I am questioning your notion that a law forbidding abortion is or would be substantially different than a law that forbids murder or rape because, in your opinion, there is no consensus that abortion is wrong. You further feel that the government has “failed miserably when they try to enforce laws” about which there is no consensus. I believe that statement is largely without basis, unqualified as it is. I asked for an instance. You cited Prohibition and, for the sake of peace in the family, let’s say you are right, the fact that the sale of alcoholic beverages is still illegal in many jurisdictions in this country notwithstanding.
I would also argue, as I have tried to, that consensus is or should be largely irrelevant as to criminality. If, for example, a majority of people decided that laws prohibiting shoplifting should be repealed, should they? Most people have stolen something in their lives, and many provide persuasive reasons for doing so. Criminal laws in many respects protect people from themselves. As I remarked earlier, an unpopular behavior would not need regulation. But let’s really keep peace in the family and forgetting all that, have it your way. Let’s also forget the fact that until about forty years ago and for all time prior abortion was illegal, and its illegality adequately enforced. There, you have won all that.
You have still assumed there is no consensus on whether or not abortion is wrong. But you know that abortion on the national scale was made legal by judicial fiat and never voted upon by the legislature. Based on polls, apparently consensus would build if we were asking whether or not abortion for sex selection is wrong, abortion for convenience, late term abortion, partial birth abortion, abortion without parental consent, etc… Polls would also indicate consensus would swing wildly depending on the part of the country being questioned.
And in the end, I see nothing in your argument that would persuade it is either imprudent or impractical to seek a reinstatement of the laws that have historically prohibited abortion.
