PBP310H: Incrementalism in Pro-Life Politics

What is incrementalism? Is it ethical? Is it prudent?

• Clarke Forscythe book

In the US, Abolition Human Abortion opposes incrementalism outright, in favour of immediatism over gradualism/incrementalism.

• Abolish Human Abortion debate (T. Russell Hunter and Gregg Cunningham)
  • Distinction between moral immediatism and strategic incrementalism
  • History of social reform

In Canada, nearly every major pro-life organization accepts incrementalism. However, several organizations vociferously oppose gestational incrementalism in particular.

• gestational limits
  • objections on principle versus justifications as incremental step
  • WNAL Direction Matters

EV73

Abortion and euthanasia are thus crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize. There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection. […]

In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to “take part in a propaganda campaign in favour of such a law, or vote for it”.

Yet also EV73, very next paragraph:

A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on. Such cases are not infrequent. It is a fact that while in some parts of the world there continue to be campaigns to introduce laws favouring abortion, often supported by powerful international organizations, in other nations-particularly those which have already experienced the bitter fruits of such permissive legislation-there are growing signs of a rethinking in this matter. In a case like the one just mentioned, when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects.