Abortion, Guns and Covid: The Common Thread
Are you pro choice or pro life? Do you believe in gun control or the right to bear arms? Should everyone wear a mask? It seems like every time we turn around there is another hot button topic inflaming people’s emotions. The furor over what public policies to adopt in relation to COVID (and now other viruses) has been ongoing these past two years and shows no signs of stopping. The latest school shooting tragedy in Texas, and the leak of the Supreme Court “Roe vs Wade” opinion both threw gasoline on long simmering fires in the public discourse over whether stricter gun control is needed or abortion should be restricted.
Each of our individual opinions on these issues is far less relevant than examining what it would take to make things happen the way we want. If I were in control, the world might look different in relation to all of the above than what we have now. But if you had asked me how it would look under me as world supreme leader two years ago, the answer would be different than today’s. And who knows what my ideal regulatory regime would look like two years from now. That’s why I think the question as to what we each think is right at the moment is far less important than the questions of how, when and whether we should have any say in what others do.
The common thread in each of these controversial issues is control. If we’re not careful, our emotions around our strongly held beliefs will spill out to not just holding our own opinions as right, but believing that everyone else should as well. From there it is easy to want to control everyone so that they do exactly what our values say should be done. But controlling others is never as easy as it seems. Controlling others means rebellion, deception, or martial law. From Prohibition and the war on drugs we’ve learned that prohibition drives activity underground, and we know from the ubiquity of fake vax passports, the growth in gun smuggling, and the back alley abortions that take the lives of both mother and child, that people will always find a way to subvert laws they will not or cannot obey.
I am not arguing that there aren’t compelling reasons for some or even all of these laws. I personally have strong reservations about the COVID vaccines, but for those who are convinced they are necessary, the rationale for making mandates with strict consequences for non compliance makes sense. When it comes to guns, I am so far convinced by the evidence that says the more guns there are, the more violence there is, both within and outside the home, which would seem to make strict gun control an obvious policy for governments to adopt. And when it comes to abortion, those who strongly believe that the life inside a womb is a baby, and that baby before birth is as worthy of protection as a baby after, would naturally be right to insist that voluntary termination of pregnancy be outlawed.
The problem is, the evidence for or against any of these measures is far less important than the interest and support of the public who will be affected by them. If opposition to any particular measure, no matter how misguided the government believes it to be, is too great, then people will resist being controlled by it. When the illegal or unsanctioned activity takes place despite the controls, the government must then decide how to step up their control. Will they bring ever harsher penalties, costs and prison sentences to bear on those who break the rules? Will they throw tremendous amounts of money and resources at the military and police and increase surveillance efforts in order to track down the recalcitrant individuals who don’t see things the “right” way? To actually clamp down on every last gun owner, every last abortion practitioner (which includes the mother herself), and every last vaccine refuser would require a level of government control so great that it would destroy civil society as we know it.
Could it be helpful if we all realized that we can’t control everyone, and we can’t make everyone think the same way as us? Only once we’ve come out of the hot cloud of emotion that makes us see others with different opinions as our enemies, can we return to the question of what makes good, reasonable policy, that the vast majority of people in our society can live with. We will never be able to please everyone, but I think there is a huge middle ground with every policy issue that most of us would not take issue with. Yes some people believe abortion should be outlawed at conception, yes some people believe abortion should be legal until the moment of birth, but most people don’t fall into these two extremes - nor should we try to push them to one end or the other. Similarly, some people believe all guns should be banned and others believe everyone should be able to carry as many concealed assault rifles as they can, but most are somewhere in between.
Perhaps just as important as finding the middle ground on any given measure, is finding the point at which control of others becomes unwieldy and destructive. Let’s move away from the attachment to our emotional belief, and try looking at what we really need in society in a big picture way, and what would actually be required to stamp out opposition to any given control we might wish to propose.
We may need to consider that, even if we are right, the policy that we want to impose on everyone else as a result of our views may not in fact be the best one for our society. I have no problem standing behind our current societal prohibition on murder and sexual assault for instance. While there remain people who for whatever reason break these prohibitions, as a society most of us easily agree that these rules are both helpful and necessary to enforce. But so much beyond these two sacrosanct values differs widely from person to person. If we can’t recognize that, we will waste our time and energy trying to suppress, rather than harness, what is a beautiful, powerful and ultimately uncontrollable evolutionary force - the human will.
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