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Viliam_Bur comments on Politics Discussion Thread August 2012 - Less Wrong
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People who are pro-life in the abortion debate should also be pro- free birth control pills (those not requiring a co-pay).
If pro-lifers were more pragmatic, they would rank the issues that they care about from least-bad to worst. Most would agree that abortion is worse than pre-marital sex. Therefore, they should support efforts to eliminate the need for abortions (not just seek to eliminate the ability to have an abortion). As access to birth control reduces the likelihood of the need to have an abortion, free birth control pills would reduce the overall number of abortions, thus supporting the pro-life stance.
Also, if you agree with the analysis done by Steven Levitt in the book Freakonomics (availability of abortion services led to a drastic decrease in crime), by the same logic, free birth control should lead to a decrease in the crime rate as well.
The catch: That pro-lifers have to believe that they will not be able to get everything that they want politically, and must prioritize their goals.
When discussing our opponents, it is easy to suggest that they should maximize their immediate utility. When discussing ourselves, it is easier to notice that maximizing immediate utility could have various negative long-term consequences.
Maybe there are good game-theoretic reasons why pro-lifers should oppose what you suggest. For example, ranking one's values from least-bad to worst (and making the ranking generally known) could be a bad signalling move, if you really want to achieve them all in long run.
A related outside view observation: Whenever a Green attempts to give the Blues tactical advise, no matter how well-meaning, the advise always seems to boil down to compromising on at least half the Blue positions.
Fair enough. :)
That's a great point that I didn't consider.