PBP310H: Incrementalism in Pro-Life Politics

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

• Clarke Forsythe, Politics for the Greater Good: The Case for Prudence in the Public Square¹⁾ quick notes from someone who has read the book
  • Philosophy of Prudence: Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas
  • History of Social Reform: William Wilberforce, Abraham Lincoln
    • “partial advances, even if they are no more than limitations on an existing unjust law or condition, can create momentum for progress”²⁾
  • Critique of Incrementalism
    • Legitimizes abortion
    • Provides political cover for those who want to attract pro-life voters while keeping abortion legal
  • Defence of Incrementalism
    • Debate over incremental laws serve an educational purpose, e.g. partial birth abortion ban
    • Incremental laws keep abortion debate alive politically
    • Incremental laws have been effective at lowering abortion rates
  • Political prudence means seeking to achieve the maximum change possible at a given time

First, we'll look at a debate between incrementalism and immediatism surrounding Abolish Human Abortion in the US, to help more clearly articulate our principles. Then, we'll turn to the Canadian debate over gestational limits and which kinds of incremental measures are acceptable to apply those principles.

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

• Abolish Human Abortion
  • Debate exists in an American context, but responding to AHA helps to define and provide clarity to our moral beliefs and strategic practices
  • Pro-Lifers vs Abolitionists, according to AHA
    • The term “pro-life” expresses a moral opinion, what you think; abolition expresses moral action, what you aim to do about it
    • Pro-lifers prefer gradual, over immediate, abolition
    • You can be a secular pro-life; you cannot be a secular abolitionist
    • Pro-lifers prefer common ground; abolitionists prefer to proclaim the Gospel
    • The pro-life movement argues that we should focus on saving the babies. The abolitionist movement argues that we should focus on converting the culture. Abolitionists believe that saving souls holds the key to saving babies.
• T. Russell Hunter (AHA) vs Gregg Cunningham (CBR)
  • The Tree: 54:30-1:04:50
  • Cunningham rebuttal: 1:04:50-1:14:40 ( shorter clip)
  • T. Russell Hunter:
    • If it's an injustice/sin, then abolish it immediately (not “overnight” but “work while the day lasts” for immediate and total abolition); opposed to gradualism
    • We must call the nation to repentence for national sin – there is no talking about abortion in a way that it's not a spiritual issue, secular people need to hear about sin also
    • Misrepresents Wilberforce was an immediatist and opposed incrementalism (or at least repented of his support of incrementalism)
  • Cunningham:
    • “We are moral absolutists, but strategic and tactical incrementalists, not because we want to be but because we must be”
      • Strategy: how the ends will be achieved by the means
      • Unstated: there's a confusion between the education/prophetic arm's role (moral immediatism) and the role of the political arm (strategic incrementalism)
    • Hunter presupposes that the pro-life movement has the power to end abortion right now, and we just choose to not do it… he says the only solution is the “magic wand” solution (or miraculous, but suggests AHA are the only ones praying)
    • Professor Michael New published a peer-reviewed study of post-Casey state legislative restrictions and regulations on abortion reduce the abortion rate and save lives: https://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF11C45.pdf
    • Totally against rape exception, “but I can count” – knew he didn't have the votes to pass legislation without a rape exception, but that introducing a very narrow rape exception could default Planned Parenthood's very broad rape exception. Cunningham. Not one single abortion had been funded by the state under that narrow rape exception when he checked. “I put the rape exception in to save babies' lives, and it did.”
    • There's a secular and a spiritual argument, but we'd better be able to make secular, human rights and social justice based arguments for those for whom the spiritual arguments would not resonate. We don't talk Greek to the Romans or Roman to the Greeks. (Yet create an opportunity to share the Gospel, working with campus ministry, etc)
    • Wilberforce: moral immediatist but strategic and tactical incrementalist.
      • He started fighting the slave trade, instead of slavery, because “he could count.”
      • On the way, he supported legislation that forced slave ships to be redesigned, and they made arguments related to pain and suffering of the slaves
      • Wilberforce also supported legislation that banned slave traffic from foreign ports, so it could only involve British ports, totally incremental
      • His last speech to Parliament talked about compensating slave holders for emancipation, and he was attacked by abolitionists for it; he knew he had to do it to get the votes, for the abolition of slavery
    • Abraham Lincoln
      • sat on the emancipation proclamation until he thought he could make it, and excluded the border states, in order to preserve the union
    • Martin Luther King Jr.
      • Moral immediatist: argued against segregation and racism in all forms
      • Strategic incrementalist: picked his battles carefully, strategically, incrementally, for political change

In Canada, every major pro-life organization supports incrementalism³⁾. However, several organizations vociferously oppose gestational limits as an incremental measure.

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.

• objections on principle versus justifications as incremental step
  • strongest objection (that I've never heard anyone make): how can we fight age=based discrimination with age-based discrimination? It'd be like gradually abolishing slavery through racist incremental steps, like starting by emancipating the lighter-skinned slaves, then moving to darker-skinned slaves
• WNAL Direction Matters⁴⁾