“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting it is really cooperating with it.”268
—Reverend MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
A lot people say, “I’m personally opposed to abortion, but I think it should be legal.
I don’t have the right to force my beliefs and values on someone else.” This is one of the most popular rationalizations for abortion. We’ve all heard this. This is at best a strange position to take because it is abstemious to an abnormal degree in democratic society. Most people don’t morally abstain from other issues. This is a very common pro-choice argument, but it’s a pro-choice argument with a twist. The person making this argument professes to have some reservations about abortion to start with, putting them on safer ground. It’s just that this person doesn’t want those reservations to change politics.
Many Democratic politicians used to make this kind of argument, even Hillary Clinton. This was frequently used by pro-choice politicians in order to win personal points, so that they don’t sound like they’re sanctioning the killing of innocent children. Rather, they want to sound empathetic to others by acknowledging that abortion is wrong while still being pro-choice and at the end of the day not changing their tune on the issue itself. It’s almost as if they want all the moral credentials of being pro-life without having to actually be pro-life. How clever. Of course, Hillary Clinton and many Democrats who used to appear moderate in lip service by making these claims have since abandoned such arguments altogether; they now openly admit that they believe abortion is a positive good and something to be celebrated.269 It is no longer lamented. How things have changed in this country—when Democrats don’t even feel the need to hide their disdain for the unborn anymore.
But there are many others who genuinely feel this way who aren’t political people. I have friends who think like this, who want their reservations to remain private. They are even reluctant to articulate these reservations, and they certainly don’t want to pass laws that reflect these reservations. This is a curious argument because it denounces abortion while at the same time insisting that the speaker intends to take no steps to put that denunciation into action.
The argument was first popularly made in the 1980s when it was fashionable for religious Democrats to take refuge in this position. One of the most prominent exponents was New York Governor Mario Cuomo, father to the current governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, and also to CNN host Chris Cuomo. Mario Cuomo argued that he agreed with the Catholic Church on the fact that abortion is wrong. But he said as a politician, he was not going to impose that position on others. Geraldine Ferraro, a Democratic female vice presidential candidate, said in a 1984 debate, “I will accept the teaching of the church, but I cannot impose my religious views on someone else.” She added, “I truly take an oath as a public official to represent all the people in my district, not only the Catholics.”270
I can see how Christians fall into this trap, since Christians typically hate to impose their views on others. They would rather just tell themselves that they are taking the moral high road internally, but not feel the need to externally impose their views on others. “Christians have had the reputation of imposing their religion on others in history, so all the more reason for us Christians today to not act like this,” a Christian might argue. The Christian who argues that he or she is “morally and personally opposed to the injustice of abortion, but would not impose their views on others” has mounted a moral high horse that has no foundation on which to stand. They somehow forget truth and send it to rest in the back of their mind, feeling perfectly good about this mental reconciliation.
Now, this position, or argument, might be called the “Pontius Pilate argument.” Pontius Pilate was the Roman leader charged with hearing the case of none other than Jesus Christ himself. The accusations were made against Christ, and Pilate seemed to be leaning in favor of Jesus—yet he never puts that belief into action. Pilate says in effect: I wash my hands of this matter. In a sense Pilate was saying, I have reservations about the guilt of Jesus. I’m personally opposed to the idea of putting this man on a cross, sure. But I’m not going to impose my beliefs on others. I’m not going to carry it out politically. That’s my personal view. (Sound familiar?)
So, Pilate then asks the crowd what they think. They yell that they want Jesus crucified. When Pilate asks them what Jesus has done, they can’t say but merely repeat, “Crucify him!” Pilate, in order to appease the crowd, washes his hands, says, “I’m innocent of this man’s blood, see to it yourselves,” and delivers Jesus so that he can be crucified not by Pilate’s hand, of course, but by guards and the rabble at large.
Just as Pilate was a decision maker in Rome, so are we decision makers in a democratic society. Obviously, we’re not the decision makers in the sense that we sit on the Supreme Court. We might not be lawmakers. We might not be personally deciding to carry a pregnancy to term or to terminate it. But we are decision makers in the sense that we can campaign and we can vote. Those who use this “personally opposed to abortion ” argument are doing far more than just passing the buck; they are supporting the pro-abortion side of the debate. How can they morally resolve such a position? Put simply, someone who is personally opposed to abortion but unwilling to impose their view on any other person is providing support for the whole gamut of pro-abortion activities.
The position being argued by people who don’t want to impose their values on others is ultimately rooted in a kind of relativism. The view that these people really hold is not that they are pro-life but rather that their values are ultimately in the eye of the beholder. This is why one is reluctant to impose one’s values. “They might be true for me, but they might not be true for you.” Interestingly, Pontius Pilate himself was a kind of relativist. His famous line in the Bible is “What is truth?” and the very fact that he raises the question, not only in that way but phrased as a comeback, implies that Pilate is saying that truth is relative.
The position opposed to relativism goes back to the very beginning of Western civilization—the idea of what can be called natural right or natural law. Natural right is simply the idea that there is a moral order in the universe just as there is a physical order in the universe. There are certain things that are morally right and certain things that are morally wrong. In other words, the universe operates not only by physical or scientific laws but also by moral laws. While the physical and scientific laws tell us “this is the way things are,” natural law tells us “this is the way things ought to be.” And the core argument of natural right or natural law is the notion that even though there are different types of laws, physical laws and moral laws, they both have the status of truth.
Natural law and natural right, on the one hand, and relativism, on the other, are polar opposites and have been for centuries. This issue of absolute truth versus relativism was a hotly debated point at the beginning of Western civilization—even in Plato’s Republic, where Socrates advocates natural right and the Sophists champion relativism. Socrates espouses the idea that there’s such a thing as right and wrong in the world—and things are right or wrong in nature. One can believe that this distinction of right and wrong comes from God, or you can believe it is simply embedded in the moral order of the universe. But either way, it’s there. Socrates has no doubt about it. But the Sophists say, nope, that’s not true. They claim there’s nothing that is right or wrong in nature—that things are right and wrong purely by custom.
People who don’t want to impose their views on others are really saying they don’t want to impose their beliefs on the woman, but they don’t mind imposing their beliefs on the baby who is going to die because it seems customary to them. In other words, by pretending to be an innocent bystander, they sidestep the fact that their view has consequences no matter what and is going to result in an individual’s death.
I want to be fair, though, to the innocent bystander, the person making this argument. What is the innocent bystander’s obligation here? Bystanders who refuse to get involved in the life-and-death situation of another are only morally responsible to the degree that first, they know what’s going on; second, that they have the power to do something about it; and third, whether it will cost them anything. No one is asking the bystander to physically jump in and stop someone else from getting an abortion. No one is asking the bystander to sacrifice their own life. But if you understand what is going on, you are being asked to do something that costs you literally nothing, which is cast your vote quietly in favor of life. And if you’re willing to be bold, raise your voice and let the world know you are advocating for protecting life because then others will stand up, too. It’s the least we can do for this cause, as this injustice continues in the country. The parable of the Good Samaritan, which is so often invoked, is not the case here in the sense that one does not need to jump in and give aid or to repel the attacker but merely to pull a lever in the voting booth. While this action costs you nothing, it can mean the difference in life or death for an innocent baby.
There is a great temptation in our culture, not just for Christians but for everyone, to not want to hurt anyone’s feelings. To let everyone just live life, do as they please, and be happy. I get it; I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings either. I, too, want everyone to be happy. But when a moral injustice such as this looks you in the face, in this magnitude, in this real form, and is an important issue in question in our country at a time when you are living and able to participate, how can you be silent? We think that “being nice” means affirming everything—every worldview, every person’s choice or opinion, no matter how harmful.
But how is it “nice” to others to mislead them by your silence into thinking that abortion on demand is morally acceptable? How is it “nice” to the baby who has to die? How is it “nice” to the woman who is puzzled by her pain afterward because everyone has been lying to her about what abortion really is and doesn’t talk about it? We must wholeheartedly love others, and we must wholeheartedly oppose injustice as well. The two are not opposed. It is precisely because I love others that I cannot let injustice go on. We must never give up truth, for if we fall prey to relativism, then we have entered the gateway to evil.
Nobel Peace Prize winner and anti-apartheid preacher Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” There is no such thing as “not taking sides.” There is no such thing as being “personally opposed.” Your position is allowing the injustice to go on.
Those who claim to be “personally opposed” to abortion but don’t want to impose this view on others are not actually that personally opposed to abortion in the first place, if at all. On the face of it, the “personally opposed” argument seems nuanced and heartfelt, but it quickly falls apart when you’re talking about justifying killing other people. Abortion is wrong, not just “for you,” not just “personally,” but in itself. To justify the intentional killing of others means that you don’t really think it’s that evil.