The following comes from the AZ (Arizona) Policy Blog. It's a valuable site and their latest post is a great sanity check for pro-life activists.
During this legislative session, there was a lot of discussion about banning partial-birth abortions through legislation. One legislator argued that we instead should focus on preventing unwanted pregnancies, and thus preventing abortions. This legislator was pro-choice, but I don't think she wanted more and more abortions to be performed in Arizona.
Is this something we can all agree on? "We should work together to prevent abortions." Certainly, we can find "common ground" here. But does that mean we should only focus on prevention?
A lot of abortion advocates want to direct our attention away from banning (or restricting) abortions through laws, and instead focus on prevention through education. Pro-choice advocates criticize pro-life groups for not focusing their attention on "prevention." But there seems to be a problem with that criticism.
Imagine if dentists wouldn't treat cavities, but they would only try to prevent them. What if plumbers decided not to fix your leaky sink, but only work to prevent the problems? Obviously, that doesn't make much sense.
If there are certain negative consequences (abortions, cavities, leaky sinks), you need to work to fix them. One way to address the negative consequences of abortion is to pass laws to restrict abortions and punish doctors for killing innocent babies.
Does this method fix all the problems and address all the issues? Probably not, but that doesn't mean our only focus should be prevention.
Pro-choice and pro-life groups can probably agree that preventing abortions is a good thing. But pro-life advocates should not waver in their stance to make sure that these terrible procedures are outlawed and that people are punished for killing innocent babies.
