That question is addressed here to people who take a real interest in it; more specifically, to those who are unhappy with legalised abortion.
People who approve of legalised abortion may find interest in what follows. Probably by the end of their reading they would be more encouraged than the first group; that outcome is not my intention, but I believe that the assessment of the question should be made candidly as well as honestly.
I suspect that many people, in whichever of the two groups they are, will tend to answer the question as if it were a different one. [That seems quite a common tendency. It seems that, deliberately or subconsciously, people answer invitations of opinion in ways which are tantamount to propaganda for what they want. That psychological tendency is unexpectedly a point of ‘unity’ between opponents and supporters of legal abortion.] Like politicians when asked by an interviewer whether they think that something will happen, many opponents and supporters of legal abortion to whom the above question were put would probably begin their response with “I hope so,” and then explain why they hope so.
The question is whether it “can” be made illegal again, not whether making it illegal again would be a good idea. Misdirected answers would not be averted entirely even if the focus were, as it should be, kept on “can,” because “can” is somewhat ambiguous: it could be interpreted to refer to literal possibility or to likelihood. Change from legality to illegality (or vice versa) is, of course, literally possible, because the law of the land is what the legislature or the courts decide, and legislators and courts can change their minds. On that basis, the answer to the question is ‘Yes,’ and there is nothing more to be said. A large majority of people would, however, interpret the “can” in the question to mean ‘Is it likely…?’ Furthermore, probably most of them would answer ‘No’.
That would be the case even in America, which has a very large anti-abortion campaign and in recent years achieved concrete successes. After the Supreme Court decided (thanks to the three judges appointed by President Trump) that the Constitution does not forbid States from restricting the availability of abortion, such restrictions have been increasing. Because abortion’s opponents had for many years kept up public activity and got enough of their number elected to State legislatures, it had become likely that they would be able to change State law if the Supreme Court allowed them to do so. For as long as these highly-desirable circumstances remain, abortion will be partly or wholly forbidden in some States. In other States abortion’s opponents have insufficient strength, so the hideous act will be allowed to continue. The broadly-anti-abortion Republican Party’s candidate for Vice-President in the 2024 Election, J. D. Vance, who is a Catholic, favours an abortion-ban applicable throughout the country, although Donald Trump prefers to leave the decision to each State. The Democratic Party are hoping that their Satanically-pro-abortion policy will help to win the Election for them. So the likelihood of abortion being made illegal depends on which of those Parties wins.
Opposition in Europe to abortion trails far behind that in America.
For example, in France the availability of abortion was (by a massive majority of legislators) recently made a Constitutional entitlement, so there is no foreseeable prospect of making it illegal. The position is just as bleak in Ireland, where the flood-gate to abortion was opened widely by a referendum-vote of the public.
In the U. K., public attention to abortion ceased long ago, probably buried the more thoroughly by editorial decisions in the secular communications-media. There are, and have been for many years, some very committed anti-abortion campaign groups, but despite their energy they have failed to arouse even their notionally-most-sympathetic ‘target audience,’ far less Parliamentarians or the general public. As a veteran pro-lifer summed it up in 2018, most people seem to be anaesthetised on the subject. The Church comments occasionally, but (perhaps inhibited by the international sexual abuse shame) muffles its message by adopting a restrained style which is less likely to provoke a hostile reaction: for example, “from our earliest days, [we] learn how to live [in a culture which] doesn’t naturally give support to all the desires that we have.”[1] Legislative proposals of restrictions on abortion have died out almost entirely since the 1980s, were only ‘chipping away at the edges,’ and failed to get through. The 2024 General Election gave an enormous over-all majority to the Labour Party, whose members have traditionally been solidly pro-abortion, so it is a certainty that the residual (but in practice easily circumvented) criminal character of abortion will be abolished. The above-mentioned energetic anti-abortion groups will thereby be left to continue their only option of ‘damage-limitation,’ by trying to persuade people not to have abortions (and offering consolation to any who have done so and regret it; they are alleged to be many, but somehow their cases do not ‘hit the headlines’). In the U. K., therefore, the answer to this essay’s title must be ‘No’.
The bleakness of the situation sometimes prompts pro-lifers to recommend hope in God. Soon after the U.K.’s 2024 General Election a seemingly-new claim was made in support of that advice: influence is proportionate to hope. What a strange idea. Hope is a matter of desire, and desire is entirely different from influence. Someone can have an intense desire but be quite unable to persuade anyone to adopt it. If attempts to do so are directed at people who have practical power, the lack of ability to persuade them results in the desire remaining unfulfilled; the modern history of legalised abortion provides an excellent example.
That was one of the points which arose in an exchange of opinions not long ago. Here are some of the others (with the participants designated as A and B):
A. If opponents of abortion face facts, pessimism is the rational result.
B. People can choose to be hopeful. They can choose also to encourage others to be so; hope of some sort of positive outcome is more likely to motivate effort.
B. St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians exhorted them to focus on uplifting thoughts. So they were not to dwell on what was wrong, and we should recognise that anything is possible with God.
A. God has, of course, the power to intervene directly and arrange everything according to His wishes, but the manifest norm is that He relies on people instead; He “has not willed to reserve to [H]imself all exercise of power.”[2] So situations have to be assessed by reference to practicalities rather than to the possibility of His intervention.
B thought also that the abortion-situation can be mitigated by prayer-supported words and actions. Worsening circumstances can be paradoxically useful, by reminding people of their need of God’s help. Sometimes a mother decides against abortion or, after having one, seeks healing, and Heaven rejoices. A did not comment on those points, but it seems to me that although there is some truth in them they bring to mind the metaphor of a drowning man ‘clutching at straws,’ because they do not even dent – far less hinder – the abortion-industry.
B raised also a point that to some people abortion is “all about numbers.” This was said to be particularly true of abortion-providers, one of whom allegedly claims to have ‘helped’ hundreds of millions of people (by, of course, killing the same number of others, who – in abortionist ideology – do not qualify as people). B seemed to believe that to focus on numbers of abortions is symptomatic of de-humanising the people who are killed, and advised that instead of looking at the latter numbers we should celebrate any life which is saved. The slight ‘echo’ of Matthew 18:12-13 and Luke 15:3-7 is justified, but tends to distract from an apparent case of ‘having it both ways’: (i) citing appallingly-high numbers of abortions as evidence of the dire situation which exists (and perhaps hoping thereby to arouse feeling and action against it), but then (ii) implying that cases when people decide to go ahead with their pregnancies compensate for the lack of progress towards ending (i).
Numbers matter. They are a way of presenting reality (even though they do not always tell us everything about a particular subject). Examples: In competitions between people whose objectives are mutually-exclusive, numbers often reveal how close and how far away from the objective the rivals are. Laughter would be the reaction to supporters of a football team who consistently highlight the comparatively-few good goals which they score, even though year after year they are near the bottom of their league; the further away a team or an individual from being in the lead, the less the celebration when something goes right. The owner of a business which is always losing customers would seem to have a strange order of priority if his morale were sustained by a few who are loyal. Cardinal Francis Arinze said, in 2000, that in some parishes [an under-statement?] almost all of the congregation receive Holy Communion but for months few of them go to Confession;[3] given those numbers, should we be more pleased about the few than concerned about the many? Reports to the XIII Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, about “The New Evangelization” (2012) said that Confession “has almost disappeared from the lives of many,” but mentioned “very positive experiences” when it was made available “at special moments [such as] World Youth Day and pilgrimages to shrines.” Did the positive experiences ‘put things right’? Surely not, because “even these moments of celebration have been unable to positively affect the overall practice”;[4] numbers ‘told the story’.
They ‘told the story’ also of the decision of a Scottish diocese in 2019 to close a pilgrimage-centre. So few were visiting it that keeping it open was uneconomic. It had been run as a commercial venture, intended to be self-sufficient and self-maintaining, but for many years failed to fulfil those aims. The local bishop said that loans from the diocese could not continue: “The ultimate difficulty…is that not enough people visit… It does not seem likely that more people will come…, even though it is a beautiful oasis of prayer and tranquillity.”[5] So that was another case of assessment being “all about numbers.” Would B (above) have decided that the “beautiful oasis of prayer and tranquillity” factor should outweigh the wastage of maintenance-subsidies from the diocese?
In any context, positive factors should, certainly, be appreciated, but not be allowed to warp recognition of whether progress towards the main objective is being made. Presumably, the highest desire underlying opposition to abortion is that all abortion should stop. Positive occurrences within contexts subsidiary to that desire should be welcomed, but are no substitute for the ‘main thing’. The question, at the beginning, was whether making abortion illegal is likely to be achieved. Probably, in whichever country it is asked, most people would answer ‘No’. Even in America, where much more progress towards illegality has been made than anywhere else, the illegality is ‘patchy,’ and the experience with Prohibition a century ago is very likely to be repeated in regard to the illegality of abortion.
This is not a desired conclusion, and may cause some adverse reaction. In England, Bishop David McGough once (perhaps more than once) cited the case of the prophet Jeremiah, who “together with a host of martyrs reaching down to the present day, was not a welcome voice. As Jerusalem faced destruction, he alone proclaimed that resistance was futile. He alone had the courage to describe the coming disaster as the inevitable consequence of infidelity and the shameless exploitation of the poor. His contemporaries sought to silence him.” They said (Jer. 38:4) “Let Jeremiah be put to death: he is unquestionably disheartening the remaining soldiers in the city, and all the people too, by talking like this…” (an accusation of which seemingly-typical modern clerics are in no danger). The bishop commented that sinful humanity’s sinful pride habitually rebels against the truth about itself.[6] Events vindicated Jeremiah’s pessimism. So did they when a Bill to give legal status of marriage to unions between people of the same gender was going through the U. K. Parliament; some campaigners against it were so desperate to sustain morale that they said that opposition was holding up well and that defeats during the Parliamentary process were not as heavy as they might have been; a prediction that the Bill would be passed was described as too pessimistic. It was passed.
There is no pleasure in being pessimistic, but relevant facts must be faced, candidly. To do otherwise is to attempt self-delusion, and (arguably worse) to delude others. More than fifty years ago, the U. K.’s Labour Party had a slogan that ‘Labour government works’. As their difficulties increased, a cartoonist drew one of their Ministers (George Brown) looking at a mirror and, according to the caption beneath the cartoon, telling himself repeatedly “You know Labour government works. You know Labour government works…” At the next General Election, he lost his seat.
The Reverend Jesse Jackson used to say (and perhaps still does), “Keep hope alive.” I have no idea of whether he was equating hope with desire or falling into a common error of equating it with optimism (the latter being a matter of expectation). Desire can be easier to maintain than optimism. Times can, of course, and do, change, sometimes for the better. Our Lord promised that “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…shall be satisfied,”[7] but He did not say when the satisfaction would arrive. In the particular case of abortion, the satisfaction from its being made illegal seems in most places extremely unlikely to arrive in the lifetimes of people reading this essay, and, as implied already, illegality itself will not be enough to end abortion (many acts continue despite their being illegal). We are, nevertheless, required to eradicate evil as far as we can.[8] So let us do so, but keep our expectations and reactions realistic.
[1] Report dated 15th November 2014 in “The Catholic Universe” – the alleged desires seem far less evident than the languid acclimatisation.
[2] “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” paragraph 1884.
[3] “The Holy Eucharist,” Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 2001, p.96.
[4] “Instrumentum Laboris” of the 2012 Synod, paragraph 98.
[5] “Catholic Herald” magazine, London, 23rd August 2019, p.11.
[6] Ibid., 16th August 2019, p.33.
[7] Matt. 5:6.
[8] “Lumen Gentium,” section 36; “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” paragraph 909.
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