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I used to think the controversy that has swirled around legalized abortion since the 1972 Roe v. Wade ruling could not be resolved, I don’t believe that anymore. The breakthrough for me came when I finally understood the obvious, that legalized abortion is a conflict between morality and freedom, and in such a conflict freedom must always prevail. Let me explain.

Except when there is a threat of harm to another or the common good, personal freedom to think and do as one chooses is as absolute in this country as anything can be. The problem this creates is that sometimes we are free to do things that are rightly understood as morally wrong. I am free not to be a good father to my children, but that would be morally wrong. The same thing holds for any abuse I might inflict on myself. Business practices that may be legal can at the same time be immoral. Even our government is free to take an action that is morally unjustifiable, such as waging an unjust war. Yet, in spite of this conflict, and in the face of it, when morality and freedom are in conflict, our form of government guarantees that freedom wins. The French philosopher Volaire summed it up when he said, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”

Yet, even though Voltaire’s statement affirms the heart of the American Constitution, there are times when the freedoms others exercise so grate against our personal beliefs and/or moral convictions that we want those freedoms limited or eliminated. This has happened numerous times in U.S. history. This is precisely the dilemma Roe v. Wade put into play. The Supreme Court sided with freedom, overruling what had been a moral precedent up to that point when abortion was illegal. The court ruled that women have the same right as men do in regard to making decisions about their own body. They get to decide. No one else. Further, this decision was a de facto declaration that moral objections cannot be a basis for taking this fundamental freedom away from women. The court was underscoring the principle that limiting the freedom of one person or group puts freedom for all in jeopardy, even though there may be moral objections to a specific individual right.

Since then the debate has raged over whether or not the Warren Court’s decision was constitutionally justified. But as important as this issue is, it may have served to distract our nation, especially people of faith, from seeing the important point that Roe v. Wade was a major victory for the cause of morality. The power of moral principles is and always has been persuasion, and this is precisely what the court decision underscored. Legalized abortion does not impose even the slightest limit on the power of moral persuasive. Moreover, the effect of the court ruling was to remind us that legislating morality as states had done in banning abortion undermines moral influence rather than enhancing it. As was often said before Roe v. Wade, abortion being illegal did not mean there were no abortions.

The conflict, of course, is that abortion opponents insist that a fetus is a person. But not everyone shares this perspective. Life beginning at conception is one view, but life beginning at actual birth is another (the one assumed in scripture, by the way). Another is that life begins at the point when a fetus can survive outside the womb. Abortion opponents not only reject these other viewpoints, they insist that since life begins at conception, the rights of a fetus trump those of the mother. What they fail to see is that they are undermining their own positions in the process. Since what they believe is a moral perspective, the degree to which it wins over the minds and hearts of women is undercut by their choice of coercion over persuasion. Limiting or taking away the freedom women have to make decisions about their own body is as self-defeating as Prohibition was in turning the tide against the very real problem of excessive alcohol consumption.

I am convinced that the way ahead for abortion opponents is to accept the imperical fact that moral teaching stands or falls on personal acceptance, not social coercion via legislation. If all of us could understand that a nation that protects both women’s freedom of choice and the voice of moral persuasion to oppose it will likely see fewer abortions than a nation that makes illegal what in the end has to be grounded in the freedom of personal moral choice.