Pro-life requires law and order.

The Importance of Maintaining Law and Order for a Comprehensive Pro-Life Ethic

The Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Ruling

The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization marked the biggest victory for the pro-life movement in the past 50 years. The ruling that struck down Roe v. Wade was also a loss for the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood. But to continue scoring pro-life victories, the movement needs to advocate for life at all stages.  

Defunding the Police and the Pro-Life Ethic

Planned Parenthood’s support for defunding the police should make conservatives expand their vision of a comprehensive “womb-to-tomb” pro-life ethic. The maintenance of law and order should be seen as a pro-life issue because allowing lawlessness and disorder to spread costs lives.

The Impact of Gang Violence on Communities

The average American is appalled by open-air drug markets in San Francisco or teenagers causing chaos in downtown Chicago. But the arrests of more than 30 alleged gang members in South Jamaica, Queens, demonstrate how much violent crime affects the lives of people far from a city’s high-end retail corridors. 

The gang takedown last month was the result of a lengthy investigation by the New York Police Department into a feud between two rival gangs: the Money World and Local Trap Stars. The conflict started with a slaying in April 2019. Six months later, the feud escalated after a 14-year-old boy named Amir Griffin was shot and killed in Baisley Park Houses, a public housing project in Queens.  

The Importance of Law and Order for Social Justice

Rewarding lawbreakers and punishing law-abiding citizens is itself a form of tyranny. Anyone who claims to care about social justice should also want to protect low-income families from the individuals who make life in their neighborhoods unbearable.   

The Success Sequence and Strong Families

They can also encourage the formation of strong families consisting of a married father and mother raising their children in a loving home. Intact families improve the odds of going to college and decrease the likelihood of going to prison for children of every background.  

This is why every politician should be discussing the ”success sequence.” Research shows that 97 percent of those born between 1980 and 1984 who finished high school, worked full time, and married before having children avoided poverty by their mid-30s. That message is tangible, achievable, and measurable. Teachers and counselors can teach this to children long before they decide to start a family. 

The Importance of Enforcing the Law

Elected officials can change laws and make policies. But aside from confinement and incarceration, they cannot prevent a person from committing a crime. They can, however, enforce the law and make it clear that criminal behavior will not be tolerated.   

The Importance of Maintaining Law and Order for Pro-Life Advocates

Pro-life and social justice advocates should stress the importance of maintaining law and order. Without it, a small number of people who have no regard for life force hard-working families to live in constant fear of losing a child to senseless street violence.   

The gang takedown in Queens should silence every college professor and political pundit pushing to defund or abolish the police. There is enough of a buffer between posh television studios and public housing projects to let them indulge ideas that lead to lawlessness. The families trying to protect their children from bullets and beatdowns do not have that luxury. 

About the Author

Delano Squires is a research fellow in the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at The Heritage Foundation. Follow him on Twitter @DelanoSquires.