A 'Shifting Focus' on Abortion
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Regarding the Nov. 18 front-page story "Some Abortion Foes Shifting Focus From Ban to Reduction":
The emergence of abortion reduction as an avenue for addressing this tragedy is a cause for hope that the pro-life movement should embrace. An exclusive focus on legal restrictions and overturning Roe v. Wade has yielded little progress and has helped polarize the debate.
No less an ardent defender of the sanctity of life than Pope John Paul II recognized that the causes of abortion go far beyond the existence of laws legalizing abortion and that they include the lack of "effective family and social policies."
Indeed, his language about building a "culture of life" addressed the need for a broad response -- legal, social, and cultural -- to prevent abortion.
Abortion reduction legislation offers the possibility of working across divides to turn everyone's attention -- whatever their stance on abortion rights -- to the causes of abortion and to our shared responsibility to address them.
VINCENT MILLER
Arlington
The writer is an associate professor of theology at Georgetown University and serves on the advisory board of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.
