s opposition, captured in the sneaker-strutting person of Wendy Davis, was able to put forward the narrative that the bill was anti-women – and succeeded.

These two lies took a situation ripe for compromise and unity over common goods and turn it into a cat-fight. Instead of  pro-lifers and pro-choicers coming together for a common cause of the unborn, women’s health and “safe, legal, and rare” abortion, we found that the pro-life “Amazing Grace”-belting crusader, finding their not-so-perfect Holy Grail of anti-abortion legislation, was warring against the whole of the feminist movement and banned tampons, with Wendy Davis as a new Joan of Arc. This narrative is a lie, fueled by the lies that the bill is both fully anti-women and perfectly pro-life. In the flame wars and protests, both we, the pro-lifers, and the bill’s opposers, created this false narrative. And when falsehood triumphs over truth, we have only tragedy to expect.

Though there are good things in any abortion-restricting legislation, publicly recognizing the difference between compromise and full victory is the only way to properly understand progress. If we don’t see the truth, we only regress, and if we let our neighbors and enemies fall into falsehood as well, we all regress together. What did the world see about the pro-life and pro-abortion movements in Texas? It merely saw two lies of two warring mobs, hurling the names of gods with little regard to charity and love. What success is there in that? I did not see conversion, but instead alienation.

This isn’t about the morality of compromise. Compromise is okay, and is more than okay in Texas. While not immediately perfect, it allows people to work together to a wider and greater vision for the truth. Yet, if we fail to recognize the tragedy in Texas’s legislation, and the failure of a passed compromise, we will forsake our patient, holy and perfectly pro-life vision for the sake of immediate gratification, losing pro-abortion activists rather than convincing them.