How Dobbs Could Have a Generational Influence
PART 2 OF 2
Whether or not one thinks Prohibition was a good policy, the fact is that it resulted in Americans drinking less. Recent studies show marijuana use has increased in the states in which it has been legalized.
Other historical examples of how government policy has shaped behavior come from such things as seat belt laws and smoking. State laws requiring seat belts have resulted in people wearing seat belts (and thus dying less often in car accidents). State laws regulating the sale of alcohol and cigarettes to minors have made it harder for minors to drink and smoke, and governmental campaigns about the dangers of smoking have resulted in fewer people smoking.
Americans like to think of ourselves as rebels and rugged individualists, but we are largely law-abiding citizens who respect our government and do what it says. Elections have consequences.
It’s going to take generations for us to see the effects of Dobbs on the number of abortions performed in the United States. But while we are waiting for those effects to materialize, there are some for whom Dobbs will change everything today, tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year.
Because of this ruling, there will be babies born who otherwise would not have been. Their lives will be a gift and blessing to the world, regardless of whether the world realizes it. Given the demographic alarms sounding about population decline, this welcome realization may well come sooner than later.
More than ever, it is the duty of pro-life Americans to uphold all children as the blessing they are by doing whatever we can to care for them and to support their parents, whether biological or adoptive. As pro-life organizations continue working for a recognition of the sanctity of life by every person in every place, the care of that life at all its stages and the promotion of pro-natalist policies become even more essential elements of our work.
Death Pangs
Those who are making big money off of the abortion business are naturally going to scream about this ruling. Their screams are the screams of death as they face the realization of their increasing irrelevance. We owe them nothing.
But the screams of those who are losing what they see as their necessary access to abortion are the screams of fear. Those of us who understand that life is a sacred gift from the Creator of the universe must not grow weary in sharing that understanding, in love, with those who need to hear it.
Meanwhile, if anyone from Planned Parenthood is reading, I have a fainting couch for sale.
https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/05/overturning-roe-v-wade-changes-everything-just-not-in-the-ways-corporate-media-claim/