When Winning We Lose

There is a paradox at the center of the Christian life that is important for OST. The Apostle Paul writes of himself:

…as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and yet not killed (2 Corinthians 6:9).

St. Paul is clear, victory according to the world’s standard is defeat for the Christian. This doesn’t exempt us, as St. James says, from the practical demands of charity. Our faith must be embodied in practical, not merely theoretical, good. We must feed to hungry and not simply pray for them or wish them well

…and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? (James 2:16)

But in the political and cultural spheres, to return to St. Paul, what might at the moment seem like defeat (or victory) quickly turns out to be the opposite. As we face the upcoming US election, this is a good to keep this in mind. Often what seems at first like a political or cultural success (or failure) for the Church’s moral tradition turns out to be something else entirely.

For example, one of the difficulties pro-life voters face is that politically successful moral arguments have brought about the very evil they corrected. Recent pro-life legal and partisan victories have not translated into fewer abortions but they have resulted in broader support for more liberal abortion laws.

As David French points out

...when we’re dealing with a complex social phenomenon, political and legal issues are rarely simple. For the first time in decades, abortion rates and ratios increased under Trump. In addition, the best available evidence indicates that abortion rates are up since the Dobbs decision.

Barack Obama was an unabashedly pro-choice politician, yet there were 338,270 fewer abortions in 2016 than there were in 2008, George W. Bush’s last year in office. Though Trump nominated anti-abortion justices and enacted a number of anti-abortion policies, there were 56,080 more abortions the last year of his term than there were in the last year of Obama’s presidency.

Even worse, after Dobbs the pro-life position is in a state of political collapse. It hasn’t won a single red-state referendum, and it might even lose again in Florida, a state that’s increasingly red yet also looks to have a possible pro-choice supermajority.

According to a recent poll, 69 percent of Floridians support the pro-choice abortion referendum, a margin well above the 60 percent threshold required for passage.

If the ultimate goal of the pro-life movement is to reduce the number of abortions, not just to change legal precedent, then these numbers and these electoral outcomes are deeply alarming. If present trends continue, then abortion opponents will have won an important legal battle, but they’ll ultimately lose the more important cultural and political cause.

Yes, we need just laws. But just laws are more complicated than merely banning evil. Just laws must not only be morally good they must also be prudent. Above all, a just law is a law that people will obey and not, as in the Dobbs decision, result in people having less respect for the moral principles underlying the law.