Hadley Arkes, the Ney Professor of American Institutions at Amherst College, articulates the same position James Dobson has taken. That fact, given Arkes' academic reputation, should weigh heavily on the minds of those tempted to dismiss Dobson as an unreasonable man of the Christian Right.
After arguing his case, Arkes says:
It is conceivable, then, that from the standpoint of the pro-lifers it might be better to lose to Hillary Clinton than to win with Rudy Giuliani. The Republican party left standing after the defeat would still be a pro-life party. . . The Republicans might be diminished, but they would be essentially intact as a pro-life party; and, when the electoral winds shift again, they have a chance of coming back with their character intact.
As to the question of abortion being a moral issue or not, Arkes invokes the disagreement between Lincoln and Douglas regarding slavery.
During the famous debate between Lincoln and Douglas, Douglas professed to be neutral on the matter of slavery. He professed to have reached no moral judgment. And so, he concluded, people should be free in the separate territories to vote slavery up or down. But, as Lincoln pointed out, he had indeed reached a moral judgment. If he had regarded slavery as a wrong—as Douglas had regarded polygamy—he would have understood that a wrong is that which no one ought to do, that anyone may be properly restrained from doing. To say slavery is something legitimate to choose is to say that slavery stood in the class of things “not wrong.” (my emphasis)
In an eerie echo, Giuliani reproduced precisely the same argument in an interview with Charlie Rose. . . [Read on . . ]