Pro-Life is Pro-Choice or Settling a Potential Wedge Issue

To be pro-life is to be pro-choice in the fullest sense of the idea. Let's submit to a willing constituency that the "conservative" position on this matter is in fact more liberal than at first considered.

Yet before advancing this argument, let us establishe one indisputable point: the being in the womb of a pregnant mother is a living human being, not a fetus, not a cancer, not a set of lifeless tissues that one can discard without ethical and moral implications.

1) First of all, being pro-life means allowing, as much as possible, for an unborn baby to be born and make choices. In other words, Pro-choice for the child as much as for the mother.

2) Pro-choice also means allowing the mother (and the father) to choose whether the child in the mother's womb will be delivered into the light of day . . . or not. it means permitting future parents and all other interested parties in discerning what is at stake if the mother choose to abort the child.

"Pro-Choice" in the mouths of liberals really ought to be "Pro-Abortion." Very rarely do we see Democrats press that both options--either to let the child live or to die--be presented to the mother, the father, or other interested parties.

In theses dire times when the United States is still facing an uphill battle to curb spending, reduce national debt, and retain as much of this nation's posterity for the future, Republicans should stop limiting their appeal with the scrubbed label "Pro-Life." Presidential candidate Ron Paul, an obstetrician who has taken the oath to first "do no harm", personally opposes abortion, yet has suggested that abortion be resolved by the states.

Abortion is conceivably necessary in very limited circumstances. Blunt sound-bite arguments on this fraught issue prevent candidates from discussing this issue properly. The matter of prompting a mother to let her unborn child live must be dealt with on as local a level as possible. Republicans should not allow Democrats to tarnish conservatives with one overbroad stoke of black-and-white extremism.

For campaigning purposes, Republicans could revise President Bill Clinton's mantra of "safe, legal, and rare", putting aside cries of out-of-touch extremism and appeal to limited-government libertarians who want to take power back from the Federal Government. Rather than attempting to finesse a wedge issue, Republican candidates can present themselves as fully "Pro-Choice", disparage Democrats as "Pro-Abortion", and shelve the matter.