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Why does the warm heart of liberalism turn to ice on the subject of unborn children? Why do so many liberals support abortion and Roe v. Wadel These are not easy questions to answer, given liberal convictions that should instead lead them to oppose abortion. As someone with an early background in antiwar politics, and who lived through the legalization of abortion, I will suggest reasons why so many liberals support it. Then I will offer many reasons why they should, instead, defend the unborn. Most of those reasons should also appeal to radicals and libertarians. I hope that all will consider my case, both in their personal lives and in thinking about public policy.
Whatever Happened to the Joy of Life?
In 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Roe v. Wade, Uberals still revered the Court for its defense of civil rights and civil Uberties in the 1950s and 1960s. They trusted the Court, and especially the three liberal justices who bore much responsibility for Roe: WilUam Brennan, WiUiam O. Douglas, and Thurgood Marshall. They also had faith in the American Civil Liberties Union, which supported legal abortion. Led astray by institutions and people they relied on, many liberals did not follow their own better instincts. Nor did they do the hard thinking they should have done on a matter of Ufe or death.
Gloomy European ideologies, left over from the 1800s and early 1900s, also influenced liberals and radicals of the Roe era. Too often those ideologies overrode earlier American views that were less rigid and more hopeful. Karl Marx's materiaUsm deeply influenced the secular left; so did an essay by his colleague Friedrich Engels that was hostile toward marriage and indifferent to children.1 Sigmund Freud's sexual theories led many Uberals to assume that sexual restraint is psychologicaUy harmful. Freudian faith-and our homegrown Alfred Kinsey-paved the way for the sexual revolution of the 1960s, which treated children as unwelcome byproducts of sex. That revolution gave many people, both men and women, a personal stake in abortion.
Thomas Malthus's obsession with population numbers and Francis Galton's ideas about breeding better humans through eugenics eventually led to a U.S. population-control movement that attained major power by the late 1960s. The more...