Mr. Ponnuru and Prof. George,
I read your article in the National Review with great interest because I’ve been trying to resolve the ethical dilemma of voting this year, and have so far been mostly unsuccessful. I am leaning a direction that is unfamiliar to me and I’m looking for a strong argument against it. I was hoping that your article would help me resolve this tension, but you did not address the argument that is leading me, as a lifelong and dedicated adherent to a pro-life ethic, to vote for Joe Biden. Here is that argument:
a. I do not believe that if President Trump returns to office next year that this will result in a substancial restriction on abortion availability or a reduction of actual abortions. b. I do believe that it’s more likely that a Joe Biden presidency will, in fact, result in fewer abortions. By that logic, I feel ethically bound to vote for Joe Biden, even though I oppose his actual position on the issue of abortion.
Here are my reasons for (a):
- The opportunity was present for President Trump and the Republican Party to take the simplest, most effective, legal step available to reduce the availability of abortions, and they failed to. When they held both chambers of Congress and the presidency between 2016 and 1018, they failed to defund Planned Parenthood. This fact calls into question, for me, the alignment between their political rhetoric on the issue of abortion and their actual political motivation to enact laws limiting it.
- There has been no historical trend to demonstrate that the abortion rate (number of abortions per 1000 women) has any relationship with the stated positions of the president, as this chart shows:
The abortion rate actually decreased under President Obama more than it did under President Bush! So it’s possible that had John McCain, an opponent of abortion, won in 2008, more abortions might have actually occured. I found it difficult to find more up-to-date data to be able to see how this trend performed under President Trump these last few years, but I feel like if it had shown a sharp drop in the abortional rate beyond the overall national trend, it would be heavily publicised by his supporters.
This leads to my reason for point b: namely that one of the predominant reasons women who get abortions say they do so is because they believe they cannot financially afford to have a baby. If Joe Biden, as expected, is able to strengthen social welfare programs, then this reason would have less salience, and logically lead to fewer women having abortions.
I am ardently pro-life, but I’m not convinced that voting for President Trump will actually achieve the result I’m most concerned with: the reduction of the number of abortions performed in the US.
Thank you for your attention and for your thoughtful article. I know it would be a lot to expect a response, but if you are inclined to tell me where I’m in error, I would welcome it.
