Religion & Law

There has been quite a bit of discussion, on this and other Catholic blogs, about the use (and misuse) of "culture war" talk, about the accuracy of such talk, about whether it is possible (absent surrender on moral questions of importance) to leave behind such talk, etc.  Against the backdrop of this conversation, take a few minutes to read this post, by Ross Douthat.

Now, I tend to think that some calls (not all, of course, but some) for "let's put the culture wars" -- childish things? -- "behind us" are, really, calls for "please stop arguing with me on the serious matters about which we disagree, and just agree that I win."  That said, Douthat raises (and quotes others who raise) an interesting possibility -- could reversing Roe (rather than giving up on its reversal) actually be the better path toward less rancorous politics?  He writes:

Overturning Roe, then, would have a double effect on pro-lifers - it would simultaneously remove the alienating impact of a legal regime that tries to read our views out of the political debate entirely, and enable us to put our theories about American public opinion on abortion and what kind of legal restrictions are possible to the test. Whether this would de-escalate the abortion wars in the long run is obviously hard to say. I suspect that the Linker thesis is correct, and that a short-term spasm of abortion politicking would give way to greater calm on the issue; certainly, I imagine that I would personally feel a lot calmer about the issue if it were de-constitutionalized, whether or not doing so led to the kind of legal gains that I think pro-lifers can reasonably hope for. But there's no way to know for sure.

I think he's onto something.  I know that, during the run-up to the last election, I often expressed my view that the (incorrect) constitutionalization of a broad abortion license, which not only rests on a premise about personhood that many people quite reasonably reject, but also (as Douthat says) implicitly expels from the conversation these many people, is what is most objectionable about the current reality; more so, really, than the fact (which, I am sure, will always be with us) that abortion would, even absent Roe, remain, in many places and cases, legal.