I’ve just come from the White House, where I was privileged to watch the President sign into law the Unborn Victims of Violence Act.

This is known to many as “Conner’s law” in recognition of the ghastly homicide of Laci Petersen and her unborn son. That dreadful crime put wind in the sails of this legislation, which brings federal law into line with that of many states. The Unborn Victims of Violence act treats those who are murdered in the womb in the course of the commission of a crime against their mothers as victims too.

The issue here is not, of course, abortion, and there were “pro-choice” as well as “pro-life” members of Congress voting it through. Abortion is not in general a crime, so the Unborn Victims Act offers no protection against it. But by drawing attention to the significance of crimes committed against the unborn it underlines the deep ambivalence of Americans on this most divisive of questions. For while their mothers carry them in the womb, unborn babies are distinct individuals. Of course, we know this in experience. The “pro-choice” mother who conceives a child she plans to carry to term speaks about “my baby” as much as the pro-lifer.

More than thirty years after Roe v. Wade the question of abortion is unresolved in American life. From one point of view, the Court took the matter out of the hands of legislators, and therefore the people who elect them. Yet it has not proved to be quite so simple.

Look at the furor over “partial-birth” abortion, a gruesome late-term procedure that has now been prohibited in federal law. Plenty of people who are generally “pro-choice” support the Partial Birth Abortion Ban, including politicians who generally vote down “pro-life” legislation. Why is that? Because, plainly, the closer the baby gets to birth, the harder it is for anyone to overcome the intuitive acknowledgement that it really is a baby. And the harder it gets for them to stomach the grisly killing techniques involved.

Yet courts in three states have blocked enforcement of the law, while they hear challenges to its constitutionality. Earlier state laws have been struck down as unconstitutional, and while those who drafted the ban on partial-birth abortion sought to make it challenge-proof it is inevitable that these federal cases will end up in the Supreme Court. We should follow their progress, in Nebraska, New York City, and San Francisco, follow the arguments, see who gives evidence – as the drama of ambivalence is played out for all to see.

The point is this: as a society we are thoroughly ambivalent about the unborn.

Side by side with this ambivalence we find a wide range of opinions that do not always reflect the “pro-life” v. “pro-choice” alternatives we find in the media. Plenty of Christians check the “pro-life” box when they are asked, but when push comes to shove and they face problem pregnancies they resort to abortion. Plenty more, including large numbers of priests and pastors, do little or nothing about the issue, even though they toe the line and say they are against it. By the same token, there are “pro-choice” women who would never have an abortion, but who defend the principle. And there are others who are deeply happy with abortions done in response to fetal handicap and inherited disease – the kind of eugenic abortion that not so many years ago some evangelicals supported.

Some people, though, are not ambivalent at all. A few weeks ago I was debating Peter Singer, Princeton bioethics professor who has been called “the world’s most influential living philosopher.” Singer candidly believes that handicapped babies should be killed if their parents wish. He has no illusions about abortion, so he is happy to call the embryo and fetus a human being, and to argue that since as a society we kill them before birth, why should it trouble us to kill some of them after they are born?

Ironically, when he opens his mouth and comes out with the logic of what someone has called his “robotic utilitarianism,” people listen. But he is so candid that they draw back. Even “pro-choice” listeners have been made to think again, since when Singer says that there really is no difference between taking the baby’s life before and after birth, they are more liable to believe him than us. Of course, he’s right, as we have been saying all along. Let us continue to work for the day when logic will prevail and the unborn be fully welcomed into the human community.

When I get home what I’m most looking forward to is holding Tessa, our latest grandchild, four weeks old and still as little as many an unborn baby. That’s when I find our ambivalence hardest to understand.