Is An Abortion Ban Really Pro-Life?

"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice.  The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization.  We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal.  Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good.  The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”  Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton

***

Amanda Marcotte argues that practically speaking, an abortion ban is not pro-life:

The rate of abortion is actually higher in countries where it's banned, suggesting that if you're "pro-life", the last thing you want is an abortion ban. The black markets that are handling those abortions are---duh---unsafe. There's no "if" here, no future date when all this is suddenly resolved. We actually know right now what each side's policy gets. If we get our way, abortion rates are lower and exponentially fewer women die or are disfigured by abortions. (In fact, if done properly, it's one of the safest surgical procedures that exists, and far safer than childbirth.) If antis get their way, the abortion rate goes up, as does the rate of women dying or being injured by unsafe abortion.

I don't think this is easy to argue against. I am pro-life, in as much as I find abortion deeply morally troubling. But I am also a conservative, which requires me to see what is actually practicable in a diverse and free society, where government does not, mercifully, have the power to control what happens inside our bodies. And so I favor the boring but essentially conservative position that most European countries have and that Roe deprived America of: legal, safe and rare abortion, with increasing restrictions past the first trimester (while allowing for late-term medical necessities for child and mother). Unsatisfying? Yes. Is any other compromise truly possible in a free society where views differ so greatly? Not without ripping the society apart.

Republicans favor the latter. Real conservatives don't.

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/06/would-an-abortion-ban-backfire.html