Note added 10-29-2022: Instead of “legal” I should have used “legally regulated.” I am opposed to abortion being made legal in the sense of legally permitted as a right beyond further legal control. I want abortion to be legally regulated as are many dangerous and harmful practices which might in some cases provide what many consider benefits.

In so far as I am able to influence public opinion, I hope to avoid a time when a large minority think abortion is totally permissible and most other people think that it is morally wrong but not gravely wrong. It’s naughty but nice as long as safe and legal.

Reflection on the notion of moral gravity have helped me to articulate my support for President Clinton’s 1992 campaign proposal that abortion should be safe, legal and rare. The widespread and unabashed endorsement of abortion in reaction to the US Supreme Court’s decision, Dobbs, June 24, 2022, that abortion is not a US constitutional right has vindicated opponents of abortion who nonetheless expressed tolerance of legal abortion with the formula “safe, legal and rare.” We dreaded the moral corruption of our fellow citizens that develops when there is widespread enthusiastic support for unlimited access to abortion.

The formula refers to elective abortions. These are abortions simply on the basis of the pregnant woman’s choice. The formula can be used to express toleration of the legality of some elective abortions. The formula does not specify which are to be legally tolerated. Certainly, not all are to be legal. The rarity requirement emphasizes that many elective abortions are to be illegal. Legislative action is needed to fulfill the rarity requirement.

Why did I support the formula”

Abortions should be safe. We should not wish ill health or death for anyone. There are at least two reasons why abortions should be legal. Legal abortions can controlled by legal statutes. Furthermore, a complete ban on abortions at this state of human culture perverts human attention to the temporary goods attainable by abortions. This is attested to by the current unabashed endorsement of abortion because of fears of abolition of abortion. Abortion should be rare because it is from the moment of conception always morally wrong. It is always the intentional stopping of a human life. We should promote the good of human life and oppose the evil of immoral choices to stop the good of human life. Abortion is intrinsically wrong even in cases of pregnancies due to forcible rape and incest.

In 2022 and several years after, there is no basis for believing that legal abolition of abortions would lessen the evils of abortion and promote the good of human life. In the US abolition of abortion might lead to glorification of abortions as prohibition led to romanticizing excess drinking. At this time, mere fear of the highly unlikely abolition of abortion has corrupted the public to turn away from the ugly evil of abortion to focus on the temporary good of solving “hard cases” where abortion seems to be the best solution.

Apparently, many, many people do not think abortion is a grave matter even if they think it is not quite right.
The political means for educating ourselves and others about the moral gravity of abortion is to use laws to marginalize and stigmatize abortion in public perception along with reducing abortions. As the saying goes promote laws which have “a chilling effect” on abortions. Keep abortions difficult to attain and perceived as morally dubious, if not outright wrong. But do not go far enough to raise fear of abolition. Keep the extreme pro-choice people focused on combatting specific anti-abortion legislation. We want them defending some type of dubious abortion; but not cheer leaders for all abortions.

But in the US and EU the situation has deteriorated to the point where there may be abolition of any legal restrictions on abortions. Abortions will be safe and legal. Rarity will be sought only in the sense that in general people prefer avoiding medical procedures.

With abortion the public perception of its moral gravity has degenerated from a grave evil to a trivial matter.

The struggle to re-establish a culture in which abortion is dark and dirty, i.e., gravely wrong, is to lead popular imagination* to contain images of particular abortions as gravely wrong. Debating the merits of kinds of abortions is more effective for this end than debates in political theory about rights of women and their unborn children.

* Philosophic tasks keep multipling, and not without necessity. Now I owe an account of collective imagination as well as collective thoughts.