Earlier this month, in the New York Times, Ross Douthat wrote this:
To restrict abortion in a just and sustainable way, to reduce both the personal hardship of parenting and the incidence of illegal abortion, you probably need some kind of policies like Romney’s plan no matter what the consequences for work incentives or single motherhood. More unintended births to poor women in the near term are a necessary price of pro-life victory — with the lives of the babies themselves the reason that price is very much worth paying.
He’s absolutely right. It’s not sufficient to want to end Roe, defund Planned Parenthood, and all the rest. We have to find ways to support families.
I’m absolutely for private, faith-based solutions — as anyone who contributed to my birthday fundraiser for the Sisters of Life knows (you still can, by the way, here). But government polices have to be family friendly, and what is more important than for the government to recognize the family as the treasure it is? We don’t frequently treat them this way, but parents are doing the most important work in the world, and they need to be valued for that fact. They need to have a shot. So many families struggle, and conservatives have to figure out a better way to help them. Families should be at the heart of a conservative approach to policy — policies that we can get somewhere with despite our current environment.
Not everyone is coming at this from the same vantage point, though, even among conservatives, so I’m grateful we’re going to debate what conservative family policy should look. Please consider joining us virtually.
Angela Rachidi and Scott Winship of the American Enterprise Institute will talk about freeing markets to help families and National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru and economist Robert Stein support a greater expansion of tax credits that won’t add to the deficit. National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty will moderate the discussion. And I’ll be introducing it as an initiative of the NRI’s Center for Religion, Culture, and Civil Society.
It’s Tuesday at 2:30 p.m., Eastern time. Sign up here.