Defending the Declaration

Last week I pointed out that Christians bear a special responsibility
to labor in the field of American politics because of the providential
connection between the Christian vocation and the fundamental principles
of American life. This week I want to lay out in more detail the
presentation of moral truth that people of faith should make in our
politics.

It is perhaps the abortion issue more than any other that draws
religious people into the fray. It has provoked a great deal of the
(mostly ignorant) criticism that Christians are illegitimately mixing
religion and politics. Over the years, supporters and defenders of
abortion have offered many different reasons for their positions, and
some pro-life arguments are better than others. For all of these
reasons, believers should be careful to make the best case possible that
it is crucial for the American political system to face the abortion
question and decide it in the right way, once and for all.

First, let me warn against a mistake that it is easy to make at the
beginning. Perhaps because we are speaking to “political” people,
Christians often address the abortion issue exactly as most politicians
do — out of its essential moral/political context. We can inadvertently
leave the impression that we are speaking out on behalf of a particular
special interest, making a case against those who believe that special
interest can safely be ignored. But, rightly understood, the
anti-abortion effort isn’t just another special interest in American
politics. We create this impression when we assume a distinction between
politics and morality that simply makes no sense in the American
context. Our political life is based on certain moral premises. In our
politics, therefore, the failure to understand, articulate and respect
those premises poses a grave threat to our whole way of life. Our
political leaders have need of moral understanding and our moral leaders
cannot escape a heavy political responsibility.

The abortion issue involves a direct assault on the moral premises of
American political life. All our rights as citizens and human beings
rest on the insight first expressed in the American Declaration of
Independence: the idea that all men are created equal and endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable rights. The idea of a right to
abortion, like that of the right to own slaves, can only make sense if
we reject this first principle. If a woman has the right to decide that
the life in her womb is not human life, that it has no worth apart from
her choice and decision, then human rights no longer rest on an
authority beyond human will and decision. If we have any claim to rights
at all, it is the result of the accidental circumstances of history or
the concurrence of a sufficient number of individual whims. Of course,
from that it follows that if a sufficient number of people in any
society agree to deprive some individual or group of their rights, there
is no higher authority to which we can appeal against this theft.

Yet it was precisely the appeal to a higher authority that made the
fight against slavery in America possible, and later the Civil Rights
battle against legally sanctioned racial discrimination and segregation.
It is also the basis of our much-vaunted belief in the individual. As
individuals we can find the courage to challenge even the most extensive
abuses of human power because of our conviction that human rights rest
on an authority that transcends human power, the authority of the
almighty God who lays down the terms on which all human and non-human
powers exist. From this conviction we derive as well those ideas of
limited, representative government which informed the constitutional
structure of our national government.

And without this conviction, most of our political ideas simply
cannot stand. Today the Republican Party purports to be the champion of
limited government and American individualism. Though this stance
appears most often in discussions of economic issues, it makes no sense
apart from the moral premises that are the foundation of these key
concepts of the Republican creed. Apart from our Declaration principles,
the idea of limited government can come across as an archaic fancy, and
the idea of individualism can appear to be a mere sentimental whim. The
moral weight of these ideas comes from recognizing and accepting the
truths set forth in the Declaration.

Thus the key concepts that define contemporary Republicanism make no
sense if we surrender to the pro-abortion doctrine that makes human
rights a matter of human choice and convenience. This degradation of the
human rights doctrine is the most dangerous consequence of the
pro-abortion position. If we accept Supreme Court decisions based on
this view, we are not just accepting a position on abortion, we
acquiesce in a doctrine that fundamentally perverts the moral basis of
our constitutional system. Thus the battle over abortion is but one
aspect of the overall struggle for America’s soul, and for the equality
and dignity of all people.

This is the foundational argument from principle that Christians —
and all Americans — should make against abandoning the unborn. But in
addition to this argument of principle, we should make a pro-life
argument based on the need to address the nation’s most important and
pressing practical problems. Poverty, crime, and drug abuse, as well as
the deteriorating environment for learning in our schools, can all be
traced to the breakdown of the family structure. This breakdown in turn
reflects the deteriorating moral foundations of our nation’s life. In
the last several decades we have suffered from the promotion of a
corrupt concept of freedom based on radical selfishness and the
rejection of moral responsibility and accountability. This corruption
fatally erodes the heart’s capacity to respect the moral commitments and
obligations required to sustain decent families. Abortion epitomizes
this mortal erosion of the heart for family life. It literally hardens
the hearts of mothers against their children.

The abortion issue therefore lies at the very center of this nation’s
intensifying crisis of societal decay. Like the proverbial ostriches,
heads buried in the sand, prominent Republican leaders insist on giving
pride of place to economic issues, while paying empty lip service to the
issues involved in that crisis. The liberal media gladly cooperate in
this economic obsession, since it means leaving their liberal fellow
traveler Bill Clinton unassailed at his most vulnerable point. For
Republicans this is politically stupid, and most likely will lead to
continued electoral defeat. For America it is disastrous, since it means
the passage of more time during which the ravages of our moral, social
disease can spread inexorably toward the point of no return.

Abortion is wrong in deepest principle and thus threatens us with a
future in which we have simply abandoned all claim to be treated with
justice. And it is wrong because of the horrible damage it does right
now to the bonds of love and trust that make common life possible. These
two arguments are compelling and will carry the day if they are advanced
with courage, persistence and charity in the public square — which is
where they belong.

Our nation rests on the premise of God’s existence, and the
importance of His authority as the foundation of human rights and
justice. If citizens who believe in God fail to make defense of this
premise the keystone of their political involvement, who can be relied
on to defend it?