The Truth About Abortions

Bronx Democrat Michael Benjamin, a New York State assemblyman, feels bad that 41 percent of New York City pregnancies ended in abortion last year. He feels bad enough to help set up a program that would try to convince pregnant women not to have abortions, he told my colleague Brian Bolduc. He just doesn’t feel bad enough to change his belief that abortion should be allowed — that is, his belief that unborn children don’t deserve legal protection.

There is an obvious tension between thinking that unborn children are in some sense human lives worth saving, and also thinking that these human beings should have no formal right not to be harmed. But just as troubling is Benjamin’s apparent belief that trying to talk pregnant women out of abortions — while supporting abortion in myriad other ways, including Medicaid funding — is a good way to attack the problem.