Waxing Poetically: Addressing Culture with a Twist of Poetry

Today, I’d like pose a question to you: What makes a law really work? Is it the law itself or is it the citizenry’s belief in the correctness and morality of a law that makes each law possible to be upheld?

Last night, while chatting with my friend online, I asked her about a her previous statement she made several weeks ago saying she agreed with certain Mormon beliefs. On, in particular, is the belief in a mandated family bonding time. I replied telling her in short that I don’t think mandates work and that for any law to be followed or adopted it must be agreed upon by the majority society or it will fail..

To illustrate I’ll use the topic of abortion. Right now in the U.S. it is legal to have an abortion to terminate a pregnancy. Why? Currently many Americans hold up the 1973 Supreme Court ruling of Roe v. Wade to maintain that because a woman has an autonomous right to do what she wishes in regard to her body, she may to such ends, abort an unborn fetus as it is part of that body.

However, many people identify the same fetus as being a potential human life. Pro-lifers feel very strongly about this and oppose abortion seeing it as a form of preemptive murder. They feel therefore the only sensible thing to do is to make abortion illegal and thereby nourish a culture of life. Their argument is one of hope, optimism and good will toward all life, one that says, “Welcome to the world, Precious Child!” It assumes once a child is born, one of two things will happen: His or her parents will have a change of heart, or the unready parents will give him or her to an adoption agency that will care for him or her in the place of the parents.

Yet, when examining the original argument of how laws can only be maintained if the public by in large accepts them. That is to say for example, we don’t steal, killor lie, not because there are a multitude of laws prohibiting these, but because our moral compasses tell us these actions are wrong. Otherwise, we are nothing more than disingenuous, manipulative and downright evil people.

So, now examine the pro-life argument from the latter point of view. Much of the country is pro-choice. Assuming that the abortion law is overturned, unwanted children would be forced to be born to parents who didn’t want them. Next, those parents would most likely want to give them up. Then consider that an average of one million pregnancies that would have been aborted would then result in new children. Are the adoption agencies ready to handle such a huge influx of children? Are those who would be forced to have children even fit to make a judgment on the matter? It seems clear that many people (the same people who are likely to have abortions) are just are not ready for the kind of whirlwind the overturning of Roe v. Wade would call into existence.

Simply think of all the laws that have been passed through the years. The more radical they were, the longer they took to take hold in society. Abolition of slavery led to Jim Crow laws, voting rights, led to some towns’ prejudice against blacks and women. Making a law is never enough. The people must believe in that law for any significant, prolific and palpable change to happen. As Victor Hugo once said so rightly. “There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come,” Yet, My Friends, that idea can only adhere itself when and if the masses are ready for its arrival.

Until we meet again…keep waxin’ and think a little too!

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